tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52734240963770110142024-03-13T05:47:08.736-07:00Greenridge ChroniclesA blog about the lives of a classical homeschooling family, in the idyllic Wet Coast, err, West Coast, of British Columbia. Oh, I know, it doesn't ALWAYS rain...it just seems like it.sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.comBlogger803125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-75775296752827406192015-03-11T09:03:00.002-07:002015-03-11T09:03:57.303-07:00The Plural Of Trellis<span style="font-size: large;"><i>It started with this:</i></span><br />
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A friend of mine posted it on my Facebook wall. Which sort of drives me crazy, because I always end up thinking "Yes! I need this in the back yard! It's what I've always wanted! I'll be able to grow more pumpkins! I love vertical gardening!"<br />
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Then cold hard reality hits and I'm left thinking "Where is it going to go?"<br />
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Not to mention "Who is going to build that thing?"<br />
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That said, I decided to try this, because it looks cool and well, I'm shallow that way.<br />
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The instructions seemed pretty basic: arch, squash, sunshine, photogenic opportunities. In case you can't tell from the photo, the black arches are PVC pipe, painted black. I think they are imbedded on reebar. The whole thing is situated in a raised box bed. There is some wire fencing in there as well.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PhPAcudWRT8/VQBY7Zlb8GI/AAAAAAAAFXE/poVyNn9IYeE/s1600/DSC_0042.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PhPAcudWRT8/VQBY7Zlb8GI/AAAAAAAAFXE/poVyNn9IYeE/s1600/DSC_0042.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a>I went outside and looked around for a likely spot for my own Squash Arch.<br />
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Have I mentioned that I live in a very slopey yard?<br />
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See what I mean? If this isn't a hill, I don't know what is.<br />
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It makes things like Squash Arches kind of challenging to recreate.<br />
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But I like a challenge, so I kept on looking around.<br />
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This is where the pool used to be. Happy days we had with that pool, until it developed a leak. And the restraining board there to the left stopped restraining the natural slump of the hill. The pool ended up slanting a bit, which had some of us concerned that 300 gallons of water might one day be visiting the back yard of the neighbours down the hill.<br />
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Which the neighbours might not like. So we didn't fix the leak in the pool. We endured many a caustic remark from the unhappy offspring, who had really enjoyed swimming in that pool throughout the summer. But our options were limited by that dratted slope, so we kept a stiff upper lip and went to the beach more often. Eventually the offspring got older and bigger and stopped complaining. Well, stopped complaining about the <u>pool</u>, that is. They found new and more exciting things to complain about. <br />
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Anyhow, as I surveyed the yard for the perfect Squash Arch site, my gaze happened upon that spot. It was fairly flat. It received a decent amount of sunshine. The rowan tree was kind of in the way but that was easily remedied by removing a few branches. Now all I needed was <strike>someone to do that actual labour for me</strike> some planks, a saw, some stakes and screws, and some soil. </div>
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So, here is my <i>Tale of a Squash Arch And How It Got Built</i>. Labour by Sheila. Inspiration by Cammie, who is now limited to posting no more than one cool garden idea per month on my Facebook page (or I'll make her come over and help me). </div>
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First off, get some tools near by so you don't have to keep trudging up the hill into the basement to get a hammer, or some screws, or a drill. Trust me on this. I used a metal bar and a sledge hammer to make the holes for the stakes in the ground because our yard seems to be situated on solid &*$#@ rock. I also used a drill, some screws, some old stakes, and some pine boards. </div>
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1. Saw branches that might be overhanging said project. Be careful that branches don't crash down on your head. Have a band aid near by in case branch falls on arm and breaks some skin. Curse friend who posted stupid Squash Arch idea on your stupid Facebook page.</div>
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2. Remove cold frame. Wonder where to put it and drag it awkwardly around for a while, tripping over bricks and irrigation pipes, until you find a good spot. Feel increasingly frustrated that you didn't plan project out a bit better. Kick pine boards and curse as knee makes a popping sound.</div>
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<span style="text-align: center;">3. Get sledge hammer and insert stakes into ground. Realize that you need the metal bar to make the holes for the stakes. Realize that the stakes are really long and will eventually need shortening. Hit finger with sledge hammer. Realize that neighbour children are listening to you swear. Curse friend a couple of times. Wonder what SHE is doing right now. Curse some more.</span><br />
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4. Request that <strike>child slaves</strike> some of the children come out and assist in building Squash Arch. Make it sound REALLY fun. Ignore their hesitation and pretend they really ARE enthusiastic. Sieve compost and fill bed with four loads. Discover the scissors that Eldest Child lost in the compost last summer. Discover a clay pot that someone tossed in the compost last summer. Ignore complaints of <strike>slaves</strike> children. Wonder briefly if so much compost will be too much for pumpkins, then decide to think about this another time. Watch <strike>slaves</strike> children sneak away while you're changing your band aid.<br />
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5. Show husband new bed, original Squash Arch photo, and ask for assistance in inserting reebar and PVC pipe into hill. Cite exhaustion, sore knee, bruised arm, etc. <br />
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6. Listen uneasily while Husband suggests new configuration of Squash Arch and points to white trellis in garden. Do that, he says. It will look better, he says. </div>
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7. Ponder uneasily until Husband offers to build Exact Replica Of Said Trellis on new Squash Arch site, then capitulate, because, well, it sounds cool.<br />
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And I'm shallow that way.<br />
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<br />sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-22507258402791936732015-02-13T10:11:00.002-08:002015-02-13T10:11:34.303-08:00World Radio DayToday is <a href="http://www.diamundialradio.org/?q=en" target="_blank">World Radio Day</a> 2015, although you'd never know it from listening to the radio here. Our national broadcaster, the CBC, said nary a word, which just shows you what a slack-assed job they're doing these days. I only know because I was listening to the BBC World Service at 2am this morning, where they announced the fact and followed it up with - you guessed it - a feature about young people and the importance of radio in their lives. Us 40 and 50 somethings are always forgotten in these kinds of features, and yet it seems, judging from the habits of my kids and their friends, that we middle-agers are the demographic that keeps quality radio alive.<br />
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I don't know if radio is important in your life, but it's one of my constant pleasures, from the moment I received my first radio as a 9 year old (a crackly AM set contained within a black stuffed poodle with his VERY OWN PINK PLASTIC BRUSH), to now, when I generally listen on my iPad mini via the app Tune In Radio. There I can listen to any show I like, on any station I like, although I mostly gravitate to the BBC World Service and NPR. I'm a lot fussier about my radio these days: as I kid I liked Top 40 shows and didn't mind those horrible blaring commercial breaks, but now I prefer to listen without commercial interruptions. My favourite shows are mostly about gardening, food, or history, but some voices have me in thrall with their accents alone. Alan Johnson, I'm talkin' to you.<br />
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In fact, I hold such devotion to certain radio hosts that I sometimes think of them as my radio boyfriends (and girlfriends). My kids think this too odd and creepy to contemplate but they're still young and unmenopausal. They don't lie awake wondering where their sound sleeps of old went. My kids are, for the most part, uninterested in historical clips from the past, news clips from Syria, or quirky stories from around the world, although Eldest Son is starting to listen to Wittertainment and The World, so there IS hope for them yet.<br />
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For the most part I have no idea what these voices look like, although I just now googled PRI's The World to get Marco Werman's name (for the past 3 years I thought he was saying Marco Gorman and spent way too many moments wondering what sort of parent would name their child MarcoGorman). I like it this way. The feeling their voices gives me reminds me of a Leonard Cohen poem:<br />
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<b>I heard of a man who says words so beautifully </b></div>
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<b>that if he only speaks their name women give themselves to him.</b></div>
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<b>If I am dumb beside your body </b></div>
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<b>while silence blossoms like tumours on our lips </b></div>
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<b>it is because I hear a man climb stairs and clear his throat outside our door.</b></div>
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Oh steady on. I'm not going all 50 Shades on you. I'm just writing a paean to my favourite radio hosts on this day, this World Radio Day. I love listening to you all. I hope to listen to you all for many years to come. Hats off to them. Hats off to the radio, from one of your devoted listeners.<br />
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<u>Some of my favourites:</u><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Dan Damon, Ros Atkins, Marco Werman, David Green, Razia Iqbal, Kai Ryssdal, Karin Giannone, Steve Evans, Alan Johnson, James Menendez, James Coomarasamy, Owen Bennet-Jones, Julian Marshall, Nuala McGovern, Mark Kermode, Simon Mayo, Sheila Dillon, Tim & Joe, and everyone at Gardener's Question Time (James Wong, Bob Flowerdew and Bunny Guinness - you rock).</span><br />
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<br />sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-41121321882122336732015-02-02T17:05:00.001-08:002015-02-02T17:05:06.984-08:00End of Month View : January 2015<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I see from my last post that I haven't posted here since my LAST End of Month View. I think this is what happens when the gardener is out IN the garden: the blog suffers.<br />
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<i>This post is part of a meme hosted by Helen over at The Patient Gardener's Weblog (her blog can be found <a href="https://patientgardener.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">here</a>). Thank you Helen!</i><br />
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Yes, you heard that right: the garden has actually seen a lot of action this month. The weather has been mild and relatively dry, considering it's the Dank Dark Depths of Winter, so I've been able to do quite a bit out there. Granted, it's quite boggy and slippery, but it's also the perfect time to be uprooting ill-situated shrubs and breaking ground on new plots. Well, to a certain extent. You don't want to be digging something up right before temperatures plummet, but if the week shows a long period of mild weather and the plant is dormant (and you know how to dig the plant up without disturbing the root ball), I say go for it. </div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AHYBJC-2COM/VM-5B_WskJI/AAAAAAAAFTM/7pl5wZ6_pEo/s1600/DSC_0004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AHYBJC-2COM/VM-5B_WskJI/AAAAAAAAFTM/7pl5wZ6_pEo/s1600/DSC_0004.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a>This photo shows a new bed I built on the edge of the slope in the backyard. It used to be a steep slope that was all but impossible to mow. People tell me "get your kids to mow it" (you know who you are) but no one in their right mind wants to slide around on a 40º slope with an electric blade whipping around their feet, so I'm trying to find an acceptable alternative. After a certain amount of slog, I now have a bed that runs along the top of the slope. Taking my cue from Ye Great Terracers Of Olde, one side of this bed is turf and wide planks topped with (purely decorative) red brick, while the other side is a single layer of red brick. I use brick to delineate (and because I like the look of it), but it's also very useful in case I decide to demolish the bed later: no concrete posts to dig up.<br />
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And yes, this IS the lengths I go to to keep the cat and squirrels out of the garlic. For some reason this bed is a favourite of all digging & pooing creatures. I don't quite grasp why, but I've learned to work with it, as all practical gardeners do.<br />
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Soon the garlic will be big enough to repel all but the most determined creature.<br />
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I took this photo to show a friend how I deal with Overly Enthusiastic Strawberries. Most of the gardeners I follow do the sensible thing and cut the shoots off during the summer. The only trouble with that philosophy is that the height of summer is also when there are vegetables to preserve, tomatoes to can, and weed growth to cope with, not to mention holidays to go on and beaches to visit. Thus this task falls down to the very bottom of the To Do list. Come winter the strawberries have (not so) magically quintupled. But it's not all doom and gloom: I hack off the newbies and tuck them into trays like this. When the older plants get, well, old, I replace them with these. If this tray looks dusty, it's because they have just had kelp meal sprinkled over them. Kelp meal is truly Magic Fairy Dust. Don't believe me, visit in June and see for yourself. One spring, from a two rows of plants measuring 10' by 3', I canned 20 quarts of strawberry jam, froze at least at many bags of puréed berries, and made buckets of strawberry popsicles and crisps. The strawberry crop was then abandoned by my erstwhile strawberry pickers, who claimed utter exhaustion.<br />
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This is the bed where the strawberries used to grow, sharing the space with tomatoes and brassicas. This year, given the rebellion in the ranks of the strawberry pickers, I've decided to revamp it so that there are strawberries on the right side of this bed, alongside the grass. They used to be on the left side of this bed, which hard to cope with when the tomatoes were tall. This way no one can claim that they are inaccessible. The reemay on the bed is to shield the fall rye from being eaten by the birds. It looks rather pathetic in this photo, doesn't it? I think I've lost heart with my fall rye: last year I seeded a massive bag of the stuff and some rodents ate it all. In one night. Let's just say that I'm not holding my breath that this batch will last long.<br />
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This is the Side Perennial Bed (official title). There are two roses, Lysimachia punctata, Hypericum perforatum, crocosmia <i>Lucifer</i>, <i>Mrs Bradshaw</i>'s geum, <i>Stargazer</i> lilies, and some rather evil Bishop's Weed. And it's all a little too rampant for my tastes, so I am planning an overhaul this spring. Ideally I'd like to see graceful billowing spots of colour but all that seems to happen here is a rude elbowing race for domination. Come late summer it's a mess.<br />
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I welcome suggestions. Practical ones, mind you. Oh, and I've purchased a Weed Dragon to combat the Bishop's Weed. Those dratted bishops. What did they think they were doing, spreading such a rapacious gospel.<br />
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I took this photo to show how clever my Step Building System is, but this is a rather horrible photo, isn't it. I thought it would show an equal view of a) steps that were neatly formed, b) steps that were on their way to being neatly formed, and c) steps that were Still In The Process.<br />
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Perhaps if you click on the photo you can see it more clearly.<br />
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Anyways, the system is thus: use newspapers to build the risers. It WILL look odd and messy and you must accept this for now. Let it sit for a season, flinging weeds and dirt every now and then until the blocks have built up enough for you to stomp down hard, creating solid and recognizable steps. In the meantime be really really careful walking down them after a rain. Newspaper is very slippery when wet.<br />
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Eventually I'll let the grass grow over them, so it looks much more....um...photogenic.<br />
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I planted a lot of dwarf kale this summer and it's still going, even now. It's such a beautiful greeny blue. Kale is the most wonderful thing to have in the dead of winter, because you can ignore the wildly overpriced bunches in the shops, content that you have your own at home. Even when it snows the kale remains green and harvestable.<br />
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Johnny Jump Ups are the most cheerful little plants around. I love them. They seem to thrive in winter here.<br />
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This one seems to have emerged unscathed by slugs.<br />
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Give it time, says the voice in my head. Give it time.<br />
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A slug is probably just waiting for me to leave.<br />
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I was never one for primroses until I discovered the perennial varieties, which are quite irresistible. This one is <i>Quaker's Bonnet</i>. The best feature of these primroses is that they return each spring <b>exactly</b> the same as before.<br />
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The brightly coloured ones in the garden centres right now always seem to revert to yellow, that is when they're not shrinking into pathetic little knots of misery, soon to be demolished by slugs.<br />
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Alright, let's switch to what's going on in the greenhouse.<br />
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Here we have some lettuces in a gutter. I'm going to transplant them into larger trays, leaving them in the greenhouse until they get big enough to start harvesting. Come March or April I'll transplant them out, under plastic covers.<br />
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A flower that always seems out of fashion by most of the gardeners I know, but I love it: the sweet pea. There is no smell quite like them. They are the BEST cut flower, as long as you remember to keep cutting them.<br />
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This year I've got several varieties: <i>April in Paris</i>, <i>North Shore</i>, <i>Spencer Ruffled</i>, <i>Blue Celeste</i>, <i>Royal Wedding </i>(whose I'm not sure), <i>Zinfandel</i>, and some seeds from last year's peas, the names of which I have lost track of.<br />
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I inherited this bedraggled lemon tree in the summer and while it doesn't look all that healthy, it currently has 23 lemons on it. Thank you Mr Seaweed Extract.<br />
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It came with a whacking great dose of scale, sadly. I hate scale - it never seems to go away. It lurks in the soil, at the base of the plant, waiting for one to look the other way. My usual method is to spray with soapy oily water, then wipe, wipe, wipe. That splash of blue in the photo? A cloth I keep there to wipe up any stray drips of oil.<br />
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Artichokes. I love artichokes. They take up a lot of space, true, but up here in the Pacific Northwest they are a pricey vegetable to buy in the shops, so I grow them instead. And when they get congested you divide them, creating yet MORE plants to take up garden real estate. Which I don't mind in the least, I love them so much.<br />
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After a number of years arguing with Peach Leaf Curl on my two nectarine trees, I happened upon a charming video of the even more charming Monty Don, explaining how to combat it: cover the plant with plastic through the months of December to March. This will prevent the disease from splashing up in the winter rains and re-infecting the plant. Apparently the tree will eventually "grow out" of it, but I'm not sure I believe that. It's not pretty, but it works. I'm all for that.<br />
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Finally, the <i>Abeliophyllum distichum</i>, looking all excited about the prospect of spring. This plant is also known as White Forsythia and while it's not much to look at, it smells like heaven (assuming heaven smells good, that is).<br />
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So there you go, what my garden is doing right now. It might be winter, but it's a very exciting time in the garden. This is why I never feel gloomy in winter: there is always something to feel hopeful about.<br />
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<br />sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-71737837226490294722015-01-02T11:43:00.002-08:002015-01-02T11:43:46.122-08:00Garden Meme : End Of Month View In the run-up to Christmas I spent a lot of time in the kitchen baking and watching older Gardener's World shows on my mini fruit-based device. There is nothing like watching someone else do a significant amount of digging and weeding, unless it's watching someone else doing a lot of planting or pruning. Meanwhile it's cold and rainy outside and I'm in the kitchen making mince pies: it's the best of both worlds.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">Stumpery in December</td></tr>
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Of all the online shows I watched this year I particularly liked the Great British Garden Revival series, because everyone had their own fascinating and cherished axe to grind.<br />
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Here is a stumpery I constructed last March after watching Chris Beardshaw wander through Prince Charles' stumpery. I probably shouldn't mention them both in the same breath because Charles' stumpery is significantly more impressive than mine, not to mention the fact that it has its own head gardener. Mine only has me. No salary (with Head Gardener perks). No Prince Charles. No stumps even. <br />
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My stumpery was constructed in the area I call The Shade Garden, using random bits of driftwood I picked up at the beach (I live on a large island in the Pacific Northwest). These bits of wood aren't terribly practical because they tend to rot, but my theory is this: by the time they DO rot (two years hence), I'll have tired of having a stumpery and want to do something else with the space. The rotted wood can go in the Long Term Compost. It's a win-win situation.<br />
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Around the wood I planted primroses, hellebores, fritillaries, and a few miniature daffodils. It is perfectly lovely in spring, invisible in summer, and - distressingly - rather lacking in Serious Gloom in winter. I'm thinking it's the lack of large stumps. The white tubing (slightly-above-ground watering system) doesn't help, but it's there so it doesn't crack during freezes.<br />
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Here is a side view of the giant hedge that renders my stumpery invisible in summer. I'm not entirely sure what it's made of, but there are at least three types of shrub. When we first moved here it was horribly overgrown and I intended to do some thinning, but when I saw all the birds flitting around, not to mention how it greened up and created a <b>massive</b> privacy screen, I decided to concentrate on making it thicker and fuller. I used a technique recommended by various Hedge Pundits, which mostly involved breaking the longer branches and forcing them sideways so they sprout out and create a thick barrier. Irritatingly, the hawthorn that dominates this section accumulated so much ivy this year that our Highly Fecund Squirrel Resident (aka <b>HFSR</b>) moved her nest out of the carport and into this tree. While I admire HFSR's tenacity (she has about 12 babies a year and is <b>very</b> industrious) I don't admire how she (along with her babies) chews up my soaker hoses, digs up my garlic, rootles around in my plastic trays, and generally makes a mess of everything, so I went in and cut out most of the ivy. In doing so I discovered where all the fluff from our barbeque cover had disappeared to. Nice.<br />
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Here is one of the winter vegetables I like to grow: purple sprouting broccoli. At least, I think it's purple sprouting broccoli; it could be white sprouting broccoli for all I know because the plant tag has mysteriously disappeared. Along with my memory.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3AeZGUH5B3A/VKXGn9qXWaI/AAAAAAAAFRk/LAqUC4CMeLM/s1600/DSC_0053.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3AeZGUH5B3A/VKXGn9qXWaI/AAAAAAAAFRk/LAqUC4CMeLM/s1600/DSC_0053.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a>The greenhouse has some trays of sprouting lettuces. I intend to plant these into a cold frame adjacent to the greenhouse in another month. Our garden is a bit of a heat sink even in winter. The container on the far left has grass seed so the cat has some green to munch on. The kids saw someone do this online (far more decoratively than I have done) and demanded that we do this because Toffee desperately NEEDS a cute little container of grass. I didn't want to go to TOO much trouble in case Toffee decides he isn't into grass, so I used a plastic tub instead of an adorable kitty-shaped boot-like object (and saved myself at least $20). Toffee is a very fickle cat. I'm also hoping he doesn't eat it then find a handy corner of the house to puke in (I look further ahead than my children).</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3PlwW3RR_Io/VKXGbRZBWMI/AAAAAAAAFRc/NZS0kevL9lI/s1600/DSC_0057.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3PlwW3RR_Io/VKXGbRZBWMI/AAAAAAAAFRc/NZS0kevL9lI/s1600/DSC_0057.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a>It's hard to see but at the base of that wooden planter is a catnip plant. This is an outdoor treat I leave for Toffee. Unfortunately he seems to have some kitty friends who also like catnip, so periodically I have to protect it with some shelving, because Toffee only goes out when it's absolutely necessary. As in: when it's ABSOLUTELY necessary (cue frantic meows at 4am). He'd really rather I get him a litter box but that is never going to happen. </div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7Xn3ueAF7uQ/VKXHGcWemSI/AAAAAAAAFRs/XaNP5uJAPh4/s1600/DSC_0058.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7Xn3ueAF7uQ/VKXHGcWemSI/AAAAAAAAFRs/XaNP5uJAPh4/s1600/DSC_0058.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a>Here is where I've planted the garlic this year. Right up against the house, under a peach tree and two nectarine trees. It's prime garden real estate but after getting white rot two years ago in the old garlic bed I've been hard pressed to find a new (and equally convenient) spot. Oh, and that fencing? It serves a dual purpose: to keep Toffee from thinking this is a large litter box and to keep HFSR from burying her acorns under my garlic. If you look slightly to the left (at about the third dwarf kale plant) you will see a slight depression: courtesy of HFSR. Or Toffee. Not sure.</div>
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One of my most concerted efforts has been in the Winter Vegetable Gardening department. I read books by people like Eliot Coleman or Mark Diacono and think "I want winter salads!" but the reality is that you need to be organized to have winter veg (that and attend Seedy Saturday lectures where you'll learn that celeriac needs to overwinter to grow to any significant size). The other photo is one of the artichokes. It looks as though they are going to survive the winter. They aren't the most stalwart of plants, sometimes easily killed during a freeze or a particularly wet winter. You also need to divide them regularly because they are, as a perennial, on the Shorter Lived side. Artichokes are another plant that hogs the garden real estate but I love them (I tried to resist saying "and true love lasts a lifetime" but I couldn't help myself).</div>
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Another encouraging photo: a Pink Lemonade blueberry with what looks like a seriously good crop of Potential Blossom.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-H5etnWxD7Zs/VKXIfoynNVI/AAAAAAAAFSk/nUOA5O-X010/s1600/DSC_0078.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-H5etnWxD7Zs/VKXIfoynNVI/AAAAAAAAFSk/nUOA5O-X010/s1600/DSC_0078.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a>This is the only blueberry I've got in a pot and as it gets shunted around the garden throughout the summer I'm surprised it is doing at all well. I haven't found the right place for it. I've got several pots in this situation. I'm not keen on this state of affairs but that's the way of gardening, isn't it? Some things work the first time and others take forever to figure out. At least the Pink Lemonade is forgiving. </div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AjEIew7OAEg/VKXGT3oApRI/AAAAAAAAFRU/tI3Q9Uyg7sI/s1600/DSC_0056.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AjEIew7OAEg/VKXGT3oApRI/AAAAAAAAFRU/tI3Q9Uyg7sI/s1600/DSC_0056.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a>A Calamondin orange, one of the greenhouse residents, thick with blossom (and fruit). I was never a big citrus person before we moved here, but now I love them. They bloom in winter, which gives the greenhouse the most fabulous scent, one to rival sweet box (which I have in the front yard).</div>
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The garden always looks slightly uninviting in winter, something I've been trying to work on. In warmer seasons this is a rose border: Crown Princess Margarita, Pink Peace, and a rose I dug up from a rental house we once lived in. I didn't even notice it the first year because it was so neglected, and when we left I had a premonition that it would be even more neglected with the next tenants that I decided to take it with us. It's tall, pink, and deliciously scented. They compete with the comfrey, which I grow for fertilizer and for the bees. So far the comfrey is ahead by a nose, so that's another one for the Problems To Work On this spring.<br />
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The oak barrel in the distance has a fig tree. I'm not thrilled with this fig but I can't bring myself to uproot it and toss it, so I'm doing the next best thing: ignoring it.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TdHND83A61Y/VKXIQWL2D3I/AAAAAAAAFSc/k99mhK-LLPc/s1600/DSC_0073.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TdHND83A61Y/VKXIQWL2D3I/AAAAAAAAFSc/k99mhK-LLPc/s1600/DSC_0073.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a>Another area I intend to work on: this willow used to be an upright specimen, as in straight up and down. Those pieces of wood on its trunk were steps for the kids so they could climb up it. Over a space of six years it's leaned further and further over, until we had to remove the swing, the rope ladder, and the float swing. Finally my husband decided to scalp it. My mum has a neighbour who did this to their willow and it looks quite beautiful now - like a small green fountain. I'm hoping that this one will rehabilitate similarly.<br />
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That blue painting is another one of my beach driftwood finds. That's a blue whale painted on the front.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IMzcyCL4ii8/VKXIhWlJakI/AAAAAAAAFSs/djTrZthnyzM/s1600/DSC_0081.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IMzcyCL4ii8/VKXIhWlJakI/AAAAAAAAFSs/djTrZthnyzM/s1600/DSC_0081.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a>When we moved here all the apple trees looked like this. Witches knots. I've been working on them, which has been quite slow because I had to learn all about pruning fruit trees at the same time. I started an espaliered fence, only to discover that I'd used two tip-bearing apple trees when I was supposed to use non-tip-bearing apple trees. Oh joy, I thought. I didn't even KNOW there were such things as non-tip-bearing apple trees.<br />
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Another view I'd like to work on this spring. I want the word ENTICE to come to mind when I look down this alley. Right now the word that comes to mind is SLANTED. Not the same thing, somehow.<br />
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And finally, a view to the west. The Garry oaks add a note of gravitas to the scene, don't they?</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>This has been a post to go along with Patient Gardener's End of Month View meme, which you can find <a href="http://patientgardener.wordpress.com/2014/12/31/end-of-month-view-yearly-round-up/" target="_blank">at this link.</a></i></span></div>
sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-30728196045475570492014-12-28T15:18:00.001-08:002014-12-28T15:18:08.711-08:00Bird Business<br />
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<span style="text-align: left;"><i>I've had this post sitting here unfinished for at least ten days, due to the usual Christmas madness. However, after flicking through a few updates from much more regular bloggers, feeling slightly neglectful (and finding myself with a spare hour), I sat myself down in front of the computer and thought "finish this thing!"</i></span></div>
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<span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /></span><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /></span> Here is our Official Resident Hummingbird. At least, I SAY he's our Official Resident Hummingbird but we're not on super intimate terms and I doubt I could pick him out of a lineup. He could be an offspring of our first Resident Hummingbird for all I know. Given how obsessed he is with keeping every other hummingbird away from his feeder, my rough estimate is that these birds can't last too long. </div>
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<span style="text-align: left;">Suffice to say that these are unusually territorial birds. </span>It could be well below zero outside - all the feeders but his could be frozen and all the birds faint with hunger and cold - and our bird would still say "BEGONE! This is my feeder and I don't share!" Every single time. Not a method I approve of, but there you have it.</div>
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<span style="text-align: left;">Oh, and the feeder he's so intent on protecting? It's a good twelve feet away from all the other bird feeders. We've moved it three times, mostly so the other birds get a chance at the food in </span>the other feeders. </div>
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He dive bombs anyone who goes near his feeder, including me.<br />
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Here he is flying off, fed up with my constant camera clicking.<br />
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He doesn't suffer <strike>camera snappers</strike> fools gladly, sadly.<br />
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I like the way he sways his head back and forth as he surveys his perimeters.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZzKGtLDLgQc/VJRWROdowzI/AAAAAAAAFPk/RSKU4xFgoCA/s1600/DSC_0028.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZzKGtLDLgQc/VJRWROdowzI/AAAAAAAAFPk/RSKU4xFgoCA/s1600/DSC_0028.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a>Finally got a decent shot of a Stellar's Jay the other day. This is a moment of triumph, I tell you. These birds are rudely camera shy when in my back yard. Whenever they see that lens, no matter how I lurk, they let out an outraged squawk and fly away. It's exasperating, particularly when there are twenty of them bouncing around on the Garry oaks. Particularly when I've set up a special peanutty feeder just for them, just for our Camera Encounter. </div>
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The other day I took approximately 78 shots of an odd encounter between a few Stellars jays and a Cooper's hawk - an encounter I've been told is quite common but I'd never actually witnessed before. I had no idea they were so fearless. This hawk, who single-handedly keeps the sparrow population in check, spends an hour most afternoons perched at the very top of the Garry oak, chewing on some unlucky small bird. He's very thorough, rarely leaving more than a teeny scrap behind when he's done. Ask me how I know? It was when I found a small yellow beak on the ground under the tree. Just the beak. Another time it was just a leg. A sparrow leg is a very small thing. Anyhow, he's thorough, our hawk. </div>
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Looks kinda foolhardy, doesn't it, sitting there jeering at a hawk? The jay then makes his way up the tree to a branch about four feet away from the hawk. Unbelievably the hawk appears uneasy. He keeps glancing at the jay and has completely stopped grooming himself. </div>
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Would you call this harassment? I think I would. Those jays are getting in that hawk's face. To clarify: our jays are migratory in these parts. They don't have a nest nearby. They aren't protecting anything. They're acting like my friend the hummingbird. If my kids acted like this I think I'd be dragging them off by the arm, to have a quiet word about <i><b>getting along with others when on the playground</b></i> in their ear.</div>
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And now look - there's suddenly five jays sitting there, clearly intent on Being Pests.<br />
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But it isn't until one actually pecks at the hawk's tail that something happens: the hawk leaves. The jays squawk pleasantly at each other for a few minutes, then fly away.<br />
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<br />sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-42731047945200456192014-11-17T12:47:00.001-08:002014-11-17T12:47:14.415-08:00Sperm & Fish<i>Yes, those two words DO end up together in this post. Trust me.</i><br /><br />A funny thing happened this week. We'd signed up for a homeschool field trip a couple of weeks ago. It was a grades 4-7 trip to see the salmon spawn at a local provincial park. There would be a guide. There would be a film. It sounded fun. It was also a cheap trip - $2 a person - but a week before the trip FDPG and Dominic showed some concern that they were going to be WAY OLDER than everyone else there because they were in grade eight. This tour ended with grade seven, they reminded me severely. GRADE SEVEN. They are in GRADE EIGHT. Surely I knew this. They expressed way too much incredulity (one was more polite about it than the other, that's for darn sure) at my signing them up for a tour that ended with a grade 7 period. How could I have done that?<br />
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Dominic was very firm. He. Would. Not. Attend. He brought up another trip we had attended where they WERE way too old and other the kids WERE all too young and the talk was WAY too juvenile (baby songs might have been sung). They reminded me how wildly embarrassing it was. I agreed, it HAD been embarrassing. I HAD felt bad for them. I HAD promised not to do that again. Solidarity.<br />
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I emailed the organizer, who was very nice and tried to find some more participants. No takers. I felt bad so I told the organizer that we would definitely show up, because I really hate it when people don't show up for organized trips and the organizer is left holding the bill. This happens a lot with our homeschool community: it's annoying and frustrating but there it is.<br />
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So we show up on the Appointed Day, my two reluctant ball and chains in tow. The organizer was waiting for us in the Nature House. As usual almost everyone else was late. I was standing idly in a corner of the Nature House waiting when I overheard a guide say "so, what songs
should I do with the group that's coming?" Songs? I feel the icy grip of disaster grab me. I sidle towards the desk as surreptitiously as possible so I could hear the other guide answer. "Do the Fishy Song," she said, "the arm movements look like this and then you have them jump up and down for the next verse while pretending they are swimming. Then they can sing the final verse with you!" They all beamed at each other, except for the male guide, who looked at me as though wondering why I was eavesdropping on such Super Secret Technical Information. I smile weakly and moved away.<br />
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I decide it would be best
not to say anything to the twins about the impending song choices. Or the arm movements. <br />
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Eventually we assemble at the back of the Nature House with our raggle taggle group of homeschoolers. There are tiny little kids chairs to sit in. Some of us sit. Boy, I thought, you sure can tell homeschoolers: one kid was in a medieval knight costume, two wore homespun knitted outfits that looked, well, weird, and the rest looked worryingly feral. Dominic was doing his <i>If I Pretend Hard Enough I Just Might Disappear</i> routine, staring hard at the ceiling. FDPG was making the best of what she clearly thought was a bad situation. She's philosophical that way.<br />
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Our guide walks in and sits down with a fish poster. An old, tatty fish poster. It's the Boy Guide, the one who thought I was stealing Nature House Secrets. He
has a very soft voice. No one can really hear him. At least, I can't
hear anything he's saying, so I decide to sit in one of the chairs right near him. He interprets this as a hostile gesture, I suspect, because he stops talking and looks at me carefully. I smile in what I hope is an extremely benign way. Fortunately he has no choice BUT to go on, so he does.<br />
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We sit through a lesson on how salmon spawn. He talks about the eggs, the fish sperm, how the salmon jaw changes while they spawn, how long they live, and so on. He asks the kids to speculate on the size of a fish brain, or how long they live, and stuff like that. He's a super low talker but he is genuinely interested in his topic. There has been no singing thus far, either. <br />
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There is, however, as there always is on tours like these, a kid in the group who knows all the answers and isn't shy about belting them out whenever the guide asks a question. He's very self-congratulatory which is even more irritating. At one point he asks the guide if he's wondering how he knows all this stuff. Awkward. His mother stands beside him beaming
proudly, utterly oblivious. I can tell that the guide is uneasy but since no one else is even trying to answer any questions, he lets him go for it. If this were a Diary of a Wimpy Kid novel I would expect Bad Things to happen to this kid at break time out behind the Nature House, but because it's a Homeschool Tour nothing does. Well, a few kids start picking their noses but that's about it. <br />
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We then troop into the little theatre to see a film to "solidify" our knowledge about salmon. It's a really old film. I probably saw it when I was in school and that was a LONG time ago. I stand at the back and again, can't hear a thing. The film is ancient and grainy and looks as though the colour is leaking out as we're watching it.
Everyone peers hard at the blurry images and tries to imagine the "brilliant colours" we're told we're looking at. Nevertheless the kids all listen carefully and quietly, mine included. Factoid Boy is mercifully silent. When it's over we go
outside and down to the river to look at the salmon. I remember this part from my school days. We'd go in a school tour and I'd feel sick the entire time, watching the seagulls flocking on the edges, pecking and pecking and shrieking and shrieking, while the poor bloody salmon struggled along. I wonder, not for the first time, why I thought the twins would enjoy a tour like this.<br />
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Fortunately our guide is young and enthusiastic. He's also incredibly knowledgeable. He walks along the water's edge and points out
various things: early spawners, old spawners, side markings on the fish and what they mean, the places salmon like to spawn in, the places where they likely fight. It's fascinating. Then our guide asks us if we would like to see inside a fish. Factoid Boy shouts out "YES WE WOULD!!!!" So he does. He walks around looking for a freshly dead salmon. There are a lot to choose from. He lays the salmon down in front of us, then drags his foot in the gravel, making a circle around the salmon. "We won't get in this circle," he says, "because this gives the salmon a dignified space." I'm not sure what he's getting at here but we're all willing to go with it, except for one of the nose pickers who interprets this as a request to get INSIDE the circle. <br />
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Then the guide
gets out his knife and cuts a neat rectangle on the side of the fish.
Oh wait, I forgot the good bit: right before he does this (it's a male
fish) he starts milking all the sperm (err, milt) out of the fish. In
great long creamy spurts. Over and over again. There's tons of milt in this fish. Gallons. It's
graphically, wildly, improbably sexual in a strange and disturbing way. All the mothers stiffen. A snort escapes my mouth, causing the guide to look up. In one uneasy instant he realizes what we're all thinking and starts
feeling self-conscious. The poor earnest guide, I think. I start laughing. Factoid Boy, not
wanting to seem ignorant of ANYTHING scientific, chortles along
with me.
Fortunately the sperm stream, err, <i>milt stream</i>, ends, so we can all get
back to normal. I wonder if anyone is going to light a cigarette then remember that I'm amongst devoted eco-West Coasters and if anyone is going to light anything it'll probably be an e-cigarette (or a joint).<br />
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We see the brain of the salmon, we see his kidney, his swim bladder, his heart, and his liver. It's a little graphic at times but everyone is clearly enjoying this part and they all jostle around, trying to respect the Dignified Space without missing too much. The best part is when he popped out the cornea, which looked like a miniature crystal ball, placed it on his palm, and showed it around. When we'd all looked as much as we wanted, he popped it back in, then replaced the organs and slid the flap shut. "For the next guide," he explained, "some of the girls aren't very good cutting open the fish." I wonder what else they don't do.<br />
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And that was that. One family had a seagull poop on them, Factoid Boy fell while balancing on a log (while shouting "look at meeeee!"), and FDPG got wet feet trying to ford a river, but all in all it was a remarkably good tour. We even got to meet a 900 year old tree, not to mention watching a dead fish ejaculate. Good times.<br /><br /><br /><br />
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<br />sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-24929183973940431982014-11-04T08:53:00.002-08:002014-11-04T08:53:31.884-08:00Pictorial Evidence<i>This was the first Halloween that I didn't take photos of my kids in their costumes.</i><br />
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Okay, I did take a couple of shots of Eldest Son in his Deadmau5 head (which you would have seen on my Facebook page), but those photos were taken less as a result of it being a Halloween costume than they were because we were all so shocked that it was a) finally finished, b) being worn to - gasp - SCHOOL, and c) it was <i>finally</i> <i>finished</i>. <br />
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Sadly, its start in life wasn't great, as you might expect from a craftsman who wasn't interested in anything that required time, effort, or finesse, aka a 14 year old boy. They have Big Dreams, these boys, but the strenuousness of turning those Big Dreams into Cold Hard Reality is often just too much work.<br />
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I, being the (<strike>sometimes</strike> often) grimly realistic mother that I am, was confident that that piece of papier maché would live out its days as a Half-Made Prototype taking up space in the workshop, in someone's closet, on the kitchen table, or on the coffee table.<br />
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Then, after being closeted for close to three years, kicked once or twice in a fit of pique, and having way too much money spent on it (not by ME, I hasten to add), it was finally resurrected and completed. I documented the moment with a photo. Then Eldest Son went off to public school, with it on his head. Apparently he wore it all day. I know because he texted me a few photos. One of him with other dressed up highschoolers; one with our university lecturer friend who dresses up as a giant pink bunny each year (and yes, he DOES teach his classes this way). The two of them are standing side by side, one very tall in a <i>very</i> pink furry suit, the other made tall by the giant blue head with its equally giant blue ears. His arms were crossed and his feet stood wide. I could feel the cool burning out of that Deadmau5 head. This kid sure has attitude, I thought. Attitude made bright by the completion of an albatross of a project.<br />
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That was probably when I realized that I forgot to take photos of the other two offspring. At that point of course they'd already changed into pajamas, washed the make-up off their faces, and were scoffing candy.<br />
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And thus ended another Halloween.sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-40549998163006083872014-10-28T14:26:00.003-07:002014-10-28T14:26:31.263-07:00Tuesday's Song of the Day I've been posting this everywhere because it's just so incredibly awesome, but I forgot to post it here (where it's way easier to find than on Facebook).<br />
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If you're one of those people who do a little swoon at the end of Love Actually, you'll love this new version. There is so much to love about it: singers, sets, music, and fantasy. It's got it all.<br />
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<br />sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-17392246246963237552014-10-19T08:35:00.001-07:002014-10-19T08:35:26.397-07:00Early Mornings<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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One of the benefits to waking early these last few mornings is the short burst of colour on the clouds one gets as the sun rises. I don't know the science behind it, but it comes and then it's gone. Just like that.It encourages magical thinking.<br />
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Well, all except those Stellar's jays. They sound like a grouchy rusty old screen door, creaking open and shut, over and over again. Funny that such a beautiful bird has such a jarring cry. <br />
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We've had an extremely long run of hot dry weather this summer, which has lulled me into a false sense of when fall should or shouldn't be here, not to mention when winter might or might not appear. It was 22ºC on the deck yesterday. We had every doors and window open. I made 12 quarts of spiced applesauce, turned the Thanksgiving turkey into stock, picked yet more raspberries, and got another tub of Juliet and bastard Sungold tomatoes. They've been the best producers here this year and they're STILL fruiting.<br />
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What I WANT to do is leave the soaker hoses out in case things need watering. Leave the tomatoes in the ground, in case they keep producing. Leave the greenhouse open, because it's so hot during the day. But I also know that just one single bout of cold rain, along with a few nights of damp, and the garden will be a mass of sodden mush, sliming the hoses, encouraging blight, and rotting my pumpkins. So today I'll wind up the hoses, drain the lines, pick a bucket or two of tomatillos, and plant the garlic. <br />
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I will also trudge outside at night to close up the greenhouse. I might even place the Christmas lights, so I don't have to do it later, in a hurried panic at the limp orange and lime leaves.<br />
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The cold frame has been moved so it can cover up the rows of lettuces, cayenne peppers, and leftover basil. The long row cover is over the tender little green onion shoots, the last few radicchio (which REALLY look miserable after a rain), and some Holy Basil. Speaking of Holy Basil, I think it's my new favourite garden plant. You always know when you've brushed against it. I'm not prone to much whimsical thinking but this plant smells of magic. And happiness.<br />
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And in the meantime I'll look out at FDPG's remaining dianthus flowers, raggedy stalwarts of the fall.<br />
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<br />sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-48058403917015305232014-09-22T19:28:00.002-07:002014-09-22T19:28:21.109-07:00Simple Recipes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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One cheap Walmart ringbinder = $3<br />
Stickers from Michaels = $4<br />
Cardstock = $1<br />
Printed nameplates = 25¢<br />
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Cooking experiences happen twice a week, and those recipes deemed INCREDIBLE will be printed up and glued into the cookbooks. <br />
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So far we've made cookies (Dorie Greenspan's Espresso Chocolate Cookies), brownies, focaccia, an apple pie, and chocolate chip cookies (seeing a theme here yet). <br />
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Funny how the simplest things go so far. sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-20032174936921723942014-09-13T14:52:00.003-07:002014-09-13T14:52:23.122-07:00School SchedulesWe spent the last 5 days getting back into the rhythm of the school day, never a small task at the end of a long, hot, beach-drenched summer, particularly when most of the participants spent much of their summer sleeping in and lolling about. This is where Charlotte Mason habit training comes in handy: everyone knows the drill, everyone knows it's inevitable, and there's way less Sturm und Drang when assembling the day.<br />
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FDPG, Dominic, and I set a wake-up time (7am), a time to begin Read Alouds (7:30am, current book is <i>The Canterbury Tales</i>), and a time to start school (9am). Theoretically this gives everyone time to <strike>play Lego in their room until I yell at them</strike> get ready, feed cats and bunnies, let out chickens, brush teeth, get dressed, apply vast quantities of toothpaste to the sink and taps, and fling yet another empty toilet paper roll behind the door in the hope that no one notices (even though there are already 10 there).<br />
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We also printed up our Week At A Glance, which is nothing more exotic than a coloured Excel chart slipped into a page protector and stuck on the wall. I used to scoff at schedules, but they stop the day from devolving, not to mention quelling many an argument, so I've grown to appreciate them. FDPG likes a crazily busy schedule, and always begins the year with way too much on her very enthusiastic plate. Dominic prefers a more spartan approach, and would probably jettison everything that doesn't involve Lego or sports. I have two non-negotiables: everyone in this house must have more than a passing acquaintance with math and everyone must know how to write (and speak) well.<br />
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Once we got those things on the schedule we wrangled over what else to include: foreign languages, art, poetry, science, history. Now that I've seen what goes on in public school, I've added in another thing this year: timed assignments. It wasn't the English Lit math physics chemistry biology OR socials that Eldest struggled with when he joined the Brick N' Mortar public school crowd, it was the timed assignments and tests. I don't give timed assignments here at Greenridge Homeschool. Shocking, I know, but there it is.<br />
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Eldest's schedule was more complicated. Last year he was in grade 11 at a real live high school, so his day looked quite different than ours. Instead of listening to stories or nattering pleasantly with the twins over who had to do the dishes, he was leaving early with Richard and a giant bag of textbooks. Rain or shine. This year he's in grade 12 , which is new and exciting, or would be if the teachers would go back to work. They are on strike. There always seems to be someone on strike in this province. I sometimes think B.C. really stands for Bolshie Communities.<br />
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And seeing as how the strike doesn't look as though it's going to end any time soon, I told Eldest he had to make himself a schedule (and make some attempts to follow it) so that he didn't lose momentum, given his choice of courses (physics, chemistry, pre-calculus, calculus, English Lit., biology). He was not particularly thrilled. I think he'd envisioned a less, err, <i>strenuous</i> start to the day. What with the strike and all.<br />
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If Eldest had to write about his first week of school, I think it would go like this:<br />
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<i>Dear Diary,</i><br />
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<i>This week I had intended to sleep in every morning and generally do nothing, but my Mum heard that I could get this semester's textbooks NOW. She said I should be reading them every day, instead of sleeping in and generally doing nothing. They are all very heavy. I don't like the look of the pre-calculus textbook. I'm sick of people telling me about the Khan Academy. </i><br />
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<i>Then she told me to email my former English teacher (who likes me because I was the only student in the class who didn't eat and talk and text the whole time) and ask for a schedule for my literature class so I could get to work on the required reading. I didn't think he'd answer my email but he did. He even sent me a reading list. </i><br />
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<i>Now I have a bunch of textbooks <b>and</b> a literature schedule. Oh joy. </i><br />
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Now that the week is over, I'm going to add a coda:<br />
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<i>Now it's Saturday and the first week is over and done with. Phew. Sigh. Hurray!</i><br />
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<br />sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-30941339946747130172014-09-05T15:55:00.002-07:002014-09-05T15:55:39.170-07:00That Time Already?Sob.<br />
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The tide of summer has suddenly turned and everyone is talking about back to school topics. I can't seem to avoid it, no matter where I turn my eyes. Makes me think about how different our homeschool world looks these days.<br />
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In the years since I first started blogging our life has changed so much: back then we had more play resources and fewer reference books. More Playdough, chalk, and markers. More fingerpaint paper. Heck, I even had different SIZES of fingerpaint paper. Thomas the Tank Engine loomed large in our world. The kids LIVED for backpacks with their favourite characters on them. We all knew who Mr Frumble was. We spent a lot of time, rain or shine, trawling around the neighbourhood just looking at stuff: diggers, trucks, signs, rain, cats, spiders, friendly shopkeepers. We had our favourite librarians. And many an afternoon we'd sit down at 4pm with a tidy little snack (there's another thing that has gone by the wayside: tidy little snacks!) and watch 30 minutes of perfect happiness with our favourite aardvark Arthur. Then it would be time for dinner and, eventually, off to bed, whereupon I'd plan activities for the following day. I frequented websites like The Crafty Crow and Art Projects For Kids, poured over books like <b>Festivals, Family, and Food</b> or <b>All Year Round</b>, and picked out rituals and traditions to start with my own family. In my spare time I read about Waldorf-inspired playrooms, with wooden kitchen setups, Circle Time, and drifting silk fabrics everywhere.<br />
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Nowadays we have way more reference books: Latin, French, Japanese, science, history, and grammar dictionaries fill the shelves. We have Shakespeare anthologies, geology textbooks, philosophy books, and precalculus DVDs. We could open a library with the origami stuff we've amassed. The Thomas table has gone and in its place is a long, flat table. Adult sized chairs. Larger scissors. Larger bottles of glue. More serious glue, too. Less tissue paper and more cardstock. Fewer glittery pencils. Less glitter all round, come to think of it, except at Christmas.<br />
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Everyone has an iPod now, a fact which has its pros and cons. The pros being some of us have learnt a ton about exploring the internet, finding interesting apps on learning foreign languages, taking better photos, and fun new activities like geocaching or studying the hundreds of ships that pass through our island waters. The cons are less tangible: less interest in playing or laying out in the backyard being simply and wonderfully idle. More chatter about the games they like to play: Minecraft, Brave Frontier, Modern Combat. I'm not so keen on the games. <i>Mindless</i> <i>entertainment</i> is my preferred terminology for all that, with a special emphasis on the mindless.<br />
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There's also way less little kid noise. I used to go about my day to the sound of shrieks, screams, and giggles following me around. Pattering footsteps. Constant chattering. The laundry could be done in one or two loads because all the clothes were so tiny. I spent more time scrubbing stains off the fronts of t-shirts. Meals were simple because they didn't involve much. One can of black beans was enough for an enchilada dinner.<br />
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All that's been replaced by skirmishes over who gets the bathroom (or who stunk up/hogged/ruined the bathroom), stereo loudness contests, and arguments (although they call them 'discussions') over who has to do the breakfast dishes (and sometimes, why). I'm conversant with names like Tiesto, Skrillex, Deadmau5, and Kaskade. I'm even knowledgable about WHO they are, and how much money they make in a year (trust me, you don't want to know). We still watch PBS a lot, but Arthur has been replaced by Mystery, Doctor Who, and NOVA. More adult fare. No one goes to bed right after dinner, either, unless it's me.<br />
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Perhaps the biggest change in our homeschool world has been the departure of one of the homeschoolees. Nowadays there's only two kids at home instead of three. The eldest is off at public school, doing Highly Complicated Math, and dissecting Formerly Live Animals. Places I decided I was no longer willing to go. That's the thing, you see: when you homeschool you either farm out the academics or you learn them yourself so you can help and teach. Ten years of homeschooling has taught me a lot: I'm much more enthusiastic about fractions now than I ever was in grade school, but I'm no longer willing to put in the long evening hours studying the higher grades stuff. Nowadays I want to put that time into my winter garden plan, dust off the sewing machine so I can finish off that duvet cover I started for FDPG 4 years ago, or just sit on the couch and read. I'm also less gripped by the politics of the homeschool world: when people start discussing terminology and placing themselves in the various positions (unschooler? lifelearner? homeschooler? enrolled? registered?) I find myself losing interest, and mentally adding<b> termin-what-EVAH</b>. All they do is divide us all at the end of the day. If only people could see it.<br />
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The youngest two are in grade 8 this year. Instead of Circle Time beginning our day we do math. We still have read aloud time every morning, because none of us wants to give that up (it's also an amazing way to get through a TON of literature), but now we start the day with the tough stuff, leaving the afternoons open for less cerebral fare: art, cooking, science experiments, crafts, museum visits, or history videos. I frequent fewer online homeschool groups, too, but again, I think that's just the way it goes as the kids grow up. I don't need the reassurance anymore. I don't care what someone's interfering mother-in-law said. We have our groove and we're happy with it.<br />
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And so it goes. Back to school. How time flies!<br />
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<br />sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-70441404280998660882014-08-19T13:18:00.002-07:002014-08-19T13:18:39.601-07:00Summer's Daze<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Some people in this house turned 13 this month</td></tr>
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Is it me or has summer gone by too fast? I looked at the last post I wrote and it was written in JULY. A month ago. And now the days of August are heading towards the past tense. Seems hard to believe.<br />
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As you can tell from the photo above, some people in this house turned 13 this month. There are now three official teenagers living right near me. I hear a lot about how teens tend to be wildly annoying, wildly angst-ridden, and wildly histrionic, but so far all I've really noticed is how much they resemble ME in my menopausal, absent-minded, fog. They forget stuff. Lots of stuff, like phone calls (they forget there's a notepad on which to write messages too), where they left their bike key, why they never put their dirty dishes in the kitchen next to the implement with which we clean those very same dishes.<br />
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Which is mostly amusing. I don't feel like such a ditz. I've got company.<br />
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Here's a behind-the-scenes shot of the Birthday Duo swinging on our Beach Holiday Extravaganza. As you can see, FDPG likes a little danger with her swinging.<br />
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Dominic and I both watched this with our mouths slightly agog, after which I shut down the action immediately. She doesn't believe me but she really DOES want to grow up with her brain and skull intact.<br />
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FDPG and Dominic departed from their usual Birthday Gift requests this year. Every year that I can remember they've asked for LEGO. This year they didn't. When I expressed my shock and amazement, FDPG offered up this excuse: "We thought you were sick of buying us LEGO." To which I expressed even more shock and amazement. An era has ended, methinks.<br />
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<i>Note that I do not say "legos." Many of my (mostly American) friends do, and while I try not to judge them, I have to confess that I do. I feel like Tom Cruise's character in Magnolia: "I'm silently judging you." </i><br />
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<i>Go on Sheila, tell us what you REALLY think.</i><br />
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So this year FDPG asked for, and received, a kayak. As you might note from this photo, provided you look carefully enough. In the middle, with the yellow, red, and blue striped sail, is her father and her brother in the Topper, while at the right is a teeny tiny little blue blip. That's FDPG. No fear, that girl. At least we were able to <strike>refuse to let her go out without </strike>convince her to wear a life jacket.<br />
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To the right is someone we didn't know, but who spent his afternoon following them around. Maybe it's a sailboat thing, I don't know.<br />
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On this very same beach holiday some of us spent a lot of time looking up the status of the sea boats near us. There is (I say with some surprise though I don't know why in this age of Omnipresent Media Attention To All Things) a website where you can track all the ships in the oceans near you. It's quite cool: you can see the stats of the ship, what it's called, where it came from, and where it's going. Eldest Son discovered this site a while back and now spends much of his time tracking large ships then pestering me to take him down to there he can view them with a scope. Fortunately we live on an island so it's easy to get to a coast to view these behemoths. The ship in the photo is a Disney cruise ship. The cruise ships are easily the most impressive boats going up and down the coast, and as they usually glide past in the early evening, lights all aglow, it's an enchanting sight. According to Eldest Son's scope, this was a Disney ship, and he could even see the giant screen playing The Lion King.<br />
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Another dreamy shot of the coastal range mountains on the mainland. We live in a lovely place.<br />
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sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-35567396903108927712014-07-18T09:28:00.000-07:002014-07-18T09:31:40.665-07:00More From The Trenches<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lo0k1l7oWeA/U8kz7SJYojI/AAAAAAAAFLM/2J-4PHX_wjY/s1600/IMG_2365.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> </a>Yes, I am making a reference to being in the thick of it. Which I am. This is the first summer where I've - more than once - thought "hmmm, maybe there's too MUCH garden going on here. I might have to cut back next year."<br />
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I know. Can you believe I just said that?<br />
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Okay, let's move on, there are quite a number of photos today. I don't know how I ended up taking so many; all I'd gone out for was a shot of the Crown Princess Margarita rose, but the light was so good I ended up taking 67 shots.<br />
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No, no, I'm not going to make you sit through 67 photos of my garden. Relax. I've cut out 10.<br />
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Just kidding.<br />
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Trust me. <br />
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I know it sounds nuts to say this, but fall planting begins now. <br />
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This six-pack contains <i>Georgia Southern</i> collards. I've never grown collards before. In fact I've never eaten collards before, at least, not knowingly.<br />
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These were given to me at by the lovely people at the Botanical Interests booth at last year's Mother Earth News Fair in Puyallup. And no, they didn't give them to me so I could write about them; they were giving seeds away to ANYONE WHO WANTED THEM. It was like a dream come true for those few minutes I was collecting packets of seed. <br />
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Some more trays of seeds, although these are mostly various types of lettuce. This is the first year I've managed to keep the kitchen regularly stocked with lettuce.<br />
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In case you skipped over that last sentence, let me <strike>blow my own horn a bit</strike> point out what an amazing feat this is. I've never fully appreciated what it takes to keep a regular variety of lettuces and greens in the kitchen at all times for five people: lunches, sandwiches, smoothies, dinners. Could be we just go through a lot of lettuce. Either way, it's been fun, even if it HAS tested my usual level of organization. <br />
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If you don't eat kale you should. I know that sounds bossy but it's SUCH a good green and it is SO easy to eat. My kids refuse to eat it knowingly but genuinely love it in smoothies.<br />
It also looks really cool:<br />
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I was reading an article about garden furniture and garden art. Where do you stand on the topic?<br />
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I like having things besides plants in the garden - breaks up the view and add different colours.<br />
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It's also a good place to store things. One day I WILL use this broken wheel and that oddly shaped piece of tile, I just know it.<br />
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This plant is commonly known as Goose Necked Loosestrife (no, not that loosestrife). Can you see why?<br />
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I've got it growing with some white Obedient Plant and a few hostas. The deer salivate over them every night at about 8pm. Fortunately I've also got a net around these puppies or they'd be toast.<br />
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Why yes, I do happen to be on the <b>Stupid $#%*&@ Deer</b> side of the fence. There are way too many of them in my neck of the city. <br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mraEFhH9s1I/U8k1PchumiI/AAAAAAAAFLw/FAV5f8zty3I/s1600/IMG_2402.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mraEFhH9s1I/U8k1PchumiI/AAAAAAAAFLw/FAV5f8zty3I/s1600/IMG_2402.JPG" height="298" width="400" /></a>I had a better shot of this fabulous and weirdly coloured hydrangea, but it didn't include the charming Mr. T slinking by, so you're getting this one instead. His nickname is Lemur Tail. Not that he comes when you call him that, mind you.<br />
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There appear to be several permutations of purple going on here: the centres of some flower heads are different colours from others. Some are blue, some quite dramatically mauve, some even white. And you can see that heads themselves are all differing shades of purple.<br />
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You too can achieve this effect by mulching just half the plant with pine cones that fall off a nearby handy tree. You can even kick them under the tree when people come over and trip over them, thus saving yourself raking duties. At least, that's what I think happened here. It certainly gets no love from me the rest of the year. And yes, I do feel somewhat abashed admitting this. <br />
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Look at the lovely green of these Holy basil plants. Apparently they are quite good as an insect repellant, but I've yet to try them. Right now we use catnip EO in a yarrow tincture - it's killer.<br />
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Holy basil is also known as an adaptogen, good in teas for stress. I'm not familiar with Holy basil but these seedlings are going in the herb garden, so we'll see what they do.<br />
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So far all I notice about it is that is has a faint lemonish aroma, is a gorgeous healthy green, and is much hairier than it's cousin <i>Ocimum basilicum</i>. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Sad & Lonely Shelves of the Greenhouse</td></tr>
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Am I regretting not thinning the peach tree this year?<br />
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Perhaps a tad. There's a lot of medium-sized fruit on it this year.<br />
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As there is every year.<br />
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One day I'll thin. One day.<br />
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Am I regretting not thinning the nectarine tree this year?<br />
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Perhaps a tad. There's a lot of medium-sized fruit on it this year.<br />
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As there is every year.<br />
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Hmm. I'm noticing a pattern here. I think I'm what they call a Chronic Non-Thinner.<br />
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"Four Little Pepperonici Maids From School Are We!"<br />
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Squiggley, aren't they? These will get pickled soon.<br />
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I <strike>made</strike> asked Eldest Son to assist me in carrying this chunk of wood home from the beach the other day, because I plan on making some of the aforementioned Garden Art with it. He'd been slogging along for about 10 minutes when he said "this is pretty junky - what are you going to do with it?" When I told him I was going to paint it so that it would eventually resemble something magnificent, he expressed rather obnoxious levels of incredulity and mirth. Evidently he could not see its striking resemblance to something alive (and swimming).<br />
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Can you?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Imagine me blue and spouting!</td></tr>
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<br />sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-44567568997877576302014-07-05T13:53:00.000-07:002014-07-05T13:53:27.211-07:00Rambling About The Garden<br />
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I was taking this photo yesterday, in what I thought were cloudy-ish conditions, but after looking at this shot on the computer I realized two things: first, the dry dry grass in the foreground detracts from what is otherwise a rather magnificent display of vegetable gardening (and one that I was hoping to boast about), and second, I need a more overcast day to take garden shots.<br />
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Oh heck, I'll boast anyway. In this shot are 13 types of edible plants or vegetables: tomatoes (Jaune Flamme, Juliet, Green Zebra, Tigerella, Black Krim, Sungold, Yellow Pear), beans (Flambo, Hutterite Soup, Blue Lake, Cranberry Bush, Scarlet Runner, Broad), beets (Touchstone Gold, Chioggo, Bulls Blood), radicchio (Palla Rosso), peas (Sugar Daddy), purple sprouting broccoli, onions (Kincho), lettuce (Valmaine, Tango, Tropicana, Red Sails), salsify, celeriac, artichokes, strawberries, and raspberries. Ignore that rude grass.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CBnRqJtCQ2g/U7hTp2ZFZtI/AAAAAAAAFH8/P60R574ERck/s1600/DSC_0007.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CBnRqJtCQ2g/U7hTp2ZFZtI/AAAAAAAAFH8/P60R574ERck/s1600/DSC_0007.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a><br />
This shot was obtained by leaning precariously out my bathroom window, screen balanced carefully on my head, with a telephoto lens on the camera. My neighbour, who was exercising her dog in the back yard, looked a little uneasy when I shouted cheerily "Don't worry! just trying out the telephoto!" <br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8fiedWMK__E/U7hTsxvD-rI/AAAAAAAAFIE/cBv53ZCZ1HI/s1600/DSC_0004.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8fiedWMK__E/U7hTsxvD-rI/AAAAAAAAFIE/cBv53ZCZ1HI/s1600/DSC_0004.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a>Here is a perfectly amazing radicchio. Why did I take so long to discover them? Radicchio has it all: looks, taste, and style. Red Sails lettuce comes close, with its beautiful frilly, red green ruffles, but radicchio wins with those mesmerizing green swirls. <br />
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Little sweat bee on onion flower head. <br />
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The box in that pot incurred some frost damage this winter, and is now sitting out the summer in a shady corner of the deck, trying to regrow. <br />
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This bench is strategically placed to block the sprinkler from watering so much of the grass. I don't think it's aware of how useful it's being, but it's such a cantankerous bench that if it DID know, I feel sure it would crumble, just to annoy me. It flipped over in the spring - for no good reason - with a number of snapdragon starts on it, causing most of them to dangle perilously close to the fence, where they were eventually pillaged by marauding chickens. I was not pleased, so the bench was banished to the Really Horrible Dry Part of the backyard. Until now, of course. <br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h4HL4mt1gek/U7hUsHlxCrI/AAAAAAAAFIs/_KaTS99aMNk/s1600/DSC_0030.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h4HL4mt1gek/U7hUsHlxCrI/AAAAAAAAFIs/_KaTS99aMNk/s1600/DSC_0030.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a>Speaking of pillaging chickens, here are Prunella (roosting on the compost screen, hiding from Pip) and Pip (looking around for more seedlings to rip and shred). Pip and Prunella are sisters - they should get along, right? Last month Pip decided that she was sick of Prunella, no doubt because Prunella makes it a habit to shove everyone aside when they get their afternoon snack. She's a good size, too, so the shoving frequently gets out of hand. Sometimes it's accompanied by a peck or two (in the case of Fern).<br />
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Pip took to really tormenting Prunella, stalking her, pecking her, and attacking her in rather random ways. It put ole Prunella off her laying, which was when I had to get involved because if there is one thing Prunella is good at it's laying eggs. That hen lays every single bloody day, which is impressive given her very advanced years. So, just as Pip took to following Prunella around with malicious intent, I took to following Pip around, only instead of malicious intent I had a bamboo pole.<br />
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<i>(sensitive types may want to look away at this point) </i><br />
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Whenever Pip attacked Prunella, I banged Pip across the back with the pole and squawked, trying to sound like I was saying "STOP THAT YOU STUPID BLOODY CHICKEN!" Eventually Pip decided that it wasn't worth having me shout and chase her around with a pole, and she stopped terrorizing Prunella, but not before Prunella decided she was really really really uneasy around Pip.<br />
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This shot shows Prunella lumbering up from her comfy roost and looking a little concerned. This is because she's noticed that Pip has noticed her, and she's no doubt starting to worry that it might be the Formerly Mean & Horrible Pip and not the Newly Chastened Bamboo Pole in Butt Pip.<br />
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Fortunately I was able to utilize my chicken language skills and tell them they are a pair of fools to put so much energy into fighting. <br />
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Royal Wedding sweet peas. So far these take the top prize in the Best Smell In The Garden contest. They pipped the lemon verbena only because the verbena requires human intervention to release its scent, while the sweet peas can scent the entire top floor of the house in a matter of minutes.<br />
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Toffee, who takes the prize for Most Fearful Cat On The Block, is sitting here, surveying his territory in a safe part of the yard (where he can dart in the cat door should anyone challenge him).<br />
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I hate to say this, but I <u>think</u> he thinks that concrete frog is looking out for him. Moments after I took this photo he licked Froggie, as if to say "you're a pal, thanks for looking out for me."<br />
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And I thought the chickens were weird.<br />
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<br />sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-42527453567301320762014-06-12T09:29:00.002-07:002014-06-12T09:29:47.515-07:00Feedly Is A Hostage<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wAEdDYc2pyE/U5nRWlevkZI/AAAAAAAAFHY/YJeSV7L9-vE/s1600/feed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wAEdDYc2pyE/U5nRWlevkZI/AAAAAAAAFHY/YJeSV7L9-vE/s1600/feed.jpg" height="145" width="400" /></a>Look, there's something wrong with the blog feeder I'm using. They are working to "mitigate" the issue, they tell me. Oh joy. Does this mean, dare I hope, that it will be easier, not to mention faster, to scroll through all my blogs after this? Because, Dear Feedly, I think you're being hacked because you're so darn ponderous to get through. You've created Annoyed Customers who can't forget Bloglines and all they did to make reading blogs fun and easy. The only silver lining to come of this event is that I get to see actual blogs again, as opposed to reading them on a feeder. Some of my favourite blogs have changed their visuals beyond all recognition! How did I not notice that? (umm, because you never click through to the blog ever?) I wish my new blog reader would incorporate this quirk, so I could see new changes to everyone's blog.<br />
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My blog, I should mention, has not changed a jot. I think I've lost interest in fiddling with colours and post dimensions, not to mention plain old posting. Clicking around to my favourite blogs shows me that I'm not alone in this.<br />
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Not much new going on here, although we did see X-Men: Eve of Destruction the other day. Oops, a little Googling shows me that I'm messing up the title - it's called X-Men: Days of Future Past. I think someone needs to make a movie titled The Rise of the Colon, but even saying this makes me wonder if anyone in Hollywood would get the joke.<br />
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Now, back to the important stuff, like the start of the World Cup.<br />
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sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-18344049802858000222014-05-29T15:01:00.000-07:002014-05-29T15:01:05.415-07:00How My Week Went<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b> Another in the "My Life As A Fabulous Cat" series </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>by guest poster Toffee </b></span></div>
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This is how I prefer to spend my day: lying sideways on a flat surface. Not only does this position set my face off to perfection (as well as resting my ample girth), it also causes the slaves to exclaim delightedly about how cute I am. And who doesn't like a little slavish worship?<br />
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If only they would obey my Look But Don't Touch dictum, particularly the young slaves. <br />
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This is my other preferred position, but for some reason the slaves don't like me doing this. They think it causes me to stay awake at night. Apparently I make too much noise while they're sleeping (but do I care? not I). Silly slaves: I make noises at night not because I am well-rested, but because it's the only time I get to claw the damn chesterfield. Note to Richard: that piece of cedar you screwed onto my favourite clawing spot? The one you hope I'll scratch instead of the material? It doesn't fool me. I'm a cat, not some dumb dog. Honestly. <br />
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When I tire of lolling, I like to sit in the window looking as atmospheric as possible. Here I am in the pose known as The Regal Egyptian. I usually sit like this until Sheila has the camera JUST about focused, then I move right when she clicks the shutter. This really exasperates her but it's so amusing. I do enjoy thwarting her. She's SO bossy. <br />
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The only trouble with annoying the slaves is that they get fussy about my Feed On Demand strategy and start paying attention to how much food I've had each day. Don't they realize that my ample girth doesn't get this way on a starvation diet?<br />
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Idiots.<br />
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Thus am I compelled to beg cutely.<br />
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Always a bit deflating to the old ego. <br />
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To get back at them I resort to specific tactics.<br />
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Here I am biting the hand that feeds me.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZLFlDWXICKo/U4OBL98ZrvI/AAAAAAAAFFk/wzheF_YP2tw/s1600/DSC_0026.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZLFlDWXICKo/U4OBL98ZrvI/AAAAAAAAFFk/wzheF_YP2tw/s1600/DSC_0026.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a>Here I am hiding while they are calling me. This particular spot lasted well over an hour.<br />
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My extensive yoga moves always get a rise out of someone, particularly if I'm licking a certain part of my anatomy.<br />
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Right in front of them.<br />
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Right when they're eating. <br />
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Tip: make as much noise as possible.<br />
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Nothing like a little suction noise, combined with some gnawing and chewing, to really get them all stirred up. <br />
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Sometimes it backfires on me and they find me hilarious.<br />
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I hate being laughed at. It's so undignified.<br />
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Luckily I have my balls to play with. I find this very therapeutic.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ebej__y8rec/U4N_X5qMl7I/AAAAAAAAFFM/oViEUyU8blk/s1600/IMG_1702.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ebej__y8rec/U4N_X5qMl7I/AAAAAAAAFFM/oViEUyU8blk/s1600/IMG_1702.JPG" height="150" width="200" /></a>When FDPG isn't around I use her iPod for Selfie Practice. Is it me or does anyone else struggle with the screen button when taking selfies? Steve Jobs obviously wasn't thinking about cat paws when he designed that thing. </div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZPpRGKN8BS0/U4N_WueZbiI/AAAAAAAAFGg/SRyqfBYyN3E/s1600/IMG_1700.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZPpRGKN8BS0/U4N_WueZbiI/AAAAAAAAFGg/SRyqfBYyN3E/s1600/IMG_1700.JPG" height="150" width="200" /></a>I meant to get more of my face in this one.<br />
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And this one.<br />
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This is probably the worst thing that happened to me this week. For some reason no one heard me knocking at the door. <br />
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I sat there for ages.<br />
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Never fear, I'll get back at them.<br />
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One day.<br />
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(<i>For more in this series please click CATS in the sidebar section marked LABELS or type How My Week Went into the search bar</i>) </div>
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<br />sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-73862776188460507302014-05-05T10:00:00.001-07:002014-05-05T10:00:31.267-07:00Springing Out Of The Ground<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The plants, I mean. <br />
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After years of growing radishes every March, then giving up when they either split or become entirely gnawed on by woodbugs, I think I might just be getting the hang of these things. Sow thinly in a cool place, pick when still relatively small, take a lot of photographs of them (glistening with water), then consume. <br />
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Some might call this a trendy repurposing of old greenhouse shelves, but the truth is that these are the lengths I have to go to to keep the cat from repurposing my salad garden as a toilet. These shelves stay on until the seedlings are tall enough to discourage even the LAZIEST cat from scratching around in them. Worth their weight in gold, them shelves is. <br />
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Lettuce seedlings (Plato II, Valmaine, Esmeralda), bulb onions (grocery store cheapies), radishes (Cherry Belle), baby turnips (Mikado), beets (Golden), and kale (Dwarf Blue Curled).<br />
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"Those overwintered," she said. "They take more than one year here."<br />
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Ah. So that's it. Why doesn't it say that on any of my seed packets then? <br />
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It's almost strawberry time!<br />
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It's definitely asparagus time.<br />
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This, folks, is what I have to work with in my back yard. No flat open stretches for me. No, no, no. It's all one big slanting sloping Machu Pichu of a garden.<br />
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Finally, Snapping Dragons, reclining in the sun.sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-28336567009106069002014-04-15T18:38:00.003-07:002014-04-15T20:55:44.073-07:00Walk The April Garden<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I took this photo to show you how comfortably nestled the Palla Rossa radicchio is, now that it's outside in the garden (as of yesterday), but all I can see is the <b>horribly squished rocket</b> to the left. I guess I didn't hear its indignant shrieks of displeasure as I lowered the wire cage over top. And yes, I do feel terrible about this.<br />
<i>Poor arugula. If it's any consolation you get to go first to the table. </i><br />
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Our weather is warming up dramatically but we're still in the Silly Season (in that no one can guarantee what the weather will REALLY be like), so when I put out the Mizuna (a lettucey brassica) and Valmaine (a Romaine lettuce from Salt Spring Island Seeds) seedlings I made sure to build in some protection. This is a perfectly okay time to transplant cold weather starts (brassicas, hardy lettuce, peas, broad beans, carrot seedlings), but make sure you protect them against a few things: cold (ie: I use Reemay at night), slugs (I use ground up eggshells scattered LIBERALLY), and assorted digging animalia and rodentia (I use old wire racks til starts are about 6" tall).<br />
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Not sure if you can see this very clearly, but here's a Sugar Daddy pea that got left behind - in the greenhouse - in early February, and looky there - it's covered with pods. Pods of peas.<br />
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I'm the type who plants VERY densely, so it's a bit of a surprise to see one single pea grow so large and so bushy on its own.<br />
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Does this make me want to seed more sparsely?<br />
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Um. No. It makes me want to plant more peas. <br />
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I'm doing an experiment with the radicchio. Some went out into the garden, protected with Reemay, and some is staying in the greenhouse, in modules. I want to see if there's any advantage in planting certain cold-hardy seedlings earlier. Every year I make a guess as to when they should all head out to the garden for good, which means that every year I ALSO worry about there being some sort of Once In A Lifetime Freak Late Spring Frost.<br />
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This is why I water strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries with fish fertilizer from January to March.<br />
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(<i>For those of you wondering what I mean by this statement: that is one fine set of strawberry plants sitting right there in front of your eyeballs. One FINE set</i>.) <br />
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Besides being one of my favourite gadgets, this item shows the highs and lows of the glass greenhouse.<br />
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This is what you can use to determine whether you keep the heat on at night or not.<br />
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My rule of thumb is this: when it's still going below 1ºC I keep the heat on; once nighttime temps are regularly over 6ºC I turn it off. <br />
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The Salad Garden (thank heaven it's labelled or I'd forget what it's there for sometimes) has a lot of plastic action right now, because it's a bit too early for outdoor carrots, spinach, and lettuce. Kept under nighttime cover, though, and it's not too early at all.<br />
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I took this shot to show off the rampant growth in the tomato seedlings but all I can see is the INCREDIBLY dirty glass behind it. My <strike>greenhouse glass cleaner</strike> nice window-cleaning husband worked hard on Sunday, cleaning the fir tree pollen off the roof, but neither of us saw the state of the back of the greenhouse. Ah well, focus on those seedlings instead. <br />
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Wondering what's blooming in the garden right now? Look no further than these charming little blue forget-me-nots.<br />
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Forget-me-not's glamorous doppleganger: a Jack Frost brunnera.<br />
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Old fashioned primulas.<br />
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More old-fashioned primulas.<br />
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Finally, my favourite: pulmonaria.<br />
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Lungwort. Dependable, multi-hued, and always cerulean.<br />
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<br />sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-16938135980755912762014-04-03T17:18:00.002-07:002014-04-03T17:18:55.463-07:00Why Wearing Protection Is Sometimes A Good Thing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<h3>
<b>So...you've planted your seeds. What next?</b></h3>
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<i>This is a post about creating prime conditions for your soon-to-be-seedlings, and your tender-just-planted-in-the-cold-cold-garden seedlings. As you might have guessed, it involves a lot of plastic. </i><br />
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<b>There's really only one thing you have to remember for your soon-to-be-seedlings</b>: You want a moist warm, environment, but not SO warm and moist that you can grow mushrooms or molds. And once those slightly sprouted seeds dry out that's it. Game over. <br />
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If you have a greenhouse or cold frame, this is much easier, because
you already have a brightly lit, warm, outdoor place to leave all those
trays. No frost worries. No rain deluges. You can use all sorts of light-weight items to cover your trays. Lots of people swear by windowsills but I'm not a huge fan,
simply because one usually needs to add in all sorts of artificial
conditions, like grow lights or a fan, and that can be a pain to
maintain on one's windowsill for 2-3 months.<br />
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Yes, I DID
say 2-3 months. Sometimes longer. I start tomatoes and peppers in early
February; they get planted in the garden late May.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AQXpSxkGk5Y/UzdXxy027PI/AAAAAAAAE80/IMOkfkuIFKg/s1600/DSC_0021.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AQXpSxkGk5Y/UzdXxy027PI/AAAAAAAAE80/IMOkfkuIFKg/s1600/DSC_0021.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a>Here's a quick and easy method for seeds in a single pot: an old ziplock and sticks to weight it down. Leave this on until the seedlings break the surface of the soil, then remove. If overnight temperatures plummet you might want to pop it on before your plant goes to bed at night. <br />
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Call me obsessive but whenever I get a large plastic bag like this one I hoard it. These are perfect tray bags: lightweight and unusually clear. This means they won't block too much light once the seedlings emerge, so you can leave it on cold days. If you're worried about it smothering the seedlings, stick a few chopsticks or pruning sticks upright around the perimeter, a few in the centre, then lay the plastic on top.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KzV4W7WtGwI/UzhLoWD3mXI/AAAAAAAAE90/FQH3tcT108A/s1600/DSC_0011.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KzV4W7WtGwI/UzhLoWD3mXI/AAAAAAAAE90/FQH3tcT108A/s1600/DSC_0011.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a> A ziplock on a tiny 9-cell. These are thinned tomato starts, and I'm keeping a lid on them for 10 days or so until they've recovered from being transplanted. <br />
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This is my preferred method with large trays of seedlings because it's easy to manage. One thing to remember: on days when the greenhouse can go from 40ºF to 100ºF in an hour you want to make sure you're around to REMOVE those heat hats...<br />
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<b>Okay, now let's look at how you can protect your newly transplanted seedlings: </b><br />
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For your teeny little just-planted-in-the-garden seedlings
(in my March garden that would be: peas, broad beans, arugula, purple sprouting broccoli,
turnips, mizuna, and spinach), you want to provide a few things: transplant shock protection for the first week, protection from night frosts, and protection from rodents or
slugs. You want those little seedlings to survive until they're too big
to interest chewing, digging animals, taller than a slug (and thus hard to chew to a miserable stalk of nothing), and tough enough for the cool
nights. This requires some cheap but essential resources. My go-to's involve Reemay and plastic. Glass has its place but it has one major problem: it's round. Most of my pots are square. <br />
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I bought these - I think they're called Hot Hats - at Lee Valley, a very dangerous place to visit. It will convince you that you need all sorts of cool, high-tech AND low-priced, items for your yard and garden. Thanks to Lee Valley I now have lovely rubber covers on my broken taps, solid plastic handles on my old weed buckets, and these square plastic plant covers. Being in Lee Valley is like being a cast member in The Lego Movie: you walk around thinking<b> EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!!!</b><br />
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These Hot Hats are useless in hot weather because everything cooks in them, but the cold, damp days of spring were MADE for these puppies. <br />
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A Hot Hat is covering rocket transplants. I have a rock on the top because the Hats tend to blow away in windy weather. No stalwart of the storm, these Hats. <br />
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Just don't do what I did and leave your Hot Hats on the ground when your teenager is weed whacking.<br />
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Sigh.<br />
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I was given these wire hoop houses by a family friend, and they really are fabulous. I can drape plastic over them AND they keep the cat from digging them up in his never-ending quest to find the perfect toilet spot. Blech.<br />
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The only issue with these is that mice like to scamper around inside them, so when the seedlings first go in I cover them with a wire tray. Until the mice lose interest.<br />
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Gardening requires stealth, I tell you.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BtN6kQkmgvU/UzhMcTbe5KI/AAAAAAAAE-c/Rjg3mbrcjGA/s1600/DSC_0022.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BtN6kQkmgvU/UzhMcTbe5KI/AAAAAAAAE-c/Rjg3mbrcjGA/s1600/DSC_0022.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a> <br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NSYlU7Xb9zg/UzhMzn7IJAI/AAAAAAAAE-k/HnXUr73ZdEw/s1600/DSC_0036.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a> Reemay is another invaluable cover for tender seedlings. I most use it for tougher seedlings: broad beans and brassicas. Plants that like cold temperatures.<br />
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Here are some broad beans with a single-sided sheet of Reemay (tip: plant the seedlings on the lee side of the Reemay). I've used bamboo canes as a support for the Reemay, attaching it with clothes pegs.<br />
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Did you know that broad beans of Olde Tymes had purple flowers? When I heard this at our local Seedy Saturday I couldn't stop myself - I had to buy some seeds. If you live near me come visit and I will give you seeds so you can grow some too.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MKR7PydTEQU/UzhMRLmOdXI/AAAAAAAAE-U/gjDPSGaSjcE/s1600/DSC_0021.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MKR7PydTEQU/UzhMRLmOdXI/AAAAAAAAE-U/gjDPSGaSjcE/s1600/DSC_0021.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a><br />
More Reemay, this time attached to another miniature hoop house. Underneath are several unusually large white sprouting broccoli plants. I started them in November and now they are about 8" high.<br />
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You're probably thinking "yeah, RIGHT, Sheila" aren't you? Well, I'm just going to leave you hanging on that one.<br />
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<strike>Mostly because I forgot to take a photo of them so I can prove my point but gosh do I really want to appear that competitive? Oh heck, of course I do. We gardeners are nothing if not shameless showoffs.</strike><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KDQ7SLWZUWI/UzhMEnvbBPI/AAAAAAAAE-M/anVmbiiyPEw/s1600/DSC_0018.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KDQ7SLWZUWI/UzhMEnvbBPI/AAAAAAAAE-M/anVmbiiyPEw/s1600/DSC_0018.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a>Okay, here's a use for the glass some of you are probably itching to use. These are little rose cuttings I took about a month ago, back when it was still really cold out. I jammed an old mustard jar on top of them and it's stayed there the entire time. Haven't removed it once. The rose cuttings look as if they've taken, so next warm sunny day I will remove the jar and transplant these cuttings to a pot. This rose is called Tahitian Sunset. It's a diva of a rose (the dreaded hybrid tea) but the flowers are so large and highly scented I cut it some slack.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TchKUU8T-ZU/UzdYMOLnWjI/AAAAAAAAE9E/qGb4sjtCJWA/s1600/DSC_0032.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TchKUU8T-ZU/UzdYMOLnWjI/AAAAAAAAE9E/qGb4sjtCJWA/s1600/DSC_0032.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a>Finally, let's look at forcing. Forcing is when you encourage something to grow or produce ever-so-slightly before it really should be producing.<br />
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Back in February I put this clay pot over one of my two rhubarb clumps.<br />
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The trick is to place it over the clump long before you even see the white bulb-lets peeking through the soil. Leave it on, rain or shine, until the leaves of the rhubarb are well out of the soil and looking in need of some sun. <br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NPMIKmkjyT4/UzdYbXXi5uI/AAAAAAAAE9M/uD776lm4vII/s1600/DSC_0036.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NPMIKmkjyT4/UzdYbXXi5uI/AAAAAAAAE9M/uD776lm4vII/s1600/DSC_0036.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a>Here's why this is a fun thing to do: see the clump at the top of the photo? That's the forced rhubarb. The tragic little clump at the bottom didn't get the benefit of the terracotta pot.<br />
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And because this photo was taken 3 weeks ago, the bigger clump is now so large that I was able to pick some stalks and make our first rhubarb crisp three nights ago. <br />
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sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-68309102332838921212014-03-28T12:33:00.001-07:002014-03-28T12:33:37.205-07:00Little Seed<br />
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<b> Here's a post about seed starting.</b></div>
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Once upon a time, long long ago, my seed starting methods were kind of haphazard. I'd go around the yard and collect a bunch of nursery pots, the 4" kind, fill them with garden dirt, then empty my seed packets into each one. The more the merrier, was my adage.</div>
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I'd watch as the seedlings germinated - a tangled, leggy mess. Some would die from damp, most just lay there, struggling. Eventually I'd toss the lot in the compost and buy ready-grown starts 3 months later. It was mildly stressful, now that I stop to think about it. </div>
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As the years wore on I had more success, but I didn't much enjoy seed starting season. It always seemed such a high-maintenance process. So fraught with disaster. Then I happened upon the BBC Gardener's World magazine. All the gardeners used tidy, sectioned, black trays, special seed starting soil, and special heat mats. Their seedlings were strong and mesmerizingly green. Accordingly, because I am nothing if not highly impressionable, I bought some black trays, some seed starting mix, and a heat mat. All of a sudden I had organized trays of healthy seedlings. No damp anywhere. There was still the minor issue of emptying the entire packet in each module, but that was solved with some early but judicious thinning. <br />
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The<b> </b>spring I had 129 tomato seedlings jockeying for room in a small, plastic greenhouse AND on every available south-facing windowsill in the house, I had to admit that my <b>More! More! More!</b> seeding habit needed curbing. I live in a city lot - it's roomy but it's no farm. So I tried the One Seed/One Square method <strike>although if I 'm being perfectly honest I mostly did the Two Seeds/One Square method because it's hard to break old habits</strike>. It worked amazingly. So that's what I do now.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Sheila's Seed Starting Pictorial:</span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jKyHgQrTtSs/UzWnk4Yw5EI/AAAAAAAAE7E/YeEFGcKkO-M/s1600/DSC_0003.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jKyHgQrTtSs/UzWnk4Yw5EI/AAAAAAAAE7E/YeEFGcKkO-M/s1600/DSC_0003.JPG" height="212" width="320" /></a><br />
<b>First, seed trays.</b> Good for the city lot gardener. Cheap, durable if handled politely, and two can fit easily onto one large heat mat. Yes, you can use any old pot you have kicking around but these compact modules don't require a lot of soil, they won't tip over when you move the tray, AND they will hold one largish tomato/pepper until you transplant it out into the garden. Plus, they are easy to store. <br />
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<b></b><b><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VucoE33Jfys/UzXEYblXjoI/AAAAAAAAE74/pT3G0-We3dE/s1600/DSC_0001.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VucoE33Jfys/UzXEYblXjoI/AAAAAAAAE74/pT3G0-We3dE/s1600/DSC_0001.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a>Next, proper soil. </b>I use a product called Sunshine Mix #4. Whatever you use should be well-draining or specially formulated for seed starting. Fill each module 3/4 full of soil and water well. Then add your SEED. Cover with a little soil. Water again, but only slightly.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Hnmkx5iUAUc/UzWn96L9-cI/AAAAAAAAE7U/r2lOkFAyJ_I/s1600/IMG_1325.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Hnmkx5iUAUc/UzWn96L9-cI/AAAAAAAAE7U/r2lOkFAyJ_I/s1600/IMG_1325.JPG" height="298" width="400" /></a> <b>Heat hats.</b> I like these. Yes, they are an absolute pain to store the rest of the year but they add Instant Atmosphere to the process. They keep the soil moist, warm, and slightly humid. This is important if you are keeping your seeds in an otherwise unheated place, like this greenhouse. Yes, this IS the high-tech version of a plastic bag, but it holds its shape better than a plastic bag.<br />
<b>Heat Mats.</b> I like these too. You can cut the germination time by at least 1/2, if not more, by using heat mats. They will also keep any tomato or pepper perfectly happy through the worst spring imaginable, until it's time to go out into the garden. Shop around: our local agricultural store charges 30% less than the local garden centre. <br />
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<b> Adequate storage.</b> This photo isn't particularly brilliant but there are two double heat mats here, one under the bench and one in front of the bench. The trays under the bench stay until they're about 1/2" high, then get moved to a brighter, sunnier location. Lack of light will produce spindly, leggy seedlings. <br />
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<b>Label.</b> Label all your seedlings, even if you think your memory is stupendously amazing. My method is this: (plant name) <i>Black Krim</i>, (date) <i>March 1st</i>. <br />
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I always place the tags in the same place on each tray: middle centre. This way the tag won't catch the heat hat if you're like me and you like to constantly see how your little seedlings are doing.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C1qud2IIJmk/UzXJXhOf5lI/AAAAAAAAE8U/x6tKydjrskI/s1600/DSC_0010.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C1qud2IIJmk/UzXJXhOf5lI/AAAAAAAAE8U/x6tKydjrskI/s1600/DSC_0010.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a><b>Thin.</b> Once the seedlings are about this high I thin them out and move them
around a bit, so they aren't always on a heat mat. Tomatoes and peppers
get most heat mat time. Some seeds, like annual flowers or quick
sprouters like lettuce, don't get ANY heat mat time. <br />
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<b>Rotate For Light. </b>When the seedlings are up and growing, rotate the trays each
day or two, so the light is evenly distributed. Switch sides on the heat mats, turn them around, and so on, so the seedlings have the opportunity to grow straight. <br />
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<b>Growing up out of the nursery.</b> If you're like me and you've got way too many seedlings, turf some of them out to the cold frame. <br />
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<br />sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-80746699299034077252014-03-21T10:02:00.000-07:002014-03-21T10:02:08.310-07:00Hand In Glove<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I don't know about you, but I am an injudicious gardening-glove picker-outer. I'm also cheap. Not the most fortuitous of combinations. Instead of acquiring sturdy finger protection, I often end up with flimsy, weak-walled sweat-havens that are only too happy to spend all their time impregnated with dirt, giving me pruney fingers. <br />
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A few weeks ago I ceased all this silliness. I decided to look for The Perfect Glove. I would still practice thrift, perhaps not <i>quite</i> so stringently, but even more critically, I would work on my injudiciousness. With those two thoughts in mind I made a list of everything I required in a glove:<br />
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1. Finger protection: thorns, biting bugs, glass, rusty nails, the odd attacking snake/squirrel/chicken.<br />
2. I want my fingers to stay clean. My heart sinks when I peel off my gloves and my fingers are ingrained with hours of dirt. I wear gloves to AVOID this scenario, not encourage it.<br />
3. Warmth. Who wants to dig around in the winter garden with numb digits? Not I.<br />
4. Breathability: they should never, under any circumstances, turn my hand into a gross white prune. <br />
5. They must be easy to remove and put on. Bonus points if I can put them on with one hand.<br />
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With that criteria in hand, I assessed my current gardening gloves. I had two types.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bDqEuXYsnDo/Uyu0Dyuv56I/AAAAAAAAE6A/_S-lhlTdD20/s1600/IMG_1544.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bDqEuXYsnDo/Uyu0Dyuv56I/AAAAAAAAE6A/_S-lhlTdD20/s1600/IMG_1544.jpg" height="400" width="298" /></a><b>First, the bulk buy glove. </b><br />
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<b>Pro</b>: Comfortable, breathable, with a useful grippy feature about them. Lightweight fabric makes them cosy to wear. Washable. Reinforced fabric across the knuckles. Leathery-like substance over the fingers. And I can put these babies on with my nose.<br />
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<b>Con</b>: They have irritating lumpy seams at the end of the fingers that continually irk me. And forget wearing them in the rain. Your hands will get wet, muddy, sweaty, AND they'll turn into prunes. <br />
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<b>Rating</b>: B (B+ if you only wear them in sunny weather)<br />
<b>Price</b>: $ <br />
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<b>The Atlas GRIP.</b><br />
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I have, over the years, purchased many many pairs of these
gloves. Sold everywhere. Often on sale. At the moment I have five pairs kicking around, in varying stages of decrepitude. <br />
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<b>Pro</b>: These are great
gloves if cheap and cheerful are your main criteria. The palm side is rubberized while the back is usefully elasticized. The rubber is thick enough to endure many a hearty rose pruning. The rubber is molded so that it WANTS to slide onto your hand, which gives them an edge in the Easy To Get On category.<br />
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<b>Con</b>: Theoretically the rubber/elasticized fabric combination seems a sound plan, but in execution it doesn't quite
work. The rubber on the back of the finger tips extends only to the first joint - just enough to ensure that
you'll be tempted to imagine them Dunk-Proof. But they aren't. And once that elastic gets a whiff of moisture these gloves become Graspy Cold Gloves of Hell. No protective coating over the knuckles, an omission I've rued more than once.<br />
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<b>Rating</b>: C+<br />
<b>Price</b>: $ (I'd give them half a $ if I knew how to do it on the keyboard)<br />
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I needed more in the waterproofing category, with a little less cracking of rubber. A clerk at a garden centre told me I needed leather. It was an intriguing thought, so I went with this pair:<br />
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<b>The Gardening Store Specialty Glove</b>.<br />
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<b>Pro</b>: Shockingly comfortable. My frugal soul is pained to admit that sometimes you DO get what you pay for. Leather knuckle cover. Sturdy leather finger tips. Highly breathable, with a clever hint of elastic around the back of the
wrists (prevents dirt from tumbling into the finger stalls). <br />
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<b>Con</b>: We were inseparable until it started raining, whereupon I discovered that my lovely leather is useless when wet. They inhaled the water, the (non-leather) portions grew sodden, and they looked like giant, deformed mitts of mud. So not attractive. We had to part ways.<br />
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<b>Rating</b>: A (as long as it's not raining, but you could always just wear them around the house)<br />
<b>Price</b>: $$$ <br />
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With the knowledge that the rain wasn't going to be letting up any time soon, I went back to the garden centre and bought another pair. A waterproof pair. At the till I was told that these were really excellent gloves. That buoyed me considerably.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3JkX6SBHMeo/Uyu0RiuIzvI/AAAAAAAAE6Q/k75yctH0yOU/s1600/IMG_1548.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3JkX6SBHMeo/Uyu0RiuIzvI/AAAAAAAAE6Q/k75yctH0yOU/s1600/IMG_1548.jpg" height="400" width="298" /></a><b>The Atlas "Best Damn Gardening Glove Ever"</b> (or something to that effect)<br />
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<b>Pro</b>: Again, shockingly comfortable gloves. Your hand positively slides in (the word <b>sinuously</b> wouldn't go amiss here). The rubber extends well up the arm, which allows all sorts of watery scenarios, from rescuing bees in watering cans to working in the rain or wet. The rubber appears more durable than that of the Atlas Grip, which perhaps explains why they stamped <b>Vinylove</b> next to the size. It's how I felt, wearing these.<br />
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<b>Con</b>: Haven't found any yet, but perhaps working in hot sun would be one of them. Think hot pruney fingers. Fevered brow. Low comfort levels. That sort of thing. <br />
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<b>Rating</b>: A+<br />
<b>Price</b>: $$<br />
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So there you have it: my life in gloves. What should I try next? What sort of gloves do you use? I know some say that comparisons are odious, but in this case I feel it's warranted.<br />
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<br />sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-54205149299078643722014-03-11T17:46:00.002-07:002014-03-11T17:46:30.202-07:00A Walk Through My Greenhouse Come along for the ride - all 14 minutes of it - of my greenhouse. The video had to be compressed and adapted so it might not be as clear as I intended! Feel free to ask questions.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/N9LO6tPc82s?rel=0" width="560"></iframe>)sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-52484957514886244262014-03-10T16:19:00.001-07:002014-03-10T16:19:20.380-07:00Jake, Bly, and Astroman Go To The Beach<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"Lucky there aren't any dogs around to sniff us."<br />
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"My Beiber hair is getting in the way of my eyes."<br />
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"I'm having trouble breathing in this environment."<br />
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"Keep the helmet on, Astroman."<br />
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"Let's climb up this wood face."<br />
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"Look at me - I can hold on to the wood AND smile for the camera!"<br />
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"Astroman is having trouble....trouble...help Astroman hold on..."<br />
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<br />sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273424096377011014.post-58551966858539338302014-03-09T12:38:00.001-07:002014-03-09T12:38:34.330-07:00Head Shots<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I don't normally take photographs in malls, but I made an exception for this particular display. I think shots like these need to be spread far and wide for all to see.<br />
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Now where do I get myself one of those headdresses?<br />
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Or do I have to make it myself?<br />
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<br />sheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11005397694258169964noreply@blogger.com0