Covid Fall 2020

This summer has been extraordinary in many ways. We had a long, hot dry spell in July. Then we had a hot August with plenty of heavy rain interspersed with scorching sun. It was far from ideal weather to have construction work done, as days were either too hot or too wet, or just threatening to be wet without actually raining. So I ended up spending much of the summer waiting each day to find out if I had any workmen coming. Projects ended up stretching out as the roofers who retiled my roof could only work in short stretches, the handyman who built my new shed had to leave it covered in a tarp for a few days before being able to get the roof complete, the company who put up my new gutters cancelled for several weeks until the weather cooperated.  Besides a few weekends visiting with my mother up north, I stayed close to home. I was not comfortable travelling or visiting people, so I had friends (singly) drop by my garden for a socially distanced visit. We ate outdoors often, and every single Friday evening throughout July and August had clear and beautiful weather, so we ate our sabbath dinners under the stars with a guest or two each week. On days when it was nice enough to go for a hike, but no workmen were present, I explored parks all around the edges of the island of Montreal and on islands in the river both to the north and south with my friend Olga.  The birdwatching was spectacular, and the views stunning. The rest of the time, I worked in the garden. 

I am proud to say that my enormous efforts digging meticulously and deeply to rid the vegetable garden of creeping bellflowers have finally paid off. I seem to have really gotten rid of the stuff. I have consistently ripped out any in the front yard that started to flower, which has prevented them from spreading to the backyard again, but I have given up on disentangling the roots from all my flourishing perennials. It will just have to be a chronic problem that I need to keep in check. 

This summer I successfully grew watermelons. Two of the plants I sprouted indoors survived this year. I am grateful that only two survived. They surpassed all expectations. I planted them ten feet away from the garlic patch, knowing they needed around 15 feet in all directions. Fortunately they only really started to hit their stride once the garlic was harvested, because they took over the entire area. I had nine watermelons that grew to maturity. One was eaten before I could harvest it. The entire inside was devoured through a hole the size of a baseball, so it looked perfectly good but when I turned it over I discovered that it was hollow, filled with rainwater and seeds which the squirrels had left behind. 

Fortunately the squirrels had only gorged themselves on one melon. I suppose it was because the apples were ripe at the same time, and were conveniently on the other side of the yard at the point farthest from my neighbour's dog. There were plenty of squirrels this year, more than I have ever had, and they were busy munching on whatever they could get their paws on. 

The watermelons all ripened the same week. This was unfortunate because they were the most fantastically tasty, sweet, juicy, crisp watermelons I have had in my life. We ate a lot of watermelon, but nine watermelons are a lot of watermelon. They were at their peak the week of the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashana, so I decided that the way I would wish friends and family a happy new year would be with the gift of watermelon. It was an unusual twist on the traditional apple and honey or pomegranate, but it was definitely sweet and fresh and seasonal. 

I also grew a single butternut squash plant. The butternut was at the center of the back part of the garden, also beside a patch of garlic, between the tomatoes, beans and bee balm. By mid August it had grown up the tomato cages, up the fence through the beans, across the bee balm patch and out into the yard in two different places. It is around the same size as the watermelon plant, and produced huge squashes. I kept finding more of them hiding in the flower bed, hanging down under the bean plants, growing in the tomato cage, hiding under the massive leaves. It is still blooming and has more small squash plants growing which might mature if the frost is late.  We have had roast squash, squash soup, squash and lentil soup, squash and chard tacos, and we have shared the gift of squash with neighbours, friends and family. I have one left in the kitchen (we needed a break). 

Everything was larger than life and more plentiful than I have ever seen in my garden, except for the garlic. It ripened early because of the hot, dry month of July. A lot of it was small, and many had only two large cloves. I separated the largest ones, and then made the mistake of leaving them in my laundry room which was too humid. I had a bloom of fungus across the top of the bowl, and some penetrated the cloves and ruined them. I had to pick through the bad ones and rescued what I could, then moved them up to my bedroom until it was time to plant. I have a smaller stock this fall, unfortunately, but hopefully undamaged by the mold.

It was not a great year for tomatoes. I planted them in the corner of the garden where I used to have raspberries, and some of the plants did not get enough sun. The cherry tomatoes are still green in mid-October. The rest produced at a good rate, and I have had tomatoes for much of the last three months at a pretty decent rate, but with all the rain I had a hard time keeping the bacteria in check. The varieties of tomatoes I bought this year (after half of my san marzano babies died early in spring) were not very resistant to the blight and my frequent spraying with hydrogen peroxide meant that I did get a good quantity of tomatoes, but they were quite spotty and some did rot.

 Once I started teaching in late August, I was spending much less time outside and the squirrels were quite bold. I have never had issues with them eating my tomatoes. I suspect it is because they dislike the chicken wire I use in the cages. This year, they were getting at any tomato that fell off, red or green, if I did not pick them up fast enough. The slugs were bad too later in the summer, munching the tomatoes, chard and even the outside of the squashes.

My mom gave me a couple of banana pepper plants that got huge and prolific.  The multi-coloured miniature sunflowers I have planted in years past were three times the size they usually are (and are still keeping the squirrels busy). One stunning red sunflower sprouted in the front yard, clearly planted by a squirrel or bird. One of my poppies was confused when we had a cold spell and the temperatures hovered just above zero and then warmed up again. It shot out 5 buds. In October. Poppies bloom usually in May, occasionally in early June. I have never seen one rebloom in the fall. My hyssop and elecampane were massive and covered with flowers. The milkweed had spread enough to attract monarch butterflies for the first time, although I only saw one caterpillar. Maybe there will be more next year. The calendulas are a riot of colour.  

The phlox were double in size . But of all the garden, the most interesting development were the cosmos. 

I adore cosmos. When you have a critical mass of them, they look like a green fluffy cloud topped by the kind of flowers that a small child would draw.  Every fall they drop seeds which migrate to unexpected places. Last fall, a few crossed the sidewalk to the new garden bed installed by the city of Montreal when they repaved the sidewalk after changing the water pipes. When the workers were pouring the cement, I asked if I could plant anything in the area, as it was clearly intended for that purpose. I was told I could not, it was city property. In the spring, woodchips were dumped in the beds of the three corners that were redone. No one came to plant anything. Weeds took root on top of the woodchips and geotextile. So did a few stray cosmo plants on my corner. No city workers came to deal with the corner plots, so I let the cosmos grow and pulled the weeds out of the space. Still no city workers came. The cosmos on my side of the sidewalk had grown in the cracks of my garden path, so I pulled them out and when no one was looking, stuck them across the sidewalk with the other escapees. It turns out that the patch, though a mere three feet from the edge of my property, gets several more hours of sun per day than my front yard. The cosmos across the sidewalk exploded in size and blooms. I only realized this evening that I took a photo just before they started blooming but somehow missed taking one when they were at their peak (I suspect that it was because I was back at work and super busy trying to adapt to teaching online, and was quite distracted by the amazing melons and squashes in the backyard that the cosmos, although much admired, missed the camera lens.)

I did, however, spend quite a bit of time gazing at them as they are directly in view of my dining room table where we ate all summer (the kitchen table was my son Isaac's work station until he started a new job in August, which, for various reasons, then made more sense to move to his bedroom). I was not the only one who loved to look at the cosmo patch. Many people strolling down the street stopped. In fact, walking on the sidewalk on my side of the street meant walking with a cloud of cosmos on both sides, shoulder high on the sunny side. It was quite spectacular. At one point a young couple stopped and embraced. It was such a charming spot!

Eventually in September, just around when the cosmos were at the peak of their flowering, the city workers finally did show up. I happened to be looking out the window when the truck pulled up. It was quite interesting to watch. A man and a women in florescent orange vests and hard hats walk out of a pickup truck with various gardening tools. The man crosses the street and starts cutting down the weeds in the sidewalk plot directly across from my yard. The woman looks at my cosmos. She hesitates. She crosses the street, talks to the man, then starts hacking at the weeds in the other plots. I watch for a while, then return to my 

bedroom/classroom/ office/yoga studio/dance studio where I am spending most of my waking and sleeping hours these days. Later in the afternoon, I look out the window downstairs to see two of the garden spots have been razed to the ground. My cosmos remain intact. I smile.  Emboldened, a few weeks later in early October, I grab handfuls of seeds from my dying cosmos and calendulas, and, when no one is looking, I steal across the street and expand my local guerilla gardening campaign. 

I have intended to keep up my blog this summer. I have had plenty to write and lots of great footage (which I have periodically shared on facebook). Somehow, though, once I was back at work in mid-August, then juggling Jewish holidays, launching two kids back to (online) school and the other one starting a new job and finding a first apartment (wow!), dating someone (imagine fitting in romance too), while surviving a pandemic, writing has taken a bit of a backseat. In fact, the only reason I have the time to finally do this tonight is that all my students are so busy writing assignments for me that they have left me alone, free of the usual barrage of emails that occupy my evenings. So I am taking a rare moment at midterm to do something I enjoy and record an extraordinary late summer and fall. As I write, the last of my sunflowers are blooming. My poppy seems poised to have a few more days of glory. The tomatoes are winding down but still giving me enough for daily use if not a surplus for freezing. The calendulas are glorious. I harvested and ate the last of the lettuce, pak choy and chard when frost was threatening, but some of my neighbour Iulia's greens (curly endive I think) had gone to seed and sprouted all over my side of the fence. So that is going into my fall salads. Interesting taste, similar a bit to arugula but instead of a peppery taste, these thin curly leaves have a horse-radishy bite. They make a nice mixer with romaine and red peppers and green onions. My basil is done, but the coriander is still blooming and has grown three feet high. I am hoping for some seeds before the frost. And my final flower of fall, the monk's hood, is at its most spectacular. With help from Olga, Zara and Ori, I have cleaned up around half of the garden beds and prepared them to plant next year's garlic. The rest will be put to bed soon, ready for a long winter.