Il
faut cultiver notre jardin
by
Robert LaFrance
The great philosopher Voltaire
(1694-1778) wasn’t even a gardener, but one of the many things he left behind
and was famous for was this quote: “Il faut cultiver notre jardin” which means
“we should mind our own damn business”.
The quote came from his novel
Candide, a book I read a couple of times when I was in my early twenties when I
took it to heart; I didn’t poke my nose in where it didn’t belong, and if you
believe that you’ll believe that Donald Trump is a genius.
I quit following Voltaire’s advice
the day I found out that Voltaire wasn’t even his real name. It was a pen name,
taking the place of the name he was born with – Francois-Marie Arouet. It must
have been confusing to his pals down at the Paris Legion, Branch #5.
So here we are, in March, not only
that, but mid-March, and Voltaire comes to mind. I have my Vesey seed catalogue
sitting at my elbow and I am getting suggestions from my son-in-law in
Singapore. He hasn’t been near a Canadian garden for a year and a half and is
eager for me to plant some of the vegetables that he and my daughter enjoy. I
am looking forward to planting something different from what I have for ten
years or more.
After a while green peas, carrots,
radish and all the other traditional garden crops have grown a little boring,
so with Mike’s suggestion in mind, I want to try things a little more exotic,
like qing choi, collards, garlic and scapes, kale, rocket, argula, and stir-fry
greens. I am not even sure some of this stuff is legal.
**********************
Turning to other subjects:
It looks as if North and South
Korea, while each not being overly trustful of the other, might be sitting down
to talk soon, but there’s one big menacing beast that could ruin the whole
détente thing.
Its name is Donald J. Trump. All it
needs is for that gent to write one of his stupid tweets – in other words any
of his tweets – and that will be the end of warmer relations. He reminds me of
a schoolyard bully who sees others having fun building something and then goes
over to kick it apart.
So here’s what we do, or what the
American people should do: get a bunch of tough nuts to hold down Trump and
take away his smartphone so North and South Korea can talk in a quiet room.
*************************
On a musical note, no pun intended,
my friend Flug just got married again and we
chipped in to buy him a new mandolin. My old friend has played his old
Rogue since he was a barber on Parliament Hill way back there, a long time ago,
and the Rogue has become a bit threadbare, if that’s not stretching the
adjective too far.
So we got together, six of us, and
paid $17,540 for an A-Style Oscar Schmidt OM10E A-Style Spruce Top
Acoustic-Electric Mandolin. My share was $25. It was a stroke of luck that we
included Billy Lee Threnody in the group; he had just won four million dollars
in the North Tilley Lottery. Anyway, Flug was thrilled and immediately dropped
it on the concrete floor of his garage. It broke the neck; we almost did the
same to him, but Billy Lee said he’d pay to have it repaired.
That isn’t the end of this saga.
That evening Flug’s new bride Ann happened to be listening when Flug answered
the phone and somewhere in the conversation used the words “a mandolin”. Ann
thought he was talking to an old girlfriend named ‘Amanda Lynn’ and whacked him
upside the head with her hardwood rolling pin. He’s recovering.
**********************
Not to lean too heavily in this
Canadian column about Donald J. Trump, a blustering bibulous blowhard, but he
has turned out to be the most disruptive president in my lifetime and in many
lifetimes before mine.
He’s an embarrassment to most
Americans and even to me who, while knowing that Canada is the best country in
the world, have always admired many things about the U.S. except their absolute
worship of guns. “The sacred right to bear arms,” one bare-armed gun owner said
yesterday.
When I was between eight and ten
years old, and Eisenhower was president, I spent my summers on my uncle’s and aunt’s potato farm near New Sweden,
Maine, and never had a problem (except her catching me smoking Marlboros one
day) even though I didn’t carry an AR-15 or a Kalashnikov rifle while pulling
mustard in the fields. Whew! Lucky.-end-
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