LILACS FROM THE HOMESTEAD - I LOOK FORWARD TO THEIR ARRIVAL IN BLOOM

When I was in my fledgling years as a collector, (of all things old) I cut my teeth as more of an archaeologist / collector than historian. Just as I began in trial projects as a poet and fiction writer, only to turn out as a hater of novelists. I couldn't wait to get home from university studies, during the week, to pursue some bottle digs or homestead hunting. I would often spend six to eight hours at digs throughout Muskoka, looking for artifacts but settling for old bottles of every description.

While out at these remote homesteads, and abandoned hamlets, some dating back to the late 1800's, I found a lot of inspiration from the environs. The digging work was hard and dangerous. Not only dodging the bears and wolves but you had to be careful with the contents of some of the old bottles and crocks. There was a large quantity of old chemicals, and various other forms of contamination. Poison and medicine bottles that still maintained contents. Arsenic was a popular contaminate. I always left a site in better condition than I found it, and always had permission of the property owner to sample the homestead dumpsites. But what became a life-long result of that backwoods immersion, was a particular passion for lilacs. It was the way to identify a homestead in the Muskoka hinterland. It was usual for a homestead to be adorned by lilacs, planted as a cheap and colorful way of adding to the character and civility of a rustic home and farmstead. They were easy to grow and given generously from one homestead to another. It was pioneer beautification. You can also find clumps of lilacs still growing where pioneer graves, long grown-over, were set out in simple plots. Yes, it's true. There are likely hundreds if not thousands of unmarked pioneer and First Nations burials sites across our region, that will eventually be unearthed as urban sprawl continues. I fell into one gravesite near the Muskoka River, on one outing, and the depression was rectangular and the expected measurement for a rough box. Many loggers, killed on the job, were buried by necessity, wherever it was convenient. This looked like one of those sites. This is one that didn't have a lilac planted near by, which tells me it was an impromptu burial due to accident.

Suzanne's family homestead, and cottage, in Windermere, on the shore of Lake Rosseau, were both loaded with lilacs and raspberry canes dating back to the first buildings erected on the properties. When we purchased our present home, in Gravenhurst, thinking we would be raising our family and retiring here, we brought loads of lilacs from the Stripp family properties. Later, when Norman, Suzanne's father, sold the cottage, and we knew the property was going to be redeveloped, we dug up another large number of lilacs. After Norm died and the family home was sold, we took some raspberries and lilacs to remind us of the good old days in Windermere. As there were lilacs on all Suzanne's ancestral grounds, the Shea and Veitch farmsteads in Ufford, on nearby Three Mile Lake, we couldn't have been happier, than to have our own homestead, however urban it is, adorned with the spring-blooming plants that have cheered up folks for centuries.

After about five years of bottle digging across the district, I began writing a lengthy series of feature articles for The Muskoka Sun, entitled "Homestead Chronicles," about a family, living on one of these forgotten and overgrown Muskoka acreages. The way it came about, actually, is the feeling I often had, while out on the dig……sensing that someone was watching me work. I never went out that I didn't expect to encounter a ghost or two. I was disturbing their own hallow ground. Not that I was digging up graves but just being there, and breaking open the same soil that was the means of their survival or failure as homesteaders, seemed to awaken resident spirits. As a long time dabbler in paranormal research, this was a bonus situation. I got the bottles and some ghost stories. Homestead Chronicles is about the haunting of these old countryside residences, and the lives invested trying to survive in a heavily forested, rock strewn region of Ontario. Lilacs, as I recall, factored very heavily in each chapter of the feature series. I got into a cleaning frenzy one day, several summers ago, and I recycled about a thousands pounds of old paper. Homestead Chronicles perished, in this act of recycling.

What never left me, other than the precise story-line, was the presence of lilacs. Suzanne and I had this as a common interest, when we got married, and began raising our family. We had to have lots of lilacs on our property. All winter I look forward to the wonderful blooms our ever-expanding lilacs will bring forth, in late May and early June. I can look out at them from my office, here at Birch Hollow, and they really do make a difference in appearance and in heart. I like to think our neighbors forgive our other transgressions and clutter, at this time of the year, sensing that the Curries must be a kindly bunch of traditionalists. If they have these beautiful trees, surely they are gentle and caring folks. As long as we don't talk politics or taxes. I got mad at someone the other day for some perceived protocol betrayal, and I must confess, I sat here in a minor rage, wishing to pen some nasty tome to right the wrong. I made several attempts, and on hiatus, with a typical Currie "chin resting on hands contemplation," it was this garden scene that calmed the beast within. What began as a scathing down-dressing, became a much, much lesser concern, to the point that the whole purpose of the writing jag was lost, because of the uncompromising serenity of lilacs. I'm sure then that my adversaries would like it very much if I could be bathed in lilacs throughout the year.

Today, weighed down with giant blooms, and the morning rain, they form a beautiful arch up the driveway. The perfume is amazing. Whatever bleakness the winter and spring brought in weather, even a rainy day with these lilac blooms, is restorative and invigorating to any diminished soul. They remind all of us Curries, of our ancestors, back in Ufford and Windermere, and those long-lost homesteads across the region, that inspired us to re-introduce lilacs to modern era landscaping. I think about all the grave sites still marked by those unfailing, stalwart, marker-lilacs, reminding us of those who carved out this region from the Canadian wilderness.

Suzanne's grandfather, John Shea, a former clerk in Muskoka Lakes, many decades ago, erected a small picket fence on a small, otherwise unmarked gravesite, on the Dougherty Road, in Ufford…..not far from the formal cemetery where John, and Suzanne's family is buried. He built the fence to acknowledge the deceased members of the Dougherty family, having four family members (we believe), perish in one night, from a contagious disease. The homestead was near the burial site. John felt that after many years of being unmarked, the site needed to be recognized with a border fence. What identified the burial spot then, and now, (the fence has rotted away) are the few remaining lilacs, planted shortly after the burials. There's something very comforting about lilacs, such that they were so frequently placed at graveside, as memorials to the recently deceased. As they were used to beautify rustic homesteads, they were similarly used to instill a little heaven on earth, marking the sites of family burial plots, and rural cemeteries. Many pioneer churches were also adorned with lilacs.

I could never get gloomy looking out at these beautiful lilacs. I do feel connected however, in my own unwritten version of Birch Hollow's "Homestead Chronicles." Each of these lilac stands comes from a different homestead, and were planted with the intent to bring brightness and good cheer to the pine and maple forests of yesteryear. I'm so glad we saved them for yet another generation, to appreciate their extension of history, from then to now. When I heard, last week, of the passing of an old friend, Roger Taverner, I sat in this same chair, looking out this window, down onto the lilac garden. Despite the unfortunate news, and feeling depressed about the loss of more than a few of my childhood chums, in the past few years, I have to tell you, the view from here was unfalteringly inspirational……like a spirited message from beyond, that heaven is a lot like this…..but much more bountiful. I'd like to believe this to be true…..that upon leaving this mortal coil, I will find lilacs wreathing that white light on the walk through those pearly gates.

Suzanne will occasionally wish to trim away the dead branches of our lilacs after the June blooms have fallen into the grass. I must approve each cut, and even then, I try to discourage her from what she knows is good and responsible plant care and general good gardening. I can't help but think about all those graveside and homestead lilacs, still blooming after a century of being left wild. I know this is an urban landscape and a subdivision property, and I do appreciate that the way we keep our property affects our neighbors as well. I'm just over-protective of these heirloom lilacs. My boys know to keep them safe when mom and pop are gone to their eternal reward. It's their family tree…..pretty much, living and thriving beyond the written genealogy Suzanne is so obsessed about. There's a lot of history in our garden. I'm glad to be an historian who can enjoy such an open book, as this, in glorious purple bloom. If only I could write, as powerful and enticing, as these blooms inspire in their spring-time regalia.

I still proudly show up at the kitchen door, anticipatory, with a couple of lilac blooms for Suzanne. She graciously accepts, as part of our spring time tradition, and she puts them in a vase her mother used…..to bring spring into the house……to uplift the winter-weary spirit. It worked then. It works now. If you drive by and think we are lilac-obsessed, well, you'd be right!