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.

Rhodo Dave puts me straight

Across the road at Pat’s, in addition to his two heavily lilac-laden trees, his heavenly-scented rhododendron is in full bloom. In fact, rhododendrons are flowering all over the island – except in my back yard. I’m putting this down to the lack of sun back there. After all, the California lilacs in the back flower much later than the one in the garden, so why not?

This looks like it's going to flower, doesn’t it? (Doesn’t it? she repeats plaintively.)

I thought so, but then I realised these are simply new leaves, not flowers. Bollocks.

Nearing the end of rehearsals for Will Shakespeare The Panto, which I directed in 2014, BJ, one of the longstanding panto cast members, looked at me and asked, “What about the children?” To which I replied: “What about them? I’m letting them in, am I not? What more do they want?” BJ pointed out that there was no point in the script assigned to giving sweets to the rug rats. Apparently simply allowing them to attend wasn’t enough. They needed sweets. “Fine,” I said, “you can hand out sweets during the Act One finale*.” Sheesh. Anyone would think that pantos were children’s entertainment. (To avoid a similar debate the following year, I deliberately included handing out sweets in the script. Personally, I still think it’s bloody pandering.)

* Act One finale: A rousing version of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.

I was reminded of this conversation yesterday when I went to the rehearsal for A Visit From Miss Prothero. 

Dave, our director, and his wife Jan have dozens (nay, scores) of beautifully flowering rhododendrons scattered around their property. I mention my two rhododendrons showing no sign of wanting to flower, proffering my theory that they’ve been slowed down by lack of sun. Dave looks at me and asks, “What are you feeding them?” I stare back at him blankly. Feeding them? What is he talking about? No one told me rhododendrons had to be provided with slap up meals. “Erm,” I mutter. “I water them.” Surely that’s enough? Au contraire. Apparently, in addition to sun and water, they need food. I see.

Fortunately for me, Rhodo Dave has lots of rhododendron food. He sends me home after rehearsal with a supply.

And he tells me I might want to give my only-ever-flowered-once lilac some of the same food – if I would like it to ever flower again. Well, erm, yes, I would rather like that. (I am, of course, immediately suspicious about the year the lilac did actually flower. Krys was here alone with it for three weeks while I was in England. Had she been cooking four-course meals for the lilac? It begins to seem highly likely. How sneaky was that? And this, of course, is much more comforting than my previous theory that the lilac liked her, but doesn’t like me.)

So, this morning both rhododendrons and both lilacs have been fed. Dave, bless him, realising how completely hapless a gardener I am, promises to remind me when the next feeding is required.  

Now that I have learnt the error of my ways, I confidently predict that this time next year my rhododendrons and lilacs will look just like Pat’s.

  

Just kidding. (I can dream, can’t I?)

Spring cleaning

Cec comes round, as promised, after his morning constitutional and helps me get the frames back over the berry beds.

No, your eyes do not deceive you. One of these things is not like the other. The strawberry bed in the foreground, built and properly levelled a couple of years ago by Mr Fixit, is the horizon line. The slapdash beds I concocted before that, not so much. Oh, well.

Cec goes off to rob from the rich and give to the poor (he played little John in last year’s panto) or do otherwise good deeds.

Cec as Little John, with my air guitar hero Will Scarlett (Paul O'Sullivan) .

 I go back to the cursed netting and the staple gun to get the strawberry frame done.

Oh, bloody bollocking bollocks. There isn’t enough netting to cover these two side panels. I refuse to buy another bloody bollocking roll of the bloody stuff for just these two panels. Back into the house to ring Cec and ask if he and Joyce by any chance have any spare netting – or perhaps some plastic sheeting? Yes, they do! Cec will return tomorrow. What a guy. 

(When the organisers of the Gabriola Garden Tour come to call – ha, bloody, ha – to ask if I would allow the public in on their fundraising weekend for People for a Healthy Community, I shall have to bill it as the Holmes/Ashley Garden – with special mention to the Rosses of Toronto.)

Oh, by the way, did I mention that Cec thinks my cup hook solution for holding the netting in place was inspired?

Well, he does.

With the netting job brought to a halt by lack of netting, I turn my attention to spring cleaning. Of the house, do I hear you ask? No, of course not. To hell with the bloody house. I’ll get to that later. No, at the moment I’m more interested in the garden path.

Not impressed? Well, that’s because I didn’t take a before picture. Trust me, bloody buckets of pine cones and needles have been removed. Not to mention the ten thousand (okay, okay – several dozen) little plastic potting pots which are going to GIRO tomorrow.

A good day’s work. Time to make a cup of tea and take it down to the garden, where I find Stella waiting.

Fifteen minutes later I’m heading back into the house because it is too bloody hot to sit in the sun. And it’s still only April. Yikes.

Appley ever after?

The question of paint versus stain has been duly debated and the answer seems to be stain. Although some followers quite fancied the idea of brightly painted frames, WISE woman Catherine made the best point.

“I just finished staining a planter box we built. Here's why: stain will protect the wood, to a degree, from wind, sun and snow and last for several years. It won't crack, bubble or peel. So the question is: do you want bright, beautiful colour and more work sanding, stripping and repainting in a couple of years? Or natural looking wood, less work and more time for the swing, the book, the cats and wine?”

Obviously more time for the swing wins. Stella, when asked, totally agrees.

Quite a bit of staining in my future, although possibly not in the next couple of days. (After a week of summer-in-April, when I go outside to take this photo of Mr Fixit’s latest delivery, there is a clap of thunder. As I write, rain has started falling.)

Elsewhere in the garden, the most exciting news so far is…

Regular readers will, I’m sure, recall that three years ago Krys and I planted a dwarf apple tree in the garden. It produced lots of blossom and one apple the first year, lots of blossom and eight apples the second year (and there would have been many more apples if frigging Antler Boy hadn't got to it) and precisely zero blossom last year. So, yes, the fact that there is once again lots of blossom on the apple tree is pretty bloomin’ exciting. Will any of this blossom turn into actual apples? Time will tell.

There is also lots of blossom on the pear tree, added to the garden two years ago. This is not quite as exciting as pear blossom has appeared in abundance every spring. What has so far failed to appear on the tree is an actual pear. Fingers crossed this might be the year.

Speaking of things blooming (or not, as the case may be), across the road at Pat’s place – and all around the island – lilac trees are already flowering. Alas, not so in my garden – neither the long-established, flowered-once-only-for-Krys-three-years-ago tree nor the second tree I planted two years ago which I was promised would flower the following year and didn’t. Considering how much I love lilacs I consider this to be most unfair. Fortunately, Pat remains very generous with his overabundance.

Blooming (not so) marvellous

Yes, I know. The garden updates are coming thin and slow. What can I say? First I was busy rehearsing for the world premiere of my play, and since then I have been (believe it or not) in rehearsals for staged readings of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Seriously.

And then, of course, there is the almost completely irresistible prospect of spending time on the garden swing with Stella and a book. When am I supposed to find time to catch up?

So today we are going to have a few words about blossoms, going back to early May.

There are vases filled with lilacs all through the house, thanks to a bumper crop of blossoms.

Pretty impressive, eh?

Unfortunately, this is not my lilac tree. It’s Pat’s. My tree has once again failed to produce a single bloom. Apparently my tree will only bloom for Krys. And then (given that she was here in March) only if she’s here at blossom time.  Even more annoyingly, the second lilac I bought last year and planted in the excavated hole filled with sea soil has also (despite the promises of the garden shop) failed to produce a single bloom.

It’s a good thing Pat is very generous with his lilacs.

Elsewhere, the apple tree, which produced an abundance of blossom the first year (and one apple) and an abundance of blossom the second year (and eight apples), doesn’t seem all that happy. It took a long time for it to even begin producing leafs and this year there is not a single blossom. Oddly enough, neither has Pat’s much older and well-established apple tree, so I tell myself (somewhat optimistically) that perhaps apple trees occasionally take a year off. Au contraire, I discover when I later make enquiries at the garden shop. Have I, they ask, pruned it? Pruned it? It’s a tiny little spliced apple tree that consists of little more than twigs. Surely pruning it would kill it? Apparently not. Oh, well. Next year.

Back in early April, the pear tree, added last year, did produce a lot of blossom.

Several weeks later there is nothing on the tree even hinting it might turn into a pear.  So much for my orchard plans. (Yes, I am kidding.)

Leaping forward to June, there is some better bloomin’ news.

 The never-watered, never-disappoints blackberry is once again producing an abundance of bee-friendly blossom.

And every day there are new roses for the bud vases.

Now. If you’ll forgive me, the garden swing calls.