day 5

it wasn't that Carissa didn't like the garden. Jean had gone to great lengths in order to make their home as beautiful and intense as his love for her was.
After they began their life there, he continued buying exotic species that in any other garden would be the individual focal point, but here, they could easily be overlooked. In the third year of the garden, Jean began acquiring orchids and built a modest greenhouse in the backyard to house them. The greenhouse was modest in size but lavish in detail, in the style of Guimard.
The presence of the greenhouse seemed to offset the balance within the backyard, so Jean decided to build an aviary, one that you could walk into. It was ten feet tall in the center, built like a frame of the house that they lived in. Jean populated the birdhouse with several brightly colored parrots and about a dozen tropical finches. This was Carissa's favorite place in the garden. There were two doors in the aviary so that the birds wouldn't escape.
The best time of year for the aviary was the spring. Jean would be working in the greenhouse with a few windows open. Carissa would go into the aviary, saturated in the scent of the wonderful orchids and spend hours chatting up the birds while feeding them.
Anywhere else in the garden though, Carissa felt overwhelmed by the color, vibrancy and power of Jean's garden. The garden seemed to take on a supernatural defiance and pride. After the first three years, no native species could take root. Jean did relatively little weeding because he wanted his imprint on the land to gradually merge with the natural landscape surrounding it. This endeavor failed, and it seemed that whatever had hijacked the natural fertility of the land had spread to Carissa. Despite years of trying to have children, Carissa and Jean were never blessed as such.

Years have gone by, and most of the orchids still eke out a living in the greenhouse, however the aviary remains silent.

day four

Jean carpeted the ground among the aspen with wildflower seed every spring. The birds would quickly devour most of it, but a good portion would survive through the summer. He had a pond dug just north-west of the house, about 20 yards into the front yard. The pond was bordered by japanese maples and a variety of ferns. There was a pathway surrounding the ferns and maple, and on the outer circle of the pathway was a hedge of small fir, dense and concealing. There were a few clearings along the shore of the pond where you could watch the frogs, ducks and turtles fumble about after the slow mosquitoes.
Behind the house, beyond the black oak, Jean coaxed along a patch of wild blackberries. It didn't take much convincing. Before Jean and Carissa's second year in their home, the blackberries had created a wall of brambles and bees behind the tree, creating a natural fence.
Lupins were scattered throughout the front yard, along with patches of native species. All in all, this is how Jean began his garden. He added things through the years, but this was the chassis.
The garden, as I mentioned, was his gift to Carissa, who was very grateful and happy for the wonderful present, as it was truly a wondrous site to behold. However, she couldn't help but feel a twinge of fear when walking alone through the garden on a warm bright day. The colors would come alive and seem to envelop her in their manic spectrum. The smells of the different flowers would blend and seemed to hypnotize her, she would feel her legs fall away beneath her, and her arms would fall down to catch her slowly. On a number of occassions Jean would come out to the garden looking for Carissa and find her asleep in the small vineyard, or curled up along the pond. To Carissa, the garden possessed mystical powers and she was afraid that one day it would swallow her whole.
No, Carissa much preferred the garden in the winter on a cold and bleary day.

day 3

Long before our hero came to live along the ocean, even before Jean built his home, there was a black oak sapling that had taken root a ways back from the water. At the time, there were no other oak trees to speak of in this part of the country, but somehow migratory and weather patterns had shifted in order for the seed to be deposited inland enough to not be washed away into the ocean and took root. By the time Jean had come upon the spot, the black oak had grown into a healthy and happy adolescence, rich with birds nests lining the branches and a thin coat of moss edging its way up the trunk. Jean thought, it's still growing so fast, the moss doesn't have a chance... Jean decided to build his home and his life beneath the black oak. Not directly beneath, mind you, but close by. He had purchased a large plot along the ocean, as he had come into a bit of inheritance after a close relative whom he didn't know very well had left him a small fortune. He inherited it by default, he was the next, and last, of kin. He bought the land sight unseen, and had a great deal of faith that it would be perfect. While most would say that it missed the mark, a great deal of this parcel of land was not suitable to build on, Jean had just purchased Eden. He would build his home beneath the tree of knowledge, watch the squirrels fight over the tempting acorns and cast out raccoons with a broom. The black oak provided a base from which to build his garden. Since this would be a wedding present to his wife, he spared no expense. He flanked the perimeter of the property with Aspens, and sparsely planted Manzanita among the normal verdant vegetation, so that if you looked toward Jean's spread, the white of the trunks in winter would cut out the plot from the rest of the coastline, and, if Jean forgot his glasses, the red of the Manzanita made him think that there were wildfires peppering his land. Only looking up at the sentinal would reassure him that all was well.

day 2

he stood up and wandered back down the dock toward the sand. the sand felt good, warm and dry on the surface and cool and damp beneath. it took him a while to muster up the courage to go back to the house, but he finally did. he lived in a bungalow along the beach, set off from the sand about a half mile. The house wasn't as spectacular a display of nouvo riche extravagance as many of the other properties along the water, but it held it's own quiet dignity. the builder, Jean, was a bit of an eccentric. While building the house, Jean remembered the gardens that he and his wife visited on their honeymoon in Vancouver. They ferryed out to Victoria Island and spent a weekend touring Buchart Gardens. As a gift to his wife in the new house, he had decided to build her a magical garden that would maintain it's mystique throughout the years. The secret to the cultivation of this garden would be to choose all the right colors in order to complement each other and the right density so that not one plant would have it's roots starved. And then there was the balance. While he couldn't remember any specific plants that were in the garden that inspired him, Jean could not forget the inspiration. The garden was incredible, beautiful, vibrant, intoxicating and slightly frightening and cold at the same time. He wouldn't want to be left on his own in there, as if the beauty and splendor would swallow him whole. And so Jean planted his garden.

open letter to the person sitting next to you in the office

A passive-agressive plea:

Hey, would you mind turning you cell phone to vibrate? Or at least pick it up on the first ring? Sure, the first time i heard it i thought, "wow, it's been a long time since i've heard the hawaii five-o theme song". it's been 5 months. i hear it at least twice a day. it's common courtesy and assumed that no one else wants to hear it.

And while we're at it, no, i don't know who won the game last night, and please stop talking about fantasy football. i suppose it is better than hearing about american idol or some other inane reality tv show, but nonetheless irritating. I mean, isn't it amazing how many yards Joe Namath can sprint on the court? No, it isn't.

Also, the window at the top of our cubicles is not a one-way mirror for you to hide behind, so please pick your nose below the divider and take advantage of what little privacy we have here in our cellblock.

Remind me again, who asked about your kids? or you sex life? or your mother's sex life? oh that's right, no one. as you so frequently say, "don't go there".

Why complain, you ask? why not retaliate? if i were to talk obnoxiously about my personal life as my personal ringtone of "Rock You Like a Hurricane" blared while looking at my Fantasy Football standing (?) and disgustingly groomed my orifices, i'd be just like you and would therefore relinquish whatever high ground i had. I'll take the high road thank you very much.+

Consider yourself served.