Coming up roses

My first full day in the garden. Still in April and it feels like June. This does not bode well, comrade. Suspect we’re in for another long, hot summer. At least we had more rain last winter than we did the previous year. Fingers crossed.

First job of the day (after retrieving the swing cushions from the shed) is a bit of pet cemetery maintenance. Weed around and add compost to first Angie and Tri’s rose bushes…

… then Clancy’s

The other rose bushes are also coming back nicely.

Although, sadly, the one at the back on the right looks as if it might be dead. Oh, no, wait a minute, on closer inspection…

Check this out! A new rose bush seems to be coming up out of the roots of the seemingly dead one! The last time this happened, the roses on the new bush were a completely different colour. Wonder if this will happen again? (Wonder if I can remember what colour the roses on this bush were before?) 

Don’t worry, I shall keep you posted.

There’s a new rose bush in the garden

Twenty years ago, although we already had my two cats (Crazy Clancy and Lady Jenny), Mike and I decided that it would probably be good for Heather, his cat-loving daughter (at the time living with us), to have a kitten of her own.

A friend of a friend had taken in a stray who turned out to be pregnant. Mama Cat somehow managed to produce eight kittens: five females and three males, all with remarkably similar colouring and markings. I figured a female kitten would be less likely to make Crazy Clancy any crazier. By the time I rang the woman in question, four of the females had already been adopted. There was one female – claimed by me – and the three males left.

As explained in a previous posting, Heather and I set off to collect one kitten and came back with two.

Angie, the female, quickly worked out that she was getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop as far as Heather’s affections were concerned and decided she was going to adopt Mike as her person. No argument from him.

If not at first sight, it was definitely love.

When I returned to Gabriola after Mike’s sudden death in Vancouver, Angie had no interest in me or in Catherine, who so kindly came back with me. Angie trotted out to the car to see where Mike was and when it was clear to her that he was not with me she was inconsolable.

But we muddled along. As well as having Tri on my lap while I was reading or watching telly in the evening, I now also had Angie curled up by my shoulder.

Blind as a bat, Tri kept on grooming Angie.

About this time last year the vet told me Angie’s kidney functions had all but packed in. There were, he said, medication which might work, but no guarantee. I started trying to prepare myself for the worst. Happily, the medication did seem to do the job. Angie perked up, back in my arms again.

Then Tri, my big galoot, got sick and was gone so quickly I couldn’t believe it.

Jenny died in 2002, aged 16. She was buried in what was then barely a garden. Clancy made it to age 18. Typically, although he’s been in the garden for several years, he can still scratch.

The same weekend I buried Tri under a rose bush last October, I dug another hole nearby, convinced his sister would soon be following him. I started trying to make bargains (with whom I’m not quite sure): Please don’t let Angie die before my birthday, before Christmas. Like the Energiser bunny, she just kept going, bless her. In the spring I filled the hole back in.

Well, we were together for nearly a year longer than I thought we would be. But when she stopped curling up with me in the evenings and then stopped eating anything except cooked chicken, I knew it was time to let her go.

I’m not much on the afterlife, but as I buried her beside her brother yesterday I was hoping that Angie and Mike have been reunited.

For the first time since we bought this house in 1996 there is no cat in it. But there are four in the garden.

Floral notes

Back in the spring, when Krys was taking a turn digging the hole for my (one) apple tree, she tried to move this pot out of the way, not realising the rose bush had taken root in the ground underneath. She ended up being scratched by a rose thorn. “Well,” I said, unable to suppress a smile, “it is Clancy.” (This being the rose bush I’d bought to replace the bedraggled fuchsias marking crazy Clancy’s shallow grave.) Given the temperament of my old black cat, she did laugh.

I’d already pointed out to her the ceanothus marking Jenny’s grave and the rose bush marking the spot where last autumn I buried poor old Tri. Krys looked from Clancy’s rose bush to me. “This isn’t a garden,” she said. “It’s a pet cemetery.” Well, perhaps, but it is a garden, too. (That said, I suspect it’s not going to be long before I need another rose bush. Angie, Tri’s sister and very much Mike’s cat, has held on longer than the vet thought she possibly could last year. She’s a game old gal, who hopefully will turn 20 soon, but it’s just a matter of time.)

Clancy’s rose bush hasn’t been doing all that well. I think it might have managed one blossom per year the previous two summers, but, as elsewhere in the garden, this year is a whole new year.

There are already four red roses ready to open up.

Tri’s rose is also ready to bloom.

Elsewhere in the garden…

The dahlias Pat donated to the cause earlier this year are starting to flower. Unfortunately, when Krys asked me where I wanted them planted before I left for the UK, I picked the wrong spot.

They’re behind the tomato plants, which are much taller this year than I remember them ever being in previous years. Thus, you can barely see the dahlias. Note to self: move dahlias next spring.

And another floral note to self: I need to investigate bee-friendly late flowering plants. The bees loved the apple blossom (main reason I am being very philosophical about the lack of actual apples). Just as the apple blossom was disappearing, the ceanothus (which they really love) bloomed. And just as the flowers on the ceanothus were finishing, the blackberry bush started to flower. Again, happy bees. But what about after the blackberry blossom? The bees are still around, but I have nothing for them.

Must do better for the poor bees.

Here we go again

Well, as I said in my last post, thanks to Krys and Pat, at least I don’t have to start digging over the entire vegetable patch.



Last winter, during a clear out of the shed, I unearthed a big bag of peat moss which I have no recollection of buying and which must have been buried in there for 10 years. Of course, I now know that buying peat moss is bad, so I won’t be doing it again. But the bag’s already there and digging it into the vegetable patch (along with large container of now compost) should help the soil. Not a job for today.

First things first. Sadly, the somewhat bedraggled fuchsias I bought last summer to plant in a pot and mark crazy Clancy’s shallow grave did not make it through the winter.



Something a bit hardier was required. I know from Walthamstow garden that roses (along with a surprising number of other things) can thrive quite well in containers.



So, last week Irmani and I went to the local nursery where I purchased what will be a vibrantly red rose bush.



Oh, and look – I found a pot for it that goes perfectly with the bench!



Serendipitous or what?

Of course, I was quite sad that the fuchsias didn’t make it. Irmani was also sad for me, not least because she is still enjoying the seemingly indestructible fuchsia she inherited from me when I left London last year.

When she heard me making undoubtedly pathetic whimpering noises over a beautiful hanging basket of the same purple and pink fuchsias (which I was again telling myself I could not afford), she very graciously pointed out that I didn’t get a birthday present from her last year and bought it for me.



Have I mentioned what a star she is? Yes, I believe I have.

Well, the fuchsia’s lovely for me to look at as I’m coming into the house, but what about Irmani and other future guests over the summer. Shouldn’t she (and they) have something nice to look at coming and going from the guest suite? Of course she (and they) should. Oh, look, the village market has some reduced to half price (which I can actually afford).



Hanging baskets front and back. Hurrah!

Getting there.

Anatomy of a room

I know this photo has already put in an appearance (and that this has nothing to do with the garden project), but it strikes me that it deserves some attention.

Anyone who’s known me during the past thirty years (blimey, how did that happen?), would probably guess instantly that this is a photo of my bedroom.

The small BOAC (from the days when long haul British Airways was still British Overseas Airways Corporation) travel trunk beside the dressing table has been with me the longest. Inside is a very glamorous doll named (by me) Aurora, for the princess in Sleeping Beauty. Hanging on the rack opposite her is a wardrobe including evening gowns, peignoir and ‘fur’ coat, most of which were hand stitched by my mother during long winter evenings after I’d been sent to bed. This trunk of delights was left unwrapped and open for me to discover with joy and astonishment on Christmas morning when I was about five years old.

On the corner of the dressing table, near the trunk are two mementos of my time in New York when I was 20: An art deco jug, which was the beginnings of my collection of 1930s blue glass and a photo of me with Dan, a man I adored (in a father-I-never-had way). On the other side of the dressing table is a photo of my mum, looking very jolly, in her RAF uniform during the war. In between the two photos is a crescent shaped piece of mirrored blue glass on which my perfume has resided in three cities on two continents.

The dressing table itself and a matching chest of drawers (corner of which can be seen in bottom right of photo) were purchased during my waitressing days in Toronto – when some days I made just mad tips – in what used to be a great antique/second hand furniture shop in the Beaches area where I lived.

Other excellent purchases from this fantastic shop included the beautiful blue glass coffee and side tables which the fuckwit house sitter from hell destroyed when Mike was in hospital, seen here in happier days in my apartment in Toronto. (The curtains in this photo, having also hung in my livingrooms in Vancouver, Stoke Newington and Walthamstow, are now hanging in the lounge in Burnaby.)



The same shop on Queen Street in Toronto provided me with the deco sideboard and table and chairs in the diningroom on Gabriola (furniture I considered, but am now glad I didn’t, move to London in 2001). So, yes, that shop did a lot of business with me.



Anyway, back to the anatomy of the bedroom in Burnaby.

The lady lamp on the desk (itself a fairly recent acquisition in Walthamstow) and another on the other side of the bed were purchased from a wonderful art deco shop in World’s End in Chelsea. Sadly, the shop is no more, but the lamps have resided beside my bed in London (twice), Toronto and Vancouver (now twice).

The Arrobus watercolour of Town & Country School in Hampstead, now hanging above the desk was also purchased whilst in Finchley Road and is also very well travelled. (Out of curiosity I’ve just gone on the internet to see if there is any information about the value of an Arrobus. Seems to be about what I paid for it 25 years ago, so no appreciation. Oh, well. I didn’t buy it as an investment.)


Not visible in the Burnaby photo, but seen here are two other pieces of art purchased whilst residing in Finchley Road. I bought the two Tito water colours because I liked them, having no idea that I had accidentally stumbled on the originals of two not entirely unknown pieces of art until I saw the one on the right reproduced as a print in a French restaurant in Toronto. I have never had them valued as I love them dearly and do not want to be tempted to ever sell them. Also not visible in the Burnaby photo is the fan, purchased many years ago when I was on holiday in Granada with my friend Angelika. Sadly, no wrought iron mantelpiece in Burnaby, so the Titos and fan reside on and above the chest of drawers.

The duvet cover also goes back to Finchley Road, ordered on impulse from an ad in the Observer colour supplement, back in the day when only the Sunday papers had magazines. (I do miss having a good Sunday paper to read. The total lack of one here has led Mike and me to actually save the Saturday Globe & Mail to read on Sunday mornings.)

The Casablanca poster above the bed was purchased in the Fremont district of Seattle when Mike and I were visiting friends many years ago. It’s been above my bed on two continents.



On the wall opposite the Casablanca poster, is another one I’ve had for years: Roses and Rue by Edward Bawden, purchased from the Tate for obvious reasons.


The cat looks like Clancy and I’ve always been a Guardian reader.

This second view of the room also includes part of the snow dome collection which began as a joke on holiday in Venus in the 1980s and somehow ballooned out of control.

And just visible on the door to the room is the poster from my dear (and tragically departed) friend Tim’s retrospective show.


The only time I’ve ever been able to hang this long, tall poster to proper advantage was in the upstairs hallway of the house in Walthamstow.

So, that’s it: my trip down memory lane.

Back to the Gabriola garden tomorrow.

I have a cat

And, no, I'm not referring to the ones resting under flora in the garden.

In 1993, when Mike’s then 18-year-old daughter Heather was still living with us, we decided it might do her some good to have a kitten of her own. Heather did, after all, love cats. Having Clancy in the house did her no good, as he only ever hissed at her, but Jenny did welcome affection. However, it did seem that Heather would benefit from the responsibility of her own cat.

A friend of a friend had taken in a stray, who turned out to be pregnant and produced eight kittens – five female and three male – all a golden tabby with white stomachs and paws. By the time we rang her about taking a female kitten (figuring this would stress Clancy out less), there was only one left. We said we’d have her. Heather and I set out to collect the female kitten, the runt of the litter, named Angel by her temporary owner. As we sat on the floor with the kittens, one of the males, dubbed Triangle Nose for (you guessed it) the triangle on his nose, made a bee-line for Heather, curling up in her lap and purring up a storm. It was – for Heather – love at first sight. She’d lost all interest in little Angel.

What to do? I rang Mike and asked him what he thought of bringing home two kittens instead of one. (I was figuring if there were two of them, they would play together and lessen the likelihood of the male hassling Clancy.) Mike’s response was pragmatic: “One kitten, two kittens, I don’t mind what you decide, as long as it’s clearly understood that whatever happens, it’s not my fault.” My decision, then. We took both.

Heather, to me somewhat surprisingly, had no interest in renaming the kittens. I had no interest in having a cat named Angel, so that was quickly morphed into Angie. Even as a kitten Tri (another quick abbreviation) was a big, affectionate feline. Angie soon realised she was getting short shrift on the feline adoration front and considered her options. Mike, she worked out, didn’t have his own cat and so she decided he was going to be her human.

An early indication that Angie was smarter than the average cat came one night when we’d retired, taking Clancy and Jenny into the bedroom with us for some peace and quiet. As we were laying in bed reading, the bedroom door knob started rattling. I got up to investigate and found Angie on the bookcase in the hall whacking at the doorknob with her paw. She didn’t succeed in getting in, but she’d been quick to work out how doors worked.

Anyway, by the time Heather was ready to move out, Mike was far too bonded to Angie to consider letting her go anywhere and it was generally agreed it would be cruel to break brother and sister up, so we ended up with four cats.

Flash forward to 2008. Mike’s been in hospital for much of the year being treated for cancer. The prognosis is not good and I decide to take time off to get him back to Gabriola for a few months. Tri and Angie have been in the “care” of the housesitter from hell. The housesitter has been evicted and more responsible replacements brought in.


I think the worst damage the housesitter from hell has done is destroy my beautiful blue glass Deco coffee table set. (When I heard this I did wonder what was really so bad about the death penalty.)

Then I realise, when I look at Tri, that his left eye is completely clouded over. Take him to the vet who says the eye was probably injured in a fight and, left untreated, a cataract has formed and covered the eye. Now I’m really wondering about the death penalty.

Still, he’s getting around okay with one eye and it certainly hasn’t diminished how affectionate he is nor how loudly he purrs when he’s curled up on or beside a female human. (Tri is definitely a ladies man. And he is, as you can see, such an elegant cat.)



Since my return to Gabriola in May, Tri has made it very clear that I am his human. He spends every evening on the sofa, curled up beside or on me.

When we came back from our early July trip to move Mike into the new flat, there was a note from Judy, the cat sitter. She suspected Tri had gone blind. A trip to the vet (and the evidence of our own eyes watching him nearly walking into things) confirms this. His blood pressure is high and apparently in cats of a certain age high blood pressure can result in the retina detaching itself. We put him on medication (really, where have Pill Pockets been all my life – all those struggles to get medicine down an unco-operative cat’s throat, instead of them gobbling them up?). There is a slim chance that, if his blood pressure comes down, the retina will reattach itself.

In the meantime, as the ophthalmologist we also take him to see points out, cats are better equipped to cope with going blind than dogs, their whiskers protecting them from actually walking into walls. As long as he has my nap of an evening, he seems contented enough.

Unfortunately, Tri does get very upset at night when I come downstairs to my part of the house, wandering around upstairs yowling loudly and plaintively. Then one night, I’m awakened by Mike banging on the ceiling. I blink awake, conscious that the clock radio is still working and therefore the problem isn’t a power failure. Make my way upstairs. Mike in his wheelchair in the kitchen doorway, pointing frantically up the path where Tri is determinedly making his way away from the house, towards the car and then the trees. I can still see him, walk up the path, pick him up, carry him indoors. Has Tri gone looking for me, we wonder? I walk up and down that path often enough to the car. Was he following my scent?

What to do? If we block off the cat flap, Angie, who enjoys her nightly prowls, will go ballistic, but we can’t risk Tri wandering off into the woods. I decide to bring him downstairs where there is no cat flap on the door, so he cannot escape in the night. Seems a bit mean, given that he’s blind, but decide it’s the best way to protect him. Fill a spare dish bowl with cat litter, cart that, some food, two bowls downstairs. Bring Tri down, show him where the litter and food are. He navigates around this new space with his whiskers, finds the litter box, eats some food, drinks some water, then finds me on the bed, curls up and starts purring.

I have a cat.

It’s a long time (other than brief visits from Irmani’s cat Mojo when Irmani and Jonno are away) since I’ve had a cat sleeping on my bed.

The first morning, before going out to water the garden (yes, there is a garden connection to this story), I take Tri back upstairs. When I go back in later there is no sign of Tri. Bit of a panic, until I realise I’d left my door open (as I generally do). Tri is back on my bed, curled up and sleeping soundly. He’d found his own way back to my part of the house. All right then. He’s claimed his territory.

I have a cat.

R.I.P.

A truly ghastly moment in the garden. Digging in the area I’d cleared of salal I come across what looks at first like a decomposing, shredded plastic bag. A few moments later I realise the gruesome truth: the “bag” is matted fur. I have accidentally shoved a shovel into the remains of Clancy, buried, not as I misremembered Mike telling me, with Jenny, but close to her. And then I remember that Clancy died in the winter, when the ground would have been rock hard, thus the shallow grave. After a moment of feeling almost physically ill, I cover up his remains.

Clancy, that crazy black cat, as anyone who ever met him will attest, was quite a character. One of six kittens produced by the (as it turned out) pregnant stray cat a friend of mine had taken in, it was believed by many that he must be part Siamese. He had the build and the yowl and very definitely the tendency to bond completely with one person (me), while treating everyone else with at best disdain and at worst a vicious bite. (I used to warn everyone who visited me that Clancy was a biter, that, even if jumped on your lap looking very friendly, he should, under no circumstances be patted, nor should you ever take your eyes off him if he was on you. There was always some idiot who would say, “Oh, that’s okay, cats really like me.” Hard to sympathise when the inevitable happened.)

I think it was my friend Rowan who once said that in a previous century Clancy’s strong resemblance to a familiar would have seen me burned at the stake. No doubt. Clancy, who used up many of his nine lives, leaping from my third floor window to explore the wider world. (It didn’t matter how many times I repaired the screen, he would somehow rip it out again.) Clancy, who used to leap on to and drape himself over my shoulder, purring and content to be walked around, hissing all the while at anyone else who came near us. Other than my mother, Clancy, who lived to be nearly twenty, was the most sustained relationship I ever had. It was gutting at the time that he died when I was thousands of miles away, unable to see him one last time. (Until just now, of course, but that, tragically, is not the same thing.)

And so it is important that his desecrated grave be properly marked. It is too shallow to plant a flowering shrub on top of him, as I have done for Jenny, so something in a tub is called for.

I go to the garden shop, thinking I no longer just want that planter with the fuchsia. Now I actually need it for something important. But the planter is gone. I ask if they have any other fuchsias and we look everywhere. There are a few left, but none of them are right. I want the sort of fuchsia I had in Walthamstow (now residing with Irmani in Camden): deep purple and vibrant pink, strong colours to mark the grave of a strong personality. None of these will do.

There is another garden shop at the other end of the island. After dropping Mike at his physio appointment, I drive down there, wandering around aimlessly and feeling dejected that my mission may not be accomplished. But wait! The woman who runs the place asks if I’m looking for something in particular. Yes, I tell her. She leads me to the back of an almost empty green house and there they are: withering in the heat and desperate to be replanted, half a dozen fuchsias of exactly the colour I want. I buy four of them and head home.

It’s only a pedestrian black plastic pot which will have to be replaced at some point by something more in keeping with the vibrancy of the flowers and of the personality of the cat whose grave they will mark, but for now the plastic pot will have to do.


It looks pathetic just sitting on the dry earth, not looking at all like the memorial it needs to be, and so I start digging up more rocks to surround it. (No shortage of these.)

I stand back, knowing I won’t be entirely satisfied until there is a proper pot, and say a long overdue farewell to Clancy: So long and thanks for all the mice.

Now we're cooking

Yes, dear reader, I do acknowledge the somewhat defeatist tone of your humble gardener’s last entry. Well, we can put all that behind us today.

A trip to the garden shop yesterday may not have borne fruit (fortunately the blackberry bush guarantees that outcome in a couple of months), but it has scented the property with the sweet smell of success.

I’m not exactly cooking with gas here (impossible as there is no gas on the island), but tonight I will be cooking with my very own herbs.

No, I can’t fool you. This is not a photo of the garden. This is the patch just outside the kitchen door. And, no, that is not some sort of cool, makeshift barbecue pit you spy. At some point in my absence someone decided to pile (I can’t say “build” as there is nothing to bind them together) bricks which had been lying around forever into a circle “feature”. You wouldn’t exactly call this a “feature”? No, neither would I. Doing something about this so-called feature is just one of many items on the long list of Things I Really Must Get To At Some Point.

Anyway, in view of the exciting news that deer don’t like herbs, I decided having some close to the kitchen door would be more convenient than having them way down the side of the house in the garden – especially while doing and undoing the wire fence stretched across the entrance remains my only “gate”. So, the herbs have been re-potted and are currently residing near the back door while I assess whether they can actually get enough sunlight there to survive. If the answer is no (which it very well might be) the herbs will be moved to the garden, by which time, I sincerely hope, there will be a proper gate.

And what, you ask, is with all the oyster shells? Well, I vaguely recall someone once telling me that oyster shells (of which, for some reason, there was a surfeit scattered around by the back door) are good for gardens. I even more vaguely recall this is because they keep slugs and snail at bay. Of course, this exceedingly vague recollection may be completely wrong – or, indeed, I may have imagined this long ago conversation. Only time will tell. (A further advantage of keeping the herbs in pots where they are is that I will never be planting anything edible in the surrounding ground (as it’s almost entirely rock), so slug and snail pellets can be scattered in abundance. (I do want to be an organic gardener, but as I decided in Walthamstow, there are some limits and slugs and snails are those limits.)

But wait, the excitement doesn’t end with the herbs!

I also purchased a ceanothus. I have always loved and wanted one of these, just never had anywhere to put one before. Wish I could say mine looked like the one above already, but that photo was stolen from the internet to give you (and me) a thrill of what’s to come. Mine actually looks like this:

Two very important things about this ceanothus. First, it makes me very happy to have something which will be absolutely beautiful marking the grave of Jenny and Clancy. Second, some research reveals that ceanothus are both deer-resistant and bee-friendly. These are two things I want very much to build into the garden of my dreams (or the garden I end up with).

Although I have discovered that deer repellent exists (no surprise there, I suppose), I am determined not to resort to this unfriendly (and no doubt toxic) product. There are trees galore and lots of undergrowth on my property and as far as I’m concerned the deer have an open invitation to munch on these. One of the loveliest sights on the island (as far as I’m concerned) is looking out the window and seeing deer wandering in your woods. I just want them sniffing over the fence and deciding there is nothing of interest to be had.

Bees, on the other hand, I want to have in abundance. I could (and those who know me know I often do) dig out a soap box to climb on and deliver a toxics diatribe here, but I will spare you, suggesting instead a read of this Guardian article.

Of all the brain dead toxic chemical-related things mankind has done since the mid-20th century (and there have been so, so many), pushing one of the most important creatures for food production on the planet to the brink of extinction has been our greatest crime against ourselves. Ever heard of pollination, you frigging idiot in a lab coat? Do you get why fucking up bees is a bad, bad idea? Clearly these guys had shares in McDonald’s and Burger King, ‘cos they’ve done everything they can to force a meat and wheat diet on the world. Bastards.

Oops, slipped onto the soap box without intending to do so.

Anyway, anyway. You can see why bee friendly and deer resistant is going to be my mantra at the garden shop, wherever possible.

Digging it

So, yesterday, in between running errands for and with Mike and before the thunderstorm started, I manage to put in a couple of hours digging the weeds out of what once had been the bed for my rose bushes and lilac tree.


Even with the weeds gone, it’s difficult to spot the one struggling to survive rose (hence the helpful box frame around it).

Although I have yet to decide what I am going to plant to replace the dead rhododendron which once marked the grave of my cats, crazy Clancy and lovely Jenny, I figure I might as well de-weed it, too.


I can’t believe how many rocks I have to dig up. I remember from past experience that some of the ground is quite rocky, but this far exceeds my recollection. Mention this to Mike when I go inside later. Of course, there are a lot of rocks, says the man who actually dug the grave in my absence. He’d put them there to stop other animals digging up the grave. Well, duh, why didn’t I think of that? A rock garden is certainly a possibility, though I now have my eye on a tri-coloured rose tree which the internet gardening centre claims deer don’t like.

Today I decide I really should do something about the pine cones scattered all over the garden. Assuming I ever track down Billy, the failure to appear rototill guy (unfortunately Pat’s lost his number and can’t remember his last name), rototilling pine cones into the ground is not a good idea. It’s hard enough to keep a lid on proliferating pine trees without accelerating the process of germination for them. Not that I particularly want to halt the proliferation of pine trees on the property - I just don't want them in the middle of the garden. Call me old fashioned, but the only trees I want growing in what little garden space I have need to bear some fruit in return for their squatting rights.


Full marks (but no prize) to anyone who can guess how many pine cones I plucked off the ground.

I’m sure there are still a large number lurking out there, but it’s hard to tell. The bloody weeds need whacking again (bastards) and I still don’t have a working weed whacker. You’d think, after all the trouble I went through to whack them in the first place, the weeds would show some respect and slow down a little, but, oh, no, they’re very naughty and want whacking again.

I can’t face going back to borrow Sally and Jamie’s weed whacker (although somehow constantly borrowing every other garden implement from Pat doesn’t bother me). There really is nothing for it: I’m going to have to make a trip to Nanaimo, which is never an appealing proposition. I’m with Bob Bossin: It’s so nice not to be in Nanaimo. (Wish I could find a full version of this most excellent and very funny – if you live on Gabriola – song, but all I could manage manage is the sample. Still, wouldn’t want to infringe on Bob’s copyright.)

However, Nanaimo can wait a couple of days. Tomorrow I am going to one of the garden shops and I am going to buy some herbs. If I don’t get something edible growing in this garden soon, my head is going to explode. I may go mad and buy some flowers, too, just to get some colour out there.

PS: The answer to the pine cone question is 435.

Progress!

It actually stopped raining last night and when I wake up this morning the sun is out. Lights, camera, action!

I get out to the garden as quickly as I can, put Jamie’s weed whacker to use. As I’m finishing the job I started two weeks ago, Sally walks past, stops for a chat. I tell her my vision for raised beds for veg at one end, and a sitting area with flowers at the other. With the sun shining I can almost imagine it happening. She asks if I think I’ll be able to get vegetables in this summer. Let’s be practical, I think, how long is my vision going to take to become a reality? Well, I say, I think I may have to resort to grow bags for this summer if I’m going to have any hope of tomatoes or any other summer fruit or veg.

I know grow bags will work, because, when my friend Ben and I moved into our house in Walthamstow we were compelled to use them after discovering that what we thought were flower borders around the paved garden actually consisted of an inch of mulch on top of an inch of sand on top of concrete.


It’s amazing what we were able to grow in pots and grow bags in Walthamstow.

Sally wishes me luck and heads up her drive. I get back to whacking weeds. When I make as far as the area I’d once carved out for flowering shrubs I make an astonishing discovery: hidden in the knee high weeds is what I’m 99% certain is my lilac tree and it’s still alive! It was four foot high when I left and is now barely one foot tall, but surely it’s my lilac tree. I call across the road to Pat, who’s also taking advantage of this probably brief period of sunshine to do some work on his garden, ask him to come over and give me his opinion on something. Yes, he says, it’s a lilac, although the deer have been at it, nibbling it down from the top. Never mind. It’s alive and that’s what counts. It makes me ridiculously happy that something – anything – from my earlier gardening efforts has survived.

Tangled up in honeysuckle and undergrowth on the other side of the fence is what’s left of the roll of fence wire I bought years ago. Some of this can be used to to surround and protect the lilac. Also unearthed in the weed whacking of this area is one of several rose bushes I’d planted, struggling to survive. It’s pretty sad looking, but undeniably has leaves on it and, again, I’m disproportionately cheered by its existence.

Elsewhere, the weed whacking confirms my suspicion that the rhododendron planted to mark the grave of my crazy, much loved cat Clancy is as dead as he has been for many years. I honestly cannot face the prospect of digging there to plant another shrub, lest I accidentally dig down as far as his remains. I decide a small rock garden (heaven knows there are enough rocks in the garden for the job) will replace the rhododendron.

I finish the weed whacking, borrow Pat’s rake (mine, having disappeared along with all my other garden tools) and make some more progress. Then I go into the house to try to find the wire cutters. Unlike the gardening tools, the wire cutters are where I left them in the bottom drawer in the kitchen.


I make a protective cage for the lilac, deciding not to bother with the rose bush you can almost (if you try very hard) see beside struggling for survival on the right.

Then I dig out my gardening gloves and apply the not terribly useful for the job wire cutters (my secateurs having also disappeared) to pruning back the blackberry shrub.

When Pat and I originally put the fence posts and wire fencing in, we used the end of the roll to close off the opening to the garden. That was fairly soon afterwards replaced by a proper (of sorts) gate – the one Tom, our handyman and mate, had taken down from his own property to replace with something higher and more deer-proof. Tom’s old gate, left open at some point and warped beyond repair by the elements, is, as previously stated, no longer functional on any level.


However, I do still have enough fencing on the roll to revert to the original deer barrier, so I set to it with the wire cutters, unrolling enough to close off the garden. Hurrah, hurrah, hurbloodyrah! Who cares if I have bleeding cuts on my fingers? (Was it the blackberry thorns or the wire, I vaguely wonder?)I have accomplished more in the past two hours than in the past two weeks. The job is so far from done that it really doesn’t bear thinking about, but – and this is an enormous but – what I now have is something which might actually be mistaken for a garden, rather than a semi-fenced in jungle on the corner of my property.

Next job is clearing enough of the undergrowth near the “gate” to relocate the compost box. It needs to be moved anyway to make room for the raised beds (whenever that happens), but it will also be a pain (possibly literally) having to undo and reattach the wire every time I want to throw peelings in.

After that, I need to dig up all the remaining weeds around the lilac “tree” and rose “bush”, to return it to looking like an actual bed. God, I can’t wait.

Still, I haven’t had breakfast yet and I’ve been at work in the garden for two hours. Time to go inside and have something to eat.

What’s this? Oh, no, it’s clouding over! Before I can finish my coffee and muffin it’s bloody raining again. Damn, damn, damn.

In two days Mike and I are going to Vancouver for 10 days (doctor’s appointments, his granddaughter’s fourth birthday party and for me a piss up in the wonderful WISE Club (where you can still have a pint and a fag indoors) with my old mate Jane who’s visiting from Montreal. Lovely chubbly, but if it doesn’t stop bloody raining in the next couple of days it will be a fortnight before I can get anything else done.

Bollocks.