Sorry!

With apologies to friends whose gardens may currently be buried under two or more feet of snow (yes, Jane, I do mean you), this is early February on Gabriola.

Last autumn, to celebrate my land (and rock) scaping work out back, I planted dozens of daffodil bulbs. They are the only thing bloody deer absolutely, positively will not eat. It may not be easily discernible from the photo below, but they’re coming along nicely. Friends on the island who get more rather more sun than I do this time of year, already have daffs in bloom. (Again, sorry, Jane.)

Something new for this year. For the first time ever, I have a sort-of greenhouse. A friend on the island who has one like this swears it does the job, so I figured I’d go mad and splurge fifty bucks on one.

Despite the dozens of pieces arriving in a box without instructions, I managed to figure out how to put the frame together.

When I started unfolding the cover I was suddenly reminded of the toxics talk roadshow I did around BC back in the 1990s. At one point I would always ask: “Has anyone here ever pulled a PVC shower curtain out of the package and felt as if you were being gassed?” Invariably there would be a couple of nods. And then I’d say: “You were.” I would then explain about the various component chemicals in PVC that escaped as soon as the plastic was unfolded.

Oh, crap, I thought the other day. The plastic cover for my mini-greenhouse is PVC. Why didn’t I think to check?

And then I thought, am I really going to take the whole thing apart and try to send it back for a refund? Is there any chance I could get a refund? Almost definitely not.

And then I wondered what sort of chemicals were likely to leach out of the PVC when the sun got on it and what might those chemicals do to any seedlings sprouted inside it for my supposedly pesticide-free garden?

And then I poured myself a drink.

We shall see.

Attack of the killer tomatoes

Okay, they’re not really killer tomatoes, but, honestly, with the exception of the crazy seven-foot tomato which grew from a seed in Walthamstow, I’ve never had cherry tomato plants grow so tall as this year’s crop.

The thin bamboo stakes, which have always done the job in the past, simply cannot bear the weight, so time must spent with scissors and string, tying the plants to the fence. (Good news, as you will see from the bottom left corner of the photo: the tomatoes are ripening.

Speaking of seven-foot plants…

I’ve never seen a thistle anywhere on the property before, then suddenly this year there were three of them growing by the back path. I have a pretty relaxed attitude towards plant/tree life outside the garden. If some plant wants to start growing, fine. (I even tolerate mushrooms.) One of the thistles is now well over seven feet tall. The good news is that bees apparently love thistle flowers. If you click on the photo to see it full size, you’ll spot the bee guzzling thistle nectar on the top flower. Moments before I took the photo, there were bees on all the flowers. So, yay thistles.

Meanwhile, back in the produce section…

My first beet has been harvested and eaten - roasted with some of Pat’s carrots. Yum! (And, yes, Jane, if you are reading this, that is indeed your old cappuccino maker, sold to me when you were moving to electricity-free Keats Island, and still going strong.)

My first two courgettes are coming along nicely.

If my eyes do not deceive me, the first flower has appeared on one of the squash plants.

I’ve just picked my first batch of peas!

The strawberries are flowering again. I’d completely forgotten they do this. Hopefully the squirrels have forgotten, too, and I will be able to pick some without a bite already taken.

The bench cushions and cover are in place.

And when I’ve finished posting this, I shall be sitting on the bench with a book and a large gin and tonic.

Cheers!

Rain, rain go the fuck away

Honestly. It’s the end of June.

Does the courgette have any flowers on it yet? No.

What about the squash? No.

Okay, there are lots of flowers on the tomato plants, but is there yet any sight of an actual cherry tomato? No.

There is still only one apple on the tree. (Mind you, from what Jane’s said about these grafted apple trees, one would be a bit of a miracle.)

And the peas are only just starting to flower.

Could we have some sunshine, please????????????

So, wonderful women’s weekend last weekend. Turns out I can actually squeeze four chairs around the table on the deck and, although there was no sunshine, it didn’t actually rain on Friday or Saturday, so good news there. (And, hey, even if it had rained: Women’s weekend. Hurrah!)

At the beginning of last week I honestly thought I might have a few strawberries ripe enough to share with my guests. When I went to the garden on Friday morning to check, oh, guess what? Gone, gone, gone. I can’t blame the deer on this occasion, as they can’t get in the garden. So who’s the strawberry bandit? Birds? Squirrels? Bastards, whoever they are.

I check again this morning.

Oh, goodie! Look at all the lovely ripe strawberries. Eat my first two ripe raspberries (yum!) before starting to pick the strawberries.

What the fuck? Okay, photo’s a bit out of focus, but every single ripe strawberry has at least one small bite out of it. Bastards, bastards, bastards. Does this happen every year? I can’t remember. The strawberry plants used to be in pots, but Krys insisted I should replant them in the raised bed. Hmm. Maybe this is her fault. Nah. It’s the bloody squirrels. Decide, if I’m going to have any strawberries this year, I’m just going to have to cut off the nibbled end and share them. (Bastards.)

Lots and lots of blackberries coming along – and I know the squirrels won’t get at them. Hah! (Plus the bees just love the blackberry blossom and the ceanothus has finished flowering now.)

Oh, and PS: the well chomped, supposedly deer-resistant plants do seem to be staging a comeback.

Now if we could just get some sunshine.

Après le déluge

Almost immediately after the cherry tomatoes are planted, the skies open and the temperature plummets. This goes on for a fortnight. Eventually, the rain, rain goes the fuck away. Happily, despite the weather, the tomato plants are flowering, so all is not lost.

The same, sadly, cannot be said for the basil. Apparently it was too early to plant outdoors.



The Genovese basil withers and dies (drowns?), but, on the plus side, the African Blue basil is hardier and seems to be responding well to the sun finally coming out.

Satisfy myself, in between rain showers, by planting another window box.



Now there are flowers to be seen through both the kitchen and diningroom windows.

Outside, Irmani’s fuchsia has sprouted its first bloom.



A week later, look at it.



Okay, okay. This isn’t Irmani’s fuchsia. I broke down last time I was in the garden shop and bought another one. I couldn’t resist. It’s all instant gratification for me. Apparently, my motto is spend, spend, spend – even though at the moment I have nothing, nothing, nothing coming in. (Yes, Mr Mikawber, I am ignoring your recipe for happiness.)

And now that the sun has returned, out in the garden…



The second row of peas I put in is starting to sprout. The squash, courgette and beets have survived the deluge and, one hopes, will soon be responding to some sunshine. There is no sign of anything which might possibly turn into an apple to be seen anywhere on the mini-tree, but that’s okay. I can be patient – especially now that I know Jane’s tree hasn’t produced an apple in eight (or was it nine?) years. After all, it took at least 12 years for the lilac to finally produce any bloom.

The ceanothus, on the other hand, is blooming beautifully.



And, as I hoped when I planted it in 2010, the bees are loving it.



And the first of the flowers are beginning to make their way indoors.



I don’t know how I could have lived this long without knowing that rose bushes will cease to produce flowers if you don’t snip the first ones off before the petals start falling, the bush will cease producing flowers. Stumbled across this very important piece of information in a novel (can’t remember which one) last year. Explains not only why my roses have been disappointing, but how important it is to read.

Oh, and by the way, what appears to be a bud vase is in fact a glass I stole from a champagne bar in Edinburgh at the end of a raucous night out with Lucy and Wanda. Oh, happy days. (Actually, I say end of the night, but that was just me. I’ll draw a veil over what Lucy and Wanda - both mums now - got up to after I got a cab back to our hotel, shall I? Doesn’t stop me having a giggle at the memory, though.)

Oh, ha, ha

Have only just noticed a comment left by Jane after the first post this year: "We have one of those grafted apple trees. It's been, like, eight years? Nine? and it's produced in all a handful of one kind of apple. Almost all of which have been eaten by squirrels JUST before we were ready to pick them. So... good luck..." (Sorry, Jane.)

Okay, I can now treat apple blossom as a present for the bees and stop worrying about the law of gravity. (Inertia always suited me better anyway.)

Final score

A reminder from Jane that it’s been a long, long time since anything has been added to the blog.

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, a girl named Anne decided (what with one thing and another) to leave her bustling home town and return to an island (let’s call it Gabriola) off the west coast of Canada where she also had a home.



Sadly, while she had been away from her house on Gabriola, the garden, which she’d laboured (with the help of her neighbour Pat) to create, had gone to rack and ruin.



This made Anne very sad.

So she vowed that when she was back on Gabriola she would rejuvenate her poor garden. Visions of year-round home grown crops danced through her head (as did flower beds and something to sit on which wasn’t the ruins of an old bench).

But before she left her bustling home town, there were many, many people she needed to see and bid farewell. Quite a few of them also lived in her bustling home town and she was able to catch up with most of them in one go at one of her favourite places.



But then there was her friend Rory, who lived many miles away in Cornwall and couldn’t come to her favourite place.

So Anne went to visit Rory.



One morning, while she was visiting Rory, they got to talking about creative things – like dancing (which Rory used to do professionally) and writing (which Anne used to do rather a lot of). Anne told Rory how sad it was that she never seemed to have (or find) the time to do any writing. Rory raised an eyebrow – as well he might. This eloquent eyebrow of Rory’s was telling Anne that she was full of something that was good for gardens, that if she really, truly wanted to write, she would somehow find the time.

Right then and there, Anne made a promise to Rory (and to herself) that when she got back to Gabriola she would (at a minimum) write something for an hour every morning when she got out of bed. It didn’t have to be fiction. It didn’t matter what it was, as long as she was writing something. It could be a letter to a friend or a journal entry. It could be anything, including – oh, yes, this is a good idea – a blog about her garden project.

And so she returned to Gabriola. On the very first morning she started writing a garden journal. Eventually she remembered that this journal was supposed to be a blog.



Like the bench and flowerbed parts of her vision, the blog went well. (Unfortunately the year-round home grown produce part was a far from resounding success.)

Then one day a funny thing happened. She switched her computer on in the morning, but instead of writing about crap soil, she found herself writing. Honest to god, make it up as you go along fiction.

Anne was very, very excited. It had been so long since she’d been on a roll like this. She kept on writing, writing, writing, in her exhilaration all but forgetting about her blog and the many followers (well, four) who’d been left in the lurch.

After a day spent planting bulbs, she decided she really should correct that.



So, here’s the final score:

Peas 0
Beets 0
Carrots 0
Broccoli 0
Pumpkins 0
Squash 0
Cantaloupe 0
Red peppers 1 (see above)
Tomatoes tons
Blackberries tons (for which garden project can take no credit)

Resolutions 1 (next year I will build the raised beds and get some bloody topsoil)

Now that the rains have come, turns out the soil in the vegetable patch can support life – it is covered in happy weeds which will need to be dug up before I empty the bottom half of the compost box on the patch and dig it in.

And now I really must go. There are fictional characters calling my name, eager to find out what they are going to do next.

Wot, no beer?

A response from Rowan re things you can do with lavender:

“You can make lavender sugar, mmmm same as vanilla sugar. You can flavour delicate fairy cakes with it.... You can put in with garlic instead of rosemary with lamb. Nice with chicken too. Better to use too little than too much in savoury cooking. Lavender jelly (as in strained jam not jello) is nice too.

”Lavender tea to help you relax and unwind, and yes, potpourri too. It also helps keep moths away so make a sachet and bung it with the woollens. Also make a sachet and tie to the bath tap so that the water runs over it when running a bath.”

So, it turns out you can drink lavender, though not as beer or wine. Lavender tea, sugar, fairy cakes and jelly are almost certainly never going to happen, but I do like the sound of using it instead of rosemary with lamb. And I’d already thought of using some for sachets in my drawers. (A sudden recollection of both my mother and grandmother doing the same, makes me wonder how this, like so much other traditional knowledge, has been wiped from memory by the Machiavellian chemical industry. Oh, lord, don’t get me started.)

After weeks of doing little more than producing one bud which I begin to think will never open, my scrappy survivor rose bush has produced one lovely bloom, so heavy on its poor, anorexic branches that it’s practically dragging on the ground. Would provide photographic evidence of this semi-miracle, but alas the batteries are dead on my camera and I don’t have any spares.

It’s not quite the mile Jane says is required, but I’ve started releasing the captured mice up the road when I check on the post. There are at least 15 houses between there and here. Am hoping they will start colonising somewhere else.

Off to Vancouver today with Mike – various appointments (including the birthday of his younger granddaughter) book marked around the delivery next Tuesday of my belongings from the UK. Am not looking forward to putting the futon base back together. Even if I can find the instructions (which I hastily packed after realising the shippers had taken it apart), they will be of limited use. It took me hours to put the bloody thing together the first time in Stoke Newington because, as I discovered after much cursing, a key instruction was actually wrong. Am hoping I will remember which bit that was.

The place will look fab when everything is unpacked and in place, but I’m dreading the process, complicated by the need to keep the halls clear for Mike to get around. Where am I going to put it all until it’s unpacked?

Pat will be watering the garden while I’m away. Hope all the tomatoes don’t ripen and get eaten by him while I’m away.

To rototill or not to rototill?

Very excited the day we left for Vancouver at the beginning of the month to be told by Billy, the guy Pat hired to do his garden, could rototill mine for $150. Yes, yes, if this is truly my garden project, I should be doing all the work myself, but what the hell. Agree to pay Billy the money on our return and ask him to do the garden while we’re away. Am also thrilled when he tells me he can actually repair existing (barely) gate. Hurrah!

Send my cousin Peter an e-mail which includes the news that the garden will be rototilled when I get back. It’s only after I arrive in Vancouver that I read Peter’s reply: “Rototill warning: Don't till if you have weeds which re-grow from pieces of root - you'll make the situation far worse. Ground should be dug over carefully and as many roots removed as possible. Good (bad!) example in UK is couch grass.” Yikes. I most definitely do have weeds which are likely to re-grow from pieces of root (though almost certainly no couch grass – whatever that is). Uh, oh, I think. Have I made job harder on myself in the long term? Oh, well, I have no contact number for Billy, so I shall just have to deal with the consequences of my over eagerness.

Tackle my mission in Vancouver, which is to find Mike a flat to replace as his visit-family-go-to-the-doctor base the tiny, expensive supported living place he’s been renting since leaving hospital in 2008. Job done on first day: find a perfectly okay and surprisingly affordable two bedroom flat in the Capital Hill area of Burnaby (borough adjacent to Vancouver). Sadly it is not on the mountain view side of the Hill, nor is it in the middle of the surprisingly funky Burnaby Heights area (let alone in the middle of the Commercial Drive area, which is where I really want to be), but it will do the job.


Beige throughout, naturally, so will have to be painted. My friend Catherine’s son Josh, a professional decorator, astonishes and delights me by offering to help me paint later in the month free of charge. Can’t believe I found a place on the first day, so lots of free time now.


Social events of the visit include the fourth birthday party of Mike’s granddaughter Celeste – an exceedingly cute little girl who, not surprisingly, can’t figure out who the hell I am in the greater scheme of things.

For me the main event is a reunion the night before we return to Gabriola of the majority of members of the women’s dinner group – started in Vancouver many years ago by me one weekend when Mike was away and I decided it would be great to have a dinner party just for my women friends. It turned into a hugely popular tradition. (I remember my friend Jane asking me one day when Mike was going to be away again, as her husband was driving her round the bend and she really needed a women’s night.)

Thanks to Jane, visiting from Montreal, we have another women’s night. It’s a shame that founding member Rowan and Mariam are many miles away, but absolutely bloody marvellous to see Jane, Eilis, Caroline, Birgit, Catherine and Cathy all in one place at the same time.

Start the evening with dinner at Wazubees (where, I am delighted to discover, they still do their fab Oriental chicken salad) then head to the WISE Club. (Where I am horrified to discover that the smoking room – the last place in Vancouver you could have a pint and a fag indoors – is no more, fallen victim to some bitch who wasn’t even a member reporting them. God, I wish I had her name and address.)

But what about the garden? I hear you ask. Not to worry, I did give some thought to the garden while I was in Vancouver. Did some internet research into Plants Deer Don’t Like To Eat. Turns out deer don’t like lavender, nor are they attracted to many herbs. Hurrah! I can actually get a herb patch going, which is something I’m already missing from my Walthamstow garden and which will also save me spending ridiculous amounts of money on ridiculous plastic packages of fresh herbs at the supermarket. So that will be one of my first jobs when I get back. I’m also going to stick some flowers in a couple of pots, just to have some colour in the garden while I’m working on the rest of it. Not sure what to do about the premature rototilling – other than simply living with the consequences.

Sunday, June 13th: Back on Gabriola and it’s a good news/bad news scenario. The good news is I no longer have to worry about the consequences of premature rototilling as the garden’s untouched. The bad news is the garden’s untouched. What the hell happened to Billy?

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.