Extreme winter

I am dedicating this post to Ronit, a friend I had not seen in a long time whom I reconnected with this past weekend at a bar mitzvah. Ronit commented on how irregularly I have been blogging (I had no idea she was following me!). She requested I post something green, and so I am posting summer pics not my usual mid-winter studies in white.

I have not been blogging recently, not from lack of things to say (never!) but just having so many things to do. New projects, new contracts, new courses, new challenges. Life getting in the way.

My garden challenge this winter has been compost. Crazy weather has made the simple task of walking to the back of my yard to dump my compost in the bin and toss some hay on it a real challenge. Back in October, I emptied one compost bin, and had it ready to go for when the current one I was using was filled up, which it did just as the temperature plummeted from a rainy, mild few days to arctic chill. A full compost bin will often be a higher temperature than outside, due to the heat created by decomposition. An empty compost bin does not have this advantage. So when rain falls and freezes on the knobs that keep the top secure from hungry animal visitors, it becomes impossible to open until the temperature goes up. Which it didn't. So I asked Josh for help, as he is quite good at this type of problem solving. It took a bit of nagging and reminding once he agreed to take a look, but he managed to get them open. As the weather has continued to fluctuate with a range of 40 degrees Celsius over the past month (sometimes overnight) I have decided to risk tempting large hungry mammals by leaving the top unlocked. So far, no bears have broken in. Anything smaller would have a hard time reaching the bottom of the bin from the top, or have the dexterity to open it. I may be wrong, but so far nothing noticeable has tried to eat my rotten bits of lettuce and eggshells.

The rain, deep freeze, huge blizzard, snow dump pattern (if you can call it that) has done a good job making the hay I carefully piled up beside the compost bin in October almost impossible to use as it is a frozen mass most of the time. I will have some pretty soggy compost come spring.  So much for planning. My last hike to the bin involved carefully opening my back door so the three or more feet of powder snow would not tumble into my house, and trekking thigh deep through snow to the bin, easily lifting the unlatched top to dump this week's scraps, then stubbornly digging out the hay pile and trying to rip a few loose strands of hay and last year's overgrown weeds (a decision I may regret) to top it off.

I am thinking of planting inside earlier this year. I am not sure the effect of a lengthier period indoors on tomatoes and broccoli and whatever else I decide to grow, so I may try some earlier and some a month later to see which works better, and have a longer harvest. I am also planning to build an enclosed area which will be groundhog proofed, to plant all of his/her favorite foods, and also as a starter nursery for sunflowers and other things that are really tasty as sprouts but the groundhog ignores if I manage to protect them until maturity. I had one surviving sunflower last year which was hidden among the bee balm until it was big enough. I tried to plant them in spots that would be difficult to get to, but the groundhog is a clever one and I have to be smarter. The bathtub worked, the old clawfoot tub was too steeply curved and smooth to climb, but not big enough to grow all the things that animal loves.





So the photos I am posting are ones which I never ended up blogging about last summer. My mother still manages to squeeze in some time for her artwork as one of her rare periods of respite from caregiving. Last summer she participated in a show at the Shaika café in NDG along with friends who have been painting with her in classes over many years, even though my mom was not in the class with them last spring. When I went to the vernissage, I parked on Old Orchard between Sherbrooke and de Maisonneuve, and discovered, to my delight, that a number of people along the street were competing with one another for the most beautiful garden. Most of these gardens were in close proximity (I am familiar with the phenomenon, we do get a bit competitive), and the effect was delightful. I decided a return visit with a camera would be in order. A week or two later, my friend Julie invited me for a walk, and I suggested heading in that direction so I could capture some of the highlights on film for posterity. I thought it would make an interesting alternative to yet more pictures of my own garden. So I have finally posted this series. Like my own front yard, the street has a lot of shade, and it is interesting to see what other people do in these conditions. It is easy to have a spectacular garden in full sun. Shady gardens take more effort.

I recently got my new Vesey's catalogue. I am waiting until I am thoroughly fed up with winter and then will invite my neighbour over to pour over the pages wistfully, dreaming of spring. The days are getting longer!

Thank you for your patience!

You may have noticed that I have not been keeping up my blog this summer. I apologize to my loyal fans for apparently falling off the planet (I am still here, I am doing fine!). I even periodically took photos so when the spirit moved me to do so, I would catch up. So what happened to my blog?

Well, I learned that working more than full time as a teacher for two consecutive semesters is not a great idea. By the end of May (after I pushed myself to write my last blog post) I discovered that I was really tired and really needed a break. Then we had a lot of rain, and weather that was cold, then a heat wave. All of which had some interesting effects on the garden, both the things I planted and the weeds. Some things did exceptionally well. The weeds particularly. I had a shift in the composition of my garden's ecosystem, and ended up with almost no lamb's quarters, but a ton of yellow wildflowers and some other plants that I have never seen in such numbers. Between the weather and my lack of motivation, the garden got quite wild in the back. Back in June I put a lot of effort into clearing the weeds in the flower beds, so at least the front yard looked amazing. Truly amazing. I cheated on the creeping bellflowers this year. I did not have the energy to excavate root (again) and anyhow no matter how much I try to dig them out around the flowers, they infiltrate between their roots and the only way I could get rid of them is scrap everything, dig out all the earth and plants and start from scratch. Which I really do not want to do. So I have been pulling up each of the shoots before they flower (or sometimes just after), and leaving all the short ground cover leaves. Rather than getting rid of the stuff, it keeps it at bay and seems to have less of an effect on the plants around it. All very interesting, but nothing I felt compelled to show off about.

I also have been involved in three other projects this summer. One is a writing project (a series of short stories) I have been thinking about for some time. The second is a course I have taught at CEGEP and will be teaching in the fall that I am redoing, which had involved a lot of research and consultations. I also got a small contract for a community organization. I decided that I want to spend a lot more time with friends over the summer, as the last two semesters made me feel like a hermit, so I am socializing, camping out visiting friends up north, going for hikes and not prioritizing time to blog. And now it is August, a week and a half before I go back to the grind, and I felt I owed my readers, and myself, an update on this summer in the garden.

My flowers were bigger and taller and more beautiful than ever, and it seemed to me that there was a constant flow of things blooming. I also spent some time creating two big new garden areas after construction finished, but some of the plants I had moved to the back yard had already started to bloom so I left them alongside my tomatoes where they get more sun than they had ever seen in the front and behaved accordingly. But the vegetable areas were quite overgrown. I shared a pallet of manure with Iulia this year, much more than I planned to put on the garden, and used the extra bags to cover over the worst infestation of the creeping bellflower in the back yard, where I had garlic last year. I am hoping that might kill some of it off. I had plans to leave it for a couple of months, then dig up the area and put in new earth, but that is a lot of physical labour. I am thinking maybe of hiring someone to do it, if I have the money to spare. Now that the ash tree next door is gone, that area is prime garden zone.

My groundhog is also getting really big and fat this year. I managed to rescue my lettuce and broccoli from his buffet table by planting it out of reach, in a planter and in the bathtub, but something else (maybe slugs or beetles) munched on the broccoli and rapini, and only three of the dozen I planted have survived. The groundhog munched all but one sunflower (I tried to hid those in hard to reach places this year, but that critter is clever), all the carrots, all but one bean. Fortunately he is not interested in garlic or berries, and this year has been extraordinary for those crops. I harvested the garlic over the past two weeks, and my garden has produced some incredibly large heads this year. I planted in 4 different areas of the garden, and each area had different sized garlic. The back, near the raspberries,  was extraordinary. The area that is still infested with creeping bellflowers and partially shaded by the crab apple trees did not do very well at all. The other two areas were mixed. I harvested 200 heads this year, less than the previous years, but even then I had to open up a new area of garden in the centre of the lawn. An interesting thing, when I harvested the garlic, I found an earthworm in the roots of almost every single head of garlic I pulled up. The bigger the garlic, the bigger the worm. Some of the ones at the back of the garden were the largest earthworms I have ever seen, almost the size of hot dogs. I carefully rescued each one and left them in the garden to do their work.  

My berries are amazing. This is the first year that the black raspberries took off, and I was picking a cup or more of those every two days for several weeks rather than a handful over a few days. Their season just overlapped with the beginning of the red raspberries, which have also been as productive. The tomatoes are quite late this year. I have some green ones, but none ripe yet. Also, with all the rain, I probably should have been spraying them daily with hydrogen peroxide, but I just started doing it regularly now and branches are already turning yellow. Oops. 

 I have three corn stalks, and one squash plant (the mystery one) doing well in the back, close to the groundhog hole. Hopefully the squash leaves will annoy him enough to push him to other gardens and leave mine alone in the fall.

The apple tree is covered in fruit, but it is not very pretty. I am not sure if it is insect or fungal problems (no surprise with all the rain), but I have not taken the time this summer to research it or do anything about it.

I also planted some basil in big pots to keep it away from the groundhog. It is not his favorite, but he had munched some of it last year so I did not take chances. My coriander continues to reproduce itself nicely, and I have a small patch of dill that planted itself last year, and also is perpetuating itself. I use the basil and coriander, but have not harvested the dill. I need to figure out the best time to do that before it gets too spindly.


So after writing my first draft of this post, I decided that I should find out what exactly were all those interesting new weeds/wildflowers that took a liking to my back yard this summer. Unfortunately, by the time I started to do this research, I had spent a good few hours (post garlic harvest) ripping out as many of them as I could before it got too hot to continue. Unfortunately because I had no idea that they were edible. It took a long time and many websites to identify what I believe to be Camelina sativa (the tiny yellow flowers in a spray behind the big squash plant, close up below).

Probably an accidental import from Europe, its seeds are exceptionally high in omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acid, and are around 30% protein. Its oil is resistant to becoming rancid, tastes a bit like almond oil (yum) and is being looked at as a source of biodiesel and low emissions jet fuel. And I ripped them out thinking they were just pretty weeds with lovely clusters of tiny yellow flowers. Damn!

I seemed to have been wise in my decision to rip out another weed that was taking over in the raspberry patch, because this one is on the invasive weed watch list. It is a biennial that has been colonizing around the back fence called garlic mustard. Although not something I am going to let take over, I read up on it and found out its leaves and flowers go well in salad (though the leaves tend to get bitter when the weather heats up), and the roots are similar to horseradish. According to the Edible Wild Food website, the plant is super healthy to eat, good for your heart, lowers cholesterol and may even help prevent cancer. Well, if I knew that I would not have chucked them into my compost. I would have had a lot of salad, although without camelina sativa dressing because the leaves of the garlic mustard would be too bitter by the time the camelina seeds are ready to press.

The other weeds/wildflowers that have busily been taking over are Queen Anne's Lace (wild carrot) and Black nightshade. How Victorian does that sound?  The Queen Anne's Lace I am quite sure is not any of its nasty poison cousins, poison hemlock and poison parsnip. I have eaten its roots (some grew with the carrots a couple years back and we tried it. Not bad, a bit woody) and brush against the plants daily as I go to pick berries. I don't recommend this as the best way to check, but there are good guides online that distinguish between them. As for nightshade, I have had a lot of climbing nightshade in past years, that did not come back for some reason (replaced by lots of white bindweed behind and on the raspberries). Those have pretty purple flowers with yellow centres, and bright red berries. They are very striking and do not seem to be too invasive so I tolerate them when they pop up. This year, I seem to be flooded with black nightshade, who have identical flowers but white with yellow centres, and will produce black berries. Ironically, these rather toxic plants are the ones I have yet to rip out. I'll know better for next year.

This year has been a good one for slugs, but I am seeing very small ones (just a lot of them.).

It was too wet to put out slug be gone often (it works best after the rain, but not before.) I have seen a few Japanese beetles on the raspberries, but not too many. There were also not too many lily beetles this year. I may have helped things along by a liberal application of diatomaceous earth early in the summer. I have a lot of milkweed spreading slowly on the side of the house. I never bothered to stop and smell them before, until a friend mentioned that they are quite beautiful to smell. I was quite surprised, they are really quite lovely. I also keep hoping for some butterfly action there, but I only saw one monarch all summer, in my calendulas. I ran to get the camera but he was already flying up over the lilacs when I got back outside. I did not give the cucumber beetles a chance this summer. No cukes, and I gave up on the watermelon idea (only one of the four seeds I planted survived, and the package said it takes two plants to get fruit).

On a different note, I am very concerned about the trees in our region. Besides Dutch Elm disease (which has left several small dead elms in the corner behind my fence), emerald ash borers which took the gorgeous huge double trunked tree next door, I have seen signs over in Westmount about inoculating the lindens for some insect infestation. Although I get annoyed with the sticky drips all over my car from my neighbour's linden, I discovered this summer walking with a friend at night in Kent park that when lindens bloom their smell is divine. I think it was particularly striking this year, because I have never noticed it before. Iulia's tree is remarkably bland smelling (I checked when it flowered), but I will definitely return to Kent park at night in early July next year to see if this was an anomaly. That is, if whatever if bugging them doesn't kill them first.

I have been spending some of my vacation time visiting friends and my parents in the Laurentians, and drove quite far north past Mont Laurier. Along the highway, I noticed huge patches of dead conifers. I had been noting more and more dead trees along highway 15 over the past few years, but this was alarming. I am surprised I have not read anything about this. I did some research to see if there is a known reason, and it seems there is yet another beetle, this one migrating from British Columbia, which is wiping out pines and spruces. I read that there are ways to inoculate or treat affected trees, but it does not appear that anything is being done and it is having a major toll on our forests.

Ablaze in colour

I have managed to get a few hours of garden time here and there despite all kinds of things getting in the way like kids, work, house, meals, and family. Zara is graduating high school and there seems to be a never ending stream of activities to celebrate. Orchestra has its final performance of the year next week. My aunt and uncle are moving and downsizing, so I have been selling furniture (or trying to) which seems to take much longer than one would expect. So the weeds are winning for now, but I am trying hard to keep up.

I managed to get most of what I want into the ground. Tomatoes are in, but still uncaged. I planted peas, but not yet beans, corn and squash (still need to weed their area). I looked up how to plant the three sisters, but then I will ignore what I read about staggering the planting. By the time the corn goes is, it will be too late to wait a week or two for the beans and squash. They'll just have to fight it out like all sisters.

Josh graciously helped me for a couple of hours to clear a new section in front of the lawn for a new garden bed, and take out the weedy earth next to where the city tore up my yard. My friend Moishe helped me rebuild the path from the driveway to the walkway, properly (I hope) with lots of crushed gravel underneath. It feels more solid. The city will be putting down sod on the area they dug up. I have subtly shifted the area so some of what they dug up is covered with the path, and some of my yard which was still "lawn" when they last left their work has been well dug up, eliminating weeds, and ready for sod if they don't notice that I moved things around.

Once they get the sod down, I will decide if and where to chop some out to balance the garden. Still not sure about that, but I have a few perennials I moved with Josh to the back yard last fall which still need a home.

Iulia took the opportunity to add about half of her front lawn space to her garden. She is going for a yin and yang center piece with red and white roses. I will wait for them to bloom to take some pics. She and her husband also spent a lot of time on the backyard with help of her parents. Note my mild envy that she has a team of 4 while I am struggling myself with occasional (though much appreciated!) guest assistance from a few of my die hard friends, or in the case of my ex, a divorce agreement that stipulates some home maintenance expectations. Next door they have seeded the area which was once the ash tree with grass, and Ovidiu's painstaking care is keeping out the dandelions and other invaders to which I am neglectfully exposing his lawn. He is very diplomatic and says nothing, but I can see him watching (and wincing) as I carefully mow my weeds rather than remove them. They have also planted a long strip of herbs and vegetables along the fence, unfortunately right up against the stubborn patch of creeping bellflowers which I have been trying to excavate for the past few summers, putting more of a priority on digging it out of that area than the front lawn.

So far, the onions and garlic are big and beautiful. I managed to plant the tiny lobelias which seem to have disappeared, possibly buried after the first rain, or they quietly died while I was not looking. I will see if they reappear before there are none left at the garden centres, and if not, plan B (buy). I have put in sugar snaps where the beans were last year. I planted basil in a planter near my raised laundry platform, broccoli and rapini in the bathtub, and lettuce in one of the large bins where I grow herbs, to evade the groundhog. He (or she) has been around a lot.

Watermelon is not looking good. From the directions on the package for the seedless watermelons, you need to also grow a seeded variety or it will not produce fruit. So I bought another variety and planted two of each back in March. Now there is only one plant still living (the seeded companion watermelon) and I am trying to find out if you can grow a single seeded watermelon plant before I dedicate a huge area of my garden to it. All the information on line seems to be geared at people who live on huge farms and will be growing many plants. The things grow ten feet long and produce up to 5 melons per plant. That's a lot of space wasted if it won't give me the good stuff.

The flowers this spring have been fantastic. I have a whole bunch of tulips still going, and the columbines are beginning to bloom, including a lot of new babies of unknown colours. I bought a new clematis to replace the one on the right side of my front steps, which I feel confident is quite dead now.

The next few weeks will involve mostly weeding. The construction industry in Quebec is currently on strike, so the people who are supposed to lay down the sod on the eyesore bare patch of my yard won't be around until that gets resolved, and in the meantime, I am not building that last front yard flower bed. I figure by that time, I may start moving around some cuttings from other parts of the garden, or maybe move some cosmos over, as there are an abundance of them coming up between the stones on the paths through the lawn. So much to do!