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?

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.

In the swing

Yes, yes, I know. It’s been a while. Well, what can I say? I’ve been busy. And I’m a bit busy today, so this is going to be a very quick update.

The most exciting thing in the garden at the moment is this.

Yes, thanks to a friend who wanted rid, I have a garden swing. It is heaven. I foresee a long, hot summer of reading. As you can see, Stella also loves the swing. Wish I’d had a video camera at hand the first time she jumped on – and shot off – it. Comedy gold. (She has now worked out that it doesn’t move as much if she uses the crate.)

Hell, the swing isn’t just the most exciting thing in the garden, it may be the most exciting thing in my life, up to and possibly including my run for the Labour leadership and the recent world premiere of my play. 

There is a great deal of good news (and bad news) to report from the garden, but it won’t be today.

For now I will simply share my new approach to gardening on Gabriola.

 

If I can’t have the island’s most productive garden (and I really can’t), then, as God is my witness, I’m going to have the cutest. And how could it get cuter than this?

More anon.

PS Although this has nothing to do with the garden, I would just like to thank the wonderful cast of That's Nice for breathing such fabulous life into my wacky characters.

Left to right: Marvellous Millicent (Jenn Feenan), Grumpy Greville (Cec Ashley), Charming Charlotte (Donna Deacon), me, Zany Zoe (Madeleine Ani), and Roguish Ralph (Roger Carter)

And I'd like to thank supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Catherine Stewart for driving all the way from Midway to share the world premiere with me.

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.

Attack of the killer tomatoes

Okay, they’re not really killer tomatoes, but, honestly, with the exception of the crazy seven-foot tomato which grew from a seed in Walthamstow, I’ve never had cherry tomato plants grow so tall as this year’s crop.

The thin bamboo stakes, which have always done the job in the past, simply cannot bear the weight, so time must spent with scissors and string, tying the plants to the fence. (Good news, as you will see from the bottom left corner of the photo: the tomatoes are ripening.

Speaking of seven-foot plants…

I’ve never seen a thistle anywhere on the property before, then suddenly this year there were three of them growing by the back path. I have a pretty relaxed attitude towards plant/tree life outside the garden. If some plant wants to start growing, fine. (I even tolerate mushrooms.) One of the thistles is now well over seven feet tall. The good news is that bees apparently love thistle flowers. If you click on the photo to see it full size, you’ll spot the bee guzzling thistle nectar on the top flower. Moments before I took the photo, there were bees on all the flowers. So, yay thistles.

Meanwhile, back in the produce section…

My first beet has been harvested and eaten - roasted with some of Pat’s carrots. Yum! (And, yes, Jane, if you are reading this, that is indeed your old cappuccino maker, sold to me when you were moving to electricity-free Keats Island, and still going strong.)

My first two courgettes are coming along nicely.

If my eyes do not deceive me, the first flower has appeared on one of the squash plants.

I’ve just picked my first batch of peas!

The strawberries are flowering again. I’d completely forgotten they do this. Hopefully the squirrels have forgotten, too, and I will be able to pick some without a bite already taken.

The bench cushions and cover are in place.

And when I’ve finished posting this, I shall be sitting on the bench with a book and a large gin and tonic.

Cheers!