It's all a bit sad

Wake up this morning to the surprising realisation that there is absolutely nothing I absolutely have to do today. No costume or music meetings for the panto (which I am once again directing). No Zumba class at 9am. (Yes, you read that right. I recently started going to Zumba classes twice a week, despite the fact that they start at the ridiculous hour of 9am.) No preparation for a rehearsal tonight. Nada. And the sun’s shining!

Perhaps it’s time to visit the garden.

I confess I have not spent much time down there since the well ran dry earlier this month. I simply cannot afford to be watering the garden with the water I had to buy to fill the cistern. Going down to the garden to watch things slowly die held no particular appeal.

I head down after breakfast. It’s all a bit sad.

It may look as if there are still quite a few leaves on the pear tree, but what you’re seeing is the bottom third. The top two thirds of the branches have only a couple of leaves between them all.

Not many leaves left on the apple tree. The little tree that gave me eight apples last year didn’t even blossom this spring (more than a little worrying). The pear produced lots of blossom, but no fruit. No idea if the rain which has started to fall and will hopefully continue to so over the winter will be enough to rally my fruit trees.

I don’t honestly remember if the leaves on the fig tree

or the lilac tree

were this yellow and ready to drop before the beginning of October last year. I have a feeling they weren’t.

Time to give up and pull up the courgette and squash. Not a great year for either.

The few cherry tomatoes left on the various plants are too small and too green to salvage for chutney, so I pull them out and leave their containers ready for next year.

On a brighter note, my fuchsia corner seems healthy and is still producing flowers. 

I take a tea break and hang out on the garden swing for a while with Stella (who’s very happy to have me back in the garden). Spend most of the time wondering what, if anything, I should be planting next year. We had a long, dry summer in 2014, but it was neither as long nor as dry as this summer. We really didn’t have much rain last winter (which probably explains the well running dry this year). I shall have to do some research before next spring, figure out which vegetables require the least water and (assuming I actually like any of them) think about planting different crops.

For now I think I’ll do something to cheer myself up. Dahlias definitely don’t need much water. Nor do the Star Gazer lilies. So, let’s get them out of their pots and into the ground.

A nice little new bed that will produce beautiful flowers for me to admire when I’m reading on the garden swing next summer. Not exactly edible, but you can’t have everything, right?

Barn door

So, after Bambo (for the second year in a row) managed to pick his way through the undergrowth to nibble all the leaves from the wisteria weaving through the back fence, I finally do something to prevent future snacking. 

After measuring the fence (9½ feet from fence post to fence post and fence post to tree), I head to the garden shop, which I know sells bamboo screens. I check the measurements for the screens: two metres by three metres. Bollocks. Metric conversion. What does this mean? Go inside to use a calculator, knowing that one metre equals 39 inches. So, 39 times 3 divided by 12 equals 9.75 feet. Hurrah! Purchase two screens and head home.

Spend some time crawling around behind the fence, clipping branches and clearing undergrowth, then start unrolling screens. Two hours later – ta da!

I have a bamboo screen protector for wisteria and clematis leaves.

Here we have it from another angle.

No, your eyes (assuming you can see it) do not deceive you. It is very definitely leaning inwards on the right hand side, as does the fence. I don’t think the weight of the screen is sufficient to actually topple the fence, but I think I might ask Mr Fixit Cec if he has any ideas about strengthening it.

In the meantime, despite the inward leaning, it actually does look rather splendid.

As Howard would say: Job done.

Arghhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yesterday I had leafy wisteria and clematis vines entwined in the back fence of the garden. Even though the clematis failed to flower this year (apparently this is not uncommon when clematises – clemati? – are replanted), the leafy vines spreading across the fence did look quite pretty. 

This morning when I went down to water the garden, there were no leaves left on the vines of either plant. 

A quick look around the rest of the garden reassures me that he didn’t get into the garden itself, merely managed to squeeze in between the trees and the fence. Bastard, bastard, bastard. 

Elsewhere, in long overdue garden news… 

The spaghetti squash plant, despite a profusion of flowers, has produced one squash. The baby watermelon plant, despite a profusion of flowers, has produced one baby watermelon. 

Disappointing realisation that all the squash seeds I planted that actually sprouted are scallopinis. Which is fine, I suppose, except I really did want more acorn squash this summer and it’s now too late to do anything about it. Oh, well.

The courgette plant, which wasn’t looking too promising, is now producing at a decent clip. (Recently made my first batch of Becky’s excellent courgette and gorgonzola soup.)

One nice surprise: For the first time since I planted it two or three years ago, the pink gooseberry bush has produced fruit this year.

Hardly enough for the gooseberry fool I was dreaming of when I planted it, but tasty nonetheless.

The cherry tomatoes are still producing an abundance of fruit.

Given the tastiness of the yellow cherry tomatoes I planted last summer (after fucking Bambo ate all the red ones), I decided to plant another one this year. This is it.

You can’t fool me. Not only are these tomatoes not yellow, they are three times the size of the cherry tomatoes. (Tasty, admittedly, but not what I thought I was buying at the market back in May.

Like the ridiculously early raspberries, the blackberries are ridiculously early this year. 

Started picking them in mid-July and genuinely cannot keep up. This would be a good year to make jam – if I was a jam maker, but I’m not. Even sharing them with Pat, there is an overabundance. I’ve already frozen about two pounds of them. (Good to know I may not have to buy any frozen berries for my cereal over the winter.)

Another nice surprise in “the back 40”. When it occurred to me a couple of months ago that deer do not eat rhododendrons, I decided to plant a couple in the back. Assumed at the time that they were well past flowering time, but look!

One of them is flowering now. And very pretty the flowers are. 

I’m pleased to report that, touch wood (short pause for me to touch both the desk and my head), the well is still holding up. (Or should I say filling up?) An ongoing worry nonetheless.

Apologies that the updates have been so few and far between, but what can I say? I’d rather be in the garden on the swing with Stella and a good book than in the house writing about the garden at my desk.

The long, hot summer

When I woke up Sunday morning there was a strange, yellowish red light in the house. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Went outside and looked at the sky. Just an overcast day. What was with the light?

It wasn’t until I talked to a friend on the phone later that the penny dropped: the sun wasn’t being blocked by clouds, it was being blocked by smoke from the forest fires burning on Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast. (As of today, there are 185 forest fires burning throughout British Columbia, many in the coastal rainforest where fires are seldom seen.)

People are understandably worried and an emergency meeting is called at the Community Hall that evening. Driving my neighbour Jamie down to the south end for the meeting, neither of us can believe how bad the smoke is. You can’t see Vancouver Island. You can’t even see Mudge. No wonder people are freaking out.

What comes out of the meeting? Well, we all need to pack an emergency getaway bag in case of evacuation (so far I haven’t) and, if the emergency is a major earthquake, rather than a localised fire, we’re pretty much fucked. Okay.

Yes, it’s dry. Bordering on California drought dry. Sprinkler bans in Vancouver and other cities, with special hot lines set up to snitch on sprinkling neighbours. Total ban on campfires throughout the province. (When some total wanker neighbours of mine set off fireworks in the wee small hours of July 4, the Gabriola Facebook page erupted with talk of vigilante justice.)

Here’s how the growing season used to work on Gabriola: Plant in April, sun in May to get things going, rain in Juneuary to get the soil properly moist, sun back in July (if we were lucky) and August.

Last summer there was one day of rain (if you could call it that) between the beginning of May and the end of September.

This year there has been one day with rain (if you can call it that) since the beginning of April. 

I am already harvesting cherry tomatoes. The last time I was harvesting tomatoes in early July was in Walthamstow in the heatwave summer of 2006 when hundreds of elderly people in southern Europe died. It’s crazy.

It’s been too hot to grow peas.

Look at these poor stunted little things. And believe me, this isn’t just my garden. (Of course it didn’t help that these peas were my third attempt, after the fucking birds gobbled up the first two plantings before they could sprout.)

And here’s the dilemma: If I water the garden as much as I should, will my well run dry? Maybe yes, maybe no. The well did run dry some summers ago and was subsequently deepened. It’s probably okay, but am I prepared to take the chance? I can’t afford the cost of repairs if the well did run dry. Nor can I afford to have the cistern filled until such time as it starts raining again. (There was so little rain last winter that the cistern was far from filled.)

So, no, I’m not prepared to take the chance. I’ll keep watering the fruit trees and the berry beds and the tomatoes and the container-planted squash (and, yes, the roses), but I’m officially giving up on the peas.

 Yesterday I pulled up the stunted beets and carrots. (At least the beet leafs were nice in a salad last night. )

Fingers crossed.