Provence in Point Roberts, Temporarily

Another border story of a sort, although this one about the Canadian border people; another Point Roberts story illustrating the possibility that Point Roberts is the place where dreams come to die.

Some years ago, a couple moved to the Point who were Canadian but apparently had some kind of green card status. He had previously been in the financial industry, I was told, and she was a lady of gardening ambitions. She proceeded to grow an absolutely fantastic lavender garden on a big, sunny, inclined lot facing northwest, more or less. Once established, the lavender was way too abundant for just one couple and she produced a one-day extravaganza each summer, a lavender tea, and she invited us all to come and share this joy.

People came from across the border and people came from the Point, and we all (as I remember) paid some small admission price and then we strolled around the house and gardens, inhaling the smell and suffusing our eyes and inner selves with the vision and scent of many different kinds of lavender, blooming in beds, blooming along a walkway that circled down and back to the upper yard, blooming in pots and vases. There was lavender everywhere one looked. The sun was hot, the skies were clear, and it was a wonderful event.

You could buy a little lavender tea, or lavender cookies, or lavender water, or lavender soap. Not too much commercial stuff, but just enough to make you feel like buying some. We went home with big bouquets of lavender and watched them dry in our kitchens for the rest of the year. And we thought what a good thing the lavender tea was and what a good thing it was that the lavender lady provided us with it.

I went the first year, and the second, and the third. And then there were no more lavender teas because at the end of the third year that I attended, the Canadians who returned to Canada carrying their bouquets of lavender were told at the border that they couldn’t bring the lavender with them. There had never been a problem before, but suddenly there was a problem with lavender, or maybe with that day’s border agents, but there was no moving them on their position.

So the Canadians wanted their money back and the lavender tea day was ruined, and it was pretty clear that nobody from Canada would ever come again for the lavender tea day. Within the year, the lavender lady and her husband sold their house and all their lavender fields and moved back to Canada. Someone came in and bought the house quite soon afterwards and immediately took out all the lavender.