I was an only child for six years and lived a cozy life perched on the 19th floor of an apartment building in downtown Saskatoon. At some point in that period mom paid a magazine subscription for me, to some innocuous title I don’t remember which happened to print reader submissions. My five-year old self felt inspired one day to put words into a poem shape after a rain shower with the express purpose of sending it off to see if it would be returned to me on a magazine page. It was.

Once I heard, or maybe read somewhere, some offhand comment to the effect of “if you only knew how many people send in poems about rain!” and I blushed for my five-year-old self.

The ideas we have about something are often depressingly unoriginal. At the same time, we absorb things without even knowing… I’m always worried about how much I miss. I totally forgot I read Loving by Henry Green until I opened the book and started reading the first pages. I’ve taken up drawing, in part, for its attention-capturing quality.

I’m planning a new flower bed in our front yard and returned to a book on my shelf: Perennials for Every Purpose by Larry Hodgson. I re-read an entry for Goat’s Beard, where the author’s comment: “Goat’s Beard will never disappoint you” felt so much like my own thought that it was like recognizing something familiar - my own foot, my own voice. Our yard has 4 of these plants, used like shrubs, just as Hodgson recommends. Years ago, I studied this book when looking for inspiration and here, I’ve absorbed it without realizing.