What a difference a day makes

A day (slightly drizzly – nothing you’d call actual rain) and a half (slightly busy with other things) spent indoors. When I go down to the garden yesterday afternoon, I can’t believe what’s been happening.

There are, quite undeniably, pears growing on the pear tree. How exciting is that? (Okay, okay, I know there’s a long way to go before I get a pear crumble out of this tree, but still. Pretty fucking exciting as far as I’m concerned.)

The California lilac has burst into bloom and is absolutely buzzing with bees.

You’ll have to take my word for it (as they are apparently camera shy), but there really were at least twenty bees sucking the nectar out of these flowers when I took the photo.

Lots of strawberries have started to appear. This is going to be a great crop – especially as (touch wood) the netting means most of them are for me and not for the birds.

Less good news elsewhere.

So much for my recent excitement that peas were starting to appear. Some have, but only four out of dozens planted. It’s possible the birds got to the seeds. It’s also possible the seeds (third year in a “good for three years” packet) were actually past their sell by date. More seeds will need to be purchased and planted. Peas now well behind schedule. Sigh.

The beets are still coming along nicely and I think (although it may be wishful thinking) that I spy with my little eye some carrot leaves starting to appear. (And as they do, I suddenly ask myself why the hell I planted them in the shallower end of the raised bed. Doh.)

Four squash plants have sprouted. No idea if they’re acorn or scaloppini. (Should have made a note of which I planted where. Time will tell.

No sign so far of any lettuce, rocket or spinach. Too soon to give up on these? Nah. Ever the optimist me.

Coming up roses, part 2

As reported last month, the roses are coming back nicely. Most of the bushes have buds on them.

  

Some are almost ready to burst into flower. Hurrah!

I want to give them as much encouragement as possible, which means surrounding them (and the lilac, which has now had its first dose of Dave’s magic “make flowers” cocktail) with compost and/or sea soil. What I don’t want is the compost and/or sea soil being sprayed all over the rest of the slanting bed when I water them.

I know! I’ll make rock circles around them to keep the good stuff  where it needs to be.

I survey my handiwork. It’s okay and it should do the job, but I’m just not quite sure. I go inside, make myself a cuppa and come back for another look. Nope. Just looks like a job half done. And it’s not as if I have any shortage of rocks, is it?

Much better. Settle myself on the swing with Stella to admire my rocky rose bed. Oh, that smug feeling of a job well (rather than half) done.

Elsewhere in the garden: Came back into the house Monday morning after watering the garden to report thrilling news to my visiting friend Catherine: the regular peas are sprouting! She shares my excitement. It is after all what we gardeners (both proper and useless like me) live for, is it not?

This morning there is further excitement. Despite the fact that one of the cats (my money’s on Roxie) keeps trying to use the veggie bed as a litter box, a row of beet leaves has appeared! No sign yet of carrots, lettuce, spinach, rocket or squash, but it’s still early days, isn’t it? (Or isn’t it?)

Fingers crossed.

A fighting chance

Being a strong, independent woman is all very well and good, but, as previously noted, getting the frames onto the beds is a two-person job and I am but one person. So I ring Cec to ask if he might be able to help me shift them back.

“What about the netting?” he asks. I tell him it’s already attached. “Wow,” he says, “you don’t waste time.” Do I detect a note of admiration in his voice? Possibly. (Possibly not.) He says he is off island today, but can pop round tomorrow. That’s fine. There is plenty else to keep me busy in the garden, because the plumber was here yesterday.

What, you may ask, does this have to do with anything? I’ll tell you.

I have a wonderful plumber. If he comes over and discovers there’s a quick fix to the problem (as is sometimes the case), he doesn’t even charge me. Then there are the times when there is no quick fix, as was the case four years ago when I fried the pump. (My fault entirely, as I’d failed to turn the hose off after watering the garden.) I asked him how much it would be to replace the pump. He told me it would be about $1000. When he saw the look of horror on my face, he said he’d see if he could find a reconditioned pump. Final cost: $200. (As I said, I have a wonderful plumber.)

Several weeks ago I rang to tell him the well pump sounded as if it was going into overdrive when I ran water for more than a minute. “Uh, oh,” he said (echoing my own thoughts). Then I said the magic words: “So I switched over to the cistern and that seems to be working fine.” These are the magic words because they tell him I’m okay for water for the foreseeable, so the free house call can wait while he attends to paying customers.  Now that we’re well into April and it seems to be the end of the rain, the situation is somewhat more pressing, so he turns up. Apparently I need a new float mechanism which he says he will come back with in two days. And he does. Hurrah!

Why hurrah? Because I need the well to water the garden properly.

So, back to the garden.

First job of the morning is shifting the two flowering-nicely, orphan raspberry plants from their current location to the beds which will be covered by the frames.

Second job of the day, prior to planting some seeds, is to give the main vegetable bed a thorough soak. (An inspection has revealed that under the first, moist inch, the soil is bone dry. So much for the extra rain we had last winter.)  An hour later, the bed is ready and the planting begins.

And here we have it, folks: peas (regular and mange tout), and rows of carrots, beets, spinach, lettuce and rocket.

And I still have more than an hour before I have to leave for rehearsal, so I give the small bed (from whence the orphan raspberries have recently been removed) the same soaking and plant some squash seeds.

All given (for the first time, I now realise, in a long time) a fighting chance. Fingers crossed.

The long, hot summer

When I woke up Sunday morning there was a strange, yellowish red light in the house. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Went outside and looked at the sky. Just an overcast day. What was with the light?

It wasn’t until I talked to a friend on the phone later that the penny dropped: the sun wasn’t being blocked by clouds, it was being blocked by smoke from the forest fires burning on Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast. (As of today, there are 185 forest fires burning throughout British Columbia, many in the coastal rainforest where fires are seldom seen.)

People are understandably worried and an emergency meeting is called at the Community Hall that evening. Driving my neighbour Jamie down to the south end for the meeting, neither of us can believe how bad the smoke is. You can’t see Vancouver Island. You can’t even see Mudge. No wonder people are freaking out.

What comes out of the meeting? Well, we all need to pack an emergency getaway bag in case of evacuation (so far I haven’t) and, if the emergency is a major earthquake, rather than a localised fire, we’re pretty much fucked. Okay.

Yes, it’s dry. Bordering on California drought dry. Sprinkler bans in Vancouver and other cities, with special hot lines set up to snitch on sprinkling neighbours. Total ban on campfires throughout the province. (When some total wanker neighbours of mine set off fireworks in the wee small hours of July 4, the Gabriola Facebook page erupted with talk of vigilante justice.)

Here’s how the growing season used to work on Gabriola: Plant in April, sun in May to get things going, rain in Juneuary to get the soil properly moist, sun back in July (if we were lucky) and August.

Last summer there was one day of rain (if you could call it that) between the beginning of May and the end of September.

This year there has been one day with rain (if you can call it that) since the beginning of April. 

I am already harvesting cherry tomatoes. The last time I was harvesting tomatoes in early July was in Walthamstow in the heatwave summer of 2006 when hundreds of elderly people in southern Europe died. It’s crazy.

It’s been too hot to grow peas.

Look at these poor stunted little things. And believe me, this isn’t just my garden. (Of course it didn’t help that these peas were my third attempt, after the fucking birds gobbled up the first two plantings before they could sprout.)

And here’s the dilemma: If I water the garden as much as I should, will my well run dry? Maybe yes, maybe no. The well did run dry some summers ago and was subsequently deepened. It’s probably okay, but am I prepared to take the chance? I can’t afford the cost of repairs if the well did run dry. Nor can I afford to have the cistern filled until such time as it starts raining again. (There was so little rain last winter that the cistern was far from filled.)

So, no, I’m not prepared to take the chance. I’ll keep watering the fruit trees and the berry beds and the tomatoes and the container-planted squash (and, yes, the roses), but I’m officially giving up on the peas.

 Yesterday I pulled up the stunted beets and carrots. (At least the beet leafs were nice in a salad last night. )

Fingers crossed.