Thank-you, City of Vancouver, for filling my arms with the first flowers of spring, which I will continue to pick from “city property” (i.e. public space) until you let my community have a community garden.  I think the neighbourhood has been asking for one for at least thirty years, but instead you have installed roundabouts, making streets take up more space, in the middle of which you plant flowers.

I assume this is your gift to us in lieu – we want to plant flowers ourselves, but you insist on planting them in concrete bases.  We’re thinking more along the lines of a fresh plot of soil.  Oh well.

Daffodils today, and I pick 12, one for each year I have lived without my mom.  Daffodils were her favourite, so, City of Vancouver, I really appreciate the gift on this March 3rd, which would have been her 60th birthday.

Unfortunately, I will be departing for Toronto next year, so as my second summer in Vancouver arrives, I hope others will continue my little tradition of sorts in the summers that follow.  I hope when I come back there will finally be a community garden here, perhaps in the park down the street where people smoke crack on the children’s playground at night.  I never see anyone there during daylight hours – it would be an ideal location for a community garden!  Actually I have seen people there during daylight hours a few times – police officers seeming to be looking for “evidence”, of what I do not know.

Thanks again, I am excited to see what annuals come after the daffodils?  Tulips?  I would LOVE some tulips!

Very Sincerely,

scars