dreaming of a Midsummer Garden

let's hope the snow is behind us now....


if so, you might feel like dancing...


here will be your dancing spot. Now, you need to use your imagination to envision this barren, dull, woebegone lot on the edge of 3...count them, 3 asphalt parking lots (of Finlandia Club and Hoito, Bay Credit Union, and Italian Cultural Center)... as a wistful neighbourhood sanctuary. Imagine many indigenous flowers, perhaps butterfly-weed and golden rod, a small patch of wild pansies and wood anemones [a-nem-oh-ne]. There will be some bleeding hearts and even a Juhannus rose bush in bloom. Imagine a few crescent moon-shaped stone benches, a weaving path of garden stones telling the stories of the Bay St. area, and lo and behold! an amazingly tall woman made of willow embracing a tree. The scent of lilacs will greet you, bumblebees will buzz by your ears, and a ruby-throated hummingbird will whirl by your eyes, searching for the nectar found deep within the pink lilies. A young girl can be seen sitting and strumming her guitar, softly singing a Joni Mitchell song. All this is foretold by the large tree standing at the back edge of this empty lot. See it there in the background, leg raised in a pirouette? That's the same tree as the one in the preceding photo...

here's that same tree again. It's terribly overgrown; there are suckers all over it; the branches go this way 'n that way; there are bumps all over the bark; it may never have been trimmed; its symmetry has gone haywire, and ...

there's even an old rusty clothesline wheel hammered into it. Years ago, the clothesline ran from this tree to the back porch of the white woodframe house that sat on this lot. When the house was first built, this tree wasn't even there. But it broke through the ground a half century or so ago, long before the house had begun its slide into neglect and ruination. The tree has stood witness to the goings on around it, but has been ignored, even abused, over the years. The tree has stood patiently as the seasons past, as the cars and trucks drive by her, as the people walk under her shelter, waiting. Just waiting for someone to notice her.

Well, she called to me when I walked by her one night last year. At this point, the white woodframe house had become irretrievably run-down. It was to be torn down. So, too, the trees. The parking lot was to be extended.

No, I told everyone who would listen. Maybe the trees aren't scrap. Maybe they can be saved. Can't you see there is a mountain ash tree by the front steps? Surely, that's salvageable? Since when do Finlanders tear down trees? I thought we were supposed to be nature lovers? Why would we want more asphalt to add to the heat that rises in the summer from this barren-of-green triple parking lot eyesore? What if we created a small urban space of sudden beauty? Of green beauty? Of unexpected greenness that would bring softness and gentleness to the eyes and hearts of passersby? A place that would invite them in, saying: you belong to this place. A place for birds and bees and butterflies and worms and beetles and other things that creep in the night...

So, it was decided. Go ahead then, they told me.

Then, one morning, the monumental task before me pressing heavy on my overworked soul, I was ruing and wondering how, oh how, am I going to get this project going? Who will help me? How will I find them? At that moment, the angel of good fortune just happened to be dusting the snow off her wings, and came calling. Unbeknown to me, the Willowsprings Women just happened to be looking for an abandoned urban lot to heal with their wondrous hands and many-coloured eyes.

One of our visions is to paint a a mural on the paint chipped brick wall (above) that is on the northeast side of Kivela Bakery (below). I was inspired by the one that is painted on the wall of a building on Roncesvalles Street in Toronto. It encodes some of the history of the area, making the flavour of the street writ big. We can paint a mural of the presence of the Finns on Bay Street, along with the entwined histories found in the Bay Street area, past and present. Once, there were Chinese laundries on Bay Street; so, too, a Jewish bakery; a Finnish milliner, now there is Wolf Tracks (an Anishnawbe shop of unique clothing and art), Natural Habit (an organic and socially responsible shopping shop), Loop (an upscale clothing store of urban Canadian fashions), among long-time residents like Scandi-deli, Finnport, Finnish Bookstore and GiftShop, Squitti's Gift Shop and others. The mural, like the stones of the weaving path, will mark the Midsummer Garden as a garden of togetherness, a place respecting our overlapping histories and futures, and the hope of sharing space together in all our diversities. Our stepping-stone path, the mural, and the garden itself can be a new vision built on the old realities of multiple inhabitants, multiple histories.

Blue and White: Kivela Bakery on Secord Street. Mike Setala is the baker. His cinnamon and raisin pulla recipe has been perfected by the old oven that warms his bakery, making the sweetbread pillow-soft and a perfect companion to a hot cup of coffee. Soon, you can sit in the Midsummer Garden and munch on the pulla.

Blue and White: the frame of the doors leading downstairs to the Hoito Restaurant, southwest side of the Midsummer Garden.

Blue and White: the colours of some of the painted chairs that will herald the Midsummer Garden project...