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.

Cherry (tomato) jubilee

With the May long weekend comes the return of the Gabriola “farmer’s” market. I put farmer’s in quotes because, as I once explained to Morag, unless you’re making healing crystal soup or tie-die salad, the market’s selection of actual produce is underwhelming. (And, yes, for those who’ve never been to Gabriola, there is indeed a definite new age/hippie element on the island.) In late May there is, however, one stall not to be missed: Lovely Linda, the tomato queen. I don’t know what mojo this tiny Thai woman mixes with her tomatoes, but they are the best.

I faff around a bit too much this morning, playing Wordscraper and, oh, I don’t know what else. Before I know it, it’s almost noon. Yikes. The market closes at one and Linda may have already sold out. Jump in the car, drive down to market.

And there, amidst all the crystal crap is Linda, her stall still populated with tomato plants. But are any of them cherry tomatoes? (I only really like cherry tomatoes.) Yes! There are still cherry tomatoes left, some already flowering. How many do I want, she asks. Four, I say. No, bugger it, let’s have six. We load them on a tray, I hand over my cash.

“Here,” she says, picking up another, smaller tomato plant. “This is different cherry tomato, also very sweet. Only one left. You have it.” Bonus.



Come home, plant tomatoes. Clap hands in gleeful anticipation. (One of the few successes I’ve had in this project is crops of cherry tomatoes, so I’m not worried about these beauties.)



Decide I might as well plant another row of peas while I’m out here. First row planted coming along nicely (as, apparently, are beets, squash, courgette and strawberries). Hurrah for Krys and Glenn and raised bed and top soil!

Even though there’s been more than enough rain recently (really, more than enough), figure I should give cherry tomatoes a good soak. While I’m at it, might as well do the rest of the garden.

Oh, my god, what’s this I see?



The new blueberry plant – bought to replace the one that died over winter – which was bursting with fruit last week, is obviously on its last legs.

NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nothing is supposed to die this year. NOTHING. This is supposed to be THE year. How can this be? Didn’t they like one another? Did they have a fight? Is the one on the right a notorious predator?

Check labels. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Both bushes are Blue Ray, so no cross-pollination. (What an idiot. Why didn’t I check this before?) But is this really enough to lead to such immediate fratricide? Or, perhaps more appropriately, sororicide? Sadly, I hope so, as the only other answer to the mystery is that I am some sort of homicidal (botanicidal?) maniac gardener and that solution simply will not do.

Perhaps a gin and tonic in the anti-gravity chair to recover?

Preserving myths

In the larder I now have bottles of peach and raspberry chutney (delicious, I discover, on the pork chops Mike’s bought for dinner), pear and blueberry chutney and pickled beets. How cool is that?

Well, it would be way cooler if I’d actually made any of these delicacies. I could claim I did, but that would, not even strictly speaking, be untrue. Along with a small basketful of lovely stones collected from the beaches of Malcolm Island, the preserves are a souvenir of a recent visit to Morag (maker of said preserves) and Darryl, old friends from Greenpeace toxic days, now living in Sointula.



And, yes, it is every bit as pretty as Darryl’s poster suggests (although the mountain in the background is not on the island, but one of the coastal mountains seen on a very clear day).

Was quite looking forward to the long drive from A (Gabriola) to B (Sointula).

Glove compartment full of old favourite CDs to play at high volume and sing along to on my way up the island highway. (Singing alone in the car being the only time I can let rip musically without people clapping their hands over their ears and begging for mercy). Unfortunately, as I discovered soon after I got onto the highway at Nanaimo, the CD player in the car has died. Bugger. Oh, well, will just have to listen to the radio. Hmm. No signal of any description (let alone CBC, which I want) seems to be available anywhere on the radio soon after I clear Campbell River. And now the “highway” is two lanes, it’s pouring with rain and I keep getting stuck behind logging trucks for miles until I have a shot at overtaking them. Not quite as enjoyable as I’d anticipated.

Still, despite rain and logging trucks, I make such good time I am able to catch the 4:05 ferry from Port McNeil, rather than the 6:30 I’d been aiming to catch. (Turns out Morag’s estimate that it was a five hour drive from Nanaimo to Port McNeil had been based on people who, unlike her – and me – actually stick to the speed limit.) So, of course, when I arrive two and a half hours early, they are not home. Never mind, I get to enjoy the view from their deck, which, if I’d had any trouble figuring it out before, makes it easy to understand why they traded in a leaky condo in Vancouver for a home in this outpost.


Not bad, eh?

They arrive back soon afterwards from a trip to Sointula’s only food shop (the oldest co-operative in BC, apparently) with news that earlier that afternoon a pod of whales had spent an hour rubbing on the beach by Bere Point. Sadly for Darryl and Morag, this news came second hand from someone at the Co-op.

Hardly surprising that we spend chunks of the next two afternoons hanging out on said beach to see this.



Wish I could say we did, but all we got were some dolphins in the distance and one seal (who I swear was a scout for the whales, sent to warn them if there were any witnesses). Morag and I did, however, get hours of enjoyment out of throwing stones at a log. What a lot of fun you can have doing absolutely nothing.

PS Despite it turning out that the Sointula pub, the Rub (for whale rub, not rub a dub dub) was holding a karaoke on the Saturday night and despite my inability to sing along with old favourites in the car, I was not tempted to get up and sing.

Living off the land

Tomato salad and squash bisque with fresh baked herbed scones for dinner, followed by the long anticipated blackberry crumble (or rather, as I am reminded when I look up my old recipe, blackberry crisp). Ah, the satisfaction of it all.

Okay, so the squash was from Pat’s garden, not mine, and it’s not as if I grew the wheat for the scones, but satisfying nonetheless.

Little culture update: the Gabriola Theatre festival was a blast. Saw three plays in three days. The first, Whisky Bars was absolutely first rate. Even bought the CD. The second, St Mark’s Gospel, was another bravura turn turn by our resident theatrical genius, Anthony Holland (retired founder of Langara College’s renowned Studio 58 theatre training programme) The third was Bed Among the Lentils, one of Alan Bennett’s delightful Talking Heads series of one act plays.

There was even a free Bob Bossin concert (though, sadly, he didn’t do the Nanaimo song).

This is only the festival’s second year and apparently it’s already acquiring quite a buzz in the world of thesps, so it’s likely to be a bloody marvellous annual event. (Whisky Bars in particular was as good as most things I’ve seen on the West End stage in the past decade.)

Off today for a mini break – four days visiting old mates Darryl and Morag on Malcolm Island, way the hell up the north end of Vancouver Island and then, like Gabriola, a 20 minute ferry ride. Darryl is managing to carve out a niche for himself doing photography work. Am looking for some tips on opting out.