I had always wanted my garden to have a water feature — maybe a small waterfall, something that the rain could drain into; and, because I can entertain my whimsy, I did just that, front-end-loadering a large hole in my backyard. I left a small island in the middle, and so it looks a bit like a large doughnut Wile E. Coyote-d the ground. I spread about some seeds, along with some submergent species, to help prevent erosion; created a small rock garden that hangs over one side to provide a bit of shade; collected a gargantuan amount of frogs’ eggs — and when construction settled down, I knew there was only one thing left to do: buy some fish. Nothing excessive — no sturgeon or pike or anything like that — just a few goldfish to give the pond a bit of colour.
You can imagine my disappointment when I found out that the local pet store was all out of goldfish. “But I have something even better,” they said with a grin I didn’t quite trust. “Just got them in, too — came here, what, October 11th, I think. Quite active fellows, to be honest.” And the petmonger led me into a back room where I saw a tank filled with them.
“What are they?” I asked.
“They’re Willows minnows,” he said.
“Willows minnows? Never heard of them.”
“Some people call them Jasons.”
“Interesting — I’ll take them all.”
“All eight? Are you sure?”
“Why? What should I be aware of? Do they not like ponds?”
“This an outside pond?”
“Of course it’s outside, yeah.”
“How deep?”
“Six, seven feet, maybe more in some places. It’s got a rock garden, a wood bridge to the island. They’ll survive the winter, right?”
“Hmmm… You sure you want all of them?”
“Very sure — I like the look of them. They’ll be even better than goldfish.”
“They are peculiar, that’s for sure.”
“Peculiar how?”
“Nothing bad, no no no, nothing like that. Better you find that out on your own.”
“But they’ll survive the winter, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah — no problem. All eight, you said? Well let me scoop ’em up.”
The petmonger shooed me back to the front of the store and shortly after followed, holding up a clear, plastic bag containing my Jason Willows minnows.
It was a quick car ride back to the Schmolaris mansion, and I carefully lowered the bag into the pond, gently acclimatizing them to their new forever home, and then let them loose, whereupon they wriggled and swam away into the darkness.
The next day came with gorgeous weather. The sun was out in full, with little wind, so I spent the morning burning cardboard boxes and slightly moldy crafting paper, after which I stood at the edge of the Willows pond (which is what I had come to call it) to see how the Jasons first night went.
After an hour of not seeing any of them, I feared my Jasons dead — but, no, they had fled to the shadows, to the coolest, darkest parts of the pond. What strange behaviour, I thought. Do Jasons never see the sun? I quickly found out that Jasons are night fish — they sleep during the day, daydreaming perhaps, and only at night do they freely swim about. I fed them with the food the petmonger sold me in bulk, and it seemed to invigorate them, as if it were coffee or alcohol or weed (or all three), so I looked at the ingredients on the bottle and was surprised to see that the main one was 1,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol, or vitamin D.
• • •
To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice.
• • •
Steve Schmolaris is the founder of the Schmolaris Prize, “the most prestigious prize in all of Manitoba,” which he first awarded in 1977. Each year, he awards the prize to the best album of the year. He does not have a profession but, having come from money (his father, “the Millionaire of East Schmelkirk,” left him his fortune when he died in 1977), Steve is a patron of the arts. Inspired by the exquisite detail of a holotype, the collective intelligence of slime mold, the natural world and the suffering inherent within it — and also music (fuck, he loves music!) — Steve has long been writing reviews of Winnipeg artists’ songs and albums at his website Bad Gardening Advice, leading to the publication of a book of the same name.
