It's all a bit sad

Wake up this morning to the surprising realisation that there is absolutely nothing I absolutely have to do today. No costume or music meetings for the panto (which I am once again directing). No Zumba class at 9am. (Yes, you read that right. I recently started going to Zumba classes twice a week, despite the fact that they start at the ridiculous hour of 9am.) No preparation for a rehearsal tonight. Nada. And the sun’s shining!

Perhaps it’s time to visit the garden.

I confess I have not spent much time down there since the well ran dry earlier this month. I simply cannot afford to be watering the garden with the water I had to buy to fill the cistern. Going down to the garden to watch things slowly die held no particular appeal.

I head down after breakfast. It’s all a bit sad.

It may look as if there are still quite a few leaves on the pear tree, but what you’re seeing is the bottom third. The top two thirds of the branches have only a couple of leaves between them all.

Not many leaves left on the apple tree. The little tree that gave me eight apples last year didn’t even blossom this spring (more than a little worrying). The pear produced lots of blossom, but no fruit. No idea if the rain which has started to fall and will hopefully continue to so over the winter will be enough to rally my fruit trees.

I don’t honestly remember if the leaves on the fig tree

or the lilac tree

were this yellow and ready to drop before the beginning of October last year. I have a feeling they weren’t.

Time to give up and pull up the courgette and squash. Not a great year for either.

The few cherry tomatoes left on the various plants are too small and too green to salvage for chutney, so I pull them out and leave their containers ready for next year.

On a brighter note, my fuchsia corner seems healthy and is still producing flowers. 

I take a tea break and hang out on the garden swing for a while with Stella (who’s very happy to have me back in the garden). Spend most of the time wondering what, if anything, I should be planting next year. We had a long, dry summer in 2014, but it was neither as long nor as dry as this summer. We really didn’t have much rain last winter (which probably explains the well running dry this year). I shall have to do some research before next spring, figure out which vegetables require the least water and (assuming I actually like any of them) think about planting different crops.

For now I think I’ll do something to cheer myself up. Dahlias definitely don’t need much water. Nor do the Star Gazer lilies. So, let’s get them out of their pots and into the ground.

A nice little new bed that will produce beautiful flowers for me to admire when I’m reading on the garden swing next summer. Not exactly edible, but you can’t have everything, right?

Fuck, fuck, fuck a buck

Today was going to be the day I wrote about how rosy everything in the garden was.

About how well the fig tree was doing now that it was in the ground.

About how many strawberries I will be getting this year.

About the peas and carrots and beets and tomatoes.

And then I went down to the garden this morning to see if there was a rose in bloom for my bud vase.

And there was. One. All the other about-to-bloom roses were gone.

Someone had enjoyed a multi course feast the previous night. I suspect this clown.

Apparently he doesn’t know his place – here, at the back of the house.

See, here’s the thing. I don’t have the world’s best fence, but thanks to the location, it’s almost impossible for a deer to take a running leap at it. Once upon the time there was an actual gate, but in my absence Mike left it open and it rotted. So, what has laughingly been passing as a “gate” for the past four years is some chicken wire stretched across the end of the ever-so-good-for-running-jumps path to the garden. I know Antler Boy must have jumped over it, because the chicken wire was still in place this morning. Up until now I’ve been lucky.

So, how did he do? Well, there’s the chomped roses

and the remaining half of the fig tree, which may or may not survive.

He had a good chomp on the lilac and the pear tree. I don’t know how likely it was that the latter would bear fruit this year, but I think that ship has sailed.

He took most of the young apples.

But not all.

Neither Stella nor I have any idea whether or not the tomatoes, all of which have had their tops chomped off will survive.

Most of the beet leaves are gone (I’ve no idea if they’ll keep growing without leaves), along with some of the carrot tops. And then there are the strawberries.

Almost every leaf gone, although most of the berries are still there. (Easier for the slugs and squirrels to find them.) Are these, I wonder, even worth transferring to the new raised bed in the autumn?

And then there’s this fabulous irony. A few days ago, I took a photo of these now-safely-in-the-garden, proven last year (contrary to the claim on the packaging) to be not in the least deer-resistant plants.

I thought it would be nice for people to see what last year’s red flowers might have looked like. Small, but pretty, I thought. Now they’re gone.

On the plus side (yes, there is an extremely small plus side), apparently Antler Boy doesn’t like squash.

So, having surveyed the damage, I have now, in a pathetic attempt at a barn door/horse solution, dragged the rotten disparate part of the old gate out of the woods, in the hope that this might add enough of a deterrent.

Bastard bastard bastard bastard bastard bastard.

Time to compare and contrast again

I figure every now and then I should probably – for the sake of my sanity – measure and celebrate progress. For example…

the bee-friendly Ceanothus planted in 2010…

is now five feet tall.

Although it did not bloom again this year

as it did last year,

this is the tiny shrub I discovered choked in a bed of weeds in 2010. It is also nearly five foot tall now. (Fortunately, Pat is being very generous with his lilacs.)

And then there’s the fig tree I purchased during Irmani’s visit in 2011.

It may not seem like much, but this plant has never produced more than one (admittedly large) leaf per branch.

And it may not be easy to see, but this year it has four leafs per branch. (Admittedly, as I said to Krys, it’s still going to be quite a while before I see an actual fig.)

No further progress with the giant hole, as I’ve been working on my column. In case you’re interested, it does feature the hole.

Back to digging tomorrow.

On closer inspection

Now that there are some seeds in the ground, it’s time to have a closer look elsewhere. There’s some good news and some bad news.

A long, hard (by Gabriola standards) winter, has taken its toll on the lilac tree. It’s only just finished growing its leaves and it seems almost certain there will be no repeat this year of last year’s excitement of the tree actually blossoming for the first time.

The clematis I thought had died seems to be coming back nicely.

The clematis I thought would survive appears to have died.

There’s no room for sentimentality in this game (well, not much), so I pull the seemingly dead clematis out of its pot and transplant it to the back of the rose bed. It will have to take its chances there.

The root-bound fig tree needs repotting.

On the good news front, the apple tree seems to be doing well.

And, yes, Krys, it is blossoming beautifully. (Although, as we discovered last year, lots of blossom does not necessarily equal lots of apples.)

There are tons of flowers on the black currant bush.

Although it may not be apparent from this photo, some of the raspberry bushes are starting to flower.

As are some of the strawberries. This would be marginally more exciting if every single ripe strawberry of last year’s crop hadn’t had a bite taken out of it. At the time I assumed it was squirrels and decided my only choice, if I wanted any strawberries was to cut off the bitten bit and share with the squirrels. Krys, when she was here, suggested it might have been slugs, said their feeding on strawberries could look like a bite mark. Have I ever actually seen a squirrel on Gabriola? I can’t remember. Ugh. I may have to revise my opinion on sharing. (Short break while I do an internet search. There are squirrels on Gabriola. Hurrah.)

And just look at how beautiful the fuchsia is looking!

Oh, ha, ha. This, of course, is not last year’s fuchsia. It’s one I bought when Krys and I went back to the garden store to get spinach seeds and basil.

This is last year’s fuchsia, transplanted from its root-bound pot to a larger pot, in the hope that, like the fuchsia first I and then Irmani had in London, this one will come back to flower year after year. I’ll keep you posted on its progress.