Shana tova u'metuka: welcoming the new year with garden delights and butterflies

This week we celebrated the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashana. We have had great weather, a nice mix of rain and hot sunny days. The leaves have barely begun to change colours. Although by climate change standards, this is alarming weather for mid September in Montreal, it is good news for gardeners who suffered from a long, cold, wet spring and a late start for tomatoes. The flowers are still going strong. This summer, due to weather conditions and a certain degree of coincidence in where I moved things around last year, I have had different sections of the garden in full bloom at various times during the summer. It is like there is a spotlight that moves around to different areas at different times. Unlike past summers, there were no long stretches where nothing was flowering, so I managed to achieve the impression that I had actually planned things out.






I have garnered the attention of some people in the neighbourhood. I think the fact that I had a very extended teacher's vacation this year resulted in me spending more time visible in the garden, and passersby would stop to talk. A gentleman who lives across the street, whom I had never met before, came over to tell me that his kitchen window looks out over the garden and he has enjoyed watching the display. I am also starting to get unsolicited advice, such as the importance of controlling the spread of my cosmos, which up to this year has not even been an issue.

I had an unexpected bloom this fall. I have discovered that coleus have very pretty flowers.
I planted those this year for the first time.

Josh chatted with the neighbours in the back, and confirmed that the prickly bushes in the corner of the lane are in fact raspberries, so I am no longer going around the fence to pick them. They were pleased to have our escapees turn up. We also discussed the massive squash plant. The neighbours explained that they had dumped some decorative squashes in that corner, and expect that something sprouted. I am not sure if the branch in our yard under the apple tree is part of this collection, or something that came from our own compost bin, which is right along the fence on the other side of the squash plant. We are waiting to see what grows. The flowers were huge, but a few have fallen off leaving just a stem. I am hoping there is enough time for fruit to grow before the frost. I checked online, and unless the squashes are decorative (as opposed to edible), we can eat them as though they are zucchini when they are immature, so I am willing to try.

In the flower garden, the gentians are blooming. I always forget they are there, and they surprise me every year. The sunflowers are huge and abundant. I have been picking bouquets and giving them to people, nibbling on small but tasty sunflowers, and adorning my holiday table with a multi-coloured selection. I have a certain amount of theft by squirrels, which I can certainly spare. Our bird Koko is not very interested in the seeds, but has been a real hog for the raspberries which are beyond abundant this year. I have been making pies, tarts and crumbles with enough left to give a care package to anyone who drops by, and keep Koko happy.

We have been inundated with bees and a wide variety of other pollinating insects. The bee balm, well past the stage of looking pretty, continues to do its job attracting bees. The sunflowers are another magnet for bees, as are the raspberries (along with a host of mosquitoes and other things that attack me every day when I harvest). The garden spiders have set up camp in the raspberries and in the beans, and are looking quite large this year. I caught a picture of a bee in the mint patch, and wonder what mint honey tastes like. I am pretty sure it was a honey bee. I am pleased to see so many of them alive and well.

On the morning before Rosh Hashana, it was raining but I was out harvesting the days crop of raspberries so we could make a raspberry apple crumble for dessert. I noticed that there were a lot of bees, as well as a dragonfly, sheltering from the rain by clinging to a sunflower. The bees were not moving around, just sitting out the rain. There are better shelters in my garden, but the sunflowers seemed to be a location of choice.


Another surprise has been a few sightings of monarch butterflies. My last blog I posted a picture but the next day, late in the afternoon, I saw two monarchs. This time I got my camera and they both cooperated to allow me to take some better shots. They were not close enough together for a double shot. They really like Iulia's zinias, which I am pleased that she planted just across the fence from our garden, so I could get a great view. They both checked out the sunflowers, but decided they preferred the zinias. On Rosh Hashana, walking back from synagogue, I saw another monarch, this time it was one with a tag on it from the botanical gardens. I am glad to have seen a few, they have become so rare and elusive.

A last bit about flowers before I get into the tastier stuff, I had some nice variety among my morning glories in the past few weeks. A few years back, I started a patch of purple ones, then added seeds that I pinched off a number of plants growing on fences along the alleyways of our neighbourhood. Technically, the seeds were not in anyone's yard, and would likely fall on pavement and never grow, so I see it as liberating them. I picked various shades of pink. I occasionally had one or two pop up that were not in the dominant purple colour, until this year, when after about a month of exclusive purple seeds, I got a late blooming variety of pinks, and even some blues.

I can't remember if I threw in some new seeds in the spring, or if these are hybrids of some of the mixed ones from years past. Whichever the case, they are really quite lovely.



Like most Jewish holidays, Rosh Hashana involves eating. There is a great deal of praying too, as well as socializing with friends and family. This year, more than we ever have, we were able to feature the garden in our holiday meals. A few days before the new year, I dug up three quarters of our carrots. They were big, and tasty too. I also harvested a lot of our potatoes.

 I am not sure what proportion, because I did not really dig, just stuck my hands beneath the hay along the surface and took what was easy to get. There might be a lot more below the surface, but I am saving those for Succoth, the next holiday which involves feasting (and celebrates the harvest, appropriately!).

The potatoes are doing really well. I have never grown from the big, extra large potatoes before (I don't usually buy those, and I plant whatever potatoes are sprouting in my potato bin), but I will make sure to repeat the experiment. They get big and are prolific, giving great yield for the space they take up. The ones in the bathtub died off fastest, and did not produce a lot or very large ones, so I won't put them there again. We picked rosemary, sage and thyme to season them, along with our garlic of course, and served them cut and roasted. The carrots were served as a baked lemon carrot tzimmis. I picked a lot of mint, and made fresh mint lemonade, which has become a family favourite for parties and holidays.

I had stopped picking beans because after six weeks eating them two meals a day, we needed a break. I was leaving them to go to seed, both for replanting and for trying them in soups, which we haven't done in the past. The kids and Josh don't like cooked carrots very much, so I decided that we would have beans as an alternate dish. I picked the smaller beans. Despite a resurgence in slugs, the purple beans were still producing a few late season beans. The pole beans are in fantastic shape and going strong. I think I am leaving the rest for seed at this point, but I snack on them raw as I am doing my harvesting every day.

The lettuce I planted in the spring has pretty much died off, as well as the few I transplanted from the Vanier gardens where they were getting eaten by a groundhog. The seeds I planted a few weeks ago have not come up. The lettuce the the chard which I did not plant are doing fantastic, and I am still eating it. The cucumbers are slowing down. I left a few to go to seed, in the hope that I will have better luck next year. Elena, my neighbour's mother, says that they do better if you do not transplant them (meaning the ones you plant come up and you don't have to go to the store to buy seedlings late in the game...). This was my lunch before Rosh Hashana, with cucumbers, beans and lettuce from the garden, and some of Chloe's fantastic beets.

The tomatoes are slowly ripening. An entire section have green tomatoes, but I am getting some. The san marzanos are small, so I have a lot more volume from the heritage chocolate tomatoes and the beefsteak tomatoes. This means the puree I am producing is more watery than usual. Chloe gave us a few of her san marzanos, which were three times the size of ours. The difference of full sun is incredible (and a few more years of hay gardening). Because we were serving salmon as the main course, and neither of our daughters eat fish, Josh cooked up some pasta and a fresh sauce as an alternative. We have not needed to do much more cooking the rest of the week, and were able to give some care packages out as well.