Yes, yes, I know. I got everyone all excited about the blog starting up again and then dropped you all. Not my fault.
First I had a piece of work land in my lap which has a very tight deadline, necessitating 10+ hours a day at the computer, a sore neck, sore shoulders and, eventually, the need to forage in the freezer for some of Mike’s old supply of ready meals.
Then my friend Becky visited, so, again, not much time for updating blogs.
A lot has been going on in the garden and I promise I will get to this soon, but today’s entry is for Becky, who may be joining me permanently on Gabriola, now that she’s found her dream home. (If she’s decided, now that she’s back in Leyton, that she really can’t live without opera, theatre, art galleries, electricity, running water and all the other excitement of London, I’ll have to let Rowan know before someone else snaps it up.
It was the wisteria that prompted us to stop and get out of the car for a look.
Not only is it for sale, but you don’t even have to arrange a viewing.
Bit difficult to get in through the front door.
So we went round the back.
We were immediately struck by all the indoor plants.
There’s a lovely fitted kitchen.
Unfortunately the bathroom has neither hot nor cold running water at the moment.
But, in the livingroom, there is a lovely tile surround for a wood stove.
A few problems with the bedroom floor, as Becky discovered when she fell through it. Fortunately no permanent damage – to her.
The garden, it must be said, could do with a bit of work.
The television reception’s probably a bit dodgy.
But that’s okay, because I think she’s going to be too busy to watch telly.
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.
Another day, another dig, another ton of rocks. Time for another flowerbed. But what shall I put in this one? There’s no lobelia left in the garden shop, I’m sick of bloody petunias and there constant need of dead heading. I want something different. But what? I am led by my nose to the answer.
Yes, lavender. Five different kinds of lovely lavender. It grows in the south of France. How hard can it be to keep it alive. And, unlike the petunias, they are perennials, so no need to worry about what to put in this spot next year. (“Next year” is my new mantra. Next year I will put in raised beds for veg and do the job right. Next year I will have lots of lovely daffs and tulips. Next year I’ll plant this and I’ll plant that. Next year.) Not to mention the potpourri I’ll be able to make if I ever get around to it.
As I sit down to admire my lavender, Sally drives by, stops to tell me how much she loves the bench. Not half as much as I do. It’s so comfortable. (Now, of course, Mike wants to get into the garden. Where was he when I was doing all this work?) When I look back at the lavender, there are bees all over it. Yes!
Okay, I’ve completely failed to grow any food from seed. (The lettuce and rocket haven’t actually died yet, but nor have they grown to edible size and I very much suspect they never will.) But there will be food produced.
Look!
The tomatoes are ripening.
And what’s this I see? My first pumpkin.
The red pepper plant teases me. Yes, it’s all very exciting, but I’ve been here before. What are the odds this pepper will actually grow and turn red before it rots? Experience teaches me the odds are slim. However, I shall hope for the best.
And, of course, there are the blackberries. Nought to do with me, as I’ve admitted before. The blackberries were growing here long before we bought the house. Still, it’s my fruit on my property, so good for me.
Can you eat lavender, I wonder? Tempting to e-mail Rowan about this. Not, I’m sure, that she will say lavender is edible. But no doubt she will suggest lavender water, lavender oil, probably lavender beer. (God knows she seems to make wine and beer out of everything else.) Hmmm.
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.
Not much time for gardening as I have to chauffeur Mike around to various appointments – haircut, physio, shopping. (I understand that he wants to have some involvement in food purchasing and of course it’s not his fault that it takes him a while to get around, but, man, it does make the shopping take a long time.) Still, I do find time to squeeze in a visit to my new favourite vendor: the garden shop.
The only down side to my beautiful Blueberry Hill rose bush is that the bed now looks completely unbalanced. Really, there is nothing for it but to buy another rose bush to plant at the other end. This gardening lark is getting expensive. If I’m not careful (and apparently I’m not) I’m going to have to get a job (heaven forefend) just to pay for it.
Try to find a nice pale yellow rose bush (yellow roses being a personal favourite), but no luck. The only yellow rose bushes they have are quite a vibrant yellow called, for some inexplicable reason, Marilyn Monroe. This would almost be an acceptable alternative, but all the Marilyn Monroes have spotted leaves and I’m figuring there is no point in handicapping myself unnecessarily. Opt for a pale coral rose bush. Lots of blooms soon to appear and, more importantly, lots of new growth showing.
While at the garden shop, triggered by Rowan-inspired guilt about how far behind I am on the veg front, in a moment of sheer folly I also buy packets of seeds for rocket, lettuce, beets, carrots, peas and even some cantaloupe.
What am I thinking? Not only is the imaginary vegetable patch still imaginary (a big enough obstacle to growing these imaginary vegetables), but, as previously stated, I’m about to go away for a week, so what the hell is the point in trying to start sprouting seeds in pots?
Pick Mike up from his physio appointment and make my way to the garden to dig a hole for my new rose bush. Roots, roots, bloody roots. Well, at least they’re not rocks (this area having once upon a time been properly dug over by me). While I’m digging the hole I note with great satisfaction that bees are buzzing around the ceanothus and the other rose. Get the new rose bush in and the hose out to soak the area. Water the other plants, thinking as I do so, that I really need to get my shit together to do the watering in the morning, when there is no sun in the garden, rather than late afternoon when the sun is broiling down everywhere.
Go inside for a cold drink, come back out, sit on dilapidated bench, light a fag and survey my domain. Really, I think, it would be nice to get some lobelia and other bedding plants in the bed with the roses and unintentionally dwarf lilac.
I am hoping the poor unintentionally dwarf lilac will eventually produce as much bloom as the genuinely dwarf lilac which I bought for the garden in Walthamstow and which now resides in my friend Irmani’s garden in Camden (see above – looking great, by the way, Irmani!), along with my monster rosemary and, I seem to recall, at least one of my potted rose bushes.
Anyway, sitting there thinking it might be nice to plant some flowers, I begin to wonder, somewhat belatedly you might think, what exactly I want out of this garden.
Do I want, like Rowan, to maximise my independence from the evil agri-business industry (uh, oh, just typing those words has me looking for a soap box, but I will resist a rant about why the hell there are green beans from Kenya in UK supermarkets year round while Kenyans watch their water table sink further and further)? Do I want the satisfaction of consuming my very own vegetables, which, given the reasonably temperate climate on Gabriola, I could do year round? Or do I want somewhere pretty to sit, listening to bees buzz and reading a good book?
Hmm. That is a bit of a poser. The latter option does sound fairly attractive and, let’s face it, would be much less time consuming.
No, no, no, I must resist this evil temptation to throw in the horticultural towel before I’ve really begun.
Go back into the house and ring Kelly. Yes! She can bring her rototiller around on Friday, show me how to use it. (Must remember to ask her to take a photo of me tilling the soil, else the sceptics amongst my readers might suspect that I snuck the errant Billy in to do the job for me.)
Okay, the timing could be better. I wonder how many weeds will take root in the week I’m in Vancouver. But at least I will know they are weeds so can pull straight away. I could actually pot some seeds for Pat to water along with the rest of the garden. Some might even sprout while I’m away.
Of course, I still won’t have any planks (for the building of raised beds) or topsoil. So, still a little ass backwards, but how is that new in this project?
As I find myself wishing the compost in the compost box was ready to roll (as I could use this to improve the quality of my soil and perhaps proceed without having to source and pay for a pile of top soil), I also find myself missing my three-tier worm composter from Walthamstow (also now residing in Camden). Oh, lovely worms, not only do you produce grade A compost in the bottom tray by the time the top tray is full, but you also produce lots of lovely liquid fertiliser which would come in very handy right now for the tomato plants (so much better than resorting to Miracle Gro, which Pat suggests.)
Do an internet search and discover that I could actually get a replacement three tray wormery for a mere $99.95. (Who do they think they are kidding with these prices? Why don’t they just charge an even $100? Not that the price would actually be $100 in this country with its stupid sales tax system which means, unlike unobtrusive VAT, everything costs a lot more than claimed on the price tag. Why can’t they just tell you how much the bloody thing costs? I blame Alberta. Oops, here comes a tar sands rant. Better rein it in.) Too late for the worms to produce their magic this year, but surely worth the investment? Pat, with his compost pile out in the open in the corner of his garden, would, I’m sure, shake his head, but I do love my worms.
A successful expedition to Nanaimo (which could more accurately be called Stripmallville, as that’s basically what it is – miles and miles and miles of malls).
As I push a trolley loaded up with a weed whacker, shovel, rake, hose and various other pieces of pilfered garden equipment, I pass a woman who eyes the contents and comments that I’m obviously going to be starting a lot of gardening this weekend. I tell her I am simply replacing items nicked from my shed. She commiserates, tells me she’s had the same problem – including the theft of a 60 pound garden gnome. (Man, that’s one big garden gnome.) Same story at the check out when the cashier also comments on the amount of gardening I plan and I give the same reply. She’s lost track of the things stolen from her garage.
Okay, I have to ask: What’s with this epidemic of horticultural tea leaves? I know Nanaimo, in addition to its surfeit of strip malls, has a major drug problem, but, bloody hell, how much of a fix can you get selling a garden hose? Is there a dodgy second hand garden equipment store somewhere in the back streets of Nanaimo where the oily, bent proprietor will take all garden-related paraphernalia off your hands, no questions asked? Unlikely, I know, but what other possible explanation is there? (Other than juvenile delinquents just being bloody annoying.)
Succumb at the gardening shop to my need for instant gratification and buy some actual plants: two Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, a mini pumpkin, a spaghetti squash and, despite my complete previous failure to ever get a single red pepper off one, a red pepper plant (never say never). Of course I know this is cheating, that real gardeners grow everything from seeds (no doubt lovingly saved from last year’s abundant crop), but I need to see some action.
Commented in an email to my semi-homesteading in Kent friend Rowan that the whole garden project is so far behind schedule I probably can’t get any veg out of it this year and receive the following reply.
Things you can grown now are:
Lettuce & rocket, keep sowing every couple of weeks and keep growing.
Courgettes will probably still be fine, start a couple off indoors to give them a start.
Peas will be fine.
Beans will probably be fine too - we've had such cold weather that my beans are still less than a foot high.
Sow some kale and sprouting broccoli in pots to plant out later for winter crops. Kale is super hardy and you'll be eating it all winter and sprouting broccoli will fruit in spring.
Sow some leeks in a big pot of compost and when they get pencil width wide you can plant them out, another good winter crop.
You can still sow carrots.
There are some potatoes you can sow in late august for a Christmas crop, well you can in the UK at least.
Beetroots, you can also eat the leafs like Swiss chard (same family).
Hmm. That all sounds rather ambitious. Well, at least I have the excuse of not getting to the chard and kale that the high levels of Vitamin K mess up Mike’s blood count. Otherwise, I am devoid of excuses to not get my ass in gear. Thanks, Rowan.
Time to actually get out into the garden. Watch this space.
P.S. Lovely dinner last night of pasta with prawns and asparagus in a lemon olive oil sauce with lots of fresh herbs.
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?
(Note to readers: You might want to skip the back story. It turned out a lot longer than I'd intended.)
When we bought our house on Gabriola Island in 1996, one of the things we loved about it the most was the fact that it was completely surrounded by trees. This part of the island (attractively known as Phase 4) had been parcelled into ¾ acre plots some years previously. Almost every other owner had, as his or her first act, cut down almost all the trees on their property, but the people who’d originally owned our plot had simply cleared a space in the middle and built a small house on a hill. So, even though there are neighbours nearby, when you look out the windows of this house, all you see are trees. It feels as if you’re in the middle of a forest and we loved it.
Don’t let the photo fool you (as the image we first saw of the listing did). This was taken recently, following a major renovation in 2006. The house was like a reverse Tardis – smaller on the inside than it looked from the outside.
The original house had been a small cabin: the entrance was at the back into the kitchen, with a small bedroom on the other side of a partition wall, a bathroom and livingroom with wood stove. At some point someone had built an extension out front of the original – a large livingroom on top of a semi-finished basement. So, really, despite looking like a two storey house, it was only one – the basement/ground floor not even weatherproofed for safe storage. When I first looked around the house, I saw the tiny bedroom and thought, Oh, no, this will never do. You could barely squeeze a double bed into it. Then I paused, in what was now the diningroom (the old livingroom), turned around full circle and declared the house was backwards. Clearly the large front room was where the bedroom should be, so that when you woke up in the morning you could look out the picture window and see trees, trees, trees. The room with the wood stove should be the livingroom, so you could curl up and admire the fire, and the partition wall should be taken down to provide and open kitchen/diningroom. Oh, yes, and the semi finished basement should be finished as a spare room and writing space for me. (Photos now added here.)
As soon as I realised that, I was in love with the house. Of course, the path of true love never runs smoothly, nor did our purchase of the house. It was listed with a cowboy realtor who offered clients a saving by only charging a 3.5% fee – which they accomplished by trying to cheat the buyer’s agent out of their half of the traditional 7%. Patrick, our friend and estate agent, went basically to war with them. Our first offer was turned down. We dejectedly began to look at other properties on the island, but nothing ever came close. After our second day of looking, I asked Patrick to drive past “our” house. He did and I said, “We want that house.” And Patrick said, “Okay, it’s not going to be pretty, but I’ll get you that house.” And he did. Some of his methods would lose him his licence (if he was still in the business), so I won’t elaborate, simply say, no, it wasn’t pretty.
In February 1996 we rented a van and brought it, loaded with excess bits of furniture from our rented house in Vancouver, to our new getaway on Gabriola.
Things we’d somehow failed to notice, but discovered that first weekend:
Nowhere in the large front room or the semi-finished basement was there a single plug.
The only window in the livingroom was a small skylight.
If you looked up at the ceiling surrounding the woodstove chimney, you could see the sky, an infraction which meant we would not be covered on our insurance if we actually used the stove.
The large, multi-paned windows in the basement were set into, but not attached to their frames. (We discovered this when we touched one and, almost in slow motion, it fell out of its frame onto the rocky ground outside – miraculously not one of its 24 panes so much as cracked.)
Just as we were getting ready to leave, the pump stopped working and no water was coming out of the taps.
Mike, my then partner (and still good friend), groaned and referred to the house as The Money Pit.
Somehow while we were there and from Vancouver the following week, we tracked down the appropriate tradesmen to deal with all these problems.
So where, you ask, is the garden in all this? Patience. There was much to do inside the house during the limited time we had on the island weekends and during the summers. Our most excellent handyman Tom put a picture window in the livingroom. I painted. I ripped up the hideous carpet in the kitchen and bathroom, put down tiles, replaced the hideous carpet in the back “bedroom”. (There was nothing we could do about the hideous carpet which covered the floor space in the middle and front rooms. It was too big a project for me and too expensive.) Where, you ask, was Mike while I was doing all this home improvement? Working on his computer or watching baseball games on television. DIY is most definitely not his thing.
It was only a year or so later, when the inside of the house was transformed as far as I could take it without a major renovation that I started to think further about the outside of the house than hanging a basket of flowers.
Gabriel garden project – phase one
On our pie wedge-shaped lot there was one corner, near the road, which had been cleared of trees and actually got some sunlight. It was a mess and it wasn’t easy to access from the house, what with all the overgrown undergrowth and the rotten tree which had fallen across what might be a path to the sunshine.
It was time and phase one of the Gabriola garden project began.
I recruited Pat, our nearest neighbour, a widower and retired logger (whom I never, at that time, told that I worked for Greenpeace, the forest campaign being somewhat contentious).
Step one: Pat fired up his chainsaw and demolished the fallen, rotten tree. We had what would turn out to be the first of many bonfires, which dealt with the bits of log, fallen branches, overgrown undergrowth.
Step two: I bought some metal poles and wire fencing. Pat helped me hammer the poles into the ground. We wrapped the metal fencing around these and used some of the excess to block the entrance.
Step three: Tom, our handyman, who had just replaced his fence, donated his old gate, which we jury rigged between two trees.
Steps two and three were crucial to combat one of Gabriola’s greatest gardening challenges: deer. I love the deer on the island, get excited when I see one, but, with the exception of daffodils and a few other flowers, there’s pretty much nothing deer won’t eat in a garden. So, a fence and a gate had to be in place before anything else could be considered.
I couldn’t be too ambitious with my gardening plans. At that time we were only on the island weekends and for varying periods in the summer. Mike, a poli-sci prof at UBC, had the luxury of spending more time there in the summer. Unfortunately, his thumb was any shade but green, so there wasn’t much help to be had from that quarter other than watering. There was no question of growing fruit and veg, but I did want somewhere sunny with some flowers, somewhere to while away a pleasant hour or two in the summer, relaxing with a book.
The area which I was transforming was rock-filled and uneven. I dug over part of it, pulling out roots, trying to make a raised patch, surrounded by some of the rocks I’d jammed my shovel and back into. I planted some rose bushes. Because I’ve always loved lilacs, I planted a lilac tree, surrounding it with wire to protect it from the deer which might (could) jump over the fence. I bought a weed wacker to keep the combination of grass, clover and weeds down to a reasonable height.
Mike and I bought a bench. Constructing it from the flat pack was a reminder of two things: Mike’s complete absence of a DIY gene and our total inability to communicate and work together on any sort of construction project. Somehow (I honestly don’t know how) the bench ended up in one piece. I bought some forest green marine paint and coated it. We had a garden of sorts and something to sit on.
The following summer, I somehow wangled three months of working from home and so had a decent amount of time on the island. Now it was time to have more than the bench to sit on. Despite my workaday role as a toxics campaigner, I threw all principles to the wind and bought a white PVC table and chairs. Now we could have lunch in the garden. Hurrah! My plans were still not very ambitious: a few pots with flowers in them, bulbs planted for the spring. It was enough. I had a garden (of sorts).
In 2001 I had an opportunity to take on a one-year contract role with Greenpeace UK. I could (but won’t) go into all the reasons that Mike and I were not functioning well on any level as a couple by then. And I was missing my family in England, tired of the semi-annual fortnight of running around from London to Liverpool to Bristol, double booking my days with lunch and evening meetings to make sure I saw everyone. It was time to go home.
The one year turned into nine, not all with Greenpeace: WaterAid, Homeless Link, the National Union of Students, a surprising stint at the League Against Cruel Sports and a grand finale as acting director of Free Tibet Campaign, all factored into the mix. During that time I’m pleased to say Mike and I remained friends.
My semi-annual trans-Atlantic trips went in the opposite direction, usually at Christmas, which was a wonderful time to be on Gabriola. There’s nothing quite as pleasant as sitting in front of a roaring woodstove on a cold winter’s day. Still, not the right time of year to work on, let alone enjoy one’s garden. The only use for the garden during those trips was for yet another bonfire with Pat to get rid of the bits of wood and other crap (don’t worry, nothing toxic) from various renovation projects. The only flora addition during that period was the planting of a rhododendron to mark the grave of a much loved cat.
Return to Gabriola
In early 2008 disaster struck for Mike. On the lengthy waiting list for knee replacement surgery, he’d had a fall, badly hurting his other leg. He hobbled around for a couple of weeks before finally going to his doctor in Vancouver. The x-ray revealed that his entire femur was shattered and the reason it had broken so easily was that it was riddled with cancer. By the time he was admitted to hospital the cancer seemed to be spreading all over his body. Femur replacement surgery ensued, followed by chemotherapy, followed by radiation. I’d managed a quick visit in April between the enormous pro-Tibet rally at the Olympic torch relay in London and the Dalai Lama’s visit the following month. I went back for three weeks in September, planning to get him back for at least a visit to Gabriola, which he missed terribly and hadn’t seen for months. Unfortunately, just before I arrived, he’d been hospitalised again, this time with pneumonia. Hoping that a visit to Gabriola might still be possible before I left, I came over for a weekend with my friend Catherine to make sure the house would be ready.
It wasn’t and we realised the evening we arrived that we were going to be spending a lot of our time cleaning. Bless Catherine, who is simply the best, she got tucked right in.
Catherine hadn’t been to the house on Gabriola since shortly after we bought it. Despite the three inches of dust on everything (the house sitters having somehow failed to grasp the concept of a dust cloth or furniture polish), she was impressed with the transformation. By then the house had been through its major renovation and was as it should be: an open plan kitchen/diningroom in the back, the “basement” now a finished bedroom with en suite bathroom and, almost most importantly, the hideous carpet in the two front rooms replaced with lovely new carpet. (I’ll let go of my shock and dismay – though it was hard to do at the time – that somehow in the reno process Mike had been persuaded to not only paint all the woodwork and wooden window frames, but that he’d chosen to have them painted brown, a colour I detest for anything except actual wood.)
In the morning light I was keen to show her the garden I’d created. Imagine my heartbreak at discovering my garden was no longer there. Oh, the fencing was still just about standing, but the gate, which had at some point been left open, had warped and rotted, fallen off its hinges. Paint peeled off the rotting slats of the bench. The white PVC table and chairs would never be white again. And of course everything I’d planted was dead, dead, dead. Okay, Mike had been hobbling around with a bum knee for over a year and had been in no position to do any gardening and, okay, the various house sitters who’d been taking care of the cats in his absence hadn’t seen gardening as part of their remit, but, oh, my, it was heartbreaking.
I had to take her to Drumbeg to cheer myself up.
Back in Vancouver, I took Mike, now out of hospital, to an appointment with his oncologist. The news was not good: the radiation which had been tried when the chemo didn’t work, had also failed. There was nothing else they could do. He had maybe a year, possibly less, possibly six months, possibly three. I understand why these guys say something as fatuous as “Try to enjoy the time you have as much as you can”, but it really does seem a slap in the face at the time.
There was no way to get Mike to Gabriola before I was due to leave. He was gutted. Inclined towards neediness for as long as I’d known him (one of the reasons being half a couple with him had proven impossible for me), he put neediness to one side and told me simply and honestly that the prospect of facing his last ever birthday, his last ever Christmas, his last ever New Year would all be a bit more bearable if I could be there. Well, what do you say to something like that? Of course I agreed to come back. Free Tibet had by then appointed a full time director, so I wouldn’t be leaving the campaign in the lurch. I went back to London, found someone to cover my half of the house share in Walthamstow for a few months, gave my notice at Free Tibet and flew back to Vancouver in time for Mike’s 65th birthday in November. We celebrated his birthday with his daughter, son, daughter-in-law and granddaughters. Then we headed over to Gabriola.
It was the worst winter on record. It snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed. There were power failures, during one of which the pump first froze, then fried. It was a week before the plumber could actually get to the house to replace the pump, a week of mornings begun by clambering across the road through the snow drifts to fetch pails of water from Pat’s house. Shovelling the drive, shovelling a path from the house to the woodshed, only to have four tons of melting snow fall with a crash off the roof and the trees and onto the freshly shovelled path. Despite all this, I was for the first time in eight years reminded just how much I did love this place on Gabriola. It was also a reminder of what good friends I had here.
In January I took Mike to Vancouver for his next appointment with his oncologist. The news was astonishing: his cancer, three months earlier still rampant and unstoppable, had gone into remission. I claim no role in this (although sanctification would be gratifying).
This was, as they for some reason say (whoever ‘they’ are), a different kettle of fish. Mike, most happily, was not going to peg it in a matter of months. Unfortunately, he still had major mobility issues. Although he could use a walker (and before I left a cane) over reasonably short and even distances, he was still recovering from femur replacement surgery and still in a wheelchair much of the time. If he wanted to continue living on Gabriola – and he did – he was going to need help after I left. A period of sorting this ensued, before I was able to leave him in the care of lovely Kelly (who became a good friend) and delightfully (for the most part) wacky Claudia.
I flew back to London. Sadly for me (and a lot of other people, I do concede) during my absence the economy had collapsed. Jobs were in short supply and I agreed without hesitation to take on some temporary work writing new business tenders for my friend Irmani’s housing charity. Still, as grateful as I was for the income, the contrast between fronting the hottest campaign on the planet in April 2008 and writing tenders in April 2009 was a bit dispiriting, truth be told. A year of temporary contracts, of filling out applications which didn’t even lead to interviews, of interviews which didn’t lead to jobs ensued. I was out of work and on the ludicrous dole (£65 a week job seeker’s allowance and a weekly housing benefit that was £35 a week less than my actual rent), when a letter arrived from the estate agent reminding us that our tenancy agreement was up for renewal in May.
How, I asked myself, can I renew the tenancy for another year when I don’t even know if I’ll have a job in May? It wasn’t as if I didn’t have options. I had a house on Gabriola. And a garden that needed me. Sod it, I thought. Time to go.
Before leaving London behind, I sign up my cousin Peter to assist me in my summer project of rehabilitating my poor garden. Peter, a lifelong gardener and for many years before his retirement a syndicated gardening columnist, has considerable experience in rehabilitating the sad gardens of his family.
Peter getting dug into his daughter Philippa’s garden in Ireland.
Normally, as above, his involvement is hands on, but distance dictates he will, in this instance, have to direct operations electronically from afar. I am instructed to send him photos and some compass references, which I promise to do.
GABRIOLA GARDEN PROJECT
Day 1 - 24 May 2010
It is late in the evening when I arrive back on Gabriola in May. I decide to put off looking at the garden until the morning, thus able to remain blissfully unaware of quite what a challenge I’ve set myself when I blithely stated in London that I was going to spend the summer transforming the garden.
In the morning I go down to the garden and gulp. The gate is, of course, still broken. The fence is still in need of some attention. The bench is still dilapidated. But now, unlike my previous winter visits, there is also two and half feet of grass and weeds covering the entire area.
Oh, well, I think, first job will have to be getting out the weed whacker. Until that job is done I can’t even begin to assess what needs to be done.
I go to the shed, where I know the weed whacker was hanging in December 2008. Uh, oh. No weed whacker. Or hose (also last seen in the shed in December 2008). Or shovel. Or hoe. Or rake. Or … Zip. Nada. Rien. Absolutely no garden tools of any description anywhere. Buggeration.
I sigh, go into the house, send an email to Gary, who’s done or organised a lot of work on the house and property for Mike in my absence, asking him if he has any idea what happened to the weed whacker and hose, last seen in the shed. He replies that he has no idea, but can lend me both. I tell him I’m a long way away from needing the hose, but the weed whacker would be most appreciated.
Day 2
I go out in the morning, take some more pictures of the garden to send to Peter, make a note to myself that I need to get a compass. Sigh.
Late in the afternoon Gary drops off his weed whacker (and the hose I’d said I didn’t need).
Day 3
It rains.
Day 4
Pat is supposed to be coming over to have a look at the garden and offer suggestions about how the fence might be strengthened – at 88 and with a bum shoulder now, he won’t be pounding posts in again, but I’d appreciate his thoughts.
Of course, it’s raining, so we give up on the idea of garden work and instead go to the pub for a pint and a few games of pool. He beats me 8-2 and the only reason it’s not 9-1 is that he misses the eight ball and pots the cue ball instead in his final shot of the final game. On the plus side, in the one game I did win, I managed to pot four balls in one go – a personal best in a game which I’ve never really mastered.
Day 5
The rain has finally stopped. I pull out the long extension cord (one of the few things still left by the gremlins in the shed), plug in the weed whacker, start whacking weeds. I hear someone calling my name, look around. It’s my neighbour Jamie, welcoming me back to Gabriola. We briefly discuss the sorry state of the garden in general and the bench in particular. I tell him optimistically that it will not be long before he will see an amazing transformation. I’ve already lined up, thanks to Mike, access to a small rototiller, which I shall be able to put to use once I’ve dealt with the knee deep weeds. Jamie carries on up his drive and I get back to work.
I’m about halfway through the job, just beginning to feel some sense of accomplishment when Gary’s weed whacker makes a popping noise, stops working. Smoke emits from the motor. Uh, oh. Borrowed weed whacker now dead. Shit.
Day 6
On my way to the shop, I run into (not literally) Sally, Jamie’s other half and our other neighbour. I tell her the sad story of my missing weed whacker and the demise of the borrowed one. She tells me they have one I can borrow, although it’s somewhat jury rigged, so she will need to consult with Jamie to see if he thinks it’s safe to lend out.
Day 7
It is raining.
I ring Sally and Jamie for the verdict on the jury rigged weed whacker. It seems the starter switch (which probably cost five cents to manufacture) had stopped working. After much checking with shops and manufacturers, he was informed that it could not be replaced and that he would simply have to buy a new one. Jamie was having none of that. He took the handle apart and bypassed the starter switch. The weed whacker now works directly off the mains. As soon as you plug it in (which must be done carefully to make sure it doesn’t start leaping about), it’s going. As long as I follow these instructions, it’s safe to use and I’m welcome to borrow it.
I say I will come by to pick it up if it ever stops raining.
Day 8
It rains. Apparently, unlike the UK, where the first half of May was crap, it had been glorious in British Columbia until the day I arrived. Ha. (Emails from friends in the UK inform me that as soon as I left, beating the ash cloud by four hours, the weather turned beautiful. Grrr.)
Day 9
It’s still raining, but Sally and Jamie are going away for the weekend, so I decide to collect the weed whacker anyway, in the hope that it will stop raining while they’re gone. We have a chat about the best sources of various plants on the island. There is apparently a Thai woman who has a stall at the Saturday market and who sells the best tomato plants and herbs. No point in visiting her at the market this week as I still don’t have a gate on the fence.
Have I mentioned the deer? I do believe I have, but to recap: there is nothing other than daffodils which deer won’t eat. Partly for this reason, people on the island have planted a profusion of daffodil bulbs – not just on their property, but along the side of the road, everywhere they can find some soil. It’s a beautiful sight in the spring.
Day 10
It’s market day, but, as noted, no point in buying any plants for the garden until the rotted gate is somehow replaced. I figure just seeing plants at the market will depress me, so I don’t go.
It’s still raining and I’m getting very impatient and wound up.
Day 11
Still raining.
Bloody hell, I’ve just seen my first BC mutant (technically called banana) slug in years. I’d forgotten how big these buggers are. I remember the first time I saw one after moving to BC in 1990. I pointed in horror, demanding to know what the hell it was and refused initially to believe the person who told me dismissively that it was a slug. Slug? Get out of here. I’ve seen slugs and they should not be the size of a 12” ruler. (Trust me, I kid you not.)
I update my status on my soon to be deactivated Facebook account to mention the slug sighting – with an added message to my friend Rowan, who moved to Vancouver the same time as me, but has been back in England for more than a decade now, that it was indeed one of those slugs. She responds by asking, to the bemusement of other friends, if I licked the slug’s bum? One of the first pieces of nature trivia we somehow picked up in BC was the fact that if you lick a snail’s bum (hard to imagine, I know, and never tried by me) your tongue will go numb.
Make a mental note that if I ever reach the point where I’m ready to start emailing my cousin Peter for long distance gardening advice I will have to mention not only deer proofing, but the threat posed by mutant slugs.
Day 12
Still bloody raining. In a somewhat vain attempt to feel as if I’m doing something, anything to move this project along, I dig out a couple west coast gardening books I bought many years ago and start rifling through them.
Of course they’re both about what you should be doing every month of the year and make the assumption that everything is already in place, simply being properly tended. It’s a depressing reminder of just how far I have to go before I can start to catch up with the bloody books.
However, I do discover in one of the pest sections that mutant banana slugs aren’t actually that big a threat – the ones you have wage war with (beer traps for me) are the little black ones we all know and hate. (I remember going for a walk with Mike one summer’s evening many years ago and seeing an army of black slugs out and about.) This cheers me up, but only for a second or two.
Nowhere in either book is there any mention of how to keep deer at bay. Methinks some internet searching is called for.
When, oh when, is it ever going to stop raining?
Oh, shit. Just remembered the whole point of keeping this Gabriola garden project journal is to set up a blog to share my progress (ha!) with friends and family. It's now June. Better do it.
