Barn door

So, after Bambo (for the second year in a row) managed to pick his way through the undergrowth to nibble all the leaves from the wisteria weaving through the back fence, I finally do something to prevent future snacking. 

After measuring the fence (9½ feet from fence post to fence post and fence post to tree), I head to the garden shop, which I know sells bamboo screens. I check the measurements for the screens: two metres by three metres. Bollocks. Metric conversion. What does this mean? Go inside to use a calculator, knowing that one metre equals 39 inches. So, 39 times 3 divided by 12 equals 9.75 feet. Hurrah! Purchase two screens and head home.

Spend some time crawling around behind the fence, clipping branches and clearing undergrowth, then start unrolling screens. Two hours later – ta da!

I have a bamboo screen protector for wisteria and clematis leaves.

Here we have it from another angle.

No, your eyes (assuming you can see it) do not deceive you. It is very definitely leaning inwards on the right hand side, as does the fence. I don’t think the weight of the screen is sufficient to actually topple the fence, but I think I might ask Mr Fixit Cec if he has any ideas about strengthening it.

In the meantime, despite the inward leaning, it actually does look rather splendid.

As Howard would say: Job done.

Arghhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yesterday I had leafy wisteria and clematis vines entwined in the back fence of the garden. Even though the clematis failed to flower this year (apparently this is not uncommon when clematises – clemati? – are replanted), the leafy vines spreading across the fence did look quite pretty. 

This morning when I went down to water the garden, there were no leaves left on the vines of either plant. 

A quick look around the rest of the garden reassures me that he didn’t get into the garden itself, merely managed to squeeze in between the trees and the fence. Bastard, bastard, bastard. 

Elsewhere, in long overdue garden news… 

The spaghetti squash plant, despite a profusion of flowers, has produced one squash. The baby watermelon plant, despite a profusion of flowers, has produced one baby watermelon. 

Disappointing realisation that all the squash seeds I planted that actually sprouted are scallopinis. Which is fine, I suppose, except I really did want more acorn squash this summer and it’s now too late to do anything about it. Oh, well.

The courgette plant, which wasn’t looking too promising, is now producing at a decent clip. (Recently made my first batch of Becky’s excellent courgette and gorgonzola soup.)

One nice surprise: For the first time since I planted it two or three years ago, the pink gooseberry bush has produced fruit this year.

Hardly enough for the gooseberry fool I was dreaming of when I planted it, but tasty nonetheless.

The cherry tomatoes are still producing an abundance of fruit.

Given the tastiness of the yellow cherry tomatoes I planted last summer (after fucking Bambo ate all the red ones), I decided to plant another one this year. This is it.

You can’t fool me. Not only are these tomatoes not yellow, they are three times the size of the cherry tomatoes. (Tasty, admittedly, but not what I thought I was buying at the market back in May.

Like the ridiculously early raspberries, the blackberries are ridiculously early this year. 

Started picking them in mid-July and genuinely cannot keep up. This would be a good year to make jam – if I was a jam maker, but I’m not. Even sharing them with Pat, there is an overabundance. I’ve already frozen about two pounds of them. (Good to know I may not have to buy any frozen berries for my cereal over the winter.)

Another nice surprise in “the back 40”. When it occurred to me a couple of months ago that deer do not eat rhododendrons, I decided to plant a couple in the back. Assumed at the time that they were well past flowering time, but look!

One of them is flowering now. And very pretty the flowers are. 

I’m pleased to report that, touch wood (short pause for me to touch both the desk and my head), the well is still holding up. (Or should I say filling up?) An ongoing worry nonetheless.

Apologies that the updates have been so few and far between, but what can I say? I’d rather be in the garden on the swing with Stella and a good book than in the house writing about the garden at my desk.

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.

Berry good(ish) news

This is what I just had for lunch.

French toast with blueberry sauce and strawberries fresh picked from the garden. YUM! The raised bed Cec kindly built for me last year and into which I transplanted the strawberries in January is bearing an extraordinary amount of fruit. I can barely keep up. (I say “barely” because, really, there is no limit on the number of strawberries one can consume in a day, is there?)

Here is today’s haul. 

Yes, that is a combination of strawberries and raspberries.

The good news is that shifting the raspberry plants into better soil in an area with more sunlight has also worked a treat. 

The bad news is that it really is far too early in the summer to have this many raspberries. We’ve had one rainy day since the beginning of May (and it was more of a sprinkly day) and all signs are that it’s going to be another long hot summer. Fantastic! say the beach bunnies. Not so much, says everyone who realises this in not the way it’s supposed to be. May is supposed to be nice and June is supposed to be wet. That’s how we manage to grow fruit and vegetables in our gardens without running our wells dry. 

It’s only just the first official day of summer (so why is it known as midsummer?) and already islanders are wondering how much they dare water their gardens. (If any of them are still watering their bloody lawns they deserve to have their wells run dry.) Not good. 

Oh, yikes. Speaking of midsummer, I need to get ready for this afternoon’s rehearsal. 

As I said on Facebook yesterday, me in a Shakespeare play? I really didn’t see that coming.

Happy Solstice, all.