Planting weekend

Josh and I spent about 25 hours today this weekend between the two of us, planting and weeding. I have no idea how the weeds are doing so incredibly well when everything else is so far behind. We are trying to do a very thorough and deep job of removing them on the theory that if we work extra hard and do it right the first time, they won't all come back. Iulia is convinced this works. I have a few years of catching up to do.  

A few  days ago my lawn was green and relative short. After a few rainy days, I found my back yard turned yellow from all the dandelions. I do like them, but I try to be a good neighbour, because if I let them go, they end up spreading next door where Ovidiu is having a constant battle to have a perfect lawn. So I asked Josh to have a go at rooting them out. It took him a good part of the day.


My nephews were visiting from Toronto with their parents, who dropped them off to stay with us, knowing that there would be pretty loose parental supervision. Kids were running in and out, with watergun and nerf guns and foam swords. We fed them breakfast and left them to their own devices, and they seemed to have had a pretty nice time. I barely left the back yard.


We did some work last week on landscaping the front yard as well as setting up new beds in the back. Josh picked up a few organic fertilizers from his parents and from Alex in Ontario which they credit for their unbelievable size and quantity of produce, so this week we will be trying it out. Some of it is made from fish, and I think there were epsom salts too. I will give a full accounting of what we are going to do and what results we have with it. Josh spent some time laying out paths in the front yard with the pile of stones he rescued last year from an underpass reconstruction (they were dumped in a vacant lot and Josh saved them from the dump. We had planned to put them out to kill the grass and then remove them to dig and put a base down, but Chloe and Abraham have recommended we just leave them on the surface and let them settle in over time. The also suggest that instead of getting a jackhammer and ripping up our cracked cement walkway, we just use the cement as a base and get some sand on top and build our stone walkway above it. I was very pleased to be able to shout at  the kids to use the pathways and not trounce on my flower beds!

I managed to get around most of the tomatoes I sprouted into the ground. Based on my map from last year I have around the same number of plants (same number of cages, anyhow) so I think we are okay. I put garlic in all the areas I had tomatoes and potatoes last summer, and in order to find areas which have not been tomatoed to death, I had to open up some new ground. We started a new garden bed in a part of the yard which may not have enough light, but I am trying anyways. We also decided to put one of the tomato cages on top of hay bales, beside the broccoli, sweet basil, thai basil and celery (found a place for them!!). I have another hay bale section to plant tomorrow. I also planted the onions, and fit about 70 of them in the bathtub.

My seeds are starting to sprout. I have seen baby calendulas and sunflowers coming out, and some cosmos sprouts. The lilac are starting to bloom, and the tulips are finally catching up to the rest of the city and blossoming. The crab apple is flowering, mostly along the branch bent to make the arch. The magnolias all over the city went into bloom quite late, but had their big show starting about a week ago. Most are dropping petals now. Mine is still quite stubbornly shut. We are really hoping the tree is doing okay. I have to do more research on what to expect from a young magnolia tree.
Julie came by yesterday afternoon to swap seeds and seedlings. I got two cucumbers and some tiny sprouts from the chocolate cherry tomatoes (she kept seeds from last year, I didn't and was grateful to have some!), and some of her extra seeds to add to my "seed bank" for next year. I told her not to buy next year before we go through what we have. I gave her some San Marzano tomatoes, basil, onion sets, and some periwinkle and other small perennials for her land garden and vertical garden, as well as the last of my brother's purple morning glory seeds (mine have been reseeding nicely for a while).


Josh and I spent some time today contemplating the corner of our property which despite much effort continues to be infested with creeping bellflowers. I had put down a lot of hay, which in some places accidentally produces some lovely, hardy grass where I did not want it, and in other places fertilized the creeping bellflowers so well that they are growing faster and bigger than ever. This did have the advantage of making them thick enough and the ground soft enough to be able to get them out by the root if we pull them up one at a time. This is an exercise to try the patience of a zen monk, but we are taking turns working a patch at a time every day. I am determined to do a fantastic and deep job of weeding by June and hopefully we will have an easier time the rest of the summer and years to come. Nothing that I have planted in that corner has done particularly well, it gets full light part of the day, is too close to the spruce tree which probably has acidified the soil, and I have really not been terribly generous with compost or manure in that part of the garden so I should not be surprised that the poppies never came back, the sunflowers were tiny, the oriental lilies did not thrive (I moved them to a sunnier spot), the dianthus became completely inseparable from the grass the grew into its area, and the occasional bicycle or snow plow do significant damage. I gave up today and moved some of the day lilies over the the corner to let them take over. If they don't survive there, nothing will and I will just have to go back to grass.  I am going to have to move some irises and tulips around once the lilies spread some more, but I think it will look a lot better.

I tucked sunflowers into every spare cranny I could find in the back yard. I think I had five or six varieties, including some Kong seeds from Alex and a few of the mini multicoloured variety I had a few years ago and have never found again. Josh picked up a few annuals including some pretty red sage flowers (not pineapple though). I gave Julie back her barely alive pineapple sage, with the hope that my carefully keeping it alive through the winter was not in vain. If it comes back, we will see if we can split it, although I am not sure I have the space for two of them to overwinter in my dining room. It is easier to expand my gardening space than my house.


Just as I finished planting today, friends of ours dropped by and said they had a couple of packs of seeds for us. Sigh. I just managed to fit everything in, even a few potatoes, broccoli, chard, bok choy, coriander, basil, four types of tomato (I think the Amish paste never sprouted, so we will have to try that one again next year), three types of peas, four types of beans, two types of strawberries, four types of mint and I heard a mourning dove in the lilacs (I have no pear tree, and no partridges in my neighbourhood).  We rigged up a new system for the cucumbers, by putting geotextile in a milk crate ziptied to my gazebo frame with chicken wire both above and below so it can climb where it wants to, but hopefully not succumb to cucumber beetles. I planted beans and peas along the edges, lettuce and bok choy underneath. I am hoping this year the system will work better. I even left some space at the back corners for the cherry tomatoes once the plants are bigger (Julie started her seedlings late. I am growing three types of cucumbers in hope that at least one variety is able to resist the beetles. A pickling cucumber, some English or lebanese cukes from Julie, can't remember which, and something called salt and pepper cucumbers. Wish me luck!

The crab apples were in full bloom with the arch thick with flowers. I suppose later in the summer there will be lots of crab apples falling on my head whenever I pass through, but right now it is breathtaking! It is still wired and tied to hold the position in place, but hopefully those will come off this summer.

Slow spring

One week into May and it has been cold and rainy for days on end. Josh and I took a drive up to the Laurentians with a friend on Sunday and the farms along the highway were so flooded, they looked like lakes. The tiny river that runs past my in-law's property in eastern Ontario flooded its banks farther than it ever has. It has been unseasonably cold too, with temperatures hovering at zero at night. I have not yet put away our winter coats and boots, and have not washed our blankets yet because it has been too cold and wet to hang them out to dry. I usually do this mid-April as part of my Passover cleaning.  Yesterday, mid-morning, I actually saw snowflakes blowing about outside, but they did not last once they hit ground. Today was sunny finally, and it started to warm up. Despite the chill, I have started biking to work, but wearing my winter coat and gloves still. Iulia has bought some annuals yesterday, but even she has not planted them yet (she was so excited to show me her new stuff she called me over to see them, standing in her doorway in pyjamas at midnight, when I came home from an evening at a friend's house). The conditions have been ideal for early snail and slug proliferation, so I made haste after seeing a few rather large ones munching on some forgotten carrot which survived the winter, and put out two full bags of slug-b-gone, one of my sponsors for this years garden. 

I would like to take a moment to thank another one of my sponsors. In my last post I described how I learned about treated seeds. I decided to call Vesey's and order the untreated variety of the burgundy beans. I described what had happened, and the person who took my call offered to send a replacement free of charge, without even asking me to send back the treated beans. I am not sure what to do with the original pack. My gardening friends and acquaintances tend to be either those who buy flats and transplant, or those who grow from seed and though perhaps not strictly organic, would likely share my reaction to planting seeds so obviously un-organic. The package warns that one should not eat them or feed them to animals either, which is my usual means of disposing of excess seeds or sprouts. I am open to any offers to take these magic beans off my hands. I promise I won't tell anyone I gave them to  you.

Despite the slow, wet start, things are busy popping up in my garden. Once again, I see things that I recognize but still don't know well enough to remember what they are. I am pleased to say that I am getting better at recognizing the weeds I really don't want, and with all the rain, they were far easier to pull out than usual. Feeling like I got a great head start, Iulia reminded me that those were merely the leftovers from last year's weeds, and their seedlings have yet to appear. I found four poppies (perennial ones, I think) returning from last year in the back, unless they weeds. There are also some things growing that did not flower last year and I am not sure what they are because I kept planting different seeds in that spot until something came up. I don't know what I would do without this blog to keep track of things. I will do research on past posts and try to figure it out. I have also discovered a few unharvested garlics, carrots and some red oak lettuce which self seeded I suppose, and is loving the weather. I had planned to put lettuce somewhere else, but it seems the decision was taken for me. 

I still have only a vague idea of where I will plant things this year. It has been too wet outside for me to spend enough time mapping things out. I know that I will need to expand some sections and leave some areas fallow. We have been thinking of trying a new technique which Chloe has been raving about, growing directly in hay bales (actually she's trying in straw bales, but we have a motherlode of hay thanks to another sponsor, Jack the master gardener who has hay producing country neighbours, a truck and a brother he visits who lives around the corner from us.

I spent some time this week cleaning up and looking around, picking up the garbage that always accumulates in my yard before the lilies get tall enough to catch the debris. As usual, my flowers are slower to bloom than everyone else on the block. I have had one daffodil, one hyacinth, three siberian squills, periwinkles galore, lungwort buds, one single tulip bud not yet open and a hint of magnolia buds not yet ripe. There is much green though. The grass doesn't mind the cold wet weather and has lost its winter fade. I see signs of life on both rose bushes, peony shoots, lots of columbines, including one growing way out where I had tomatoes last summer. I moved that one to the front and am curious what colour it will be and how it got there. I also removed the chicken wire which we put horizontally over the area around the spruce tree where I had morning glories. That particular experiment failed, as the vines did not understand what we wanted them to do so they did not make it up the sides of the tree. I am going back to using string, but kept the chicken wire we wrapped around the base of the tree.

After doing some research on line on re-planting begonia, cana and dahlia roots, I got cold feet and shoved them back in the basement for a couple more weeks. Laure, my companion through hours of youth orchestra rehearsals and fellow shade-gardener, told me that she has never managed to get re-planted begonias to bloom. I am trying anyways, but may end up picking up more dahlias, begonias and canas.

My next shopping list includes coyote urine, sheep manure, black earth and maybe a few annuals. Also, I am going to get another clematis to put on the right side of my front door where the Blue bird Rose of sharon bush has refused to accommodate me by surviving. Of course, Iulia's is doing fine. I plan to take vicarious pleasure from hers and planted the magnolia right near her windows too in exchange. Nice to have great neighbours.

So thanks to all my sponsors, supporters and fans who are making this wet and lousy spring more fun and promising. 

Do beans get tuberculosis?

Last week we had some pretty extreme weather. One day the temperature hit 26 and we all shed our parkas and put on shorts and tank tops, and the next day it was -10 and it snowed. So while everyone was catching colds trying to adjust, the crocuses decided they were ready and popped up right through the snow. I thought about what a pretty picture that would be, but by the time I had my camera out, the snow had melted from that part of the garden. Lots of other green things have been popping up despite the temperatures staying on the lower end, though hovering around zero at night the past few days. And with the green things, I found some surprise carrots (with no tops, just exposed orange) and the first slug happy to find an early feast. Slug-b-gone is back on my shopping list. Sigh.

My seeds arrived a couple of weeks after my last post. I have not had time to post, because last week was Passover and I barely had time to plant my seeds, being ridiculously busy cleaning my house from top to bottom, cooking and generally being domestic. I probably should have taken the time to read the fine print on the seed packets, because too late I realized that some of the peppers I bought were supposed to have been planted 6 weeks earlier. Oh well. Some of the varieties mature in 65 days (ring of fire), some in 73 (flame hybrid thai peppers) and some in 80 (mayas). This means that for a decent pepper crop, I will have to plan to have lots of manure in October so they will survive the move inside better than last year's batch. The monkeyface peppers did not even say how long they take, but the recommended a later planting time than the mayas so there is some hope there. I got some new tomato seeds from my mother-in-law called Amish paste, and I planted some of those, the steak tomato seeds given to me by a client at our day centre who knows I garden, and san marzanos, totally forgetting about the Black Krims. Josh reminded me about them a week later and I got some of those planted too. Where I am going to put all this stuff is a bit of a puzzler, especially when I noticed the garlic popping up beautifully (did I really plant that much garlic?!). I will be expanding the garden space a bit to fit it, especially as we are trying broccoli again, which takes up a lot of space.

More on the topic of organic versus non-organic seeds, I had a bit of a surprise when I looked at the packet of Royal Burgandy beans and found that they were treated with captan, streptomycin, apron, thiram, and underneath it says do not use for food or feed. Apron? Captan? What the heck is that? Clearly, these are not organic. I did a bit of reseach: apron, captan and thiram are antifungals, and streptomycin is, as I guessed from the name, an antibiotic. It is used to treat tuberculosis. Beans have tuberculosis? Really?? I went back to the Vesey's web site to see if there was anything which should have signalled to me that these beans would not be appropriate for my generally but not strictly organic garden. I found the error of my order. There were two options, for treated and for untreated seeds. Incidentally, they were identical in price. I am going to contact Vesey's and see if I can make an exchange. I am now going to be more careful when I make orders. I would expect that there should be a big red warning that these seeds contain potent antibiotics, even a pop up saying "are you sure you want to get these seeds? They have been treated with fungicides and other naughty things!" So to add to my last list of things to know when ordering seeds, "treated" indicates definitely not organic.

My last order, for onion sets, has turned up today, but as no one was home for the delivery, we pick it up tomorrow from the post office. They arrive just in time for planting, which meant that I need to finally make some decisions about where they are going to go. As I really do not like doing things in a disorganized manner, this also means I have to decide where everything else is going to go. So I ducked outside after dinner and sketched out some ideas of where I will put things this year. The onions are going into the bathtub, and I will weed out any savory that sprouts. We are pretty sick of savory after discovering how huge it gets and how well it reseeds (oops). Josh liked that idea, but pointed out that my placement of carrots would be too shaded by tomatoes. I am trying to find places where there have not been tomatoes in the past year. I also did not think about where to put broccoli, and forgot completely about potatoes. I have to be careful where to put those because some diseases cross between potatoes and tomatoes. Also, I covered the area where I had the cucumbers with hay bales to try to kill off any cucumber beetle babies, and plan to keep that section undercover this year.

I am planning to add some pics soon. As of yesterday I had three crocuses blooming, one Siberian squill, and a daffodil budding, but not much to photograph. I am waiting for the magnolia which has had buds since sometime in February but is biding its time. I am also going to work on my garden design and post that once it is more advanced (I have learned not to say finalized until at least mid summer!), now that the onions have a designated spot, I have time to plan the rest.

Monkeyface peppers and Black Krim tomatoes

I had been putting off ordering seeds. My friend Claude confirmed what I have heard from other people, that after two or three years, seeds are not as fertile. I have three wonderful seed catalogues. Vesey's which is based on Prince Edward Island, William Dam which my friend Jas passed on to me (based in Ontario) and Richter's, another Ontario company. Over the past few years we have ordered a few types of seeds that were specialty and not easily found in gardening centres or even Dollar stores, such as our San Marzano tomatoes and a couple varieties of basil which are grown more by commercial growers.

The world of seeds can be a very confusing place. Each catalogue has similar and complementary items, so it is not as simple as finding the company that has the better prices. William Dam had a lot of overlap with Vesey's at better prices, but their shipping costs were different so in the end the prices were not so different. Since there were a couple of items in the William Dam catalogue that were not available in Vesey's and the shipping cost was higher, I ended up choosing some near identical items from William Dam so it appeared that I got more for my money even though I am not sure I saved anything.

Buying seeds at the local store is simple, but the choices are limited. The advantage of a catalogue is that you can find all kinds of varieties not available elsewhere, and have information which can be helpful to find what you are looking for. The carrots I grew last summer were not ready to harvest before the first frost, and never reached full size. Josh says it was because I grew them too close together. Though probably true, catalogue shopping allows me to see if there are varieties which are better suited to a northern, short summer with a faster maturity. You can also get seeds for plants that sound fun. I am not sure if Black Krim tomatoes, a very dark purple variety from Russia, taste better than what I grew last summer, or if monkeyface peppers will survive the transition to indoors better than goat horn pepper, but they both look very different from other varieties and had pretty appealing taste descriptions.

In addition to the variety, catalogues offer such things as heritage seeds, organic seeds, and pelleted seeds. More confusion for the novice. Heritage seeds are basically from varieties of a plant which went out of style and have become rare. Some are referred to as heirloom seeds, which indicate that they are from cultivars grown and passed down through the generations of a family, which means they may have been very local. Produce from heritage seeds is not easily available commercially, and if you want to know what they taste like you need to grow them yourself or know someone who does. Heritage seeds are often swapped between gardeners. Our friend Alex has been a provider of the occasional interesting item for our garden. In fact, just a day or two after I put my orders on-line, Chloe sent me an e-mail to tell me that she has some seeds from Alex to pass on to me, having visited with him recently. I have no idea what I will be getting, but will let you all know!

Sometimes heritage seeds have become rare due to commercial reasons. A tasty tomato that is not red, or is very soft and does not transport easily, peppers that are hot and flavourful but have odd shapes that do not pack well for shipping, apples that are huge, sweet and very crisp immediately after harvest but become mealy quickly and do not store well would lead to their being abandoned in favour of other varieties. If grown in your back yard where shipping considerations, uniform appearance and short shelf life are not an issue, it is a pleasure to have more interesting and varied choices.

Another advantage is that some heritage plants may have more resistance to certain insect infestations or fungus, or other problems that could knock out a crop. I have, even in my limited experience, had certain breeds of tomatoes die out while others thrived under the same conditions because of different levels of resistance to a fungal infection. More variety is better, and the local stores do not offer much choice. On a bigger scale, if we do not continue to grow and produce heritage seeds, we may be ultimately placing our food supply at risk. Many of the plants which produce our supermarket food come from hybrids, and seeds of hybrids may not reproduce the same plant as its parent. Even more ominous are companies which have developed seeds which produce plants incapable of reproducing themselves. Not being able to keep and grow seeds from our own plants creates a dependence on seed companies. On the level of my back yard garden this does not appear to be a big issue, but on a global scale, it could spell catastrophe. Imagine everyone grew one variety of tomato from one single company, and all these tomatoes had the same weakness to an invader species of insect. Instead of cutting our losses, and eating a different variety that year, there could be no harvest at all.

Organic seeds was a new concept for me. I am very familiar with organic gardening, and although I practice a lot of the techniques, up to now I have not given much thought to the parentage of the plants I grow. I do not know the effect of pesticides sprayed on the plant which produced the seed which I planted in my garden will have on what I harvest, and until I picked up the William Dam seed catalogue I honestly had not put much thought to it. In fact, it begins to take on a religious feel, along the lines of "in order to reproduce something pure one needs be pure oneself." Of course the organic seeds are more expensive than the same cultivar without the organic guarantee. I find myself pressured without evidence to go for the purer form. Something else I need to research.

Pelleted was a puzzler for me, I was not familiar with that concept. I asked Claude, who explained that the seeds are coated, either to make tiny seeds easier to handle and plant, or to add pesticides directly onto the seeds themselves. I checked online for more information on pelleting, and found some other companies that sell organic pelleted seeds, for twice the price of course, which suggested to me that the pelleted seeds that did not specifically mention they were organic may possibly have pesticides or other additives included with the inert substances used to pellet organic seeds. It may also be that the parent plant did not meet organic standards. The idea of being able to plant individual carrot seeds more easily is quite appealing to me, but the catalogue does not elaborate on what the pelleting is, so I ended up buying the non-pelleted varieties.

So in addition to our standards, (romaine lettuce, mixed baby greens, scarlet runners, a couple of varieties of basil, sunflower, hot peppers, tomatoes, carrots) this year I am trying onions, swiss chard (rainbow colours), burgundy beans, snow peas, soybeans, a new variety of cucumber called salt and pepper (claiming to come pre-seasoned) and some calendula flower seeds. I have yet to figure out where we will put everything, but I am planning to hang cucumbers in suspended pots as a means to beat the beetles this summer, so that will clear some space for additional beans and peas. I also kept some seeds from the beach peas in New Brunswick with the hope they will like the conditions in my back yard. With a little luck, I will have pink, red and white pea and bean blossoms this summer.

Meanwhile deep in the winter snow...

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.

Dead peppers aren't much fun

Coming up to Christmas, everyone at work was broke so we decided to do our holiday parties low budget. Our organization decided to forego the big holiday gala for the first time ever, so our own departments are doing our own thing. One of my teams decided to do a pre-work breakfast at a local pub (PJ's) that offers a surprisingly good quality selection at rock bottom prices, the other took up my offer of a vegetarian pot luck at my house.

Last week was exam week for my older two kids. The youngest had some big projects. The father of one of her friends was in hospital and we offered to have her come over after school any time. My house at best looks well lived in, but this week it surpassed even my liberal tolerance. I planned to come home early on Thursday so that I would be able to tidy a bit before my team descended upon us.

So what does this have to do with my garden? Well, remember the pepper plants I rescued from the frost and brought inside? I had initially intended to set them up in the basement under grow lights, but Josh got back to work full speed ahead on finishing up our kitchen before Orianne's Bat Mitzvah back in the end of November. He is still working on the parts that were impossible to finish on a short deadline. This precluded turning the workshop space into a greenhouse, partly because of competing needs for space, but also because neither of us had the time to set up the lights. I placed the peppers in containers that I could put water in to create a bit of humidity, and set them up close to the lamp I have in my dining room for houseplants and the windows to keep them going until after the Bat Mitzvah. By that time, most of the plants were starting to look pretty far gone. Leaves falling off, stems turning brown. Being the optimist that I am, I have kept watering and spraying for aphids weekly, but there comes a time when it is clear that there is really nothing left one can do.

When I walked into my dining room and looked around at the laundry on the table, the crumbs on the floor, the sweaters and coats and schoolbags flung on chairs, I noticed that there were only three of the fifteen remaining pepper plants which had the remotest of chances of survival. My first act was to toss twelve potted brown sticks into the mounds of snow outside of my back door.

I did manage to get the rest of the room reasonably tidy, and had a lovely dinner with my colleagues. However, I believe my first attempt at maintaining pepper plants over winter indoors had been an utter failure. The pineapple sage is still hanging in there though.

I bought tomatoes

Yesterday I went grocery shopping and for the first time since July, I bought tomatoes. My chest freezer is filled to bursting with frozen tomato purée but we do sometimes need some raw ones. The last of my harvest went into the freezer on Sunday. The remaining green tomatoes are sitting in a big bucket in the back of the garden. I still have not figured out what to do with them so they remained where I left them when I did my last harvest. I still have some of my in-law's garlic left so I have not had to resort to buying garlic yet.

Some of my indoor peppers turned out to have aphids, though nothing was visible until recently. I made a batch of my soap and baking soda spray and hopefully will get it under control. I threw a few more out into the back yard, and some have lost all their leaves and are looking a bit yellowish brown, but some have leaves sprouting so I have not given up yet.

We have had a few sprinklings of snow, sleet and hard frost but nothing has stayed on the ground. The chrysanthemums have not completely given up but the flowers are not looking too glorious. Everything else has pretty much died.