Garden Thursday

I moved this arbor. Instead of it sitting in the middle of a bed where no one can walk through it (this never occurred to me - my mother pointed it out) I've now got it positioned as an entry to the vegetable garden.

I am waiting for the Westerland rose planted against it to take off. If you like orangey-gold climbers this rose is really beautiful. I bought it at a garden centre only because it was a) orange, and b) cheap, and instead of turning into one of those Regrettable Impulse Purchases it turned out to be a really nice rose.

In front of that arbor is a columnar apple tree my dad gave me. It's called Ultraspire. The handy thing about columnar fruit trees is that they can be grown in a tub or in a very tight area of the garden and they actually like it. I'm a little worried about this one because this is the third time I've uprooted it. First I thought "Oooh, this would look amazing in an oak barrel on that stupid ugly concrete slab over there." I plant the tree into an oak barrel and put it on the concrete slab. A week later I notice the wild green burgeoning of the Gravenstein apple tree beside it - but it's burgeoning all over the Ultraspire. I think, with a pang, "Ack! That poor Ultraspire is going to be drowned beside that Gravenstein!" So I move it. But if you've never moved an oak barrel full of tree, dirt, and wetness, let me just say that it's not an easy feat. After a few humiliating heaves and ho's I finally dug it out and planted it in the wheelbarrow, thinking "Another place will magically appear, til then it can sit here." Later that day I was moving the arbor and thought "Gosh, that Ultraspire would look amazing beside the Westerland rose!" One thing I did to move along the success of this final move was to add a lot of kelp and bone meal to the soil before plopping in the tree. That should help the roots from developing too much shock.

Here is Max dismantling an old bench a friend of mine gave me. Check out the wrought iron detailing! (uh-oh, I sound like a car fanatic "Look at those hubcaps!") My plan is to sand and paint the wood then reattach it, using the Handy Dandy Max of course.

And lookee here. It's the inside of a greenhouse. My mother bought my dad a huge hard-sided greenhouse the other day, so I inherited his old one. It's a bit weather-beaten but it's already made seed propagation so much easier. The cat likes to sit in here. Does that make him a Seed Guard Cat? He even made me put a concrete paver at the end so he can lay on the warm concrete when it's sunny.











Here's a shot of it at the end of the vegetable garden (makes it sound like it moves stealthily around the yard, doesn't it?). That red tape is from the 'weather-beaten' bit of its former life, when it was caught in a wind and had some of its cover shredded.

The twins and I planted a bunch of seeds the other day, and placed the containers on the shelves of this thing: carrots, lettuce, arugula, clary sage, milkweed, 6 different kinds of tomatoes, breadseed poppies, collinsia, peach hollyhocks, fennel, beans, and sweet peas.








And finally, some primroses. You SO need to stop buying those cheap 99¢ polys and get these English ones. They are head and shoulders above the others. And they aren't nearly as attractive to the slugs. At least, mine don't seem to be. And the colours! This one is red with yellow centres.













Well, that's it for garden action around here. I'm going to be thinking about installing watering systems soon, because I like having the beds on soaker hoses and timers, but I've yet to find a soaker hose that lasts. They all seem to develop little holes in them, rendering them rather unimpressive in the Soaker Department. I've cleared up almost all the winter debris, and I'm slowly working on removing all the Bishop's Weed from the side beds. Gosh that stuff is tenacious. Irritating, persistent, and horribly tenacious. Grows like buttercup but faster. When I'm done that I will move my ire to the vinca.

Why DO We Need A Dictionary Of Old English?

Ammon Shea answers this question in the most delightful way, well, provided you like reading about nuances in language.

Semantic change waits for no man, indeed.

Twittering Again

FDPG is going on a Brownie camp, so we're getting her gear together. I pick up her "sit upon" (something to sit around the fire on). Every other Brownie drew flowers and fairies on theirs; FDPG drew The Evil Head Man, Nasty Mr Pumpkin, and the Scary Octopus Man. This was BEFORE Dr Who. Just so you know...


Dominic, as he's getting his hair trimmed. Out on the deck in the sun. "I can't see in this light!" "This sun is too bright! Why do you have to do this when it's so bright?" "Ouch, you clipped my ear AGAIN! I'm going to BLEED to DEATH!" As is my wont, I ignore him because he does this each and every time. And then, right at the very end, I glimpse a teeny tiny speck of blood. I HAVE clipped his ear! Do I tell him? I decide not to. This kid is an elephant. He will remember the day I SHREDDED HIS EAR WILLYNILLY until the day I die.

Max, as he helps me load the wheelbarrow with soil, to move from the front yard to the back yard: "Oops, I just remembered - I have to go check my batteries. I'm recharging them. They might be ready now."

Nice try Max. Nice try.

Garden Thursday

New spot for the arbor. I moved it to make a bigger herb garden. Now this arbor acts as a sort of Entry Way for the vegetable garden. It is bordered on either side by golden roses: one side is a David Austin rose that I think is either Golden Celebration or Graham Thomas, and on the other side is a Westerland climber.

This is a checkered fritillaria: Fritillaria meleagris. They are just starting to bloom in earnest. When I saw the picture on the bulb package my first thought was "No WAY do these things look like this!" They were like some wonderful Alice In Wonderland chess board flower come alive but my deeply suspicious nature distrusted that picture - I've bought too many bulbs that looked incredible the first year and that first year only. Subsequent years they reverted to the sorry a$$ heritage they'd been crossed with, much to my irritation (mostly because I'd paid too much for too little and we all know how annoying that can be). But you know, these fritillarias really DO come up like this, year after year. Even better, they last for weeks and weeks, crisp and fresh the whole time. They start very very small, then oh-so-slowly creep higher and higher until you're amazed at how very tall they have suddenly grown, all the while maintaining that crazy chequerboard pattern. I've got them all over the place now, I love them so.

This is my week for transplanting. Here's the first plant I moved. It sat in a pot in my cold frame all winter, mostly because I couldn't think of anywhere to place it until it was too cold to put it in the ground. And now, with it bursting out of its pot, I was forced to. It's hardhack: Spiraea douglasii. I bought it last fall at the place where I get our fruit and vegetables. This place also has a little greenhouse section in the back and this poor plant was sitting pathetically in a cracked pot, looking old and dry. But that's not why I bought it: I bought it because it was 75% off. I can't resist nearly free plants. Plus I liked the name hardhack. My only dilemma is when I research it online: I bought a variegated version and I can't seem to match the tag on the plant with the names I find online. Time will tell if the flower is pink or not. I suspect not somehow.

My other major transplant was this pear tree. Now, I don't know where you live, but let me just say this - if you're ever in a garden centre and see a charming little pear tree sitting oh-so-prettily, with the even more charming name of Louisebonne, don't think back to your university days as a medievalist translating Chaucer, where pear trees in literature seemed to abound, oh no, do yourself a favour and get yourself over to the perennials. Busy yourself with a few blueberry bushes or some fancy hellebores or something, because pear trees are a PITA in these parts. They do this terrible blight-infested dance with the juniper bush, and everyone ends up getting rust. Very codependent. Rust, for the organic home gardener, is no fun. It involves picking off leaves and even worse: little to no fruit. There are a couple of options, though: 1) move the tree at least 100' from any junipers; 2) remove the junipers completely; 3) don't plant pear trees ever again, whilst glaring at neighbours who have thousands of feet of juniper hedges. I chose 1), although I was unable to find a single spot in my yard that was 100' from any juniper hedge, this being a juniper hedge-infested neighbourhood. I think I might have managed 55'. And here it is. According to my online sources, April is the cruellest month...I mean, April is the month when the juniper pollen is at its most potent, so if I was going to move this pear tree I'd need to have it moved by then. So I did. And here it is. In its new spot at the end of the yard. So far it looks really good: the blossoms are all breaking and nothing is drooping. Sigh. I was really looking forward to those Louisebonne pears. Apparently they are slightly pink and have none of the grainyness regular pears have. And it would have looked so atmospheric with my stuffed partridge come December...

If you've read this blog for any length of time (or if you know me IRL) you'll know that I live on a hill. The yard is big but it's also quite steep in sections. So I did like the Peruvians and terraced some areas. At first I used sod, in little half moons. This is a good solution if you have a small area and you don't mind the border being grassy. This section here, in the photo, is too large for a grassy border because I'd be constantly picking out the grass, so I had to find another edging material. I thought about cedar boards but I really wanted a solution that did not involve me buying anything. So I did the next best thing: I asked Max to give me bricks from his HO train fantasmagoria garden sculpture brick stash.
I started with the front walls and later added the side walls, with some strawberry plants added as decorative points. And a couple of stakes just in case of earthquakes. I know, I know, stakes on my brick beds will be the least of my worries if there is an earthquake.






Here's a bit of a closeup. I don't do mortar, because I have issues with total commitment, but I think these walls will endure long enough to settle firmly into place with each other.

Here's a detail shot: you can see my little pear tree down at the bottom, along with my crumbling compost bin. No rude remarks about the straightness of my walls, now...

Good Day Sunshine

The day started off badly: the developer who bought the house next to us has, let us just say, difficulties being a foreman, and some of the tradesmen he's hired are making a hash of my yard as they traipse around doing their thing. So I spent some time this morning trying to make myself understood (and being reminded that there is still a very clear divide between some of the sexes). It's been a while since I've heard a man over the age of 25 actually say "Whoa, babes at five o'clock, dude!" while I've been standing next to him. While his ladder is firmly wedged in my fuchsia bed. While he's sitting smoking on my doorstep, quite oblivious about the fact that I might actually mind him sitting smoking on my doorstep.

Sigh.

Fortunately things went up remarkably from there. Max and I had the best conversation about his life today. I am not a person who plans ahead a whole lot, so I haven't been reflecting much about the impending teen years of my offspring, other than to think than that they can be trying for the rest of the family. As a result, dealing with this First Teen is sometimes unpredictable and inexplicably mysterious, not to mention frustrating. For those of you who either can't remember being a teen or don't have teens in your life, let me just say that at times it can be like living with a really really picky princess. An opinionated picky princess. I often reference this to Max, especially if he's being particularly princessy. Irony keeps the irritation down, you know.

"You are such a princess!" I say. To which he usually says "I am a BOY, BOYS can't be princesses." To which I usually say "Oh you are SUCH a rule breaker, you little princess you!"

Sometimes he laughs. Sometimes he rolls his eyes. Sometimes he stomps away. It sort of depends how he feels about being so woefully misunderstood.

Sometimes I laugh. Sometimes I am completely serious. Sometimes I stomp away. It sort of depends how I feel about being the Servant Girl to his Princess.

Anyhow, we had a really great talk today. It really made up for the irritating Babe Boys next door.

This is the part that was glossed over in my Parenting Manual: what to do when they aren't babies anymore. Some of it comes easily; some of it doesn't. So when days like today come along, they really are an unexpected delight.

Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief

Spoilers!

Have you read the book on which they based this film? I haven't, but Max has, so I am going by what he remembers, which is this: the plot isn't horribly different from the book. There are some key differences, which, if I had read the book, would probably drive me BATTY (which happened when we read/watched The Water Horse), but overall Max wasn't terribly bothered by any of the divergences. So I won't be either. Well, until I read the book, or listen while FDPG reads the book and tells me all about them and THEN be horrified about how callow and disastrous the changes are...

Calm down Sheila.

The story is this: Zeus, head honcho in Olympus, loses his lightening rod. There he is up there, in that picture. That rod in his hand is the very one he lost in the book. So you can see why he'd be so pissed. Goes nicely with the shield, although in the movie he was more of a long black coat, long blonde hair, cool scarf kind of guy. He was played by Sean Bean, whom we usually refer to as Seen Been, or Shawn Bawn (think about it - it'll make sense in a minute).

Anyhow, Zeus thinks that his brother's son has stolen his lightening rod. He's very annoyed about this, because losing his lightning rod means that he can no longer make lightning. Why this was an issue was beyond me, frankly, but it was obviously not an issue for the Movie Executives. They glossed over it in a matter of nanoseconds: I think it involved a toss of the head, a couple of brotherly shoves, and three very cold glares. If they could have inserted a Meagan Fox cameo, I'm sure they would have, even if this scene was on the top of the Empire State Building.

The brother in question, in case you tend to mix up your Greek Gods, is Poseidon. One of the Big Boys of Greek Mythology. Here is a picture of him rising out of the Mediterranean. He's pissed about Zeus' accusations, although from what I remember of the scene he doesn't seem very indignant about Zeus accusing his offspring and most of us in the movie theatre assumed that he figured his kid was the thief. I was more indignant about Poseidon's assumption of guilt than I was about Zeus' assumption of guilt, frankly, although both of those assumptions paled when I stopped to think about Omnipotence and God-like Abilities To See All and Know All, because surely they

SHOULD HAVE KNOWN WHO THE HELL STOLE THE STUPID BOLT IN THE FIRST PLACE, SHOULDN'T THEY?

Calm down, Sheila. Calm down.


Okay, so Poseidon is a fairly tough guy, played by the grimly charming Kevin McKidd of Rome. When he comes out of the waters in his Greek God outfit, complete with trident, and glares at some hapless fisherman, well, forget about Venus rising from the waves. Kevin, err, Poseidon, looks pretty darn cool. He stalks almost continuously from his initial entrance until the very last scene. I like a man who can stalk well.

Move on Sheila.

Turns out that Poseidon's kid is no mere God, but a part-human offspring, or demi-god. And his name is, in true Super Hero convention, is Percy. Percy Jackson.

Percy is your average disenfranchised Modern American Teen, who likes to sit underwater for minutes on end (helps him think), has issues with dyslexia, and is fairly conversant with terms like ADHD and "show some respect, man!" He has charming blue eyes, likes to argue about everything that happens to him, and is fairly likable, as far as the MAT thing goes. His accoutrements: sad-eyed, sad sack mother; initially-charming-but-later-cringe-worthy sidekick-slash-Protector friend; school principal-slash-centaur; and Hot Chick-slash-demi-god-slash-ultracool-fighter-friend, all have their good and bad moments, although I have to say that his mother (played by She Really Must Be Slumming Catherine Keener) is truly awful. Someone show that woman how to IRON. I need a little verisimilitude with my movies, puleeeze.

Anyhow, Percy, as the heroic convention goes, has to find the bolt, return it to Zeus, get some action with the Hot Chick, kill off the Baddies, and manage his angsty teen attitude, not necessarily in that order. Medusa makes an rather campy appearance, as does a very cool Hydra. There are a lot of absorbing CGI effects in this movie, effects that make the story line far more palatable than it otherwise would. Call me a complete killjoy, but I had the distinct feeling that the director didn't quite know who he was making the movie for: adults, children, or teens. And by this I mean: there are goofy, funny scenes involving kids running around being Cool Demi-God Fighting Heroes, exciting scenes involving Angry Gods being Angry Gods, dramatic scenes with monsters and lots of things getting smashed up, and distressingly mature scenes where the cast of High School Musical (on acid), Meagan Fox, and a couple of pole dancers wouldn't have gone amiss.

Poor Meagan Fox! What have you got against her?

The entire Transformers franchise, for one thing. And her complete lack of acting talent, for another.

Get on with this, Sheila.

Let's just say that watching a satyr do an ensemble dance routine (with a number of 'sexy chicks') as if he were a randy Michael Jackson kind of guy is quite cringe-making when one has taken one's 8 year olds to a movie that one assumed would be packed with action and not hormones. And let's just say that one doesn't usually expect Persephone to be dressed as a panting, slutty 18th century prostitute while she's in Hades (I won't even get into what I thought of Hades except to say that he had baroque pretensions of Rock Star Grandeur that might, just might have been amusing had I not been accompanied by my 8 year olds who were puzzled as to why Hades had such bad hair and why the satyr bleated whenever he was near Persephone). I felt like saying GET A ROOM ALREADY.

And let's not even get into why the satyr got his horns after spending time with Persephone in Hades. Oh my my. It was all so...so...banal. Juvenile. Such a hackneyed male fantasy. I wanted action. Excitement. Dramatic tension. Pure fear. Terror, even. I did not want to watch a couple of boys have a Losing My Vir— movie.

Gosh, don't hold back, Sheila.

Sorry, Rick Riordan, but I was completely disappointed.

Garden Thursday

The weather has really changed in the last week! We had days and days of balmy, sunny, mild weather. The Mason bees and bumble bees were emerging, my nectarine and peach trees are in full blossom, and all the hardy fuchsias (what a weird word to spell) are sprouting madly all over the place, giving me an opportunity to prune them for the first time ever (tip pruning to remove the dead wood from the winter). Then, just as quietly as it had arrived, the balmy weather disappeared, leaving us with cold wintry drafts. I rushed over to the garden centre to buy some manure to pile over the roots of the trees I'd been re-planting (to give them some heat) and then decided to plant the roses I had sitting in pots around the front yard. You can't see it from here but I now have a little climber (Lady Caroline, a variant of The Fairy) going up an aged pine tree, where I hope it will intertwine with Sandy's clematis, as well as another clematis (Mrs. N. Thompson), to create a sort of pinky, purpley, bluey spectacle.
Someone gave me a bag of lilies, which I planted in the above bed. This used to be the Lozenge Bed, and had a little oval of grass in the middle. It was very pretty but incredibly awkward to mow, and one day, in a fit of ARGH-ness I dug out all the sod and turned the inside Lozenge Grass into inside Lozenge Dirt. Things were even more awkward after that because it took me forever to figure out what I wanted from that bed: first I planted some roses but their thorny arms made it even more awkward to navigate the space; so I hauled them out and replaced it with some Irish and Scotch moss and tiles. Now it's a pleasant open space. So don't worry if a garden section isn't working for you: you can always dig things up and reposition them, as long as you follow the one cardinal rule of transplanting—take good care of the root ball.
Here is my usual transplant technique:
1. First, I dig the hole the plant is going to be moved to.
2. If it's dry, I fill that hole with water.
3. I then dig all around the plant, making sure I'm not cutting any major roots.
4. Place it onto a tarp or large shovel.
5. Take it to its new place. Then, before placing it in its new home, I sprinkle a couple of big handfuls of bone meal and kelp meal in the bottom of the hole. I position the plant and sprinkle another few sprinkles of bone and kelp meal over the roots. If I have some compost I fill the rest of the hole with compost. If I don't, I try to break up the old soil so it's soft and crumbly. In the summer I'll then water. This time of year I don't.
6. Oh, and when transplanting the adage is that you always keep the plant facing the same direction it faced in its old place.

In other news: primroses seem to be the new fad here. It's weird, I've never noticed so many new varieties before. Not only the usual poly. primroses, but the English primroses - which are taller, hardier, and less shiny with primary colour if that makes sense. They are far less likely to revert, too, so if you like primroses, the extra $ you'll pay for these English ones is well worth it. I've got a few that are springing up all over the place. I'm keeping the areas around them clear of debris, though, because the slugs are pretty enthusiastic right now.




Look at this before and after. A local gardener, who has a very useful garden guide for my area, gave me this tip: upend a terracotta pot on the rhubarb in early spring, to force it a little.

Here you can see the little nubs of rhubard, peeking out from the soil. The date is February 18th.












And here is the rhubarb after I suddenly remembered it! I was walking by and caught a glimpse of green leaf out of the top of the pot, and thought with a tinge of horror "OMG! THE RHUBARB! I FORGOT ABOUT IT!"
So I pulled off the pot, and look what I found.

I took this picture on March 7th.