This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Dec. 3, 1938.
Summer waited at Lantern Lane until I came back from Europe. All the way across the prairie I saw it fading, and the flowers disappearing.
The prairie scene was one of cold beauty; plowed fields purple in the sunlight, ridged into a pattern by the cultivator; the stubble fields bleached into pale gold, broken by piles of new straw where cattle and horses foraged and pigs burrowed.
The prairie has had a long breathing spell under clear skies this year, with unbroken weather for weeks. Lovely days of sun and quiet nights of stars, but even this does not satisfy everyone, and complaints are heard about the continued dryness.
The ground is too hard for plowing and if the ground freezes dry, winter’s snow will do us no good, for the moisture will not penetrate the hard surface.
The warm days have set the willows thinking of spring, and the rising sap has coloured them purple and red in a glow of false hope, but some of these nights the poor little things will feel a hand of lead laid on their hearts and they will remember what season it is!
When we left Elkhorn, we saw the first trace of snow, just fine powdering on the plowed fields and enough to outline the roads that ran through the stubble. The hummocks in the fair-rings were covered, too, suggesting the old-fashioned buncushions that lay on many a horsehair sofa in the early 1890s.
Sunrise on the mountains, as we approached Calgary, is an experience that atones for many of life’s dull places. Sun-lighted snow peaks, moving blue shadows of stormy clouds drifting across them, now lifting, now settling; windows of farmhouses, catching the sunshine, and darting out rays of light that seem like signals; the rolling landscape that seems to flow into the mountains like an inland sea, carpeted with tawny grass — it all makes a scene that hushes conversation.
I saw it on a frosty morning, when the smoke from the farmhouses rose straight into the still air. Not a wind was stirring as we came into the city, but behind the nearest peaks we could see a snow storm coming, which soon shut off our view.
In Vancouver there was a white frost on the sidewalks, and many of the garden flowers were limp and dead. I felt a little sorry for myself that all the beauty would be gone from Lantern Lane. I might have known that summer lingers longer on the Island than anywhere else.
So here I am, the first morning, going around to see the survivors, and they are many. Red leaves still glow on the sumacs, and three fine blossoms sway from the high stalks of the California tree-poppy. They are not quite as big as they were in the summer, but would do well on a hat yet, with their silky white leaves and yellow centre. “Poached eggs” is the popular name and describes them well.
The newest flower in the garden is the yellow jasmine, which should not bloom until January, but here it is, fluffy and full, with its little bell-like flowers, in defiance of every seed catalogue and calendar, exulting in its self-determination. It is growing into a lovely shrub and now covers the middle part of the front veranda.
One hollyhock holds up its head and waves a lovely wine-red corsage in the gentle breeze which passes by. The same breeze rings the blue Canterbury bells in their second or third blooming and brushes the firmly set dahlias in yellow and purple closely packed pom-poms. There are single blossoms, too, in rose and magenta, marred a little by wind and weather, but brilliant as ever in their colour and texture.
I often thought of the red sunflowers which were in full bloom when I left, lovely big ones with strong markings, and some distinctly red. The birds came by the hundreds when the seed was ripe, but we have enough to sow again, for these are precious, not only for their beauty but because of the giver.
Jim Clarke of Winnipeg came to the station one day last year to give me a little bag of seeds … and now Jim has gone. But the seeds he sowed in the lives of his family and friends will go on blooming, like the sunflowers, for Jim had the gift of healing laughter and the mirth that has no bitterness.
In the vegetable garden, the kale is a lovely sight, with its closely curled leaves, dark green and vigorous. Let the hurricane roar! The kale has no fears, with its tough fibre.
The peppers are still on the stalks, a lovely crop, burning red now in patches. I picked a big glossy one, with a dash of red coming on its cheek, and have it on my desk trying to regain the pleasure I had to miss by being away so long. The eggplants struggled through, but no one seems to think much of them, even when they ripened.
The grape vine is wrinkled and withered, but the grapes are in jars in the basement, made into jelly that “will stand alone.” So are the blackberries and some of the neighbour’s logans.
The shelves in the basement throw out a satisfying vibration of security and remind me of the collars of corn I saw under the eaves of the houses in Savoy and Burgundy. The same vibration is in the little root house, where the onions and potatoes are stored.
There are also citrons in their green leopard skins, and a few fine, long vegetable marrows, each of which will make a “Gordon Head Goose” when filled with meat, rice and onions. There are boxes of apples in the apple house, and boxes of lavender, and the carrots big as turnips are still growing in Mr. Edwards’ field. We ate some of them yesterday, for we still enjoy extra-territorial rights in this field.
The house is full of gladioli — the last of a long procession of bloom — and two fine roses, a talisman and a crimson beauty whose name I do not know, bloom in a vase on my desk. So am I right in believing that the summer of 1938 stayed to wave a kindly hand to me before it passed forever away into the land of memory.
The cover crops are green and beautiful now. Mr. Towler’s alfalfa runs up and down the field in even rows — chrysanthemums in great blocks of colour dot the landscape. Lantern Lane is carpeted with autumn leaves, and more are falling as the wind comes in from the sea.
The wood piles have grown since I left. So has the little Coronation oak tree from Great Windsor Park. It has three sets of leaves on it now, and no longer needs a stake to show its location.
Across the road the great pines still stand, gently bending without haste, or confusion, or resentment. They know something, these evergreens, which makes them able to bend, without loss of dignity, beauty or pride.