Where the Concrete Cracks ~ A Bouquet of Brrd Roots
The Grant Application
Part One: The Deadline
Montreal Arts Council office, 4:47 PM, March 15, 2024. Grant deadline: 5:00 PM.
Millicent Tremblay, 67, stands at the reception desk with a manila folder that's been opened and resealed twelve times. Inside: the application for "B Otto Will and Brrd Roots Presents"—her organization that doesn't quite exist yet.
"Name of organization?" the receptionist asks, fingers poised.
Millicent freezes. She's practiced this. "B Otto Will and Brrd Roots Presents."
"Pardon?"
"B. Otto. Will." She spells it. "And. Brrd. Roots."
"Bird?"
"Brrd. B-R-R-D."
The receptionist's fingers hover. "Is that... English? French?"
"It's—" Millicent stops. How to explain it's the sound her grandson Ezra made at eight years old, shivering in her garden, trying to say "cold roots" with missing front teeth? How it became their code word for ideas that need winter before they bloom?
Part Two: The Garden
Six months earlier. Millicent's community garden plot, Villeray. The city's sending eviction notices—the land's been sold to developers. Thirty-seven plots. Mostly tended by immigrant families who've been here forty years.
"We should organize," says Mr. Chen, whose tomatoes win every year.
"Under what name?" asks Fatima, the young Syrian mother who grows medicinal herbs.
Millicent's there dividing irises, thinking about her late husband Harold's saying: "Be ought to will"—meaning you ought to become what you're meant to be. Her grandson Ezra, now 28, tech worker, sits beside her, unemployed again, pulling weeds.
"Brrd roots," he mutters, remembering that winter when he was eight, when she taught him about stratification—how seeds need cold before they grow.
"What?"
"Nothing. Just... the roots are cold. Brrd." He makes the shivering sound.
Millicent stops. "Say that again."
Part Three: The Name
They workshopped it for weeks in her kitchen.
"B Otto Will and Brrd Roots Presents"—each word fought for:
B Otto Will: Harold's philosophy mangled into something new. Be. Ought to. Will. The choice to keep choosing. Also sounds like "botanical," which Millicent loves.
Brrd: That unpronounceable cold. The difficulty is the point. Makes people pause, ask, remember. Like when Ezra had that paperclip through his nose at eight, rebelling against Hebrew school—the irritation that makes you pay attention.
Roots: What's underground. What connects. What survives winter.
Presents: Not past or future. Now. Also gifts. Also "presence"—being here, taking up space.
"It's too weird," Fatima says.
"Exactly," says Mr. Chen.
Part Four: The Proposal
What they're actually proposing: Turn the condemned garden into an "Alternative Growing Space"—vertical gardens on the construction fencing, guerrilla planters in the demolition gaps, seed libraries in phone booths. Legal gray zones. Growing where growing shouldn't happen.
Millicent's application calls it "agricultural intervention." The real plan: organized trespassing with tomatoes.
But first they need the $30,000 startup grant. Hence the manila folder. Hence standing here at 4:52 PM trying to explain "Brrd" to a receptionist who's already decided they're crazy.
Part Five: The Presentation
"You have three minutes," the receptionist says. "The committee's about to close."
Millicent's brought a bouquet—of course she has. Not flowers. Vegetables from the condemned garden:
- Chen's black tomatoes ("mysterious to abstract")
- Fatima's zaatar (pronunciation difficulties as passwords)
- Her own Jerusalem artichokes (roots so deep the excavator couldn't get them all)
- Ezra's failed lettuce (brown but somehow still growing)
She arranges them on the committee table. Five people in suits stare.
"B Otto Will and Brrd Roots Presents," she begins. "We are an organization that—"
"Can you spell that?" interrupts the chair.
This is where it falls apart. Usually.
Part Six: The Truth
But Ezra's followed her in. He's wearing his old tech company hoodie, the one with burn marks from soldering installations for artists who never credited him.
"It's supposed to be hard to say," he interrupts. "That's the point."
The committee stares.
"Brrd. It's the sound of cold. Of waiting. Of seeds that need winter. My grandmother taught me that—some things only grow after they freeze. Some organizations only make sense after they fail to make sense."
He pulls out his phone. Shows photos: The garden now. The eviction notices. The seventeen families who've been growing food there since 1978.
"We're not alternative to something. We're what everything else alternates from. Gardens were here first. Before your offices. Before the condos. Before the city."
Part Seven: The Moment
4:58 PM.
The committee chair—a woman who probably has a garden—looks at the Jerusalem artichokes. "These survived the excavator?"
"Roots go down fifteen feet," Millicent says. "They'll grow through concrete. Like we will."
"B Otto Will," the woman says slowly. "Be. Ought. To. Will."
"My Harold's words. Dead twenty years but still growing things."
"And Brrd?"
"The sound my grandson made when he was eight. Missing teeth. Cold hands. Learning that some things need to struggle before they bloom."
4:59 PM.
"Your proposal is for guerrilla gardening."
"Agricultural intervention."
"That's illegal."
"So was the community garden in 1978. So was speaking French in Manitoba. So was my grandmother voting."
5:00 PM.
Part Eight: The Bloom
Three weeks later. Letter arrives.
Denied.
But.
The committee chair's personal note: "While we cannot fund illegal activities, the Isabelle Gagnon Foundation (my private fund) supports 'unconventional preservation of agricultural heritage.' $50,000 available. No receipts required."
And handwritten at bottom: "PS - Those Jerusalem artichokes? I planted some in my yard. You're right. They grow through anything."
Part Nine: What Grows
Today. The construction site.
Between the condos going up: sudden gardens. Tomatoes in rubble. Beans climbing rebar. Sunflowers in the gaps where windows will be.
The city calls them vandals. The news calls it "botanical terrorism." The developers call the police.
But the police officer who comes is Vietnamese. Recognizes Mr. Chen's variety of bitter melon. Takes some seeds instead of names.
Ezra's built an app: "Brrd Roots Presents: Mapping Montreal's Secret Gardens." Ten thousand downloads. Even though nobody can pronounce it right. Or because.
Millicent, watching her Jerusalem artichokes crack through fresh concrete: "Harold always said we ought to become what we're meant to be."
"What are we meant to be, Grandma?"
"Weeds, apparently. Wonderful, unkillable weeds."
Epilogue: The Definition
From the grant application Millicent never submitted:
"B Otto Will and Brrd Roots Presents is an organization dedicated to the preservation of growth in hostile environments. We are the pause between heartbeats where seeds decide to split. We are pronunciation difficulties that become passwords. We are established yet unconventional, like rivers—always there, never the same.
We grow in the cracks. We preserve through cold. We present ourselves without apology.
Some call us alternative. We prefer to think we're what everything else alternates from—the original urge to grow despite. Despite concrete. Despite eviction. Despite pronunciation.
Our bouquet is made of vegetables, not flowers. Our garden is made of trespass, not permission. Our organization is made of people who understand that 'brrd' is just another way of saying 'wait for spring.'
And spring always comes. Even through concrete. Especially through concrete."
—
For all the guerrilla gardeners, the seed savers, the ones who plant where planting isn't allowed.
