t’s a four-hour drive from Edmonton to Jasper. Visually, the highway is slightly more exciting than any road out of Regina. 

            Joan was driving. I was bored. 

            I had read stories about people who believed that by concentrating, they could burn holes in clouds. I thought that was nonsense. Since I had nothing better to do, I decided to prove them wrong. I focussed all my attention on a small wispy-looking cloud up ahead. 

            It dissolved into blue sky as I watched.

            Pure coincidence, I thought. I chose some bigger, puffier clouds. I found I could bore a hole through them, too.

            So I picked one of the least likely clouds, one with a heavy dark base. I chose what seemed to be the thickest part of the cloud. I focussed myself totally on that cloud.

As a song says, what a difference a day makes!

            On the last Sunday in May, my daughter called after church, to say that she might have found me a dog. She worries about me living alone since my wife died. Especially when Covid-19 isolation restricts me from visiting others, or having them visit me.

            By 3:00 that afternoon, I had a dog named Pippin.

            After three months of isolation, I feel like a February groundhog emerging into the brightness of a new day.

            I am no longer alone.

            I have someone who needs me.

            What a difference a dog makes.

A friend gave me a little book to pass on to our local museum. But because Covid-19 closed the museum for the last couple of months, I’ve kept the book on my bedside table for occasional edification.  

            It’s called “Rules for the Conduct of Life” -- a large topic. Closer inspection reveals a less lofty goal. It was intended as an ethical guide for apprentices seeking to join the Freemen of the City of London.  

            The text contains 36 rules.  I found it interesting that only four of the 36 rules were considered self-evident, capable of standing on their own. 

            All the rest include at least one text from the Bible. Sometimes two, or three. As if they needed an external authority to validate their wisdom. 

The dogwood tree stood as a pillar of creamy white blossom. The hawthorn tree celebrated with a joyful chorus of deep pink flowers. Azaleas flamed fluorescent -- white, orange, red, violet, yellow. Purple allium heads tried to look like computer visualizations of a coronavirus. The rhododendrons toasted the morning in deep claret and white.

            Lilacs, shaded from Ming to Wedgewood, ensured that this was not a fragrance-free zone.

            Tiny yellow, white, and blue flowers cascaded down the rock garden. A septet of humming birds danced around their feeders. A great blue heron rose lazily from the lake below, trailing his legs behind him.

            And there was evening and there was morning, in the four billionth year, and God saw that it was good.

            Joan would have loved it. She would have rejoiced in her garden. I could not imagine how she could willingly leave it.

My shovel sank into the soil the full depth of the blade,  effortlessly, liker slicing butter. I turned the shovel load over.  The soil was rich, black, moist. And loaded with fat wriggling worms.

            Some robins thought I had called them for dinner. They hopped happily over the lumps of earth only a few feet away from my own feet. 

            What a difference 27 years makes. When we first moved onto this property, the land was a horse pasture. Back then, the earth beneath the sod consisted mostly of river-tumbled rock and gravel. In some earlier era, this bench had been the mouth of a rushing mountain stream dumping glacial debris into a lake much larger and deeper than today’s. It left a legacy of stones and sand.

            The remains of the streambed still lie inches  below our lawn. But this garden plot is different, thanks to 27 years of  relentless composting. 

            If I’ve achieved nothing else in my life, I’ve created rich black soil that didn’t exist before.