Strangler wrangler — a true tale of guerrilla gardening

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European Swallow-wort — better and perhaps more accurately known as Dog-strangling Vine — is considered an invasive species in Ontario. With its innocuous greenery, this perennial herb sneaks up on native plants and twists its stems around them like a python crushing its prey.

Whenever Donna Spreitzer sees it, she weeds it out.

“I will step into gardens in my neighborhood and snip it out,” says Donna. “I don’t think most people know what it is, or that it is invasive. I am quite horrified at how the Don Valley is full of it.” She recommends putting the weeds in garbage, not compost, to ensure seeds do not spread.

The vines can grow up to six feet long and will use other plants as structural support, literally choking out the competition. The plant may have been brought to North America originally as an ornamental plant.

Donna, who is the Executive Director of a busy daycare in Toronto, also wears the cap of the Stranger Wrangler, a guerrilla gardener taking action to protect native species. “I know that pulling the vine won’t make it go away but at least it will stop it from going to seed and spreading.”

The Dog-strangling Vine is indeed prolific, with its multi-embryo seed pods. I found some twisting around my red currant bush recently and quickly pulled out the invading plant’s stems and pods.

Donna and her husband Scott are veteran gardeners in both city and country. East of Toronto, they operate a small farm growing crops and vegetables. Donna has been known to haul a pick-up truck full of home-grown pumpkins to give away to neighbourhood families at Halloween.

Donna is the third winner of the Guerrilla Garden Challenge. She will receive a copy of my sweet story: “The Tiny Gardens that could…. A tale of two guerrilla gardeners in the heart of the big city.” Plus she gets her pick of a plant from my private collection.

Congrats Donna! Keep up the great work and thanks for sharing your story!

Donna in the Don Valley

Made in the shade — a true tale of guerrilla gardening

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In the smoking heat of summer, the city needs all the shade it can get. Near the exit of a busy supermarket in east-central Toronto stands a sturdy, teenaged Sugar Maple with a broad canopy. It’s the eco-product of some urban guerrilla gardening by local resident Debi Rudolph.

She and her husband were taking advantage of a city tree program, but when their tree arrived and was planted by a city crew, it was not the Silk tree the city had promised. So Debi found a perfect spot for the baby Sugar Maple nearby, replacing a deceased tree on the boulevard at a busy Sobey’s grocery store. The Maple has thrived, providing an ever-growing shade circle at the intersection of a city sidewalk and the Sobey’s exit.

“Rather than wait for the city to do something, I simply moved it over to the Sobey’s boulevard, which obviously needed a tree,” Debi recalls. “Then I called the city and asked, ‘When are you bringing my Silk tree?’ A week later they showed up with the right species. They never asked about the Sugar Maple, and nobody at Sobey’s ever mentioned anything about the sudden appearance of a baby tree on their property either. So it’s all good!”

Over the next few years, Debi lavished TLC on her guerrilla tree. “I watered, mulched, and pruned that baby for the next four years, just to make sure it survived.”

Debi’s maple

Debi admits to feeling some guilt about planting a ‘stolen’ tree on a grocery store’s property, but the tree is thriving. Native to eastern Canada, sugar maples can live 200 years or more and when mature tower more than 100 feet tall, with a wide canopy. In fall, they put on a spectacular show of multi-coloured orange, red and yellow hues. In spring, they can be tapped for Canada’s sweetest crop: maple syrup. Urban trees like Debi’s help citizens beat the heat and a green canopy can improve mental health in the concrete jungle.

Debi, a landscape design specialist, and a fellow community gardener at Thorncliffe Park, sometimes walks down into the Don Valley nearby to harvest crabapples for jelly in fall. More guerrilla gardening is in store, she says:

“I do have plans to take cuttings from that crabapple tree in the valley and plant babies up and down the valley. Whatever variety that tree is, it’s really hardy and fairly disease resistant, so l want to make sure there are more of them around.”

Debi Rudolph

For more true tales and exploits of guerrilla gardening, visit kinrosscordless.com

Seeds of hope — a true tale of guerrilla gardening

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Hikers along the hydro line near Powell River, B.C. sometimes stop to admire some vivid red poppy blooms, not knowing that the gorgeous flowers grew from seeds cast by a fellow hiker, Jayne Rutledge-Fogarty.

“It all started with my dad and his seed collecting,” says Jayne, an artist, photographer and vintner.

“He would ask people if he could mark the flower with a piece of string and later collect the seeds. When he died, we found old film containers full of seeds, so we mixed them all in a bowl and divided them three ways among my brother, sister and I.”

The seeds originally collected by Jayne’s dad, Floyd, are the gift that keeps on giving.

“I scattered mine at my home in Powell River and along the hydro pole line…calendula, yellow iris, columbine, red poppy to name a few,” says Jayne. “A lot of people used the line for walks and there is enough rain out here in BC to keep them watered. Just some bright spots for them to enjoy.”

Jayne grew up in Don Mills and as a dancer studied at Canada’s National Ballet school. Her mom, Winifred, taught ballet. Today, Jayne is a fabric artist and vintner of fine wines such as the award-winning Chrome Island Red.

Seeds of hope and beauty — Jayne’s fabric art

She’s also a proud parent, grandma, appreciator of the natural world… and gardener.

Some of the plants from Powell River came with Jayne when she moved to Denman Island. She still collects seeds from them and “I scatter whenever I get the chance.”

Some seeds have even gone from sea to sea. “I still have tiger lilies from seeds my dad brought out west from my grandmother’s home in New Brunswick.”

“My dad passed on his love of gardening to all of us.”

Jayne Rutledge-Fogarty

Jayne Rutledge-Fogarty

Beautify a city space – take the guerrilla garden challenge!

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After a long, cold, lonely winter, Mom has joined other residents at her retirement home to beautify a tiny parkette next door. Further east at the gritty intersection of Pape and Cosburn Avenues, her son has delivered a geranium arrangement and is providing TLC to the little perennial garden at Bethany Baptist Church, home to a weekly food bank.

Will you join us?

Take the guerrilla garden challenge!

You can start small with a single plant or tiny tree. Beautify a public space in city or country, and send me a pic of your tiny garden. Or send a short tale about a guerrilla gardener in your neighbourhood. The first five entrants will receive:

— An herb, flower or shrub from my private collection — so pretty! But there’s more!

— You will also get a signed copy of this sweet tale: “The tiny gardens that could… A tale of two guerrilla gardeners in the heart of the big city”. (Please disregard the garden dirt under the author’s fingernails)

“It was an act of faith. In summer 2018, Toronto writer Ian Kinross and his Mom, Sheila, installed two tiny gardens in public spaces in the heart of the big city. They nurtured their little ‘guerrilla gardens’ through blistering heat. They battled garden thieves and accepted the kindness of strangers. Ultimately, they brought beauty to neglected spaces — it was also an act of hope.”

To enter, send your pic/story to me at ikinross48@gmail.com, connect on FB, or comment on this blog post.

It’s been a tough winter and a tougher pandemic. We could all use a little TLC. Beautify a public space — take the guerrilla garden challenge!

Thursday food bank at the guerrilla garden

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The guerrilla gardener infiltrates the southeast corner of Pape and Cosburn Avenues to tend to the tiny garden he has adopted at Bethany Baptist Church. As camouflage, he wears his Eddie Bauer relaxed-fit jeans, Mark’s hiking boots, a short-sleeve shirt and a brown Bruce County Plowing Match ball cap. Nobody will bother him. He is the invisible man who weeds and waters the flowers and shrubs, and has mended the brick perimeter surrounding the garden.

From a green plastic watering can, he douses the pot of geraniums and some of the existing hostas and other perennials that are now bursting from the soil as spring turns to summer. He cleans up a few pop cans and candy bar wrappers littering the garden and deposits them in the city garbage container next to the bus stop.

But today is not ideal for covert gardening action. Hundreds of people have gathered for the church’s weekly food bank. They’re lined up on a hot afternoon for several hundred yards along the south side of Cosburn Avenue, a street of rental apartments in Toronto’s east end.

Food bank volunteers have set up a series of kiosks, organizing the donated food by categories including pasta and dry goods, juice and other drinks, and what appears to be a small hot-lunch area. The food bank recipients are in line according to family size, with the biggest families first.

Some volunteers have tossed empty cardboards boxes on top of several shrubs the guerrilla gardener has been nurturing. Gah! But this is no time to by picky. It’s time to observe a community organization and its volunteers in action — serving people in need.

Volunteers cruise the line to chat with recipients, check registrations and answer questions. Others dole out food. The Thursday food bank operates year-round at the church, in the blistering heat of the summer and deep freeze of the Canadian winter. The 103-year-old organization also hustles to deliver online services and youth programs during the pandemic.

The guerrilla gardener will be patient, bide his time, and make contact with the organization to find out more. And he will be back regularly — to nurture the geraniums and shrubs.

On a mission

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Today’s guerrilla mission is about geraniums. A pot of red ones are about to land this morning, clandestinely, at the southeast corner of Pape and Cosburn Avenues — a little splash of colour amidst the hustle and bustle of this city neighbourhood.

The driver of the northbound 25b Don Mills bus pulls down his mask to take a sip of coffee. As he opens the front doors of the bus, he looks over to see a guerrilla gardener crossing Pape. The middle-aged gardener, wearing a Bruce County Plowing Match ball cap, is trying to look nonchalant while hauling a bucket of soil, a geranium arrangement, a garden trowel, a black plastic garden planter, and some rocks (for drainage) across the intersection.

The front suspension of the 25b bus kneels to help passengers board. Just a few feet away, the guerrilla gardener finds a nice spot for the flower planter, at the west end of the Bethany Baptist Church. Like this neighbourhood, the church has been hustling during the pandemic, providing a weekly food program along with virtual services and youth programs. Later today, hundreds of people will line up on Cosburn to receive food donations.

Across the street, McDonald’s is getting a facelift, the golden arches still rising above the construction site hoarding.

With the geranium arrangement firmly nestled in the black planter, the guerrilla gardener decants extra soil to ground the tiny garden in its new home. In the final phase of this covert action, he walks back to his nondescript 2011 Dodge minivan to get a watering can, and returns to give the geraniums a good dousing. Leftover water provides a drink for some emerging hostas and other perennials on the site.

As he patches up a few bricks at the garden perimiter, his cochlear implant battery beeper goes off. To change the battery, and keep hearing the birds and buses, he sits on a sturdy red bench provided by the church for passersby.

Rough-and-ready Grackles — black birds with hints of metallic green — flutter over to the bench, expecting a treat. There is nothing but a stale crust and two cigarette butts on the ground. The gardener makes a mental note to bring a muffin next time.

The sun is shines on a warm May day after a long winter and even longer pandemic. To the north, the road is busy with multi-modal transportation. A cyclist, a pick-up truck driver, and the Cosburn bus driver and passengers all wait patiently for the light to change to proceed westbound. On a hydro box nearby, an artist named Sarah has painted a pretty floral design to beautify the space.

Of course, a tiny garden is more than a clandestine guerrilla mission. It will need nurturing over the coming months. Weeding, watering, pruning, tidying, waiting, appreciating.

But for today, this gardener’s mission is accomplished.

Guerrilla garden reconnaissance

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I’m on a mission. But this guerrilla is packing garden tools and geraniums, not weapons. It’s a mission of hope and peace, to beautify a city space after a long winter and grinding series of covid lockdowns. The city could use a little spring cleaning.

I’m returning to the scene of the crime — the gritty intersection of Pape and Cosburn Avenues in Toronto’s central-east end. It’s where my first guerrilla garden flourished a couple of years ago, aided by some good Samaritans who stopped by to water and tend the plants. The local crossing guard, Leo, told me then that people had admired the tiny garden and wondered “Who is this mystery guy with the flowers?”

Today, the garden’s former location is out of bounds — a new building is rising from the ashes of the former Crow Dry Cleaners on the northwest corner So I have to scout an alternative site. On the north-east corner, a busy McDonald’s restaurant, where older Greek couples congregated for coffee before the lockdown, is undergoing renos. To the southwest, a bright and cheery Greek Cafe has sprouted on the corner, serving coffees and baked goods to passersby. On the fourth and last corner, I spy a possible garden site. I swoop in to scout it out.

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The Bethany Baptist Church has closed its doors during the lockdowns but hustles to provide services, youth programs and hymn sings by zoom, plus delivers a weekly curbside food bank for local residents in need. Each Thursday, people who use the food bank line up on Cosburn Avenue, according to household size, to receive donated food. In these tough times, the line can stretch for hundreds of yards.

The Church’s tiny gardens at the southeast corner of Pape and Cosburn are nicely arranged with perennials including some hyacinths and tulips sprouting in spring. But they could use a little TLC. The brick garden perimeter needs some repair, and annual flowers could brighten a few bare areas. This spot has a friendly feel to it. Red benches on both sides of the church create some public space where citizens can take a load off and chat, these days with masks, both at the garden and next to the TTC bus stop.

The garden reconnaissance is complete. This guerrilla is hungry and could use a mid-afternoon coffee and muffin. Once risk of frost is past in early May, the gardening mission will begin…

Vinyl on my nostalgic belt-drive: “I’ll find myself some wings”

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Listening to the music was different with my new cochlear-implant hearing system, but I had learned that familiar music was easier. Between my memory, the new cochlear system in my right ear, and a hearing aid in my left, I could start to understand and enjoy music again.

Tucked away in our basement were several hundred record albums from my youth. I had taken them out of those heavy-duty plastic milk crates and stuffed them into the bottom shelves of a bookcase. Once in awhile I would gaze at them longingly.

My 33-RPM vinyl albums definitely qualified as familiar music. I must have listened to some of them hundreds of times as a teen in my basement bedroom in Don Mills. I recall playing air guitar to George Harrison’s Still My Guitar Gently Weeps with the door closed. The posters that came tucked into the cover of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album had been proudly taped to my paneled bedroom wall.

Seeking a new “record player”

Forty years on, the layer of dust on my old albums was accumulating even faster as components of my old stereo system broke down. The receiver/amp had been a nice model in its day, but now only offered mono sound through a wonky volume control. One of my speakers produced an annoying static sound. My Sony turntable, acquired long ago from my friend Scott, worked like a charm but could not produce sound without and amp and speakers.

I had spied a nice “all-in-one’ turntable while visiting our daughter Alison and her boyfriend Jared in Scotland. Her stereo unit was compact and looked like what I would have called a “record player” back in the 1970s. Turntable, amp and speakers were built in.

With the coronavirus phase 2 in full swing in Toronto, I needed some music to brighten up the winter months ahead. I drove our minivan to Best Buy, donned my mask, and spoke to a customer service person there. She did not have the model in stock, but could source a nice “all-in-one” turntable for me the next day. Besides the amp and speakers, it also had capability for CD, cassette, radio and bluetooth. Gah: I would be catching a hi-fi wave, if not going ahead of the technology curve. Sold!

I showed up the following day to pick up my made-in-China Victrola “Nostalgic Belt Drive Turntable.” Probably not built to last, but it looked nice. If I could get a year or two out of it to play my albums, I would be happy.

I mined my record collection and quickly dug up a treasure. The Guess Who’s American Woman was one of the first albums I bought in the 1970s. Its dreamy cover blends the image of a woman’s face with the group portrait of four members of a band out of Winnipeg who were stepping onto the world stage with hits like No Time, No Sugar Tonight, and the gritty, churning rock anthem: American Woman.

I plugged in my new Victrola, turned the option dial to Phono, opened the cover, and placed the album on the turntable. I still had Scott’s old record-cleaning brush, so used it to dust the vinyl first. American Woman opens with Burton Cummings scatting vocals atop Randy Bachman’s bluesy guitar. Then it explodes with Bachman’s 4/4 rock guitar riff, anchored by Jim Kale on bass guitar and Gary Peterson on drums.

Putting the pieces together

To my ears, the song sounded beautiful. Cummings’ vocal was strong and clear. The drum part sounded crisp. The song sounded different and I couldn’t quite place why. I think I could not hear some of the musical mix. I could pick up most of Bachman’s melodic guitar solo but it sounded slightly muted by the overall mix. But if I closed my eyes, my memory could fill in some of those pieces. Wow.

As a drummer, I had always admired Gary Peterson’s crisp, clear style. No bells and whistles. His drum beat sets the pace for “No Time,” a song about a person moving on: “No time left for you… I’ll find myself some wings.” Randy Bachman’s lead guitar joins in, followed by Cumming’s vocal on the first verse.

Listening to an album means setting down the needle on the vinyl, sitting back and taking in a series of songs. There is no remote. It is an act of peace and discipline in our fragmented world. You take in the album and its songs as a whole. For every monster hit like No Time, you listen to some counterpoint, like the strange, poetic minor-key Talisman.

While enjoying my album, the only thing I needed to remember was to pick up the needle arm after side A finished. My fancy-schmancy new turntable did not have automatic return.

A drummer’s high

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You may have heard the term “runner’s high.”

One of the pleasures of playing music is finally getting something right, often through practice. Practicing music may not send endorphins coursing through the body, like those giving a feeling of euphoria to a long-distance runner, but it does forge new connections in a musician’s brain. And those can trigger joy in his or her soul.

As I sat down at the Rogers drum kit I had dusted off during the lockdown, I recalled my afternoon practices as a teen in my parents’ basement in Don Mills. I have to give credit to my parents Douglas and Sheila, and my siblings Louise and Andrew, for putting up with the percussive racket coming out of our basement for an hour or so most days.

Practicing sometimes meant the agony of defeat. On one occasion, I was working on studies focusing on “independence” — the ability to separate and free up all four limbs, both on the kit and in the mind.

Despite many attempts, I could not seem to master one of the studies. In a desperate moment, I reared back, stood up, picked up my drum stool, and impaled it in the basement ceiling in frustration.

Damage control

As if waking from a bad dream, I realized what I had done and felt instantly sheepish. I pulled the stool leg out of the ceiling, sat back down on it, and continued my practice. Right after, I camouflaged the damage. Using a pencil to draw dots on a piece of white paper, I simulated the pattern of the ceiling tile. Then I cut it out with scissors and taped my crude circular patch job to the tile. I guess my arts and crafts studies in elementary school had finally paid off. The patch stayed there undetected, although slightly yellowed, until my parents sold the house years later. (Shhhhh! It may still be there today.)

Practice also means the thrill of victory. After getting my Rogers kits set up recently, I started to put together a fall practice agenda. It would be one thing to help get through the continuing covid lockdown, during the long Canadian winter.

First up was some Stick Control — from the classic 1930s book by George Stone. He focuses on control and liberation of the two hands, through patterns and variations.

Next, I went back over the 18th-century dance suite interpreted for snare drum by Anthony Cirone. I had almost mastered two of the suite’s four studies in the last few months, including a stately Spanish “Sarabande” in 3/4 featuring some lightning-fast passages. But I realized I had glossed over the other two pieces. I dug into the concluding Gigue to polish it up a bit. It would be nice to confidently play the four movements straight through one day.

A segue from snare to set

Those snare studies were actually a neat segue into practicing drum set. With the Sarabande fresh in my mind, I tried to adapt it for the full set, initially bringing in bass drum and high hat. Then, using Cirone’s 4/4 Allemande study as inspiration, I fooled around with a funk beat on the kit. My hands were feeling fluid and I let them drive the beat while my clunkier feet, on bass drum and high hat, filled in some spots with syncopation.

Next door, the neighbors had moved back in after a reno. But Nadine had assured me that when the door was closed to my makeshift practice area in Ali’s old bedroom, the racket was nicely muted.

I made a mental note to speak to the neighbors to apologize and let them know I would never practice after sundown.

Breaking down the shuffle

The thrill of victory came with the last component of this practice session. I had listened to Toto’s classic rock song Roseanna, and found some great YouTube videos breaking down drummer Jeff Porcaro’s fabulous shuffle beat.

The legendary Porcaro made the beat sound easy but it is complex when played at the song’s correct tempo. The YouTube video by Drumeo starts with two hands playing triplets — the right hand on high hat, and the left hand ghosting the second beat of each triplet on the snare. Then to get the backbeat, the left hand has to throw in a combo double backbeat/ghostbeat. For those who read sheet music, the Drumeo video also scores out Porcaro’s beat.

Before even thinking about adding the bass drum, I experimented with the Porcaro shuffle with my left and right hands. It started to click at a slower tempo, so I sped up a bit, feeling good as it started to feel more natural. I kept screwing up, but it felt like some new cerebral connections were being forged.

Not quite a drummer’s high, but I would take it.

Sticking with it

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I was feeling cocky when I cracked open Stick Control to its first page of exercises for the snare drummer. After all, in trying to make my drumming comeback, I had already tackled several challenging snare drums solos, including an 18-century dance suite adaptation from Anthony Cirone’s Portraits in Rhythm.

My friend and fellow percussionist Ward had reminded me about Stick Control and I remembered it from my drum-lesson days in the 1970s. During my recent pilgrimage to musical instrument store Long & McQuade, I picked up a copy of the music book, along with a new pair of sticks.

Stick Control2

The first page of Stick Control’s single-beat combinations looked simple at first glance. There were 24 in total, exploring different left-right hand combinations in a consistent stream of eighth-notes. Should be easy, I thought.

The fifth combination was paradiddles. The muscle memory kicked in and the paradiddles flowed smoothly in a right-left-right-right, left-right-left-left sequence (say PA-RA-DI-DDLE, PA-RA-DI-DDLE). I was on a roll.

But number 6 through me for a loop. It consists of standard paradiddles, but staggered to start on the second or “RA” beat of the paradiddle. My brain cramped. I tried it a few times and could not get it to flow.

Breaking bad habits

I recovered a few combinations later, and started to enjoy the challenge to my brain, hands, and memory. One thing I noticed was the emphasis on ambidexterity — a challenge to my dominant right hand. The exercises alternate downbeats with both left and right hands. A good way to break drumming habits.

Ahead of me were a total of 72 single-beat combinations. And that is just the first section.

The author-composer is George Lawrence Stone, a serious-looking man with a rudimental drumming pedigree and track record of percussion performance and teaching in Boston. Stone died in 1967 but his method is still revered by modern drummers.

“It has helped me to sharpen the tools of expression,” drummer Steve Gadd wrote. You can’t question Gadd’s musical tools — he brought a crisp fusion to his drumming with Steely Dan, Weather Report and other progressive bands.

Putting in the hours

“To the uninitiated, the art of drumming appears easy,” wrote Mr. Stone in the preface to Stick Control — “so easy in fact that unless the drum student has had the advantage of expert advice, he (or she) may fail to realize the importance of the long hours of hard, painstaking practice that must be put in.”

Doing the quick math, I figured I had solo-practiced drums and percussion about 2,400 hours between Grade 6 and Grade 13, mostly in my parents Don Mills basement. (Thanks Mom, Dad, Louise and Andrew, and sorry for the racket.)

My drum teacher Glenn Price recommended at least an hour a day, and I put in the hours, with a few days off now and again. Adding in practices and performances in rock and jazz bands, stage bands, concert bands, percussion ensembles, music camp, and a brief stint in Humber College’s music program, let’s push that estimate to a total of 5,000 hours.

Author Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the 10,000-hour principle to achieve mastery in a skill — maybe this old guy still needed to get cracking.

Doing the math also reminded me that life was simpler back then. For today’s kids, with more distractions and technology, would it be tougher to practice music, or any art form or technical skill?

Delicacy and power

Stick Control, with its relentless combinations of single beats, triplets, short rolls, rudiments such as flams, and blends of the above, was definitely on my practice list back in the 1970s.

Stone promised that with regular “intelligent” practice, his collection of rhythms, “will enable one to acquire control, speed, flexibility, touch, rhythm, lightness, delicacy, power, endurance, preciseness of execution and muscular co-ordination to a degree far in excess of (one’s) present ability.”

I seconded that emotion.

Stick Control was back on my music stand.