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Grandpa's Barn Finds, Nana's Garden Stuff, Saint Thomas, ON (2026)

11/30/2025

Garden Arches

Should I buy this?

Who hasn’t repeated that question over and over again in their minds at an estate sale. The garage was dark and quiet, the wind whispered in the thick air as it passed through the front doors and skittered out the back. The dust and cobwebs trembled and shivered in the expectant moments as we walked around, searching. “Oh, it’s over there,” came a voice from across the building. Alongside a dark wall, follow the tired and musty scent of an old faded and battered cardboard box.

There were a couple of pieces of long and very old antique railing lying heavily on the box. Poor thing, damp and warped, the once strong box corners chewed by mice, perhaps a few yet lived inside in the winter months. Cardboard is warm. The cardboard had sagged comfortably into the arms of the cement floor, the quiet darkness along a concrete wall was peaceful. I thought about a fine spring day when garden dreams overtake us all in multiple trips to garden centres, vehicles overloaded with new plants and shrubs. I thought of the warmth in the air as the spring sunshine melted all memories of long winter days and nights, the way the earth looked and felt as it was turned with a shovel, the sound of the earth being moved and the scent of it. The way the garden hose spurted out water on the newly planted roots, filling the freshly dug hole with water, the way the earth slipped into place around the searching plant roots. I looked out the back door at the remnants of a spring garden. The arch had been abandoned, for many years.

The style of the arch was 1970’s or 80’s, so claimed the picture on the box. Flashlight told me it was cast, height and width. A few slightly rusty bits poking out of the box told the truth. Not possible to see if any parts were missing. Perhaps something important was, that’s why it was never installed on this beautiful property. I doubted. Perhaps I don’t need arch, maybe it won’t fit in the spot I am thinking of in my back garden. I argued with myself. Perhaps it is too heavy for us to manage. I maybe should let it go, perhaps it isn’t meant for me. I left sad box in the darkness to look at a couple of items in the house. It was a beautiful home, the home of an artist and a dreamer. I understood. A few minutes later I started to head for the road, then turned and went back for the ask. Should I buy you? Send me a number, arch, what you’re worth to me. The number dictates the outcome.

This year back garden has been renovated to adjust to our age. New fence installed, moved a few things, planning for what I can handle in my cherished space. Arch came home, I assembled its parts a few days at a time, when the weather was wonderfully pure and ambition was great. Husband installed arch securely upright, it will not fall. I have admired it all summer, garden creatures have explored it limbs. I have added some fall branches, yesterday I decided to decorate it for Christmas season. Whoever bought it so many years ago, arch has made it to a garden at last. I hope you can see it. It is fine, truly fine.

Crystal Trojek
November 2025

11/22/2025

It's story time, my garden this morning said so.

The Barn

When winter comes to visit the garden, it brings a zealous amount of imagination. Each line and each formed shape is carefully drawn, while never altering or attempting to change the antiquities in my garden. Winter values many things as they are, the keepers of the yesterdays and all the tomorrows. Winter has come to my little garden, weary of the panorama of work it has completed a few miles away. When winter came to the farm, the space was broad and wide, and full of possibilities.
I remember the years we used to walk across the field to Grandpa’s farm, the snow crunching under our boots as if it was a sea of white broken glass, the star packed skies, the air crisp and clean and all was so bright, as bright as the moon could make it. My kids used to run, impeded only by the sharp and strong remnants of cornstalks, piercing the white snow and still marking the rows that were so carefully planted in the spring. Coyotes were often heard just at the back of the farm at all times of the year, there were a number of ponds and shelter there, far from the roads. On those nights in the winter time, we walked a little faster to our destination.
Winter loved to paint any remaining leaves a shade of white on various parts, a few wrinkled and brown apple ornaments on the snow apple tree, the crabapple, or the rough bark of the pear tree, or along the single curving and jagged length of that old golden russet tree by the barn. A few apples still resided in the top parts of that tree, out of the reach of that old wooden ladder, but skimmed with frost and white sparkles. That tree, crooked and bent and missing some parts, always looked as if this would be its last winter, but it wasn’t.
The old barn allowed such music inside as winter would make there, the wind whistling in between the old weathered boards, a few cracks, and around the old squeaking doors. Snow usually slipped past that old double door that led to the horse stall, ruffled the old straw bales that were still piled high in the corner, and slightly lifted the tarp again that covered the old cutter.
An old mulberry bush attempted to guard the entrance to the big doors, the wind quite enjoyed banging the door on the barn beams as much as the rusted chains would allow. Winter could still dust the sets of old leather horse harness hanging on the far wall, and could churn up a nice whirlwind and make some old bits of straw dance with the big cobwebs hanging in various dark places if the door was open. The barn had harboured many people and animals from winter storms, had heard many words and stories from those of all ages, kept every whispered secret, standing firm as it always had, now without the old wooden corn crib nearby or the row of huge green pine trees that whistled from across the field when it knew the wind was coming. Winter was generally a noisy creature, spring comes a barely noticeable breath on the wings of sunshine.
Winter, finding a number of rusted out familiar objects from farms near and far, settled down in my garden and removed his hat. This was a restful and sheltered place, where birds passed their days of cold and frosted disturbances that were the trademark of winter. Wind wasn’t of much assistance to winter in such a place, snow was amenable to lying wherever winter wanted to use it to enhance the landscape. There were many shades between white and black, white and brown, and winter could use them all, and well.
Winter felt that most of the objects in my garden were from a slightly familiar scrap pile, which might be a little judgmental but then winter lived in a colourless world. Winter must find the appearance of the first purple crocus flowers quite disturbing.
Winter relaxed and soon realized my garden was the patch of earth where every season must have breath and exist for a time. There was evidence of seed heads and dried grasses, old sharpish sticks, crumbling concrete and of course various types of rusted objects who never felt small, inferior, old, abandoned, or beyond usefulness. the road that had brought them all to this place was well travelled, always open, and winter might just pass some time here for a while, a few pleasant days before it moved off.
Of such makings was that old barn, and it is gone now, as many others are. Their pieces from old farms have found more seasons of life amongst the plants in my garden and winter is but another traveller.

crystal trojek
november 2020

11/09/2025

Some pine cones said they would like to be owls for the Hort Society Christmas tree.

Owls

I would like to have an owl living in my garden. My several bird feeders scattered around the garden space attract mice and chipmunks, setting the table for owl dining. Someday I hope to have one visit, maybe I have but just missed it. Setting up owl nesting boxes is out of the question, my days of climbing to the far heavens are over, and those who have falls are not able to maintain bird feeder menus. Some mornings birds are significantly disgruntled with loud protests just because their table is empty. They should be thoroughly disgusted if I never appeared with a can of food at all.
Some years ago there was a just born spring morning at the farm. My husband had already risen before the sun, and happening to look out the bedroom window he met a baby owl perched on the thinnest of window ledges, in the faint morning light. Both were looking at each other through that old glass pane with equal surprise. As all great moments are, it did not last long. Owl flew off across the yard of apple trees and beyond the barn. Perhaps his home was in that old maple tree that towered over the house, or a dark corner in the old barn where I always questioned how creatures found their way inside. Perhaps once sufficiently recovered the old barn darkness beckoned him home, where the piles of old broken straw, the old dust, old earthen floor, old winds tamed by their efforts to squeeze through old boards to that almost sound proof place, were all quietly listening to old stories from old equipment while the world outside changed and grew modern. The world inside the barn did not care.
I hope to one day toddle out to the upper deck in the melting darkness, and perhaps meet an owl again. Not just the hint of one who the Merlin app on my phone says is nearby, one blinking its large eyes and saying hello from perhaps that big red maple tree. Just one fine spring morning when all the birds have come home to my garden again I should like to meet one. When we’re all at home once more in the sunshine.

Crystal Trojek
November 2025

10/28/2025

Tell Me a Story

“Tell me a story,” said the dahlia to the old water pump, “for I am weary and heartbroken. My face is scarred with frost, my limbs are overwhelmed in fear of the ever enroaching darkness. The stars they seek to eat me alive, they whisper of wicked things they will do to me. I am afraid.”

“Autumn has conjured a gathering, of the meanest of garden fairies born in the morning fog, nourished by a fast thickening morning dew. They are swarming in numbers at the bidding of the stars, who have lost their first love whose name was a gentle soul called spring,” said the water pump. “I am old, I have seen it many times You must be brave, and wait for another spring. Frost is an untethered tide, it will come for us.”

“The moon is laughing, I can hear it every night. Its voice wanders about in the darkness, it never becomes truly lost in the clouds, they cannot contain it.” The dahlia flower drooped lower, even though the sun was crawling over the horizon, brightening the day once more. The dahlia still had a few promising buds. Dahlia had met a few rambunctious hummingbirds this summer, who had apologized for being over inquisitive amongst its many petals. The dahlia didn’t mind, the hummingbirds knew many great stories when they weren’t too busy. Their travels were very interesting, and very exciting.

The pump had lived long and kept its many years inside its heart. It was distressed the first time it felt a blistering q***r sensation, the time a sparrow picked up a fleck of paint that had slipped from its metal body, spitting it out quickly, realizing it wasn’t edible. The pump spoke kindly of life, “I do not know why the earth changes so much, but in many ways it stays exactly the same. The ground sleeps during the silent winter months, resting and preparing for spring. I was afraid my first few winters, the snow almost buried me. People would dig me out, fill their pails and buckets. They always came back.” The pump continued, “My working life ended, I lost count of how many years I spent alone in the darkness of an old barn, but I did not give up hope. My world is different again, but I am still here.”

The melting frost became dripping tears, the dahlia was unable to hold them back. “I can weep. There is honour in sadness, it is the path to healing. I gave my best for many weeks, I am proud of what I am.” “ I hope I see you again in that spot next spring,” replied the pump, “You are beautiful, and the memories will make me glad you lived near for all these days. It is a privilege to have such fine company.”

“In the winter months I write in my story book of past days. I will not forget a minute of our time together, for you are a gift immortal. I shall read your story to you when I see you again next spring, when the first flower opens and your ears are ready to hear it. You may be invisible in the garden for a time, but you will live forever in my heart.”

“Cafe au Lait”

Crystal Trojek
October, 2025

10/15/2025

Chestnuts

It was the brightest of Thanksgiving Sunday mornings, the kind when the frost struck the earth in the hours just before dawn, the sun burning it away into a heavy dew. The fog of October mornings dusted every gathering of frost breath, sweeping the garden with a freshness that belied the calendar calling to November.

The clouds were large and many, floating in the turquoise sky, the one that had forgotten about sunburn and sun tans. Socks and sweaters were lifted from the back of dresser drawers, jackets pulled from the back recesses of closets, hot drinks replaced lemonade. Mum’s knitting basket reappeared by her chair in the living room, company for her pattern books soon to be clicking needles. A trip to the yarn store was not far off, as soon as the list was made we would be going.

Today it was Thanksgiving Sunday, the last time good summer clothes would be worn to church. Our dresses would be let down from Easter, if we were lucky Gran had made enough hem that they wouldn’t be too short. Mum used to say, “You’ll warm up in the sun when you’re walking there. Mind the road, do what your brother says, behave yourselves.” It was a fair walk to that old Anglican church for little legs, we might see two cars on our journey. Today you would have to cross the main intersection with the light or you wouldn’t get across.

A handful of houses before the church, the sidewalk was littered with prickly fruit. Some had opened, I still remember easing a chestnut out of the shell and into my hands. The smoothness of it, the deep reddish brown colour, that nutty new born chestnut smell, wondering why there was a grey mark on it. I looked up into the bright sky to see the chestnut leaves waving green and yellow over my head, I tucked three of them into my little purse as my brother was yelling from up the street to get going. My feet half skipped and half ran to the wide open church doors, I remember the chestnuts bouncing in my little purse, keeping time with the jiggling coins slipped into my white gloves for the Thanksgiving offering plate.

I can still see my hands barely holding that old church hymnal straight, my voice stumbling along with the hymns I barely knew, and thinking how lovely my little chestnuts would look on the altar with all those pumpkins and squash and autumn flowers. I opened my purse a couple of times during the sermon to see if they were still there. On the way home my brother knocked a few more chestnuts down for us with a piece of a branch. I walked home with my purse open and overflowing, my gloves, and I think my hat. Happily showing them to my Dad he remarked, “oh, you’ve found some conkers. That’s what they call them in England.”

I kept those chestnuts in my room for months, until one day I came home from school and Mum said she had tossed them. The chestnuts one finds at Christmas time for roasting have never been as appealing as those ones. Maybe their story isn’t nearly as appealing after all these years as the memory of my brother knocking them from the trees while we gathered them. We never knew one day our family would be spread far and wide, or disappear, those times would never return. Hello little chestnut, you still have my heart.

Crystal Trojek
October 2025

10/07/2025

Gave my new vintage laundry tubs some pumpkins and autumn plants. The purple salvia grew a lot bigger than I thought it would!

09/27/2025

Grapevine Wreath

Today I spent a couple of hours working on fall outdoor decor, autumn planters. It is never difficult to come up with ideas, these days it is finding the stamina to translate the visions into reality. Creations haunt me day and night to make them so, imagination unconfined has no end of the season on this earth for me. The players just change uniforms.
Deciding not to become the solitary adventurous gardener who, tempted by the branch too high as the perfect one, precariously balanced and then slipped off of the ladder while no one else was home. I abandoned the idea to cut another beautifully curly and oh so pliable length from the ever enticing curly willow tree. I trudged into the house to see what else I could use to make a ring around my container as I walked past rose hips, artemisia, hydrangea heads, clematis seed pods, and considered their viability in where this particular design and others might be going. A blue jay was shouting at the leaves changing colour again, you can eat some of those peanuts while I’m gone hunting I thought, but I will be right back much like those two chipmunks cleaning up the sunflowers on the ground.
I’m rare fond of armatures, always botanical, supportive, and readily able to hold other elements of my design. Curly willow never stops giving. Every time my husband mentions with disdain a branch is touching the roof or wall of his garden shed again, it is a signal to cut miscreant branch and give it another life in a design of some kind.
I found a grapevine wreath on top of a storage cupboard in the basement, one of those design staples that have many faces, almost unlimited uses, and spectacular longevity. Taking it in my hands, I thought of all the grapevine wreaths I have had there, large, small, and fashioned in my own hands.
Dogs were as eager to roam the fields behind our rural home as I was, did not matter the purpose. Plenty of tracking to be done across the stubble of cornstalks or the shredded soybean plants or the golden carpet of what was left of this years wheat. Deer, rabbits, squirrels, coyotes, foxes, possums, raccoons, skunks, other people’s dogs and cats, our barn cats, pheasants, geese, ducks. The excitement on a fall afternoon was hardly contained, there was no snow yet to hold up the journey. The snow sometimes came as a whirling dust in the air, the dogs sniffing and tasting the melting flakes, speckling their thickening winter coats.
Sumac lined the fence rows, the grapevine made the old fences what they are today, laced with rust, leaning in several directions, old posts pointing to the darkening skies, they will ever be a home to the homeless, a hiding place for the frightened, a nursery for all manner of creatures. Miles and miles of grapevine, red French knots of wild rose hips, backstitched with goldenrod, threaded with asters, looped with teasel, there was enough of it to make a rope to lead me to Charlottetown. It was easy to pull and stretch enough grapevine to make 5 large grapevine wreaths to hang on the porch posts that ran the length of the house. On another day, we would trek further down towards the old gravel pit, where enough red osier dogwood grew to build a house.
These days I collect grapevine wreaths and other assorted useful items from thrift stores, auctions, and garage sales. I will need them for something eventually. I will give them all coats of many colours, friends of all shapes and sizes, like the one I used this afternoon. Kale, peppers, a grass bunch, some gourds, an old rusty milk sieve, and every time I see that old cast iron stand I love it more, no matter what it’s holding. Happy days, happy memories.

Crystal trojek
September 2021

09/26/2025

It's almost time to think about baking again.

More Than Paper

It was my turn to bring a snack for Girl Guides. Sitting on the kitchen step stool, the synthetic leather bound red cookbook was cold stretched across my white bare legs. The book was quite large on my lap, covering the whiteness of my not yet scraped knees below a new skort, pages open to the chosen recipe. The window was pushed up, and a few chirpy sparrows outside were looking for more stale bits of bread, perhaps a crust left from the morning. My Mum loved sparrows, and the scent of the scraggly old lilac that wandered through the little screened window above the kitchen sink, just about that time of year. The shade from the house bathed the lilac as parts of it lay across the wooden fence, yet it bloomed anyway.

Baking was a reading lesson, a class in accuracy, cleanliness, a study for the faithful in the powers of such things as flour, vanilla, eggs, salt, and the very humble looking contents of the “Magic Baking Powder” tin. I always expected when carefully unscrewing the lid that something really memorable would be inside, but there was just white powder. My Mum talking loud above the whirring Sunbeam mixer. Cookies now reposed in the oven in neat little rows, I remember standing on a chair, my hands immersed in all the suds of the sink full of baking dishes, how warm the water was, the feel of the slippery dishes, the way the tufts of white froth looked on my fore arms, the smell of the baking. Jumping down you could just see the lumps if dough rising in the oven and turning into cookies. I can remember turning and seeing my Mum smiling, sitting down for a precious moment, cup of cold coffee in one hand and blowing cigarette smoke into the empty air, pushing the smell of the baking cookies out the window. I remember my Dad coming in, the cookies proudly displayed on a plate, snugly encased in saran wrap, ready for the journey to the Girl Guide meeting.

More than fifty years later, it is a very hot, humid, muggy morning and even the scuffling and shuffling feet can’t make the dust rise into the thick air above the parking lot gravel. Grouchy plants nearby are wilting before the dew is gone, the restless wander around the furniture and boxes of stuff, water bottles clutched in hand and hats pulled down over their heads. The sun becomes more generous with its heat by the moment. I’m disappointed, I’m thinking I might like to go home. The sale has started in another part of the building, auctioneer should be out here very shortly. Must take another quick look, just in case. A four level cart of dishes, squeeze around back, take another look.

A small and faded stack of well cared for old books are leaning against the bakeware, in the shade of the building. I pull off one, two, three, four and there is number five second from the bottom in the pile. Just lying there, my vision blurs, I’ve got to walk away for a minute, just a minute. I walk back and look, it cannot be. My husband walked up beside me, “Is that it?” “Yes, that is it.” The years melted away in the sunshine, I placed my hand on the top of the red Purity Cookbook, and I knew it. I knew it. Remembered the pictures inside, the way the recipes looked, the way the book felt in my now wrinkled hands. I can see it open on the kitchen counter, and remember the way it spoke lying in the little kitchen drawer, with a few elastics or pieces of string underneath when you removed it. I think, I have been looking for you for years, and here you are. “My Mother had one like that,” another bidder mentioned as I carried it away. “I know, so did mine”.

Crystal Trojek Sept 2017

09/20/2025

More pumpkin hunting today, and other stuff. Too many ideas.

Jurassic Park

When I first saw the rusty old sap pail and its dirty friends, they were lying on a dirty old farm wagon with many other dirty old farm bits and pieces who had lived in the silence of a dusty old barn for some years, alone. Dreaming in the forgotten and dust speckled layers of time they were, waiting for me.
My rusted sap pail might hold many occupants, simultaneously. It might be content with a captured rainbow of spring: primula, hyacinths, daffodils, or muscari, hellebore, violas or pansies, and a twig flag with soft p***y willows dripping down the stems in the brightest of sunshine that comes on the warm breath of April.
The simple pail might spill over with summer, perhaps rippled spikes of coleus, the round and smiling faces of cheeky petunias, the scent of oregano or rosemary, the sprawling arms of verbena and lantana, spots of portulaca, and liquorice plants could sleep under the moon, waiting for it to spread its tender light on all of the plants as only the moon can do on a summer night. Bees,
butterflies, dragonflies, or fireflies may all rest there on the plants in the old pail and dream on the faces of the flowers.
When the days became shorter, the pail might allow the chrysanthemums, asters, plump kale with its crinkley faces, bright purple or orange peppers, or purple pansies to return to the pail. There might be a spot for a few orange pumpkins and nubby gourds for they are pretty in an odd sort of way. A chipmunk might steal ornamental mini corn, but the plants will fill in the gap and never speak of it.
This year, the begonia has but one proud soul to keep it company. It is a Jurassic Park “Rose Shades” begonia. For the last few years, when we have in early spring journeyed to the garden centre, I must have the begonias, because of the leaves. I never dream of the arrival of its pale pink flowers, I just wonder at the beauty of the silvery leaves, that go with everything on earth. The leaves shine brighter in the few moments when the morning sun dabs at it, and then it is content to remain in the shadows. There is no disappointment that the flowers have not arrived, that they appeared and are not the expected colour, or that their life was too brief.
When I purchased the little stack of rusty sap pails, a gentleman wandered past and remarked, “You know you can’t use those for sap collecting any more. They’re illegal.” “Oh, good to know,” I replied. “I don’t want them for that.” I’m utterly in love with rust, that’s the thing. The depth of it, and the stories it has to tell. The leaves in the sap pail today offer only the purest part of the plant, themselves, all of themselves in a tarnished mirror that outshines the rest.

crystal trojek
September 2019

09/20/2025

The last big stump disappeared from my garden this spring, sufficiently broken down that it no longer held soil. 😢 The spring flowering bulbs will be out again shortly, tempting all of us to buy more.

Old Trees, with Young Hearts

I have several sizes and types of old trees in my garden, old logs. They are hollow logs, filled with soil and planted. I have them because I like the way old logs make my garden look old, and they match all the old rusty stuff in my garden. Hollow logs were free, a gift from artistic friends who knew I would appreciate such things. I do.
Logs look natural, one has been home to a family of rabbits, many are home to all kinds of insects, which feed birds and all kinds of garden creatures. I know chipmunks live in one with the roots of a clematis and some lavender plants, I suspect they live there all year, even when the snow is deep and the clematis has disappeared until spring. Squirrels like to plant things in old logs, they like me to see them doing it from the windows. My two terriers do not.
I like what I plant in old logs much better. I love the way a portion of the hollow tree holds the soil, one can see the rings of the tree, its years marked out in the wood, the bark even though it is peeling in places. I think of all the things that tree might have seen in all the years it struck leaves and stretched towards the sky, again. I think of how it felt the warm spring rain, waking up and shaking off the winter’s shroud and waving at summer days. All the birds who might have nested there, those creatures who found shelter in its arms, protection, and rest for the night. People who loved a tree’s shady places, who ate and rested there on the ground, in the shadows of its leafy wings. I think of autumn leaves, their brightness in the cool autumn days, the empty branches covered in ice, or filtering snow as it piles up at the tree’s strong feet. The earth calls a tree home, it lies there horizontal, resting from the wind, the water, the sun, the heat, and the cold. It lies.
This time of year, I plant spring flowering bulbs in my old logs. I think of how beautiful the crocus look, rising from the soil in those old logs on the best of March days, when the sun is shining down on the green leaves, threading themselves through bits of old leaves, twigs, drops of snow and ice, bits of yesterday brightly embroidered with bits of tomorrow called “peony time’ and ‘roses of June”. The crocus rise first, and soon the tulips and hyacinths will push their way through a tangle of sedum, or thyme, and the daffodils will rise above bark covered tables. They will rise long before I can plant annuals in the ground, they will be the first flowers of my spring garden. They will not care about a bit more snow.
I have been looking at some new crocus to add this year, maybe some muscari, and some dwarf daffodils. There are always new ones, begging me to take them home. Those old tree stumps in my garden, on the best of spring days, will have new hearts. Purple, yellow, cream, apricot, blue, mauve, red, fuchsia, and white hearts, brave new hearts come spring. I can see them now.

Crystal Trojek
September 2021

Grandpa's Barn Finds, Nana's Garden Stuff

11/30/2025

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11/09/2025

10/28/2025

10/15/2025

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