Ton of bricks

The dastardly fucking deer have now gone for the mint. Really? Bastards.

So, a trip to the garden shop to buy a replacement mint, which I plant down in the garden – definitely not as convenient as just outside the kitchen door.

Dedicated followers of this hapless horticulturist blog may remember when I first started the herb garden by the kitchen.

The project involved the dismantling of a brick “feature” created by one of the many idiotic workmen Mike once employed.

Two years later I’ve finally figured out some use for all the bloody bricks (other than the ones Darryl and I used to weigh down the tarp on top of the leaking woodshed).

Look, an actual vegetable plot.

The stick marks where I’ve planted the first of the lettuce seeds. Wild rocket (arugula here – why?) seeds are germinating. The last time I tried to grow rocket from seed it committed suicide. But not this time, oh, no. This time I haven’t just hoped I had soil in my garden capable of nurturing life. This time I’ve dug in manure and lime. This time the rocket (and lettuce) will thrive. Not only that, but the wild rocket is a perennial. I will have rocket for salads every year for the rest of my life. (Short break while I cross my fingers.)

And look, another bed!

Oh, my god, how good is this well manured and limed soil? It’s a miracle.

Oh, okay, I bought and transplanted broccoli, cauliflower and cabbages. Yes, I cheated, but after the disappointments of 2010, I need some guaranteed results.

The purists can scoff. Someday I may, too – but that will be after I figure out how I can afford and where the hell I can put a greenhouse.

Vodka and tonic, I think

Another day begins with noticing the absence of something. Bastard Bambis have chomped the tops off all my tulips and two of my hyacinths. Again I ask: What the fuck? I’ve grown bulbs in pots by the back door before and never had a problem. Bastards. (I think I may have said this already.)


Fortunately, the other pot – the one in the fenced-in garden has survived.


Well, now that I’m down here – and seeing as it’s stopped raining and is actually a lovely day – I might as well do something.


Yeah, okay, doesn’t look like much, but the first batch of peas have now been planted – both shelling peas and mangetout (which, I learn after baffling the man in the garden shop, are, for reasons I cannot fathom, called snow peas here). Fingers crossed.

Oh, look. The fig tree does appear to be staging a comeback.


Decide it will probably do better if I transplant it into a pot which isn’t as thin and cheap as the one I originally used. (According to the instructions which came with it when Irmani and I bought it last year, fig trees are more successfully grown in pots. We shall see. I’m thinking figs this year are unlikely.

Take a break for a cup of tea and a biscuit. Is that enough for today? Oh, sod it. Go to the shed and get the shovel.


Some hours (and much dirt in my fingernails and on the knees of my jeans) later, I’ve weeded and dug over the second bed.

I need more manure and (oops, nearly forgot) some lime. If the forecast is correct (oh, ha, ha), it’s going to be a warm sunny weekend. Just the right weather for preparing the soil.

Back in the house, two questions remain to be answered.

Is my ass going to be as sore tomorrow as it was last time? God, I hope not.

Shall I have another cup of tea? Nah. Vodka and tonic, I think.

Are you deaf?

Sunday morning, still riding high from three sold out performances of The Death of Me.

Take my cappuccino outside to have a fag and check on the progress of the fuchsia Irmani bought for me last year. Yes, lots of new shoots coming along, so, unlike the one I bought for the garden, this one is going to come back beautifully.

As I turn back towards the door something (or rather the lack of something) catches my eye.


Difficult to tell from the picture, I know, but the two pots of chives, which were coming back nicely, have been nibbled down to the soil, as has the returning parsley. What the fuck? I’ve had herbs growing in pots by the back door for two years and the deer – who are not supposed to like herbs – have never touched them. Bambi bastards.

So, a trip to the garden shop to buy replacement chives and parsley. Clearly these can no longer be safely planted so close to the house.

Down to the garden, where I weed and add manure to one of the raised bed sections. (Yes, cherry tomatoes have successfully grown in this soil for the past two summers, but, as previously noted, they will grow anywhere. Nothing else I’ve ever planted in these beds has survived, so let’s hope the manure does the job.)

As I am completing this task, two women, out for a walk, stop to say hello, as you do on Gabriola. After commenting on the beautiful colour of the blue hyacinths, one of the women points at me and asks, “Are you deaf?”

Not at all sure what I’ve said which could have prompted this, I say (rather appropriately) “Pardon?”

She nudges her friend, looks at me, says, “You are, aren’t you? From the play?”

Ah, I’ve misheard her. Death, not deaf. Yes, I admit, I am the Angel of Death.


They tell me they loved the play, thought I was fabulous.

My soil may be crap, the deer may be chomping my chives, but apparently I’m a star. Not a bad day.

This will be the year

Yeah, yeah, you’ve all heard it before, but seriously, this will be the year.

When I came back in 2010, it was the end of June before it stopped raining and I could get started. Far too late. (Nor did I appreciate how totally crap the soil in the vegetable plot was until my garden guru cousin Peter wrote to inform me that the rocket was flowering before the leaves were large enough to eat because it was starved of nutrients and was desperately trying to reproduce before it perished.)

And last year, after Mike died, well, my heart just wasn’t in it. No surprise there.

Thanks to Krys and Becky, the vegetable plot did get dug over (compost added), but, to be honest, without Mike around, I was hard pressed to think of any vegetable I liked enough to make it worth growing.

Berries, I thought. I like berries. So, blueberry and raspberry bushes (and a black currant) were purchased and planted in the plot. Truth be told, I didn’t get all that many blueberries.

The raspberries were also very disappointing – until I discovered that four out of five of the bushes I’d bought were actually the late fruiting variety. Lots of raspberries in October. How odd.

I did get lots of cherry tomatoes in and they were yummy, but no great horticultural breakthrough, given that they will grow absolutely anywhere.

And so to 2012

Easter Monday. It’s a lovely day and I’m thinking of going for a walk. But, no, I decide. Let’s get into the garden.


The hyacinths I planted last autumn are looking pretty, but I’m not sure the fuchsia is going to stage a comeback.

First things first. I spend some time raking up twigs and thousands of pine cones.

Now I want to move the fruit bushes to side beds. This requires digging and weeding said beds. My neighbours Sally and Jamie, out for a walk, stop to chat, comment on what good quality the side bed soil appears to be. I cannot help but agree with them. Is this where the decent soil in my garden has been hiding? How annoying would that be?


I transfer the blueberry bushes. Difficult to tell from the photo, I know, but there is already a great deal of growth on them. Lots of blueberries this year? One can but hope.


I transfer the raspberries, including a few, small new ones. The roots of these appear to be connected to the larger plants, so not something appearing from the seeds of fallen fruit. Who knew raspberries did this? (Lots of people I’m sure, but until this moment, not me.)


Last year’s strawberries seem to be coming back nicely. Not sure how well the fig tree in the back pot is doing.

Go inside, make myself a cup of tea, come back to sit and admire my morning’s work. I really should stop now, but…


Maybe just dig over part of the vegetable plot? Yes, why not? I’ve actually bought some manure and a bit of topsoil, which I add. This really is going to be the year.

Next day

Oh, my god, how much do I ache? And why the hell is my ass so sore? Surely it’s all fat? Where are the muscles hiding?


Take my cappuccino down to the garden. Okay, the sore ass is worth it. Look at the garden! What a great start.

Becky finds her dream home

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.

Garden news anon. I promise.

Brrrr

Well, I had to give up yesterday. I was wearing a wool jumper and a wool jacket, but my fingers were still going numb as I unpicked stitches. It’s nearly June, for fuck’s sake, yet I still had to start a fire in the afternoon.

The cats were so grateful they both immediately curled up in front of the wood stove.

I was tempted to do the same, but went back to unpicking the stitches on a lovely futon cover I bought last year for a dollar at GIRO. (Gabriola Island Recycling Organisation, not dole cheques, in case you’ve forgotten.) Half the fabric was used last winter to recover a chair in the livingroom.

Today it’s time to use the rest.

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

How long has it been since I last recovered the seats on the diningroom chairs?



Hmm. Well, let me think. I bought the material when I went to visit my heavily pregnant friend Krys in Toronto and drove her to a fabric shop in the boonies. And how old is her son James now? I do believe he will be 18 soon. So, yes, time to recover the diningroom chairs.



Small things, I know, but they make me happy. What a lovely difference.

Here we go again

Well, as I said in my last post, thanks to Krys and Pat, at least I don’t have to start digging over the entire vegetable patch.



Last winter, during a clear out of the shed, I unearthed a big bag of peat moss which I have no recollection of buying and which must have been buried in there for 10 years. Of course, I now know that buying peat moss is bad, so I won’t be doing it again. But the bag’s already there and digging it into the vegetable patch (along with large container of now compost) should help the soil. Not a job for today.

First things first. Sadly, the somewhat bedraggled fuchsias I bought last summer to plant in a pot and mark crazy Clancy’s shallow grave did not make it through the winter.



Something a bit hardier was required. I know from Walthamstow garden that roses (along with a surprising number of other things) can thrive quite well in containers.



So, last week Irmani and I went to the local nursery where I purchased what will be a vibrantly red rose bush.



Oh, and look – I found a pot for it that goes perfectly with the bench!



Serendipitous or what?

Of course, I was quite sad that the fuchsias didn’t make it. Irmani was also sad for me, not least because she is still enjoying the seemingly indestructible fuchsia she inherited from me when I left London last year.

When she heard me making undoubtedly pathetic whimpering noises over a beautiful hanging basket of the same purple and pink fuchsias (which I was again telling myself I could not afford), she very graciously pointed out that I didn’t get a birthday present from her last year and bought it for me.



Have I mentioned what a star she is? Yes, I believe I have.

Well, the fuchsia’s lovely for me to look at as I’m coming into the house, but what about Irmani and other future guests over the summer. Shouldn’t she (and they) have something nice to look at coming and going from the guest suite? Of course she (and they) should. Oh, look, the village market has some reduced to half price (which I can actually afford).



Hanging baskets front and back. Hurrah!

Getting there.

Another, much sadder project

A year ago this week I dodged Icelandic volcanic ash (plus ça change)and flew from London, where I’d been living for a decade, back to British Columbia, where I’d lived throughout the nineties. I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting, moving from a major metropolis to a small Gulf Island. Whatever it was, I certainly wasn’t expecting that less than a year later I would be a widow of sorts, living alone on Gabriola without Mike. No, I certainly wasn’t expecting that.

Nor was I expecting to start this blog again. It had done its job. I was writing again. Well, I haven’t been writing since March when a massive heart attack took Mike away. (Yes, I know I’ve said it before. We all hope that when our time comes it will be quick and we will be oblivious and so it was with Mike, but it is brutal on those left behind.)

Although originally intended to be a blog (requested by friends in England) detailing the transformation of my once upon a time garden on Gabriola, this blog has also covered the transformation of the apartment Mike and I rented in Burnaby. It doesn’t, therefore, seem inappropriate that I should start it up again with another interior transformation.

This particular transformation is tinged with sadness, because Mike isn’t here to see and enjoy it.

In 2006, when our mortgage came up for renewal, we put some more money on it so we could do the renovations we’d been dreaming about since buying the place 10 years earlier, like turning the semi-finished basement into a guest suite and finally replacing the raised-pattern, diarrhoea-coloured carpet we’d inherited with the purchase. I was living in the UK, so poor Mike got stuck living with the renovations. I did my bit when I came over for Christmas that year, painting the finished basement and the kitchen and diningroom. We jointly chose a replacement carpet and the colour for the walls in the livingroom and bedroom. I didn’t think we needed to discuss the woodwork, because it was, well, wood. How was I to know that Mike (who was an easy mark for tradesmen) would somehow be convinced that the wood had to be painted to “protect” it? (Huh? Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction when I found out.) When asked what colour he wanted it painted, he said it should be painted the same colour as the wood – a reddish, mahogany brown. He thought, bless him, that I would like that, because he knew how much I liked the wooden window frames, doors and beams.

It was bad enough with the grey in the livingroom and bedroom.

But with the blue in the diningroom and kitchen it was just vile.

I got rid of the brown woodwork there over the long, snowy winter of 2008/9.

And now it’s also gone in the livingroom.

This transformation was part of the Down With Brown project undertaken last week with my wonderful friend Irmani, who flew all the way from London to pitch in.

Although the walls were probably ready for a lick of paint, I might have put off doing them had it not been for Mike’s perplexing decision to leave the cheap chipboard archways (instead of having them dry walled with everything else) and also paint it brown. (Honestly, sweetie, what were you thinking?)

So the walls had to be painted, too.

Those of you who remember the Burnaby apartment transformation story, may recall that it was all a bit crowded in my bedroom.

Well, there’s rather more space for everything now. (One of the things that sold Mike and me on the place originally was the huge front room with windows on three sides overlooking our “forest”.)

And the white woodwork makes it so much brighter. (Now, if I could only figure out what to do with the surplus to requirement desk parked at the end of the bed. I can’t get rid of it – it was a present from Mike – but there really is nowhere else I can put it.)

After a job bloody well done, I saw Irmani off on the float plane, stopping first for a lovely lunch.

Then she boarded the floatplane for a night with friends in Vancouver.

What a star.

Yesterday I dealt with the last of the ground level brown. (Not that I couldn’t have guessed beforehand, but painting louvered doors is really a pain in the ass.)

Of course, that still leaves the beams. General agreement that this is a job for a professional.

But it already looks so much better I think I can live with it until I can afford to pay someone. (Where is Josh?)

What, do I hear you ask, about the garden?

Well, I confess I’ve been pretty slack about that. (Without sounding flip, which I certainly do not intend, I did have a funeral and an apartment pack up* to sort out.) However, some progress had been made. Thanks to Krys, another wonderful friend, who flew out from Toronto after Mike’s memorial service and came over to Gabriola for a few days, a third of the vegetable patch was weeded (oh, yes, weeds had no problem growing in my barren soil) and dug over in April. My wonderful neighbour Pat did the rest of it. And now I’m finally getting to the rest of it.

More anon.


* When I went back after the move to do a final clean and inspection of the Burnaby apartment it had gone back to being beige throughout. It was as if Josh and I had never painted it, as if Mike and I had never been there. Made it easier to walk in the door in some ways and extraordinarily sad in other ways. When I asked the very nice building manager Zeb what was going to happen about the deposit, he at first told me it would be forfeited, as Mike and I had signed a lease agreeing to be there for at least a year. When I made it clear this wasn’t, under the circumstances, going to fly, he rang head office where someone, under the circumstances, agreed. I was then presented with an itemised list of deductions which meant I wouldn’t get anything back. With the exception of a charge for repairs, which I accepted as Mike’s walker had gouged a few corners, I told him I wasn’t going to accept any other deductions and wanted the deposit back, minus the repairs. This involved a call to someone else at head office, who wasn’t there. By then I just wanted to get out of the building. So I said, “Zeb, when you talk to this woman, you need to tell her three things. One, she is trying to rob a widow. Two, I am a media savvy woman who has good contacts in the press and friends at City Hall. Three, if she doesn’t agree to refund what is owed to me, I will become this property company’s worst nightmare.” An hour later he rang me back to say I would be refunded the amount I was asking. Bit of a letdown, really, such an easy win.