Pretty impressive, eh?

Yesterday’s blog about the transformation of the diningroom window into a hummingbird haven, prompted me to think it was probably time for the semi-annual “compare and contrast” posting.

I may not (and let’s face it, never will) be successfully growing and harvesting enough fruit and veg to feed myself year round, but, dang, the garden sure does look pretty these days.

This photo was taken yesterday.

This is where we began in May 2010. Pretty fucking impressive contrast, eh?

So, how did we get from this sad photo to the one above it?

Considering where I started in May 2010, I was quite pleased that three months later the garden looked like this. Please note the ceanothus (planted for its bee-friendliness to replace the dead rhododendron marking Jenny’s grave) in the bottom left corner.

I don’t seem to have taken a comparison photo in 2011. It was a bad year for the blog. Not much better for the garden. Hardly surprising, under the circumstances. The photo above was taken in April 2012 – first year I attempted to fertilise (semi) proper beds.

 

By the time this photo was taken in May 2013, I had (thanks to Krys and Glenn) a proper raised bed with fresh top soil. It was a good year for peas, beets, tomatoes, courgettes, squash and strawberries.

 

Alas, I don’t seem to have taken a comparison photo in 2014. Closest thing is this one of the prayer flags I put up confound and confuse Bambo after his garden invasion, but you can at least see there is now a second raised bed, thanks to the wonderful Cec Ashley.

By June 2015, the garden swing (best garden news of that year for both Stella and me) was added. Now let's see that first photo again.

Once again I say (along with giving thanks for the friends who’ve helped), pretty fucking impressive, eh? Oh, and FYI, remember that ceanothus I said to note?

This is what it looks like now.

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.

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.