Thanks to the Garden Lady

           

            There weren’t as many people at the food bank when I arrived there on Wednesday, July 6th. Maybe no one wanted to venture out into the heat even for sustenance. I certainly tend to feel like eating less on hot days. There was no real line-up, so as usual I positioned myself where the line would be but a little further back than the person seated along the side and closest to the sidewalk. She was an elderly woman of East Asian descent wearing a sun hat and reading a book. I asked her if she was the end of the line. She counted everyone else that was there in order of their arrival, then pleasantly informed me that she was number six and so I was number seven.

            I was gladly surprised to notice that not a single one of the people there at that time were smoking and that none of them looked like they were going to. Of course, that changed as more people arrived and so I eventually had to step out of line in order to breathe. After the tall man, who’d somehow gotten in front of me had finished his cigarette, I moved back in line. He turned to me and told me in a thick French Canadian accent to go in front of him. I was tempted to try to speak to him in French but I was afraid fumbling too much. I continued reading my book for pre-adolescent francophones and wondered if he noticed while standing behind me that I was reading in French.

            After the line had moved me closer to the door, I overheard a conversation between Joe, the manager and one of his staff about a situation that happened recently, because of which they’d had to call an ambulance for a woman they knew. She had fallen from her fifth floor balcony but had only sustained minor injuries because, according to Joe, she was drunk at the time. It was also mentioned that she was high on mescaline. It seems she was walking around like nothing had happened after she fell but Joe could tell that she needed an ambulance.

            Either the friendly old lady miscounted or a couple of people butted in ahead of me because I didn’t end up with number 7 after all but number 9. Either way though, it was the lowest number I’d ever gotten at the food bank.

            I went home and saw my next-door neighbour in the hallway. As he’d heard me climb the stairs he said he’d thought it might be Sundar, our superintendent arriving. He was holding a bag of garbage, so I assume he was looking for Sundar to come to transfer the garbage from the bins on the deck into the yellow city pick-up bags as he usually does on Wednesdays to prepare to put them on the curb on Thursday. All of our bins were full and so there was nowhere to put them outside. He said he hasn’t seen Sundar in a few days. I suggested that his health might be the issue, as when I’d spoken to him a week before he told me the story of how he’d recently collapsed in his apartment with both his arms and legs paralysed. He couldn’t get to the phone to call an ambulance and had to lie there until his friend came to knock on the door. His friend heard him moaning and called the ambulance. From the way he described it, it sounded like he’d gone into insulin shock. My neighbour shook his head and commented that Sundar shouldn’t be drinking with his condition and I agreed.

            As I was getting ready to go back out, I tripped over something just inside my door. It was a bloodied, dead bird that Jonquil had dragged in. I picked it up with some tissue and dropped it out my side window into the O’Hara Garden beside the Coffee Time.

            When I went back to the food bank I checked on the bush growing out of the brick wall of the building that houses the food bank and saw that it had one more purplish blue blossom on it.

            The door person called for numbers 1 to 10. As I showed her my number I joked, “You always start with number 1. Why don’t you start with a different number sometimes?” She said, “Okay. Next time I’ll call numbers 10 to 1!”

            Since mine was a high number in the set, I had to wait a while to have my number called. The doorkeeper asked me, as she has in the past, to move down as seats further down had become empty. I told her I wasn’t going to play musical chairs. A little later, one of the reception workers asked me the same thing but I politely told him I’d get up when my number was called. I really wish someone there would offer me a logical argument to justify that rule of shoppers moving down one chair every time one to the right is cleared.

            Bruce was my helper this time. I took another can of olive oil spray; another bag of “Say Yes To No” Gouda toasted bread crisps; a box of Swiss cheese crackers; a can of pineapple chunks and two cans of sardines. Bruce offered me some bottles of iced tea but I told him I didn’t want it because of the artificial sweetener. He said, “Yeah, aspartame.” He added that he doesn’t take it either because it leaves a bad aftertaste.

            They had larger boxes of Shreddies than what was last time available in the cereal section, along with Apple Jacks and granola. I seem to be returning these days to the love of Shreddies like I had in my childhood.

            Across the aisle, Hazel was minding the cool stuff. She gave me a choice between a litre of two percent milk and a carton of some kind of fruit smoothie. I took the milk. There was a bin of packs of hot dogs, but I noticed two bags of sausages among them so I took on of those. Hazel gave me the other one too.

            From the bread section I took a loaf of bread that had one raisin on it, in hopes that there were more raisins inside.

            My French Canadian friend got ahead of me in the bread section because he didn’t need to use tongs for the bagged bread that he grabbed.

            The vegetable lady called him the “French guy” and spoke of how she hadn’t seen him for a long time.

            She gave me some of the usual potatoes and onions, but there was also a big bin full of a selection of fresh garden vegetables. The smell of fresh dill was all over the food bank, so I definitely asked for some of that. I noticed something that looked like more rhubarb at the bottom of the bin, but it was just the stalks of a bunch of Swiss chard. The vegetable lady asked if I wanted anything else. I hesitated until she coaxed, “Come on!” then grabbed some Swiss chard and shoved it into my bag. “Take some spinach for your dinner tonight!” Then she explained, “I’m calling everything spinach!” She stuffed in a couple of bunches what turned out to be young garlic plants with the tops attached. The bulbs looked more like onions. There was also a bag of mixed greens, some of which were spinach, some dandelion greens and some of what were as far as I could tell just plain weeds. I asked if it all came from the same local lady that had brought the rhubarb the week before. She said, “That’s exactly right!” It’s so nice that someone with a local garden is bringing in fresh produce and it’s a great change from the withered overripe crap that we usually get at the food bank. I asked her to thank the garden lady for me and she said she would.

            That evening I rode up to Fleming and Bayview, then turned right to toss around on a few more of those Leaside streets that can’t make up their minds which direction they want to go. I went down Denegall, which actually goes straight, but then turned left on Cameron which curves up, then Sharron, which curves down to McRae.

            That night I reluctantly decided to make use of some of the greens I got from the food bank. I sautéed the Swiss chard along with the garlic scapes that I’d gotten the week before, a chopped onion and a chopped red pepper. It was actually pretty tasty.