EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

Baby Break It Down

Ann and I still play Pinch-Punch-First-of-the-Month. I won last year, hands down. My lead this year is slimmer. Our game is important to me because there’s not enough talcum powder left in the world for the Scrabble ass-kickings Ann inflicts on me.  Maybe I pinch a little too firmly. A third competition is who will clock the first robin investigating our lawn come spring. Robins are like trends, the next big thing; they arrive with great fanfare, puffed out chests, and then quietly slip away as August dwindles. We don’t notice their absence at first.

We do take note of the Canada geese who haven’t made a chirp or a peep all summer. They stir unfailingly on Labour Day when the Canadian football schedule gets interesting – doesn’t matter when summer’s last holiday, September’s first Monday, falls. They must react to the lower light, the chill of the night. Put on your stockings, baby, the nights are getting cold. The mornings are notably crisper, half-zip fleeces or flannel shirts required for front porch coffees and traded sections of the Globe and Mail. Soon the day will dawn when we’re out there at our usual time, but morning’s late and we’ll have to wait awhile for enough daylight to read the paper by. And, it’s Ann’s new year even though she’s not taught music in Alberta’s primary or secondary school system for quite some time. Sticky fingers on cheap violins.

As is rarely the case with some of my run-on sentences and long paragraphs, the patio flower pots have been edited, some spent annuals weeded out so to speak. I’ve started cutting back the perennials. The day lilies are always the first to turn to straw, stems and fronds. The ferns, bleeding hearts, ragged yellow hostas and bloomless peonies are next. I mow our lawn about twelve times between Victoria Day and Thanksgiving. A City of Edmonton diktat declares cats strictly indoor pets, akin to those wretched, eye-watering albino bunny rabbits. Cats exact their toll on bird flocks (magpies excepted), you see. So do modern reflective UV-treated tinted windows. They’re also something of a delicacy to our burgeoning population of urban coyotes. On the other paw, a savvy outdoor cat, our late tabby Scamp for example (He thrived some eighteen years, ignoring skunks and staring down aggressive dogs and knew exactly where to lay across our Saturday morning crossword puzzle), is ruthlessly efficient at rodent control. Catless (like the entire neighbourhood) these days but not pining for the smell of kitty litter dust, I limbo the lawnmower’s blades for the last couple of cuts; get them down as low as they can go: Ann and I theorise we’re shutting down the local voles’ winter salad bar. A sneeze barrier of a s(n)ort.

I took down our patio umbrellas. Their storage bags are still fire engine red. The umbrellas themselves have paid the cost of doing their job in the heat of the sweet summer sun. They’re like cheap plywood, one side good. But the fabric has held up and, anyway, we don’t hover over them, we sit beneath their faded shade. I can’t remember if red was our primary choice for colour or if we settled for late September clearance pricing and lack of selection five years ago. Same goes for the patio overflow set of Canadian Tire folding chairs in day-glo urine sample colours. When they go on sale now they cost $10 more than we paid. I store all this stuff at the rear of our attached single-car garage, one without a human door. To do this I have to move the snow shovels, the ice chipper and the ice scraper. I’m always tempted to move them outside a titch too soon because, you know, autumn in Edmonton, sometimes a leaf rake just won’t do.

Changing seasons, changing hats. My outdoor work cap features a football logo now because the summer game is winding down. After Grey Cup I debut my Montreal Canadiens winter headwear. A Habs cap I’ve worn for twenty-five years has faded to pink in some places. I only mention this because it used to be as blue as their home helmets. Just 76 points last season; they’ll have to rack up another 16 above and beyond that total to sniff at the playoff pool this year. Ideally those points come with wins rather than cheap overtime loss rewards because the league's cock-eyed accumulative methodology, essentially a football rouge, does manage to subtly sort contenders from pretenders. Eh bien, I digress; too soon to talk hockey.

And it’s too soon to be too hasty, we’re still in September after all – my favourite month in this town, blue sky above green and gold foliage, ideal temperatures. I can’t cut back everything at once because some plants pick their moment, delay it, become a little showy once their competitors are spent. Ann’s already thinking about her garden next spring: There will be fall transplants, weather permitting, and so I do what I can with the information I have, what I know for sure. Anyway, I have labour limits, one-hour shifts – I’m not as lithe and limber as I used to be. I can tell you I feel great but if I said I was in the best shape of my life you’d laugh at me.

It's too soon to break down the picnic table for storage in the crawlspace underneath the back porch. Ann and I are grateful to be in sort of a holding pattern now, enjoying what’s left of our patio and garden before the night of the killer frost. Then we’ll have to scramble a bit. There’s always more work to be done before the ice pellets fly.                                       

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date. New fiction coming soon. Finally.