2 INCH WOODEN BLINDS

I basically grew up in this house. We moved in when I was 4, and it's the only house that I lived in with my parents that totally felt like home. I know my parents liked the house that my Mom owns now best, where we moved when I was 18, but this one is it for me.

I wish I had a photo of this house when we moved in. The yard looked nothing like this. My parents, my Dad especially, spent so much time making it their own. I remember when the trees weren't much bigger than I was. Except for the stunted one in the middle. That was always supposed to grow up and offer beautiful shade, but I don't think anything grew very well on that hill. The grass was always kind of brown too.

But, Dad built a fence, planted trees, built a gravel driveway space with red-painted retaining walls, planted a hedge on the west property line, and put ivy on the west wall, which looks like it has lasted. Dad built a deck on the east side of the house, and Mom planted gardens. We had raspberries, sometimes rhubarb. And there were bushes with yellow flowers and ones with purple flowers that were always buzzing with bees in the summer.

Dad built cat houses, too. I wonder if he always wished we'd gotten a dog? I don't know. But he enjoyed messing around building things, and so he set to work building a house that the cats could use in the winter when it was cold. The first one was a model that sat in the yard near the back fence. It was quite attractive, with cedar siding and insulated with styrofoam and a blanket. But the cats couldn't see out, so I don't think they used it much. But then he built one with plexiglass on the front and a little window at the side, and put it on top of the fence against the wall of the house. Smudge loved it. She was always in there, and she would come out of it when you came home, meowing away. Smudge is buried in that yard, actually. She was 17 when she died. I was 16. She'd been our cat for as long as I'd been alive. Dad built another one, on stilts, at the new house on Aspen Drive. It was perhaps the most attractive one he'd built, but it rarely got used. It didn't have any plexiglass.

The yard once had one of those trees all kids in Alberta (Canada?) used to be given in grade 1, the little evergreens, somewhere to the left of this picture. But it got yanked out by Marc's little sister Christina before it ever had a chance to take root. I don't know why she did it. A little green corner of my heart died that day, though. Honestly. I was quite distraught.

There are so many things I remember about this house. I could never tell them all. One thing I remember well is how often we kids would play on the hill: me, Marc, Steven, Jason before he moved to Chilliwack, Neil later on. It seemed so much bigger then. I'm sure this didn't help Dad's attempts to coax the grass to life, but we invented a game called Timber. The rules were simple: the sidewalk was out of bounds, and we started at the top and tried to drag each other to the bottom. Everyone had 3 lives and the first one to knock everyone else out was the winner. The winner would gloat for a bit, and then we'd do it over again.

THE WEARING OF THE GREEN.

" O Paddy dear, and did you hear the news that going round ?
The shamrock is forbid by law to grow on Irish ground ;
St. Patrick's Day no more we'll keep, his colours can't be seen,
For there's a bloody law against the wearing of the green.
I met with Napper Tandy and he took me by the hand,
And he said, " How's poor old Ireland, and how does she stand ? "
She's the most distressful counterie that ever yet was seen,
And they're hanging men and women for the wearing of the green.

Then since the colour we must wear is England's cruel red,
Sure Ireland's sons will ne'er forget the blood that they have shed.
You may take a shamrock from your hat and cast it on the sod,
It will take root and flourish there though underfoot it's trod.
When law can stop the blades of grass from growing as they grow,
And when the leaves in summer-time their verdure dare not show,
Then will I change the colour that I wear in my caubeen
But 'till that day, please God, I'll stick to wearing of the green.

But if at last our colour should be torn from Ireland's heart,
Our sons with shame and sorrow from this dear old isle will par t;
I've heard a whisper of a land that lies beyond the sea
Where rich and poor stand equal in the light of freedom's day.
O Erin, must we leave you driven by a tyrant's hand ?
Must we ask a mother's blessing from a strange and distant land ?
Where the cruel cross of England shall nevermore be seen,
And where, please God, we'll live and die still wearing of the green !

Dion Boucicault (1820-1890).

[ Dion Boucicault was an Irish playwright born in Dublin. Inspired by America's successful revolution against British rule, many Irish thought the time was ripe for independence. The colour green became a symbol of sympathy for Irish independence, and the British actually began executing people found wearing anything of the colour green.

The pen, however, is mightier than the sword, and this powerful poem was the response. Napper Tandy, mentioned in it, was a Dublin shopkeeper who, having been identified by the British as a freedom fighter, had to flee to France. And Boucicault himself fled to America. ]

Co. Fermanagh scenery.

I suggest that you view my picture in Lightbox - Press L.
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