At Churchill Meadows community gathering,
before Thanksgiving and Halloween,
we were given huge pumpkins
to carve smiling faces
to make funny scary masks…
Everyone was busy with their handiworks
except for one lady, whose eyes were fixated
on the seeds that we dug out and put away.
She collected each and declaimed her future harvest.
At the break, I approached her and we chatted.
Immediately we became friends. I felt familiar
and presumed this Carol had a Chinese background.
She invited me to visit her garden
where she grew vegetables for food banks
and seeds for seed hubs.
Her face was full of sunshine as her hands carried joy and life.
We stood in her garden, while she packed seeds into boxes:
yellow peas, Oregon sugar snap peas for seed libraries,
Barry crazy, sun sugar, sun gold, prairie fire cherry tomato,
Chayote squash, zucchini, cucumber for friends and communities,
flowers’ seeds – calendula, nasturtium, marigold for bees…
our conversations continued…
It was late autumn, before the weather got cold,
she was busy digging soil, cleaning up…
mending fences… preparing for next year.
When we met again, it was this summer.
I told her sun sugar and zucchini
grew well in my home garden,
snow pea and squash in Susan’s Garden…
Behind row after row of green peppers,
she smiled and said, “I told you; it is easy…
My seeds are best!”
I added, sweet too!
This time I knew her full name is Carol Lim,
actually, she is not Chinese, but Malaysian.
She moved to Mississauga in 1982.
She has worked for HSBC for 28 years
and retired six years ago. To continue helping
our community, she started to learn growing healthy food.
Since then, she kindly teaches others her tricks
and generously shares seeds…
When I asked “Are you tire?”
she answered, “Always young if you keep growing”
Well, I want to add this for her and for all of us:
“Always good if we keep loving…
Thank you, Carol Lim!”
Carol Lim at Churchill Meadows community garden, Mississauga,
Anna Yin interviewed Carol in 2024
more interviews and poems for Polyphonic celebration for Mississauga’s 50th Annivers