On Green

It is a strange thing to look up and to see green around you. Maybe not so strange; plants eat light, and green helps them do that, and it turns out there are plants everywhere. But to look up after a day of being inside, staring at computers and arguing/laughing/crying fiercely about them, to look up and see green -- hedges, trees, grass, herbs -- well, it's a change.

This week has been spent with computers. And that's not so strange, since I type at them for a living. But I've been with them a lot this week. I've been working nights, and working mornings, and all for the best of reasons: because I like my work; because I like computers; because people I like and respect have asked me to do things with them, and to work hard, and to accomplish. So I have, if clumsily, and have worked hard to do so.

But now I'm outside. Outside in the most gentle of senses: a porch, attached to a house that's attached to other houses. I see concrete and stone, condos and windows, tables and chairs. My four metres square is next to other four metres square, and the road is not far beyond that. I hear cars, and neighbours, and none of it sounds terribly nature-filled. And, as before, that's not so strange either.

But there is a Douglas Fir, one metre tall, growing in a pot beside me; we'll plant it later this year in a park. Sunflowers and morning glories and oregano and lettuce are sprouting in a planter box; the kids and I planted them three weeks ago, and now they're stretching for the sun slower than I can see. There is new growth on the hedges. The rose bush beside them is blooming -- one flower now, more to come in the summer. There's dogwood and lavender and herbs growing in a neighbour's porch and a spindly oak tree I grew from an acorn brought back from UBC. There is wind to move all of them: to create a waving mass of leaves, of green, of life.