I have not had much inspiration to blog recently. This has been a very long winter with lots of extreme weather. We had early snowstorms as far back as November and December, deep freezes alternating with rainy days, freezing rain and thaws. Even us rare birds who enjoy winter have been finding this one too long and too harsh. I have delayed ordering seeds because then I won't have an excuse to look through the catalogues again, but I need to get down to it soon if I will have them when I am ready to plant. I still have a ton of seeds leftover which I have not used, but we bought most of them three years ago and I am not sure if they are still as fertile. I have not yet decided what to do with the old ones, seems a shame to throw them out. I may just toss them randomly on the edges of our property and see what grows wild.
Josh and the kids visited our friends up north of Mont Laurier for a couple of days over Christmas while I was working. Jasmyn send home as a gift for me a baby celery plant and a thai basil plant. I have them under my plant light and so far they are doing okay! I asked finally had the courage to ask Jas what she and Gu do to keep hot peppers growing indoors through the winter, as mine died gradually but surely. Her reply was that they just do trial and error until something works. Okay, I asked, what worked? Manure tea. Well, that does explain why mine "crapped out," not a drop of manure tea in my pantry this time of year. I mentioned my conversation shortly after to my friend Julie, in the context of our amazement that her pineapple sage was still going (seems it is ok with frequent waterings laced with my bird droppings) whereas the pepper seem to like somewhat stronger manure tea. Her reply, "oh, I have some in the house." Seriously, I did not expect that answer. I will plan ahead a bit better next year and dilute some poop in a jar for winter gardening purposes. I had a little outbreak of mealybugs on my African violets but have been using the diluted dishsoap and baking soda solution and it has not spread even though it is close to the celery and sage plants.
At school, for the Jewish festival of the trees (Tu B'shvat), my youngest daughter planted grass seeds as a class project. I mean "mow the lawn" grass. So next to the celery I now have a paper cup with a tall head of grasslings. I am not sure where that will end up come springtime, but in the meantime it looks ready to mow.
A couple of weeks ago, there was an organic seed fair at the Montreal Botanical gardens. A Facebook friend sent me the link and I shared it, but in the end I did not really feel like going outside on a freezing cold day so I decided to order from catalogues instead. My posting it inspired a friend who was organizing "Career day" at my youngest daughter's school to suggest I talk about gardening at the school.
Let me backtrack a bit. I have been participating in Career day most years since my eldest son was in first grade. When all three kids were at the same school, I alternated years with different grades because, to be honest, I have been in the same career for some time, and there are only so many times you can present being a social worker in homecare, geriatrics and day centres. I don't make cool products or have nifty props like some of the other parents, so it gets old fast, so to speak. Especially as my youngest has been the only one for the past year and a half so I can't even alternate unless I present to a grade where I have no kids. I wouldn't mind per se, but Orianne would never forgive me. Due to the risk of repetition, and a small pool of parents willing and able to give presentations, a few years ago the planning committee promoted the idea of going beyond career in the sense of a paid job, and asked if any parent had a hobby they would want to share. One of the planning committee members is a follower of my blog, or at least checked it out from time to time and gave me the idea of presenting my passion instead of my day job again.
I was concerned about being interesting enough, so I decided to introduce some of the reasons people garden, and why we choose to grow certain plants, and then showed a slide show of pictures of plants, trees, flowers, landscape shots from my garden and ask the kids to identify if the plant was for eating/drinking, medicinal use, for attracting pollinators, as a natural pesticide or just because it is beautiful. It was a fun exercise for me to see how many plants I am not using to full capacity: I have bergamot, rose hips, hibiscus, linden (okay, that one is my neighbours but the leaves fall on my property so I could collect them) but I only use my mint for tea. I even have a few daisies which may be the right type for chamomile. I have gentian (antifungal) and spruce (antibiotic) but in my yard they are more decorative than functional. I even included some ideas of how to recycle in your garden, showing them my rocks, brick walls, bathtub full of herbs which were all free materials saved from the landfill. I explained my use of daylilies as a wall to catch blowing garbage on the street from being strewn across my yard (they did not see that one coming), and how a garden on the sides of a house can be part of the landscaping to control water infiltration. I only found that out when we had an estimate done by an expert about some water issues in my basement. Talking about the variety and flavour of homegrown food versus storebought made everyone hungry. One of the teachers asked if she can come see my garden this summer. The next parent did a Zumba demonstration with the kids as I was leaving.
Josh and the kids visited our friends up north of Mont Laurier for a couple of days over Christmas while I was working. Jasmyn send home as a gift for me a baby celery plant and a thai basil plant. I have them under my plant light and so far they are doing okay! I asked finally had the courage to ask Jas what she and Gu do to keep hot peppers growing indoors through the winter, as mine died gradually but surely. Her reply was that they just do trial and error until something works. Okay, I asked, what worked? Manure tea. Well, that does explain why mine "crapped out," not a drop of manure tea in my pantry this time of year. I mentioned my conversation shortly after to my friend Julie, in the context of our amazement that her pineapple sage was still going (seems it is ok with frequent waterings laced with my bird droppings) whereas the pepper seem to like somewhat stronger manure tea. Her reply, "oh, I have some in the house." Seriously, I did not expect that answer. I will plan ahead a bit better next year and dilute some poop in a jar for winter gardening purposes. I had a little outbreak of mealybugs on my African violets but have been using the diluted dishsoap and baking soda solution and it has not spread even though it is close to the celery and sage plants.
At school, for the Jewish festival of the trees (Tu B'shvat), my youngest daughter planted grass seeds as a class project. I mean "mow the lawn" grass. So next to the celery I now have a paper cup with a tall head of grasslings. I am not sure where that will end up come springtime, but in the meantime it looks ready to mow.
A couple of weeks ago, there was an organic seed fair at the Montreal Botanical gardens. A Facebook friend sent me the link and I shared it, but in the end I did not really feel like going outside on a freezing cold day so I decided to order from catalogues instead. My posting it inspired a friend who was organizing "Career day" at my youngest daughter's school to suggest I talk about gardening at the school.
Let me backtrack a bit. I have been participating in Career day most years since my eldest son was in first grade. When all three kids were at the same school, I alternated years with different grades because, to be honest, I have been in the same career for some time, and there are only so many times you can present being a social worker in homecare, geriatrics and day centres. I don't make cool products or have nifty props like some of the other parents, so it gets old fast, so to speak. Especially as my youngest has been the only one for the past year and a half so I can't even alternate unless I present to a grade where I have no kids. I wouldn't mind per se, but Orianne would never forgive me. Due to the risk of repetition, and a small pool of parents willing and able to give presentations, a few years ago the planning committee promoted the idea of going beyond career in the sense of a paid job, and asked if any parent had a hobby they would want to share. One of the planning committee members is a follower of my blog, or at least checked it out from time to time and gave me the idea of presenting my passion instead of my day job again.
I was concerned about being interesting enough, so I decided to introduce some of the reasons people garden, and why we choose to grow certain plants, and then showed a slide show of pictures of plants, trees, flowers, landscape shots from my garden and ask the kids to identify if the plant was for eating/drinking, medicinal use, for attracting pollinators, as a natural pesticide or just because it is beautiful. It was a fun exercise for me to see how many plants I am not using to full capacity: I have bergamot, rose hips, hibiscus, linden (okay, that one is my neighbours but the leaves fall on my property so I could collect them) but I only use my mint for tea. I even have a few daisies which may be the right type for chamomile. I have gentian (antifungal) and spruce (antibiotic) but in my yard they are more decorative than functional. I even included some ideas of how to recycle in your garden, showing them my rocks, brick walls, bathtub full of herbs which were all free materials saved from the landfill. I explained my use of daylilies as a wall to catch blowing garbage on the street from being strewn across my yard (they did not see that one coming), and how a garden on the sides of a house can be part of the landscaping to control water infiltration. I only found that out when we had an estimate done by an expert about some water issues in my basement. Talking about the variety and flavour of homegrown food versus storebought made everyone hungry. One of the teachers asked if she can come see my garden this summer. The next parent did a Zumba demonstration with the kids as I was leaving.
