Escapes and escapism

I do hate when blogs I follow trail off with no further clues on what's going on in a blogger's life, so while I'm not really feeling the blogging right now, it does seem only fair to give a bit of an update. Plus I've been doing some fun stuff! In May this year I quit my job to head off on a three month overseas adventure, and then unexpectedly (but happily) found myself wrapping up not just my job but also my relationship of more than five years and our shared household. Which while sad, suddenly meant that I was free to extend the adventure. I headed off to Canada with two of my closest friends, Matt and Mark, to drive 3000 kilometres in an unreliable $400 van, and then spent 16 days canoeing the Yukon River.

It was an incredible journey; we were on the river just as spring was arriving and each day would bring fresh, hyper-colour green tree growth and more sunshine as we made our way from Whitehorse to Dawson City. We were pretty sick of canoeing by the end of the trip, but to have such an experience with good friends was unforgettable.

Once that section of the trip was over Mark headed home, while Matt and I continued on for two months of roadtripping through northwestern USA. I don't think I've had a grin plastered on my face for so many days straight in my life. We stopped each night in small towns and state or national parks, did a mammoth amount of thrift store shopping, drank a lot of coffee and ate a lot of diner breakfasts, listened to a lot of music, talked a great deal, and played countless games of backgammon in campsites.

After Matt left I stayed on in Canmore, Alberta, to see whether living in a mountain town might be fun for awhile. And it is, but the pull of home is very strong as well. It's incredible to look up at the mountains and get out and enjoy them with wonderful new friends, but I miss friends and family from home, and big city life, and there are many more jobs that excite me in Melbourne. So now I'm at a crossroads, with a foot in each camp and a new decision every six hours about what I'm doing next. It's hard to make a choice when you're choosing between awesome and awesome, and to figure out whether you're opting out of making serious decisions or making the most of the opportunities you have.

A riddle for you all

What's a gardening gal to do when she has spent a year getting an empty garden to a point of overflowing abundance...


...only for the landlord to insist that every single sliver of green be removed from the property upon departure? (And we are talking bare concrete and dust here.)

A) Be heartbroken for a little while and instead spend time in Ikea kitting out the one bedroom flat she now calls home, trying to fill the silverbeet-shaped hole in her heart with meaningless consumerism/pretty birch veneer products.

B) Cultivate a ridiculous houseplant per square metre ratio.

C) Look after a friend's railway-side guerrilla garden patch through most of its growing season but then freak out about heavy metals in the soil just as the winter harvest rolls around due to concerned words from friends who test soil for a living.

D) After despair and despondency find another guerrilla garden closer to home which has abundant community and potential, talk about it non-stop for weeks and then plunge headlong into it, forcing her poor boyfriend to spend entire weekends dawn to dusk helping her knock together garden beds, source soil, etc.

E) All of the above.

I think you folks know the answer. Which also means I feel excited about blogging again! (Not that it's just a garden blog, but let's face it, gardening is the backbone.)

Looking forward to chatting with you all again.

Here's a shot of the railway-side garden before we broke up. It was fun while it lasted!