Dancing in Spring with Flowers
Journal of the Garden East of Eden 1994 to 2003
Stoop to look at the flowers
And a cosmos will open before you;
Look up to see the sky
And a universe will unfold.
Ann England
Chapter 1 Introductions
THINKING OF PURPLE
With thanks to Jenny Joseph
who started all this
I am NOT an old woman
So, SOMETIMES, I wear purple,
And fly away from home
To write stories on a balcony
above the sand
in the middle of a Florida night
To drive hundreds of miles
to exotic locales
And eat steamed Baltimore crabs
And photograph flowers against blue skies
To plant beds and beds
of heritage flower seeds
under a solar eclipse
And watch birds and plants
shout spring
to a land
that glows a welcome
To take a mid-afternoon break in planting seeds,
And don a beribboned straw hat
And sip "mint julep" margaritas
while watching the Kentucky Derby
in memory
of having driven past the state the previous week
To watch the movie "Pretty Woman"
three nights in a row
And discuss its mythological resonance
on a long drive
to deliver
organic produce
to eaters in the fast lane
of a modern city.
I am practicing.
Ann England August 1, 1995
At the end of April, each year, I drive my father north from a condo in Clearwater on the west coast of Florida to his home in Mississauga, west of Toronto. Before leaving Ontario, I take a side trip to a farm north of Lake Erie, and there I plant flowers.
In the beginning, I was a ten day-a-year gardener. Sometimes fifteen, but generally less. I would plant flower seeds, weed flowerbeds, add compost, spread mulch, and then hop on a plane and go home.
By the day I departed the farm, the first seedlings had sprouted, and many perennial leaves were open. No flowers, or even buds. So I would leave, requesting that someone take photographs to confirm that flowers really did bloom. Throughout the summer, my phone calls to my father, who visited the farm occasionally, elicited the continuing refrain, "There's SO MUCH GRASS!" No photos; just the continuing refrain.
The next spring, I would return to the garden, pull grass and dandelions out of the perennials, plant new annual flower seeds, spread compost, add mulch and go home. And await reports.
In February 1998, after 4 years of spring visits, I had occasion to travel through Toronto, so I visited the farm for a few days. And there WERE reports and there WERE photos! Between tours of the winter garden and cleaning flower seeds and repairing the tractor, we talked about the garden. We talked about the stages of the garden in the summer, which seeds germinated, which flowers were cut and sold throughout the season and which seeds were harvested for future plantings or for sales to customers. And we looked at slide photos of flowers really blooming, and grass and more grass growing through untended flowerbeds. But, best of all, flowers really did bloom from many of the seeds I planted, and in the many beds I weeded.
The purpose I serve is small, in the general scheme of things. I dig flowerbeds and plant flower seeds. That's all.
On a farm that must provide a living through its vegetables and fruits, flowers are a minor component. But, somehow, flowers add a dimension beyond the small monetary income they provide. They speak of the land becoming beautiful. They give a reason for nourishing the soil and building a place for worms and toads and birds and bats and moths and butterflies. And they attract bees, which willingly expand their pollinating territory into the surrounding vegetable gardens.
Seeing the pictures, talking about the gardens, and walking the land, reaffirmed my place in its life.
Dinner - May 11/97 - Mother's Day
Asparagus, bacon and wild garlic slowly fried
Boiled Jerusalem artichokes
Morels and fiddleheads fried in butter
Salad of watercress from the valley, sliced Jerusalem artichokes from the farm gardens
Butterfly wine - Pelee Winery
Dessert - sherbet tea/coffee
Thurs. May 8/97
Green Orchid
Today was transformation day for Ken. As Farmer Ken, in his pale blue and white overalls, he finished collecting bushels of fertilizer and boxes of transplants and loading them into the back of the van for delivery to his customers in Toronto.
Showered and freshly attired in beige slacks and a multi-green Hawaiian shirt with his hair pulled firmly back into a ponytail, he climbed into the van for a leisurely two-hour drive into the City. There he will transform himself into a business-suited companion, and accompany Joan for her special evening, a fundraiser for the Red Cross.
Volunteering is an important component of Joan and Ken's lives. Joan has, for years, been a Red Cross volunteer, gradually working her way up through the chairs to the presidency of the Toronto Red Cross. Tonight, she will attend the banquet as its outgoing president, her companion by her side.
At the farm, Joan became a member of the Norfolk Field Naturalists: Whenever she's in the neighbourhood, she attends their tours and gatherings.
Kenneth took a different route. Years ago, he started the "Seeds of Diversity" organization, developed the principles, helped write its mission statement, edited the first magazines and found 160 like-minded people to fill out the membership. Later, he helped prepare the groundwork for Canadian Organic farming legislation.
Then he moved on to become a member of the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve Programme, helping a local branch to promote the Long Point Biosphere Reserve.
Joan stays with one or two organizations. Ken gets in at the beginning of something, or sometimes at the end, makes a significant contribution, and then moves on.
Sat. May 3/97
In the evening, Ken took Joan and me on a tour of the farm. He showed me the hardwood boards drying out on the top floor of the barn. They will dry out for at least a year, layered in a lattice pattern to allow air flow, before Ken can use them to build their new house. On the separate property, beside the barn, we paced out the outline of the new house as we stood within the string outline. Ken explained where each room of the house and food areas will be, and why. There will be food sorting areas, a canning area, and wet and dry storage areas.
Then we walked down to the lower floor of the barn. Last year, this area had several old horse stalls. In the fall, Ken removed everything to the walls. Then he laid a concrete floor using a cement mixer he now owns. During the winter, he built a workbench large enough to carry the wood and other materials he will use in house building. Above the workbench is a large, well-supported shelf to hold all his tools. He has wired and wired and wired, with innumerable electrical outlets.
Next we followed the roadway beside the barn and stepped (climbed) down one of the slopes, heading south. Taking a side trip from the roadway, we walked down into the valley in search of wild onions and wild leeks. Ken pointed out where he had harvested trees for his house lumber. That lumber will be used for cupboards and counters and floors.
Back up above the valley, Ken and I walked the asparagus fields in search of a few stalks for our first feed of asparagus this year.
At the western end of the asparagus field, we walked across the Narrows above the end of the Valley of Springs to look at the flower and vegetable gardens. Last fall, Ken bought several loads of sawdust and chicken manure and had them deposited in two long hills northwest of the northern roadway to Painter Lane. Then he used the tractor to combine about half the sawdust with all the chicken manure. We dug into the sawdust and it felt slightly warm. We dug into the mixture of sawdust and chicken manure and it was steamy! Sawdust takes nitrogen from the surface of the soil in order to break down. The addition of chicken manure to the sawdust speeds up the process before the combination is put on the soil.
We checked out the Flower Garden. In the Blue garden, the old faithfuls are well under way-blue flax, Echinacea, and hollyhocks. The Red garden had been disced for planting annuals.
It was bitterly cold as we made our way back along the western row of asparagus and then followed the Concession road back to the house.
Supper: Roast beef
Last year's potatoes
This year's greens
Just before bedtime, I pulled out the photo panoramas that I had put together in the past two years. They showed us the progress of the flower gardens during the past few years.
Mon. May 10/98
My great-grandfather was a farmer. In 1881, he planted potatoes at Thunder Bay to feed the CPR rail crews building the railway across the country. Then he left there to look for farmland to homestead, acquiring farmland northeast of Teulon, Manitoba, on the edge of Oak Hammock Marsh. [He chose prime hay land!] He, thus, homesteaded BEFORE the railway arrived in Winnipeg. There he stayed, planted a garden, cut hay, and raised cattle. His son grew up on that farm, and left as soon as the law allowed, apprenticing himself to a pharmacist, then taking university courses to qualify, and eventually moving into Winnipeg where he raised a family equally disinterested in farming. His son, though, must have had SOME farming in his genes. He spent every summer of his youth on his aunt's farm just south of Stonewall, not farming but being out-of-doors and on the land. And, when his family was growing, he maintained a vegetable garden with the help of a neighbour who earned his living as a gardener to the wealthy and taught him how to make a compost heap that grew magnificent purple iris on its top. But, gardening, to this son, was really only an adjunct to earning a living and raising a family. And, beyond that, a neat lawn and an organized flowerbed or two were all that city living really required of him. But, he, too, had a son. And the farming genes returned, three generations later and much transformed by the passage of time and the changes in the world. A new generation of farmer from old stock. The original scion farmed out of necessity. The latest son chose to farm, and went searching for a way to do it. Now he entertains his city father by serving him the foods he has harvested from his own farm and they remember the grandfather who couldn't wait to get off the farm, and the great-grandfather who planted potatoes for a living and then raised cattle on swampy hay land.
* * * * *
Thursday, May 1,2003
In Ken's van this year is a picture: a dancing brown figure with a goat head mask. Its deep brown and green colours welcomed me into the vehicle.
When Ken worked for Department of the Secretary of State, about thirty years ago, he was given the portfolio of looking after some of the settlement needs of a new set of immigrants-Tibetans. On considering how to approach this task, he decided that a religious leader would have a finger on the pulse of such a group. One of their spiritual men was a Buddhist monk who lived in Toronto while the group itself had settled in the Lindsay area. Ken visited with the man, and asked him what these people needed to make them feel comfortable in their new country. The response was that they needed Tibetan "readers" for their Saturday studies. Ken knew that would be a do-able task and set out to acquire the books.
On their last meeting, the man went into his back room and returned with a small painting. He said that the Chinese had no use for religion or spirituality, so he carried this painting with him out of Tibet. This was the brown dancing figure, wearing a goat head mask and a tiger skin, and holding near her heart what might be a skull vessel of life-giving blood in one hand and a stalk of corn held high in the other. The monk did not have enough facility in English to explain what the god was holding except to say "corn". Ken senses that it means "Useful Plant Life". The monk said he had little to do with gardens at this stage of his life. He had performed his role for the painting and must now pass it on to its next guardian. Giving Ken the painting, he said that Ken need not concern himself about the management of this Goddess, nor worry about her future. In Tibet, an icon is the god; this image was strong enough to look after itself and would guide Ken through to the next stage of its existence.
Ken took the painting back to his city apartment, and that year started gardening: he planted his first window boxes, and his plantings increased each year thereafter. He guarded the painting for 30 years, but last year became aware that it was ready to move on/expand its influence.
So Ken made a copy of the painting and placed it on the central dashboard of his truck. He knows something will happen, but not what.
Saturday, May 3, 2003
As usual, you can tell that Joan has arrived from the City and added her signature to the houses. Every room has a bouquet of daffodils-yellow and white, and yellow-hyacinths, cilia and ferns or evergreens. Such a sunny look! Today was Friendship Day at the farm. We spent much time over the breakfast table chatting this morning. Then I spent about an hour looking for and translating the "Joy of Cooking" recipe for Mint Julep. The Spring Arbour Farm (SAF) Canadian version was maple syrup, mint leaves from the garden, and Wisner's Whiskey (because it happened to be in the cupboard).
Later, I walked along the roadway above the valleys. I climbed down into the western end of the springs below the Narrows to photograph Mayflower leaves. On the way, I saw a maroon-streaked skunk cabbage flower unfolding from the ground, took a photograph of a red trillium whose face was shining UP, and saw a few purple violets adding a spot of colour to the green of the skunk cabbage leaves, and the dark brown of the wet soil.
In the fields, I managed to clean out one Echinacea bed near the walkway, trying to remember why there was a large vacant area in that particular bed. Then I remembered that I had dug out a huge goldenrod(?) plant. I also cleaned most of the Canterbury Bells bed that I had planted with many greenhouse seedlings last fall. Only 4 came up this spring. While I worked in the fields, I listened to a Belva Plain story on my Walkman.
Back at the house, I prepared snacks and "Juleps".
Every year, I arrive at Spring Arbour Farm during the first week in May. Regretting that I had to drive PAST Kentucky on my drive north, instead of taking a side trip to the state, I like to watch the Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday of the month.
At 4:30 p.m., we donned our flowered hats,
and then sipped our drinks while we watched the
race.
This evening we entertained the Wynias in the new house. We do all our cooking in the little house, and eat in the big house when Joan is in residence. By the time Ken and I return from the fields, Joan has everything in place, so Ken and I help carry a few last items across the yard.
For supper, we had a big feed of the first asparagus of the season-early, this year. Joan grilled pork steaks on the grill, with paprika-ed mushrooms. We also had sweet potatoes slathered in butter and onions, and a big mixed salad on the side. When Joan pulled out the store-bought pie from the box at dessert time, we discovered it was uncooked, so we ate dessert an hour later. Cantaloupe was served in the interim, as a palate cleanser.
Chapter 2 The Place
Tues. March 11/97
Kenneth calls Spring Arbour Farm, "The Garden East of Eden". This is a reference to the original garden established for Adam and Eve, which grew plants but husbanded nothing with a stomach other than the people who worked the land. It is also a present day locational reminder that it is situated east of the town of Eden, Ontario. To me, the reference is more global. My Eden is the prairies of southern Manitoba, where, even I am east of Eden-Manitoba, this time. Spring Arbour Farm is part of a small enclave of parkland with similar growing conditions to the prairies, but more than two thousand miles southeast, and with more benign temperatures. Its energies call my prairie soul for ten days a year.
Spring Arbour Farm is on a huge sand plain that runs westward along the north shore of Lake Erie from Port Dover, past the clay plains just north of Long Point, to Port Talbot in southern Ontario. On a map, this area looks like a huge teardrop with its northern point around Delhi. Thus, the major part of Norfolk County is a flat plain of coarse sand. These sands were deposited when Norfolk County was a delta of glacial Lake Whittlesey, and under the shoreline waters of the next glacial Lake Warren. Venison Creek weaves its way into and around the Spring Arbour Farm property, about 75 feet below the surface of the farmland. The creeks and rivers that drain this sand plain have cut deep channels through the sand and the underlying clay or silt strata.
The farm buildings are on the southeast corner of the property. North and west of the farm buildings are two 5-acre fields of asparagus. Planted BEFORE the farm was purchased, it is now one of the few organic farms growing asparagus. It is very difficult to start growing fields of asparagus without first killing the tough indigenous plants.
These asparagus fields are separated from the rest of the farm fields by the Valley of the Seven Springs, a long valley of springs that cuts across the farmland, leaving a narrow strip of land wide enough to drive a tractor to the back fields.
North of the Narrows, the large fields stretch the width and length of the property.
In the centre of the first fields are the flower gardens, framed by a long curving shelter belt of trees, and surrounded by the vegetable gardens. A long curving roadway arcs northeast around the vegetable and flower gardens to end at Painter Lane which slopes down to Venison Creek. Here, the irrigation pipes along the roadside transport water up to the dry flatlands above.
Northwest of this roadway, long piles of manure, sand and sawdust steam away.
In the early spring, farmer Ken starts seedlings in a large greenhouse beside the little house, transplanting them to larger pots as they grow.
About the second week in May, he moves outdoors to cut asparagus. With asparagus harvesting well under say, he begins to deliver compost, seedlings and asparagus to his customers.
As the pace of asparagus harvesting slows and the seedlings now outside the greenhouse harden off, Ken moves to the vegetable gardens surrounding the Flower Garden beyond the Narrows. Day after day, he works the soil, adds huge quantities of compost, and transplants seedlings.
Each year, a different pattern develops as the vegetable "rows" are dug in curving lines to add a flowing border around the flower beds.
On a search for fiddleheads, leeks and garlic along the valley floor one day, we discovered a new meadow in formation. Land beside the water had been filling in with willows, making walking to the wild "food" patches increasingly difficult. But beavers had been busy and were cutting down the small trees and nibbling off the bark. At the same time, they were producing a different kind of meadow. These beavers are not regular beavers that build homes across streams and dam up the water behind, but Bank Beavers, whose homes don't shout out their presence. We looked for the beavers but they weren't entertaining visitors that day.
.
Tues. March 11/97
Along the slopes of the farm, an unusual form of reclamation occurs. In the "old" days, the slopes above the valleys were used as garbage dumps. With the new regime in residence, the valleys are being returned to growing spaces for wild plants and other wild life. The many springs that trickle down into Venison Creek nurture the sloping land that supports a canopy of Carolinian forest, part of a major flyway for warblers in spring and fall. The low bottom lands support a deer population while the slopes provide food and hiding areas for small animals. Removing the human-manufactured detritus frees the land to perform its tasks.
This challenge has been undertaken by the urban businesswoman in the farm partnership. Almost every available weekend in spring, summer and fall sees Joan in hiking boots, jeans, jacket and work gloves heading out to remove the next layer of garbage from the slopes-old shampoo and hair dye bottles, bags of cut hair, old refrigerators, truck tires, toppled tobacco kilns, pop cans, car bodies, and on and on. The garbage is piled at the top of the slopes until "Free Day at the Dump". Then it is loaded into the van and the two partners drive to join the line-up at the dump and visit with their neighbours as they wait their turn to deposit their junk. This day of the year is a local institution. The whole district shows up to contribute and to gossip. After four years of work, the first small valley is now clean, an indication that the task IS possible.
Sat. May 3/97
This morning, Joan and I drove over to the Long Point Bird Observatory to watch bird banding. Joan is a member of the local Norfolk Field Naturalists and this was a sponsored trip. Unfortunately, we were the only attendees. We always learn more when there are several people to ask questions and generally show an interest. To capture the birds, the banders set out long black nets that look like narrow, out of place badminton nets in areas where birds are likely to fly in early morning or evening. This morning, it was pouring rain with a cold wind, so they had left the nets rolled up because the birds weren't flying. Therefore, they couldn't show us any bird banding. We wandered around Long Point, walked the beach, saw the lighthouse, walked around the capture nets and then went to Port Rowan to do some shopping.
Port Rowan is an interesting town. Besides serving the local farming community, it carries supplies for duck hunters and wealthy boaters who travel the lakes. I could find good quality clothing for my grandchildren in a clothing store, or discuss working decoys with the owner of the nearby hardware store whose wealth of information could be demonstrated as he pointed to the many samples of carving decorating the tops of the antique display and storage cabinets around the walls.
Oct. 23/00
The Norfolk Field Naturalists sponsored a natural history tour of the Turkey Point woods about 20 k.m.? east of Spring Arbour Farm.
Four of us arrived at the parking lot part way down the hill to Turkey Point. The walking tour went through the forest high above the marshy point of land that juts southward out into Lake Erie. The different trees that make up this Carolinian forest were identified: Sassafras, Pawpaw-which was down in a valley, American Chestnut, Black Oak, Red Oak, Beech, Butternut, Walnut, Tulip, White Cedar, Yew (very low here), Hemlock, White Pine.
During this tour, we met Dr. Al Gordon, a plant geneticist, who manages a picetum, a test plot of spruce trees from around the world. On this day, he sat in his green jeep on one side of a highway, leaned out the window and gave the eight of us across the road a lecture on the growing rates of trees from different parts of the world; and how to cull the plantings in diamond patterns adjacent to square patterns to maintain a minimum of four trees for statistical validity (which can then allow one of the trees to die and still maintain statistical validity).
Thurs April 22/97
Ken took me out to a Thai restaurant for dinner in Simcoe. He talked about the fact that Simcoe becomes much more racially diverse in summer. The local tobacco farmers hire people from Mexico and the Carribean to work their fields. When the Caribbean workers are preparing to return home, they buy all the fancy children's clothes they can find in the local shops.
Mon. Oct. 21/02
I have always wondered how big the flower gardens are. They appear huge to me, always impossible to completely care for, but I needed a number to attach to the area for which I was responsible. I had no idea what I would do with that number, because "acres" and "square feet" mean little to me. But they are words I can use to describe my space to others of a more literal mind.
In the basement of the big house, I located a long rolling tape measure amongst Ken's tools, collected paper and pencil, and walked the half-mile to the flower gardens. I measured the width of the roadway and the lengths of the gardens on either side. I measured the distance from the roadway of the farthest poppies in the red beds and the farthest Echinacea beds and yarrow beds in the Blue-Yellow gardens. Then I multiplied out these numbers to compute the square footage of a square garden, and subtracted a quarter of that number because of rounded corners and a long curved side. The result: I look after one-third of an acre of flower gardens. Is that impressive? When I say "one-third of an acre", it doesn't sound like much, but when I look at the gardens, they look HUGE! To someone with a concept of acreage size, the statement has meaning: to others, a picture tells the story.
Each year, I produce a series of panoramic photographs of the gardens, tape them together, and mount them. Those photographs describe the area for city folk who have no concept of land on a farm.
The Flower Garden, 1997, looking North
Fri. Mar. 7/97
Originally, the Flower Garden was planned as a modified teardrop shape with a pond in the middle. Around the pond would be three groupings of flowerbeds, each filled with its own colours of flowers. The Blue garden would contain predominantly blue flowers, graduating from blue-black to purple to mauve, with a sprinkling of white in a couple of beds. The Red garden would contain rose and pink coloured flowers in the beds opposite the Blue garden, and become progressively true red and then orange-red as it moved towards the Yellow garden. Across from the orange-red end, the Yellow garden would be filled with many shades of yellow and orange flowers. Where the Yellow garden and the Red garden bordered the roadway through the Flower Garden, a strip of multicoloured flowers would be planted. Lastly, the Yellow garden would meet the Blue garden to complete the circle around the pond. The idea was to produce a Monet-style garden using flowers that could have grown in a 19th Century garden. Claude Monet's gardens were chosen as inspiration because the artist searched out and experimented with growing flowers from many parts of the known world.
The realities of available planting time and intrusions of other activities produced the inevitable adaptations that began to change the initial dream into its unique reality.
In my first year, much of the Blue garden was planted, as well as a small portion of the Red garden and a few rows in the Yellow garden. Then 1,200 saplings were acquired as windrow trees to be planted along the property line. To hold these saplings until time became available to plant them in their final locations, a "nursery" was dug. This was a couple of trenches about a hundred feet long where the soil was turned over in a long curving line just west of the Blue and Yellow gardens. Once the saplings were resting on the turned soil, a layer of soil was shovelled over the roots to help them to retain moisture. These "nursery" rows added a MAYBE temporary but, nonetheless, pleasing border on the western side of the Flower Garden. Through time, the remaining trees might form a valuable shelter belt protecting the Flower Garden from strong winds in summer, holding snow in winter to supply spring moisture, and providing a second-level barrier (besides the windrow trees) to wind-blown insecticides and fertilizers from the neighbouring tobacco fields.
By planting time, the third year/1995, an irrigation system had been added. The angular pattern of irrigation pipes cut across the curving lines of the flowerbeds and "pond" area. In early spring, the straight lines of the pipes disturbed the curving lines of the flower beds but, as the season progressed, the pipes were gradually hidden by leaves and flowers, with only the vertical sprinkler pipes showing.
The irrigation system did more than change the scene during planting season: it further altered the original vision of the Flower Garden. With water now being sprinkled into the "pond" area, it seemed only reasonable to grow something in the space. So, in the next two years, rhubarb and a selection of herbs found their way into the space encircled by flowers.
* * * * *
Aug. 1/98
When I look at the Flower Garden, I see pattern. I see the outline of the gardens against the curved line of the valley trees. Then I see the shapes of the individual flowerbeds I have dug through the years, each a separate hump within the overall outline of the garden.
Each year, I start weeding in the first beds I planted, re-establishing their original outlines. As I move out or in from those beds, some take on new shapes to accommodate plants that have established themselves beyond original outlines or new plantings that require wider or narrower or straighter or curvier beds. And the joy, for me, is seeing the daily building of pattern as more beds reappear from the old grass and weeds. And my objective is always to leave an established, flowing pattern of flowerbeds and pathways.
Around the western edge of the garden, remnants of the tree "nursery" have added an interesting border to the garden. Their size and inadvertent location had forced an adjustment of the original plan for the western lands: not a problem, just an adaptation.
The other borders of the Flower Garden change annually as vegetable crops rotate or alternate with fallow fields. So no two years show the same perimeter pattern of growth framing the basic shapes and colours in the flower gardens.
Mon. May 10/98
When I travel around the springs beyond the asparagus fields in early May, the first gardens to greet me this year are the salad beds: wide rows of lettuces, radishes, beets and onions. They form a flat green and brown striped pattern, an interesting border framing the southwestern edge of the Flower Garden. By mid-May, the remaining southern and eastern borders are tilled sandy soil awaiting vegetable transplants from the greenhouse, and the northeastern border is filled with rows of newly planted potatoes. By then, I have done what I can in the flower gardens, and the irrigation system has been hooked up and tested. The growing season is under way.
July 28/02
THE FARMYARD
The farmyard is about two acres in size. It consists of a small farmhouse set back in
the space behind large flower gardens that fill hollows and roll over "hills" pushed up by
the tractor the first year they owned the farm. On one side of the house, towards the back,
are three gardens planted in separate colours using Claude Monet's gardens as models.
Beside these gardens is a shed attached to the long grey skeleton of an old tobacco
greenhouse, which runs the length of the front gardens to the concession road that borders
the property. A horseshoe-shaped driveway runs parallel to the old greenhouse, encircles
the house and returns to the
concession road: two-thirds of this
driveway is edged by asparagus fields.
On the far side of the shed is a wide
grassy area large enough for a parking
"lot" and truck turning space, with a
big hip-roofed barn on the far side.
Joan prepares and looks after the gardens around the farmhouse. Each year, Ken provides her with fresh compost, and often chicken manure, and a supply of seedlings from the greenhouse. She adds seeds that she, or he, has acquired, and she sets to work. In her professional travels, she also finds other plants she wants to add to the mix. The result is amazing, ever changing, colourful gardens that both greet the visitor and sustain those seated on the back porch or in the yard.
Sat. May 4/96 - 10:30 a.m.
THE LITTLE HOUSE
On a table in front of the living room window in the farmhouse sits a large geranium plant, its leaves big and healthy and one large cluster of magenta flowers raising their petals to the early spring light. This is proof that the little house can now survive winter.
When Joan and Ken first bought the farm, cold
drafts would blow through the walls and across their
ankles. The previous owner had hired a contractor to drill
holes in the outside walls and blow insulation between the
walls. K & J couldn't stand the look of small white holes,
uniformly spaced in two rows around the walls, so they
wrapped the broken insulbrick with tarpaper and painted
it. The house looked fine, but the mice excavated tunnels
through the lower insulation between the walls, and the
wind continued to blow around the ankles of people inside.
Last year, Ken put a layer of foam polystyrene insulation on the outside walls, wrapped the house in sheets of Tyvec fiberglass, and covered it all with vinyl siding. Then he covered the inner side of the windows with clear plastic. And in the basement, he placed two heat lamps facing the water pipes.
This was enough to keep the house at a temperature that allowed the plants inside to survive a week or two at a time when Ken and Joan were in the City, unavailable to stoke the furnace.
As with all farm homes, the first place of entry is the back door. To reach the back door, we originally stepped up onto a medium sized, brick-coloured porch framed on two sides with a hip-high fence. This soon gave way to an extension that doubled the size of the platform, and a further one that tripled its size. Now the porch is about the same size as the inside of the house. Bracketed by huge evergreens, it is the place of congregating as soon as weather permits, and is in use much of the year.
Inside
THE KITCHEN
Open the back door and step into a tiny two-walled lobby containing a tall cupboard and space for boots and shoes. Remove your footwear and step up onto the carpeted kitchen floor. This small space contains a huge fridge plus a counter and a sink along one wall, with cupboards above and below, a large olive stove and oven, with a large pot cupboard beside it along a second wall, and a table to seat up to four people under the window. This kitchen works only because its occupants continually move collected items to their respective locations.
THE LIVINGROOM
The walls of the small living room are bare. The "pictures" on the walls are the ever-changing views through two large windows, and the patterns within the rooms beyond each of its doorways.
The bathroom always has fresh flowers beside the sink, and a china or a glass container holding a votive candle. The hand towel hanging on its brass ring complements the woodwork and colours in the room. And the mirror covering half the long wall provides the illusion of space and light in this apparent alcove off the living room.
In the EAO [Estate Administrative Office] can be seen the dark green of the wall below the non-existent chair rail, light wood of the computer console and old pictures of fruit can labels, tin signs from the 1930s and a pen-and-ink sketch of a bearded man in nature.
Through the kitchen doorway can be seen the warm light wood lower walls and
furniture, with new preserves glowing beside the stove, and bags of
flower seeds on the table.
In the fall, a curtain is added to the "picture" window. Hundreds of pointed red peppers in all sizes and colours from dark green to pale yellow to orange to dark, fire engine-red hang on strings to catch the sun's rays as they ripen. And at the opposite wall, edging the kitchen doorway, a curtain of the same peppers surrounds the black furnace pipe as it passes through the room on its way to the roof.
One year, new table was added to the room [68" x 41" or 5'8" x 3'5"]. Designed and built by Ken, using the tools Joan buys him and woods from the property, it is unique in style and design. The boards for the top were chosen so the eye could follow the grains from beginning to end. The legs and central support post were constructed with a laminate of dark vertical interiors and light outsides, to give the illusion of lightness. They were inset to allow seating for extra people when necessary. This way, even when everyday work is happening, three people can easily sit along one side. With a water-base Verithane finish applied, Ken has been able to gradually add fresh coats indoors without fumes suffocating the inhabitants. In this tiny room, it appears huge, showing off its colours and workmanship.
Asparagus Soup
Fresh tulips from the garden
Geranium that overwintered
THE EAO
In a small house, each room serves multiple purposes. Take the EAO, for example. This room is about 10½ feet by seven feet, including two tiny closets with a built-in chest of drawers between, across the long end. This is the main service area of the farm. In the closets and drawers are the work-clothes for the farm. Along the floor of one wall are the baskets for clothes either on their way to the City to be washed or ready to be allocated to drawers or hangers. The rest of the room is file drawers, fax machine, computer and desk. This is the Estate Administrative Office! Here, Kenneth tracks his sales, designs his web site, looks after correspondence, receives orders, prepares bills.
One spring, a lightning bolt went through the telephone lines at the farm and eliminated Ken's modem. It had to be replaced. Three days later, he discovered that the temperature in his walk-in cooler in the barn was 125°C; and that lightning bolt had also blown the lines in his cooler!
THE BATHROOM
The bathroom at Spring Arbour Farm is a special place. What isn't white is blue and white. Every day that the Mistress is in residence, a bouquet of flowers fills a small curled-lip glass vase set into a brass holder, all standing beside the sink to reflect in the large mirror that dominates the room and, thus, enlarges it.
Near the toilet is a tall, narrow stack of shelves crammed with magazines and books on science and natural history and literature and history and gardening. And on the wall beside the doorway is a small, brightly coloured print of Northern school children playing outside a school. The original painting was produced by Ted Harrison, a teacher for years, and then principal, at a small Northern school in the Yukon. His bright, sunny colours evoke the warm, cheery smiles of the people of that cold land. The colours he used were those he saw when he lived in Indonesia. When asked to describe his painting style, which outlines each object, he said "Nouveau Canadian Cloisonné" describing both this well-travelled Scot, and the painting style he developed.
When I visit Spring Arbour Farm, I like to leave the bathroom door open as a beautiful alcove off the living room with its flowers and its reflected Ted Harrison print.
THE BASEMENT
The basement can be reached through a door in the kitchen. When they first moved in, Joan and Ken took their lives in their hands when they stepped on the stairs. The steps were made of sturdy wood that had warped in such a way that they pitched one forward. A year of this and Ken replaced the top two boards.
Early in their first year, an architect friend visited. After a trip to the basement, he looked rather puzzled. "I don't know what's holding up this house," he said. Now there are teleposts in strategic locations.
A closed-in room takes up about a third of the basement, to the right of the stairs. Originally, it might have been a coal room. Now, two of its walls contain shelves full of gleaming jars of preserves. One year they contained:
JELLIES L'herbes de Province Vinegar
Grape Pickled Asparagus
Sumac Basil Wine Vinegar Dill Pickles
Basil Bread and Butter Pickles
Red Currant Relish Excellente
Mulberry Wine English Orange Marmalade
Hard Cider Cinnamon Basil Vinegar
Lavender Pickled Beans
Sumac Wine Pepper Relish
Apple Marjoram Tomato Juice
Herb Wine Apple Ginger Chutney
Pear Coulisse Blackberry Syrup
Stewed Rhubarb Maple Syrup
Apple Sauce Oriental Plum Sauce
Apple Pear Butter
Canned Pumpkin
JAMS
Strawberry
Strawberry Orange
Apple Ginger
Mon. May 5/97
This morning, we toured the orchard at the north end of the farm, and peeked into the valleys on either side.
We picked and cooked Yellow Goatsbeard roots - tasty.
Aug. 10/98
A close-up of the Herb beds in the middle of the Flower Garden shows a startling interloper, what Ken calls a "volunteer", a bunch of large bright yellow iris waving maroon edges. The oregano and thyme leaves fill wide, rectangular, straight-rowed beds while the mints creep across their curved pathways and through neighbouring hilled flowerbeds. The massed row of mauve chive blossoms complements the yellow iris colours, heightening the sight of both.
Viewed from the north end of the gardens, the yellow iris forms a centrepiece to the
line of chive blossoms and the dots and masses of purple Sweet Rocket scattered
throughout the Herb garden and the Blue garden, with a mass of planted beds in the
background trimmed with the green of the lettuce, radish, onion and beet leaves in the
distant salad garden.
A walk along the hollows between the mint "rows" raises a heady aroma. Mint will not stay put!
Monday, February 7, 2000 - 1 p.m.
This year, with a space of time between the Canadian and American trade shows for our business in Winnipeg, we drove out to Spring Arbour Farm.
After breakfast, I donned skis and travelled all the ski trails on the farm.
The farm has a coating of snow, with large drifts along the windbreak line between fields and over the Narrows between the asparagus fields and the vegetable garden. In the orchard at the northern limit of the farm, the sun was hot and I unzipped my jacket. My skis stuck in the damp snow and I had to walk with them instead of glide.
The Flower Garden looks pretty in the snow. The western edge of the beds is delineated by evergreen trees, deciduous trees, and corn so that you can see the curvature of the gardens. The dark-brown Echinacea beds also follow the same curve while the rhubarb, which starts at the central roadway through the garden, flows in a repeating curve towards the northwest end of the Yellow beds.
On the east side of the garden, there is no similar edging plantings to define the outer edge of the red beds. I was attracted to Ken's initial plans for the shape of the flowerbeds and plan to see that outline somewhat formalised.
Last night, Ken skied the farm as dusk fell, while I donned my bright plum coloured New York-visiting wool coat, threw the large blue and pink paisley shawl over my head for a scarf, and trudged around the asparagus fields in high rubber boots. I must have looked like a Russian Cossack.
Writing at the kitchen table, I again see Frank Lloyd Wright's water lily window hanging over the sink on the west. Beyond the north window are the huge trees of southern Ontario in the distance, forming the horizon line. Just outside that window, chickadees and a chipping sparrow bustle in and out of the birdfeeder dancing at the end of a big overhanging evergreen branch hanging over the deck.
Fri. July 14/00
The farm is overwhelming in July. Trees come at me. Head-high wisps of asparagus fronds and staghorn sumac leaves close in on either side of the roadways, not at all like the open low growth of early spring. Without Ken's mower along the roadway, there would be nowhere to walk. The roadways had been mowed the previous week in preparation for Spring Arbour Day, the annual celebration of the purchase date of the farm. Large butterflies are everywhere. In the Flower Garden, a swallow swoops low to tell me I'm in his territory. Obviously, the time from my departure from the farm in mid-May to my return in July is long in a swallow's memory. Along the roadside is chickery.
In the Yellow beds, the grasses have taken over. Mullein shoots its yellow flowers
high above the grass, providing tall stalks for goldfinches to perch on. And creeping
through the grass are many yellow and rust-coloured gaillardia flowers that have reseeded
themselves from past years. Two large Tansy beds
show lush green growth, two
feet tall and still growing, but no
yellow flowers yet. Strangely,
in the middle of the Yellow
beds, two small patches of white
pea flowers bloom in strong
contrast to the surrounding
grasses.
Eastward, across the roadway, old poppy seed heads from spring blooms show Grecian urn shaped, dark grey heads atop the green leaves. New beds planted in unusual poppies did not bloom this year. Hopefully, we'll see some growth when they've been a year in the ground. There are several different kinds of poppies now growing at the north end of the Red beds.
Purple vetch grows wherever it can, in long flowing vines. In the Blue beds, its colour fits; in the red beds, it makes a striking contrast; in the Yellow beds, its colour seems out of place.
Joan has achieved marvels in the Monet gardens beside the house. The orange, yellow and white bed is full of vibrant colour at this time of the year. In the pink-purple beds, the hollyhocks and meadow clary contrast in height, shape and colour, and across the bed flows the pink of the rose mallow. The third bed seems to be resting in varied green leafy patterns backed by a giant fall of white Shasta daisies. At the edge of the grass is a lush strip of multi-flowered tiny violas. The fun edging of this bed is the frilly, spiky pyramids of bolted lettuce reaching skyward.
Friday, Oct. 20, 2000 - 10 a.m. Spring Arbour Farm - Breakfast
Leftovers: Baked Yellow Marrow
Stuffed with rice and wild rice
SAF Spice Bush jelly
(cider, spice bush, sugar, pectin)
Chamomile Tea
Our plane landed in Hamilton on Tuesday morning.
The colours of nature outside are stupendous. Inside the house, red peppers are ripening from green to yellow to red in long curtains in front of the living room window and around the furnace pipe, with a strand intermingled with the vegetable-shaped Xmas lights draped along the centre beam.
Going for a walk, I followed the roadway from the barn as it curved between the fields of flowing yellow asparagus fronds on my left and deep, multi-coloured valleys on my right. Far below, I knew, flowed Venison Creek, cool and gunmetal grey over its sandy bottom. As I rounded each curve in the roadway, I thought of the spring that flowed under my feet and out into rivulets that joined the waters from other springs, to meander through wide beds of giant-leaved skunk cabbage before leveling out at the bottom of the slope to find its home in the creek.
Each of the seven springs on the property has a unique character. The spring below the northwestern end of the asparagus fields flows in levels of shelves, each with a small pool. These pools are deep enough to allow watercress to live year-round. In February, one year, I had picked a few leaves under the water. When the icy air touched them, they instantly froze, with a startling Z-P-P sound.
The land above the other side of this spring held the Flower Garden surrounded by the vegetable gardens whose produce Ken sells to customers in the City.
Chapter 3 Flower Partners
Mon. Aug. 10/98
PANSIES
Sweet Rocket
Blue Flax
Pansies appeared in the Blue garden this spring. The bright purple and yellow flowers looked somehow out of place amongst the powder blue of the blue flax and the mauve of the Sweet Rocket flowers. The seeds had been sown in the greenhouse the previous year and the seedlings transplanted into beds I had left unplanted, or beds whose seeds hadn't germinated. Their faces were so bright and cheerful that they were quickly potted up into decorative planters and distributed to friends and family. Their presence in an unexpected location in the garden reaffirmed appreciation for the original decision to maintain a single colour within each designated area of the garden.
Planting pansies in an unused bed served several useful purposes. Firstly, it maintained that ungerminated bed as a flowerbed and not as a grass bed. Secondly, it introduced a different shade of purple within the blue and purple beds. And thirdly, it introduced brilliant yellow highlights. Normally, pansies are just plain sunny and warm. In this location, they clashed. At the pathway as a border, they would shine and complement the beds behind. They just didn't fit in the centre of the garden. Without this exercise, we wouldn't have learned.
Mon. Aug. 10/98
CHIVES
This was the year for chive vinegar. Always on the lookout for ways to enhance
the garden's value to the gardener and his customers, we searched the herb and vegetable
books for a use for the garden's products. The lovely mauve chive blossoms had to be
removed so the gardener could continue to harvest tasty chives for his customers. A book
on vinegars contained an article stating that chive vinegar was not only a beautiful colour; it
was also one of the nicest tasting vinegars. Et Voila! Out I went,
sheers in hand. The work became far less onerous with a useful
purpose at the end. A big goldfish bowl full of blossoms and
vinegar soon turned a most delicate pink colour.
Mon. Aug. 10/98
The Red garden is fun to watch because surprising things happen. The third spring of planting (2nd year for me), the whole Red garden area was rototilled, except, probably, the Dianthus (pinks), which had maintained a certain visibility into spring. The following years, a large bed of Echinacea appeared beyond the southern limits of the previous year's plantings, obviously planted two years earlier but rototilled and ignored. And three huge Oriental poppies appeared beyond the eastern limits of the previous year's plantings. They have thrived as well. These re-births have convinced us to maintain an enlarged perimeter to the Red beds, a limit determined by the garden rather than by us.
Oriental poppies survived the
rototilling because they have a l-o-n-g tap
root. They behave like dandelions: when
you cut off their tops, the root slowly
recoups, and gradually regrows the tops.
This characteristic makes it difficult to
transplant. If you break off the root
instead of digging down to the VERY
bottom, the tops tend to die.
Mon. Aug. 10/98
When I look at a photograph of the Blue garden this year, I see the long curve formed by the Echinacea and hollyhock beds at the southern edge. The Echinacea is in full, bright green leaf about 6 inches high, whereas the big round-leaved hollyhocks interspersed amongst them are much more sporadic, and sometimes missing entirely. The grasses will probably take over those beds this year. Cleared of grasses this fall, the beds might hold the dropped hollyhock seeds for germination next spring. Wishful thinking, I fear, but a nice idea.
The western curve of this garden shows a profusion of the massed heads of pink-purple Sweet Rocket where the land was left fallow. That mass of colour starts the eye travelling throughout the gardens to discover dots of the same colour where seeds have fallen on fertile soil. This is a plant that loves the sandy prairie lands here. Even in the Red garden, a few pink-purple flowers highlight the huge orange-red poppy heads as they bloom.
Mid-garden is a row of deep maroon and bright yellow violas. In their second year of growth, the shining faces fill the bed with colour.
Bordering the Blue garden to the north are large, dark-green rhubarb leaves forming a curve that moves off to the north as the bed travels west. And at the western edge of the Blue garden is the curve of "nursery" trees just beginning to grow tall enough to form a distinctive border. As yet, these trees are far enough apart and short enough to allow us to see the field of rye beyond, long mounds of sand and manure for compost to the northwest, the higher land forming the edge of the unlevelled neighbouring farm to the west, and the tall trees rising out of the distant river valley to the north.
The only other colours in the picture are the taupe coloured flax straw covering newly planted flowerbeds, and a bumpy light brown of the remains of a compost pile, soon to be spread on the beds so the plot can be seeded beside the roadway.
Mon. May/Aug. 10/98
The plants in the Red garden don't show much yet. Always, when I arrive in
spring, the Dianthus (pinks) indicate that the Red garden exists, showing masses of
intertwined narrow grey-green foliage covering an ever-faithful square-ish bed in the
middle of the southern portion of the garden. Any picture of the Red garden shows the
distinctive leaf colour and pattern. And after several years of plantings, we always find the
large groupings of huge Oriental poppies and satisfying growths of rose
mallow and hollyhocks. Sweet William has finally taken hold as well as
tiny poppies that produce one blossom on a tiny stem, beautiful and
delicate. And, this year, we found pale, pale yellow columbine struggling
for survival in the grass beside the roadway. Wrong side of the roadway
for its colour, but GROWING.
Mon. Aug. 10/98
A roadway runs through the Flower Garden, from south to north, curving slightly.
To the east of this roadway is the Red garden that, in the original plans, was to hold blue-red flowers at the southern end opposite the Blue garden and orange-red flowers at the
northern end opposite the yellow flowers. When annuals are planted, this concept is
maintained. What has been lost, somewhat, is the original height arrangement. The
roadway was, and still is, a focus in the garden, so short flowers were to be planted along
the roadway with tall flowers along the outer edges in the distance. Somehow, hollyhocks
crept into second and third row beds in the Red garden. And the tiny Shirley poppies were
planted east of, and therefore behind, the huge Oriental poppies, invisible to the traveller on
the roadway. But, this year, the tiny poppies are creeping
around the sides of the huge poppies to be seen as
brightly coloured sparks against the big green leaves.
And tiny delicate columbines are helping to force the eye
downward to also see their pale yellow heads.
To the west of this central roadway is everything else. The Blue garden is planted opposite the blue-red flowers so that the view through the Blue to Red gardens is pleasing to the eye. The Herb garden is planted opposite the transition of reds from blue-red to orange-red. And the Yellow garden is opposite the orange-red flowers, a sunny sight against a red background to the viewer travelling west of the flower gardens.
The Yellow beds? They are there, in the Flower Garden, but not because of my efforts. Yellow has been my nemesis as a flower gardener so far. These are the last beds to be planted before I leave, and usually get left for someone else to finish. Which means, they were sometimes planted with vegetable seedlings started in the greenhouse. One year, I managed to plant a sampling of every yellow flower packet ordered, but only once. This year, three yellow beds were planted, only three. This left the sunflowers to reseed themselves in an unweeded flowerbed and the Jerusalem artichokes to try to push their way through the grasses, untended. And, likely, the remainder of the Yellow beds will again be planted with herbs and vegetables sprouted in the greenhouse.
Mon. May/Aug. 10/98
When I plant flower seeds from a brown package, with only a written description on the front, I wonder what the flower looks like. Without time to research in books, I keep hoping for some photograph to show me what I planted. This year's early spring showed me a few new examples of flowers. In the Yellow garden, one wallflower plant showed me its vibrant golden yellow blooms, and a white marguerite (daisy) waved at me with its sunny yellow centre.
Throughout the Red garden was a most satisfying display of the variety of leaf shapes, together with the poppy flowers, orange-red in the orange-red section.
And the Blue garden demonstrated that pink-purple Sweet Rocket much prefers to leave its assigned beds to a few sturdy plants and scatter itself through the garden. The Blue Flax demonstrated how transitory are its flowers. The day after the flax began to bloom, I chose a particular flower to photograph, took my camera out of its case, bent down to focus the lens, and discovered the blossom had dropped off. Each blossom lasts only about half a day. This garden also showed me a variety of healthy leaves to which I could attach flower names and then delimit planted beds.
Sun. June 18/00
Flax is a plant that requires extra effort each spring. The old straw must be broken off and discarded. It can't be pulled because the new shoots grow from the old roots. Scissors or clippers can be used to cut the stems before the new growth rises more than 4 or 5 inches above the ground, but I seldom get to those beds soon enough. Instead, each old stalk, or a group of stalks, must be broken and pulled away, a laborious, time-consuming task. Most years, I keep returning to the tasks for a while each day until the job is done. In years when I finish only one of the two large flax beds, the beds look very different in flower. The old straw adds a wispy, muted look to the blooming bed, while the weeded bed is a mass of small pale blue flowers covering the tops of the blue-green grass stems.
This year, the original blue flax beds in the centre of the Blue garden called more loudly than the other beds, so I took a spade and a trowel and started to work. While I broke the old straw stems and removed them, I considered the weeding ahead of me.
A couple of years ago, dandelions took over the Flower Garden, possibly from seeds in some manure. Last year, I cleaned these out of parts of the Blue and Red gardens. This year, it was the turn of this blue flax bed. What a chore, but a necessary one.
At the top of the valleys, in many areas, grows a profusion of
staghorn sumac on 8 foot high, sturdy, reddish stems. These shrubs
had seeded themselves in parts of the garden, with a few strong
stems getting quite healthy in these blue flax beds. Their roots are
very difficult to remove because they frequently fork and then the
new forks travel in different directions. When you pull the root out
of the garden, it tends to break at the forks and you end up pulling
out only one branch. The roots left in the soil then grow new
shoots. With slow and careful tracking, I managed to remove most
of the roots, producing long channels through several beds in the
process.
While removing dandelions, I found another plant with similar tough branching roots. Not knowing what it was but knowing it was NOT blue flax, or sweet rocket that I allow in this bed, I removed the dozen or so plants along with their roots, following them to a bed just south of the blue flax. This bed seemed to hold a fair number of these plants whereas there were a few scattered around the garden but no other concentration. I didn't see these plants elsewhere so I began to suspect that they might belong in the Blue garden. Back at the farmhouse, I noticed similar leaves beside the porch and asked about them. "Rocky Mountain Penstemon" was the answer. A light dawned. I had been trying to grow this plant since my first year on the farm but had never known what it looked like! And here it was! But they didn't belong in the blue flax bed, not this year, anyway! In the bed in the middle of the Blue garden, I removed all but the "Penstemon" plants. [Wrong! These were goldenrod!]
There were a couple of animal diggings in the bed, but they seemed old, so I filled them in along with the trails left by the root removals and dandelion uprootings, added some compost and stood back to admire a task completed.
Oct. 28/00
Is the yellow yarrow still growing?" Ken asked, after I had moaned about my inability to remove grass from the tightly entwined red yarrow plants in the Red beds.
"Where?" I asked, surprised. I thought I knew the gardens, but had no memory of yellow yarrow.
He explained their location at the western edge of the gardens, centrally located behind the herbs. They were growing all right, with no help from me. So I weeded and fertilized them.
When I showed my friend Dorothy my garden photographs, she was intrigued to see red and yellow yarrow. When she was growing up in Nova Scotia in the 1930s and '40s, there was white yarrow growing wild. English settlers had brought the seeds from England when they settled in the country, and planted them in their gardens. They put the plants in their linen drawers because moths and other insects didn't seem to like them.
SIGNATURE PLANTS
July 5/02
Each year, I look for the Signature plants. Some are always there, others arrive and
stay, always standing out, or becoming familiar, or gradually becoming just another part of
the farm, and some last only one or two years.
Not far from the barn, beside the roadway around the asparagus fields, is a Russian olive tree. This shapely tree with its sage-green leaves stands guard at the entrance to Green Lane, a long tunnel of deciduous trees ending in a deep, dark spruce and pine forest planted in 1972 as a reforestation effort.
The name Green Lane is in memory of a country road that ran about a mile from the Ogopogo Motel (on the western highway from Penticton to Skaha Lake at the southern end of the Okanagan Valley) to the eastern roadway (which ran back north to Penticton). When our family lived there from the middle of March to the middle of June each year, we would take long walks in the early evenings, picking wild asparagus as we walked. It is rather appropriate that this Green Lane in Southern Ontario begins beside an asparagus field.
In spring, its grey green leaves stand out against the dark green of the staghorn sumac, and the bright green of the valley trees.
In the early fall, the small leaves turn a pale lemon colour as the bright red berries develop.
Past the Russian olive tree, just over the lip of the valley, a batch of
double daffodils brings a smile. Each blossom is huge. Years ago, these
had been an (unwanted) discarded household plant. Now they shout the
arrival of spring to passers-by.
Along the western farm road, a patch of grape vines produces grapes every two years, when the neighbouring irrigates his fields adjacent to the patch; or are grapes biennial, and the linkage only co-incidental? I suspect not.
In the early spring, I watch the white flowers gradually open in the hedgerows on the western side of the farm. Each day, more buds open until the dark trees and shrubs fill with dots of white.
As I round the southwest corner of the asparagus fields and cross the Narrows into the gardens, I see a large white dogwood in the distance, at the head of River Road. The sight forces the eye along the brown curve of the northern roadway to the large patch of white at its end.
We will miss this Signature Plant in future years. Asian landscape gardeners have brought plants from other countries that have introduced Anthracnos that is killing the local dogwoods. Last year, half the River Road dogwood flowers had a brown tinge to them. We'll soon have to look elsewhere for that startling splash of white.
Each year, two or three huge, many-branched sunflowers take root in the vegetable gardens, like giant edible scarecrows, watching over the rows. The plants tower above the surrounding vegetation, drawing the eye upward.
In the Yellow flower garden, the mullein spires reach for the sky, forcing the eye up from the garden beds.
Pale lemon yellow flowers
climb these tall stalks bringing goldfinches, with their yellow and
black markings.
Chapter 4 The Other Guests
1996
A toad appeared in the garden this year. When I arrived at the beginning of May, it was moving under the mulch covering the previous year's flowerbed, carefully keeping within the shadows of the criss-crossed straw stems. I greeted him with quiet ecstasy. He was the harbinger of the returning fertility of the land! His presence proclaimed the rightness of our attempts to return a scarred plain to health.
As I dug the beds in the flower garden, I found a few worms. They moved amongst the dug-in rye stems rotting to a mixed-soil bed.
Sun. May 4/97
Saw the remains of an Eastern Hognose Snake today. Ken had disked it, accidentally, as it warmed itself in the sun of an early spring garden.
I spent the day digging out narrow-leaved plants from the Blue flower garden - Yellow Goatsbeard. Our guidebook for wayside plants says we can cook the roots like parsnips and eat them.
There is a pair of sparrows probably nesting in the fir tree at the north end of the Red garden:
Black and white stripes across top of head 2 black and white bands of wings
I'm always surprised at the number of details I neglect to observe when I study a bird. If I note wing bars or tail shape, I should have noted beak shape and chest pattern. Oh, well.
A blue jay is in the tree inspecting the bird feeder on the back porch of the farmhouse.
Sun. May 11/97 SUNNY Mother's Day
Ken and I went for a walk behind the old compost heap at the north end of the asparagus beds, directly opposite the farmhouse. We climbed down into the valley to a large patch of fiddleheads. There we picked the few fiddleheads that were yet visible. Ken can now recognize a bed of ostrich fern by the fruiting body, a stiff brown upright "spike" from the previous year. In the same area, we picked wild garlic while we were down there. We saw where the bank beavers had cleared a meadow. It's a wonderfully sheltered deer resting place in winter and needed to have the willows removed. Across the stream, the bank was dotted with the blooming white trillium. On our bank, the Trout Lilies hung their heads in the fine rain and the trilliums were hardly out. The May Apples were big green half-open umbrellas.
At the top of the hill, we found an armful of big, very pale morels. Ken had driven back and forth over this area with a mower last fall. My experience has been that morels grow best on overgrazed land. Possibly, this cutting and driving cleared the area for the morels to grow this spring. We climbed back into the truck and drove westward around the road between the asparagus fields and the top of the valley where huge puffballs had imploded in the fall to leave 4" wide stems topped with dark olive flat plates. We stopped at the top of a valley and looked down the long slope and across a spring creek bed. In the distance, we could see the stump of a tree Ken had cut for lumber. Its two mates were still growing tall and straight. As we watched, a big raccoon ambled down the slope to a hollow under a huge overturned tree root beside the stream. We drove on. Just before the Narrows, on the way to the flower gardens, we stopped the car and climbed out. We walked down the long slope half way into the valley where two springs pour their waters into firm, sandy creek beds.
Ken walked along the spring watercourses picking watercress. Back at the top of the hill, we walked through the asparagus patch looking for enough asparagus for supper. The rain pelted down on us as we walked.
May 22/97
ORIOLES
Icteridae (in part)
New World orioles are brightly colored arboreal blackbirds. Like all members of their family they have flat foreheads and strong sharply pointed bills. Unlike other blackbirds they seldom come to the ground and most species show little or no gregarious tendencies. Their long neatly woven nests usually are suspended from the tip of a branch. Although their harsh chattering scolds are quite similar to those of other blackbirds they are good singers, producing a variety of clear whistles and sweet rich warbles.
BALTIMORE ORIOLE. Icterus galbula
Male: only almost robin-sized orange and black bird over most of East. Under parts, rump, shoulders and sides of tail brilliant-orange; head, upper back, most of wings and tail black; wing-bar and wing-edgings white.
Female: dull-yellow above, orange-yellow below, two white wing-bars.
Voice: loud clear whistled surely
Song: sure-ly sure-ly sure-ly sure-ly-the-world-is-bright-and-gay
Prefers tall trees in towns and open country. Breeds south to inland Georgia and Texas (accidental along s.e. coast); winters in Central America.
From: A Pocket Guide to Birds
Eastern & Central North American
By Allan D. Cruickshank [Official lecturer of the National Audubon Society & winner of the John Burroughs Medal]
Washington Square Press
1953/1960
Aug. 10/98
Each year, we look for some sign that varied life is returning to the garden.
One year, I found a FEW worms, and each year saw more. This year, there were huge night crawlers in one area of the garden. Another year, a small brown toad planted/posted himself on one of the red flowerbeds and remained close to that area while I worked around him. Another year (2004), a huge brown toad manoeuvred around the remaining grasses as I weeded the western end of the Echinacea/Holyhock beds. Each year, I find fewer and fewer cutworms as a balance of the insects and bug life returns. I put the cutworms out on the roadway where the birds can find them or they can eat the dandelion roots. This year, I found a nest of brown speckled eggs amongst the flowers, probably one of the sparrows around the garden.
Tues. Feb. 10/98 - 12:35 p.m.
I'm sitting on the bench at the west side of the farmhouse. Sun is forcing me to peel off layers. The marmalade cat lounges beside me in the sun. He stretches languidly, extends his paws, skyward, and falls off the porch. On his feet, he looks stupidly stunned, staring accusingly back at the edge of the porch.
"Southern Ontario Library Service" says a sign on the long beige van in front of me. It was previously owned by the University of Waterloo. Originally holding shelves and shelves of books, it has heavy-duty springs, just what a farmer needs to transport weighty bags of compost to Big City gardeners. Ken has insulated it and funnelled the air conditioning into its back. The vegetables can now be kept cool during the day and a half required to deliver a full load of fruits and vegetables to eighty or ninety customers in the City, 2 ½ hours away.
Crows call from one bush to another. The woods are alive with bird sound. This is February in Carolinian Canada.
The cat raises its head to look back
towards the barn where Ken works on the
tractor. It hasn't been started for 2 months
and needs some help.
Mewer
Aug. 10/98
This year, we discovered that the local snakes spend 60% of their time in trees. Neighbouring biologists put sensors on the snakes on their property and discovered this interesting fact. Now when we walk down into the valley, we look UP instead of down!
In the valley, too, are the fiddleheads and leeks for customers' tables, and masses of trilliums for their gardens in the City. And wood-beautiful tall maples, cherries, ash/birch?-to thin out and use to build furniture and cupboards and floors. These trees are so tall that they appear high when viewed above the deep valley.
Mon. Aug. 10/98
This year, I began to transplant clover into the pathways in the gardens. Where I found it in a flowerbed, I moved it to a pathway. Some time in the future, there may be time to seed the pathways with a short clover, but, for now, the sporadic transplanting will remind us of future plans. Clover can inhabit spaces where grasses would otherwise be intrusive.
Clover amongst the flowers, though, is an intrusion. Its roots surround the roots of other plants and gradually form a tight, impenetrable mass, while the top growth covers the opposing greenery.
Fri. May 7/99
Common Nighthawk (Chordeiles minor(?)/virginianus(?)
One evening, I sat on the porch and listened to the nighthawk in its nightly exercises
out in the asparagus field. He would sit and z-z-zit repetitively for a stretch of time. Then
he would fly in an arc, along the field, over the house, around and down to land somewhere
else in the field. His stubby wings moved so quickly, they produced a whirring sound. As
he came down, a whole new set of warbling, tuneful sounds echoed across the field. In the
fading light, I was SURE I should be able to see him. So
I pulled out a pair of binoculars and focused them on
where I thought the sounds came from. Focusing on a
fading distance proved a distinct challenge in the
decreasing light. But, try as I might, I could not locate
the bird. So I listened as I sat.
A day or so later, I almost ran the bird down as I drove around a curve in the farm road at sunset. He had cheated! When looking across the asparagus field from the farmhouse deck, the viewer cannot see the far road. It is slightly below the level of the field.
Sun. May 23/99
Watching the grackles on the lawn, I remembered a comment made by the Chief Biologist of Southern Ontario. As we rode the "quad" along the south beach at the tip of Long Point, he shouted, "See those red-winged blackbirds ahead of us?" "They're males who haven't mated. They'll hang out around here all summer."
I hadn't known that unattached male red-winged blackbirds hung out together in a crowd. I knew that pelicans did that because I'd seen them often enough above and below the Lockport dam on the Red River north of Winnipeg. But single red-winged blackbirds were a new experience in my knowledge. The birds swooped and flew en mass across the beach.
Saturday, May 11/02
The houses were full of ladybugs when I arrived. A neighbour said that her solution to the indoor population problem was to run the edge of a sheet of cardboard from bottom to top of a window, collect as many ladybugs as fell onto it and transport them out the door. Now I find them throughout the flower gardens.
Thursday. (Sept. 19/02)
I stayed in the gardens until the sun went down. Then I picked up my tools and headed back to the house. As I walked around the head of the valleys, a small, neat snake, dark in colour, glided out of my way and into the asparagus field. Given its size and location, it was likely a Smooth Green Snake (Opheodrys vernalis). Some years ago (the year we toured the tip of Long Point), I found a dead one in the same area. The tractor had run over it earlier that morning and, by the time I saw it, it was a deep turquoise colour. When I described this snake to the biologist, it took him a few seconds to think what colour the snake might have been when it was alive.
Saturday, Sept.21/02
As I cleaned out the 4th row beds on either side of the central line in the Red beds,
I kept watching a seed pod atop a milkweed. When I first spotted it, there were about 8
red Milkweed beetles (or "Eastern Milkweed Longhorn") [Tetraopes tetraophthalmus],
motionless on the pod. Over time, the number doubled, just on that
one pod, seldom moving. Occasionally, one would slowly crawl over
the others.
The reference book says: "Eggs are left on milkweed stems near ground or slightly below soil. Larvae bore into stems, over winter in roots, and pupate in spring. Adults emerge in early summer, complete life cycle by autumn.
Food: Larva bores in stems and roots of milkweed..
Ref. "The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders"
By Lorus & Margery Milne
U. of New Hampshire
Visual Key by Susan Rayfield
Alfred A. Knopf, N.Y.
A Chanticleer Press Edition
Published, Oct. 1, 1980
Reprinted 4 times 0-394-50763-0
But this isn't what was happening here.
Sunday, Sept. 22/02
Late in the day, the wind picked up and blew across the gardens quite strongly. Something blew into my arm and I glanced sideways as I dug. My eye caught sight of a huge green shape at VERY close quarters. Startled, I shook my arm and the shape dropped to the ground: a beautiful lime green preying mantis. It stayed motionless in the grass for a few moments and then crawled slowly up a tiny twig, upside down. Right side up, it looked around. I watched it for a few moments and then returned to my digging of grass out of the poppy beds. The next time I looked for it, it was gone. Such a beautiful insect. With it in the garden, the world was right.
Monday, Sept. /02
I keep hearing chittering as I work in the flower gardens. I look up, thinking Sandhill Cranes are flying overhead. Then I realize a baby raccoon is calling its Mama somewhere near the edge of the gardens.
The monarch butterflies flit among the newly cleared zinnias and cosmos flowers. Joan stopped at a park on her way to Toronto on Friday. Past her head flew butterflies, gathering for the first leg of their trip south across Lake Ontario.
Sept. /02
Late on my last day, Ken was in the gardens gathering produce to take to his customers in the City. I called him over to look at the beetles on the milkweed pod. This time the pod was almost completely covered. And there were different sizes, from 1/8" up to Ύ" in length, all longer than wide. As we watched, the tiny ones moved around as if searching for something, the mid-sized ones were absolutely still, and the large ones, much more strongly patterned with blocks of black on the orange, were slowly climbing over and away from the others. We suspected that the stationary ones were sucking juices from the pods and, thereby, growing.
Sept. /02
I felt a burning sensation under my glove at the base of my thumb and forefinger. Annoyed that a burr might have gotten down from the cuff, I eased up on pressure there as I pulled weeds. A minute or so later, the burning was still there.
I pulled off my glove, and there was a red ant pushing with all his might with his hind legs as his pincers dug into my skin.
June 8, 2003
This year, the nighthawks nested in the middle of the western asparagus field. As Ken picked asparagus in the area, a bird suddenly flew past him, landed and put on a broken wing act. The nest that it was distracting from was right on the ground, with its mottled eggs. I like the explanation in one bird guide book that if there is a depression at the nest location it is because the weight of the bird pushed the sandy soil down. No nest building for this bird.
The middle of an asparagus field seemed like a strange place
for a nest, but since these birds have small and very weak feet, they
could not nest in a tree. That also explains why one never sees a
nighthawk squatting cross-wise to a branch. Whenever I've seen this
bird in a tree, it's been crouched down longways along a fat limb.
Sideways, it would fall off.
Nighthawks fall into the Suborder called "Caprimulgi" or Goatsuckers, along with whippoorwills. At one time, these birds were thought to suck the milk from goats. What they were actually doing was catching the insects that the goats in the field attracted.
These birds are old friends of mine. On trips to Drumheller, forty years ago, we would see nighthawks quietly roosting among the hoodoos during the day. Nowadays, during evening walks of a spring, summer or fall in the city, I hear the z-e-e-t, z-e-e-t of a nighthawk circling above the large street lamp at the corner of our street, catching insects attracted by the light.
Descriptions of the nighthawk show that its wide mouth doesn't have the bristles/whiskers jutting out that can be found on the Whip-poor-will.
Chapter 5 Learning the Dance
Each planting season was noticeably different from its predecessor. My first year of planting, 1994, was the second year for the Flower Garden. On the drive from Toronto to the farm, in Year 2 of the Flower Garden, I was given a box, about 6 inches on all sides. In this box were the flower seeds I was to plant during my 10 days on the farm. It sat very lightly on my lap as we drove. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY PACKAGES OF FLOWER SEEDS WILL FIT INTO AN 6" CUBED BOX?!! I was overwhelmed! And then I panicked.
On our arrival at the farm, Ken took me out to the Flower Garden. There were two beds of perennials growing from the previous year's planting. The rest of the gardens had been disced to make digging easier.
Back at the house, I took the flower seed packets out of the box. And for the next day and a half, I sorted. I sorted into flower colour and then I sorted into plant height. Within the colours, I sorted by shade. As I sorted, I looked at the photos on the fronts of the seed packages, and became familiar with the kinds of flowers to be planted. This done, I could no longer avoid the inevitable. I did have to put the seeds into the ground.
Once I was out in the field, the task of beginning to plant wasn't nearly so daunting as first imagined. With the pond outline and the perimeter edge and the central roadway and the two growing beds as guidelines, I began to dig new beds. Each bed took on a shape related to adjacent beds, allowing for walkways that curved and flowed between them.
[Given that planting time was limited to ten days and the task could be physically crippling, it was important to develop a routine that could be maintained throughout the day.
Step 1. Turn over the sandy soil in the bed with a spade. Dig in fertiliser.
Step 2. Level the soil with a metal rake.
Step 3. Straighten up and walk to the van where the seeds were kept in case of rain. While walking, admire the trees bordering the river valleys a short distance beyond the garden.
Step 4. Choose a seed packet, draw the flowerbed on a diagram and label it. Put on a set of earphones and turn on the Walkman to listen to a murder mystery.
Step 5. Return to the flowerbed, scatter the seeds or place them in rows. Cover the seeds using a wonderful, long-handled light wooden rake with plastic tines.
Step 6. Slowly tamp down the soil-all sloped edges and into the middle-while listening to the murder mystery.
Step 7. Walk back to the van. Return the seed packet to the sorted piles. Remove the Walkman. Walk back to next bed while listening to bird sounds and admiring the scenery.
This routine, although somewhat cumbersome, maintained my sanity and allowed me to dig and plant from mid-morning until there was no more light by which to see. By the last two days of my stay, I was strong enough to dig beds faster and by-pass some of the walking back and forth and Walkman listening in order to complete more beds in the time available.
When I returned to the Garden in future years, the murder mysteries of particular beds would replay themselves in my head.]
That first year (Year 2 of the Flower Garden/1993?), I managed to plant, and therefore lay out the pattern of beds in almost the whole Blue garden. As it was the smallest of the three colour gardens, I chose it in the beginning because it seemed ALMOST possible to complete. On my last day, I planted several beds in the red-pink end of the Red garden. And my brother, the farmer, later planted some yellow flowers in the Yellow garden.
In my second year (Year 3 of the Flower Garden/1995), a few more beds in the Blue garden had re-seeded themselves, and biennial hollyhocks were in their second year. I didn't have to replant those beds, but weeded them, added fertilizer, and scattered straw as mulch. That task didn't take so long as seeding and left me time to plant more seeds in the Red garden. Also, I had become considerably more efficient, and less overwhelmed, able to start on Day 1 instead of Day 3 of my visit.
At the end of ten days' planting, in Year 2/1995, we realized that the sand in the garden would dry out and blow away without some protection, carrying the seeds away as well. The rye crop, previously grown to hold the sand during the fallow year between tobacco plantings had been turned under in the Flower Garden area to add body and nutrients to the soil, but lay untouched around the outside of the Flower Garden. On my last planting day, we rushed around, raking out the dry stalks of rye from the standing rye beds and scattering the broken straw over the beds. Moisture then stayed near the surface to assist germination.
[In my second and third year, we used wheat straw as a mulch.]
Sun. May 4/97
Ken, his two apprentices, and I spent the morning in the Flower Garden. One of the apprentices used the tractor to move sawdust to the Flower Garden.
Perennial Blue beds have been weeded. Blue Flax, and Sweet Rocket beds have been fertilized and today had sawdust spread on them. Violets have been weeded.
Farmer Ken and an apprentice pulled the soil into one L - O - N - G bed in the Red garden with metal rakes. Then they made a second long bed (I think) and about 3 other long curving beds.
The Yellow garden is all ready for planting as well.
It started to rain about 3:30. At 4, the workers were sent home and we returned to produce several more beds in the pouring rain.
[sketch of bed outlines]
At 6 p.m., we drove our soggy selves back to the house.
Tues. May 6/97
I learned how to clean seeds this year. As flowers died and their seeds ripened last fall, Ken picked the seed heads and stored them in labelled paper bags, which allowed them to dry out rather than rot. They remained that way through the fall. During the winter and early spring, each bag was opened and the seeds cleaned.
We rubbed the husks between our hands over a screen. Then we tipped the screen back and forth, tapping the edge. Seeds and chaff were then put in a slope-sided metal bowl and taken outside. The contents were gently tossed in the air, which allowed the chaff to blow off.
Later, Ken put other seed husks in a blender and whipped them up. Chaff was then blown off the seeds in the breeze off the back porch.
We then put the seeds into small brown paper packets, labeled them and filed them in an old wooden storage box with a nice fitting lid.
* * * * *
His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing
"You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."
"But the Solar System!" I protested.
"What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently: "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."
From: "A Study in Scarlet", pg. 10, 11
By Sir Arthur Conan DoyleIn "A Treasury of Sherlock Holmes"
By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Selected and with an Introduction
By Adrian Conan Doyle
Hanover House, Garden City, N.Y.
1955
The Importance of Forgetting [Prob./97]
With a tip of the hat to Sherlock Holmes who would have understood the process, and the necessity for using it.
The new farmer's focus on a specific activity within a season is total. When seeds have to be planted in the greenhouse, platforms at chest height are quickly constructed to hold the seedling boxes, as the need arises. Transplanting to larger pots, and mixing/producing the soil mixtures, and turning the heaters on and off regularly, and opening or closing the doors of the greenhouse depending on the outside temperatures, all happen without fuss, almost automatically. The focus is on successfully getting as many of the seedlings as possible into the fields.
And when each box of seedlings has reached a certain height and the soil in the gardens outside is warm and the weather agrees, the seedlings are planted out in the fields day after day. And the work of building new holding shelves the right height in the greenhouse slows down as mixing soil and transplanting into larger containers continues; and turning on the heat in the greenhouse at night and shutting all the doors, but opening them slowly or quickly, depending on the outside temperatures, continues.
The changes in activity each day depend on the availability of completed tasks from the previous days, or the weather, or the sudden need to take action to rescue seedlings or find replacement equipment or repair faulty hoses or lights or, or, or.... Each task or challenge is dealt with immediately in order to continue with other tasks.
And when the seedlings and bulbs and tubers and new seeds are out in the fields, the weeding begins and continues. But the tasks and the knowledge involved in preparing the greenhouse and building appropriate shelving and planting and nurturing the seedlings is swept out of the farmer's brain to leave room for the new focus in other directions.
Winter comes, and with it the time to plan construction of a new house. The farmer walks the slopes and valleys of the land to find the tall straight trees necessary for the building. As he looks, he considers recently fallen trees, and two trees of the same species side by side so that one can be removed and the other can expand to take up the available upper story space vacated by the one removed. Then he returns to his charts and diagrams and how-to books and produces plans and charts of a house that will be large enough to hold a large greenhouse with built-in platforms across a southern wall, and a basement divided into dry storage and wet storage and roof-heated-water areas, and a kitchen large enough to process large batches of fruits and vegetables. Between walks in the valleys to look at trees and drawing plans in the farmhouse, he slowly cleans out a lower room in his barn, spreads gravel, acquires a cement mixer, [see also pg.34] and pours a concrete floor in nine-square-foot chunks. And as the sections of floor cure, he builds a workbench and a shelf to hold the tools for building the new house, and he wires the workshop to supply electricity to all those tools.
And in the late winter, the farmer cuts down the chosen trees and hauls them to the barn. And just before spring and seed planting begin, a portable sawmill arrives to cut the logs into boards so that the grain of the wood is strongest. And the farmer and his lady carry the boards to the top of the barn and crosshatch the boards to air and dry through the following summer and fall.
Then the farmer sweeps out his brain of house planning and tree choosing and workshop building knowledge to make space for soil preparations, and fertilizers and seedling germination and water hoses and heating beds and opening and closing greenhouse doors as weather changes and laying out seedling boxes onto platforms in the sun in the greenhouse.
And as he mixes soil, and sows seeds, and moves seed boxes onto platforms, a thought skips across his mind. He focuses totally on each season's requirements and then sweeps out his brain in preparation for the next season's load. But sometimes that memory should be kept. And as he lifts his seedling boxes onto a platform, he remembers why the platform is the height it is. And he also remembers that his house plans, produced AFTER he had swept his brain of the previous spring tasks and decision-making, showed the platforms considerably lower. And the result would be aching back and sore knees. And he also realizes that if he raised the height of the platforms in the house he is planning, he would also have to raise the roof, and change aspects of walls and windows. And as he works, he wonders if it is such a good idea to sweep the brain totally clean after each season. But as he works, he is glad that it takes more than one year to plan and build a house. And he understands that sweeping often leaves a few bits lying around to be added to and mixed with the new clutter building up.
And in the long summer days when visitors come to the farm, he takes them to the new house area, and shows them the string outline for the walls and the vertical logs from the valley to hold up the roof, and then they walk to the barn to see the stacked lumber and the new workshop. And he talks about the proposed kitchen and cupboards and cabinets and greenhouse and living spaces that will be constructed in the workshop, using the lumber in the barn. And ideas begin to form again about the new house that he will continue to plan during the coming winter.
* * * * *
1997
This was the year the full scope of the Flower Garden was developed. With extra, young hands available, it was possible to fertilize and shape the large area into flowing beds.
Mon. Aug. 10/98
1998 was the year I really saw the garden in bloom for the first time. The winter had been very mild and spring came a month early. When I arrived in early May, all the perennials were in leaf, and within a few days, some of the flowers were in bloom. By the time I left in mid-May, the pansies, chives, Sweet Rocket (phlox), blue flax, yellow iris and columbine were in bloom and the first of the large red poppies were showing. And the herbs and rhubarb leaves had filled their beds.
Tues. June 27/00
A large sheet of plasterboard displaying a photographic panorama of the Flower Garden leaned against the wall before me, its patterns of newly seeded beds laid out diagonally across the panel. The highlight was the strong mauve Sweet Rocket flowers blooming in the wild areas of the Blue garden, accented against a light lemon coloured weed that had escaped the cultivator in the vegetable garden at its southern border. And the yellow weed in the large panorama drew/moved the eye on to the yellows of iris and pansies in other photos/areas.
In one photograph adjacent to the panorama, the tiny sky-blue flax flowers whispered their presence against the dark brown of the nearby cultivated soil.
The roadway through the garden emphasized its divisions: Blue flowers on the left (or West), with herbs beyond and yellow flowers in the distance; red on the right, shading from blue-red to orange-red in the distance. In early spring, the roadway looked large and prominent; with summer growth in height and colour, it would welcome the traveller and diminish in appearance/presence.
How I wished I could follow its progress through the spring, summer and fall. Possibly this year that would happen. I would return in July, anyway.
This May, I had planted all possible blue and red flower seeds and cleaned the remaining beds for seedlings from the greenhouse. But I had not touched the Yellow beds. I wondered what they would look like. I had routed out all the thick new growth of staghorn sumac from the Blue garden where it had taken hold, but had not been able to continue my efforts into the area north of the mint and other herbs. Possibly a July visit would restore my resolve to continue my efforts. Or maybe I would find time next year if my progress in the Blue and Red gardens were sufficient to shorten the time required in those beds in future. I wondered and hoped and dreamed as I studied the panorama and its accompanying photographs.
Friday, May 17/02
On the Concession road in front of the property, telephone workmen were busy doing something. I wandered out to see what they were doing and got into a discussion with one of the linemen. Our topic of common interest fell to toys. The sister of the telephone lineman has a toy store in Drayton called Funraisers. A portion of all sales goes to a charity of your choice. She has to keep hopping to find toys not carried by the major department stores. Sounds familiar.
* * * * *
July 29/02
The gloves we usually use for gardening are a flowered cotton with small rubber dots across the palm and fingers. These dots help to grasp the sturdy Couch grass that fills the Monet gardens near the farmhouse. When they get dirty, Joan takes these gloves into the City and throws them in the washing machine, and then rolls them into pairs for the return trip to the farm. Gradually, the dots wear off and, as the season progresses, the seams loosen on the more-used right hand. And by the end of the season, two left-hand gloves become mates, one inside out
I finally solved my gardening glove problem this year. When I garden, I need to use my bare hands in the soil. Because so much of my gardening work is pulling grass and other "weeds", the index finger of my right hand suffers from the rubbing of the sandy soil. By the time I leave the farm, the edge of my finger is rough and sore, and it sometimes takes two or three weeks of non-gardening before the finger recovers any muscular strength. This year, I wrapped the finger in two separate pieces of Elastoplast fabric bandages, leaving the knuckle free to bend. At the end of each day, I removed the tattered bandage strips and put a new pair on the next day. It worked! When I left the farm, all my fingers were in working order!
.
Chapter 6 Dancing with Flowers
Sat. Jan 10, 1998 - A DREAM
Shasta daisies waved in the breeze, lifting her spirits. As she
walked the perimeter of the flower beds, colour combinations interchanged
and heights of plants flowed up and down. Yellows flowed into whites
and became blue and purple. Beyond the blue beds, the pinks and rose of
the red beds were a flaming backdrop to the quiet blues. Across from the
end of the blue beds, the pinks and rose colours sparkled and shone.
Around to the reds and vermilions to look across to the multi-coloured
path border to the oranges and yellows, with the white beyond. The circle
complete, she stepped to the centre, and the herbs.
August 5/02
To get ready to head out to the Flower Garden, I begin to collect my supplies in the house:
bottle of water with a little juice in it, sun hat, gardening gloves,
notebooks, garden plans, pencils, pens, Walkman and story tapes.
Always story tapes.
Joan spends many hours on the road each month travelling to various meetings. To pass the time, she listens to story tapes that she gets out of the library. When I first started working in the gardens, Joan brought me a selection of tapes, thinking I, too, might need to listen to something other than the birds and bees while I dug and weeded. As she had made the offer, I felt obliged to accept. And soon I was hooked.
Now, I look forward with anticipation to each new supply. I get engrossed in murder mysteries and adventure tales. And this is the one chance I get in a year to catch up on the old classics and the new Canadian award winners.
Once, I arrived to find no new tapes. Luckily one of the fixtures in the house was a Bill Bryson tape of his walk along the Appalachian Trail, quite a different setting from his English adventures. But I had travelled into the Adirondack Mountains for ten-day camping trips during my university years, so I felt quite at home walking beside him in my mind.
Wed. May 10/95
Yesterday, it rained. As I planted seeds, the hood of my raincoat slid forward on my head so that all I saw was the earth in front of me: no trees, no field, no sky. When I slid open the van door to write what I'd planted into the chart or to choose a new packet of seeds, the rain spotted seed packets, smudging the labels.
My usual pattern for planting is to spade the edges of a plot into the centre, and then lightly rake the pile level with a metal rake. This produced the final appearance of a raised and separate bed. Then I would return to the van (to stretch my legs and back and eyes), choose a new packet of seeds, walk back to a new plot, scatter or sow the seeds on the soil, and then rake the surface or cover the holes or trench with a most wonderful tool, a long-handled, lightweight wooden rake with long plastic tines. The last step in my routine is to return to the van, collect the Walkman (tape recorder), turn on the latest story (Sue Miller's "See Jane Run", Sue Grafton's "D is For Deadbeat", Dickens' "Great Expectations", Carrie Fisher's "Delusions of Grandma") and listen while I tamp down the sandy soil with its seeds. That done, I return the Walkman to the van and begin a new plot. With this routine, I have enough variety to maintain a steady pace. I can be aware of the warblers returning to the woods nearby and the meadow birds establishing territory. I can observe the trees and the surrounding fields as I walk back and forth to the van, which also allows me to stretch cramped muscles. I can also follow a story in lumps of time, like I would when reading a book. And by the end of the day, I can see between nine and twelve 8 x 4 foot flower beds arranged in neat patterns within a pre-arranged outline. Satisfying indeed.
But this couldn't happen yesterday. With the rain, I missed the trees and the stretching and the breaks in listening and, by 7 p.m., I was cold, soggy, lonely and MAD.
"This has GOT to stop!" I chided myself. "If I'm going to be mad, I might as well be WARM and mad. If I'm going to be wet, I might as well be WARM and wet. If I'm going to be lonely, I might as well ENJOY being alone."
I climbed into the van and, being mad, figured out how to follow the ruts in the roadway backwards to the "T" and to turn around WITHOUT freaking out about maybe tipping over the lip of the valley just beyond (I was concentrating on being MAD), and drove back to the house. There, I poured myself a glass of beer and a bowl of potato chips, sliced very old cheddar cheese slices onto a plate, put a Jennifer Warren tape of "Famous Blue Raincoat" (Leonard Cohen's songs) on the stereo at full volume, poured scented bath oil into a tub and climbed in to listen to Leonard Cohen overlaid by dribbling HOT water.
To be mad, but not a directed mad was a unique experience. Not being able to direct the mad at someone else forced me to solve it. After all, it was MY mad!
Mon. May 15/95 Mother's Day Yesterday
Just spent an hour outside observing the moon and Jupiter through Ken's telescope. I used the dial on my Luminous Star Finder to locate the star, Arcturus in the constellation Boötes, and the constellations, Draco, Leo and maybe Lynx. Fun.
My interest in Draco began when I saw the star arrangement over the doorway of a cabin my Morris Dance group stayed in while attending a Morris Dance Ale (a gathering, where beer plays an important role as well as dance) last fall in Minneapolis, MN. This constellation was an easy one to locate once I had found it the first time, because it flows between the Big and Little dippers, always convenient markers in the northern skies.
* * * * *
With one day left to go in the Flower Gardens, I've filled up the space in the Red garden, and have half finished the Blue garden. I seeded 14 beds today and can hardly move!
Tues. July 4/95
This year was Irrigation Installation Year. The design of the plantings was now dictated by the area that could be reached by the irrigation system. A smaller area was allocated to planting red flowers, the southern end almost across from the southern end of the Blue beds.
The full area of the Red garden and the majority of the Blue garden were planted this year, as well as two yellow beds. There were possibly three reasons for this appearance of larger planting coverage than in 1994: 1) The area to be planted in red flowers was reduced. 2) The planting routines and flowerbed arrangements had been established in 1993. The organization of the garden itself, the techniques of digging and planting, the sorting of seeds into colours and sizes, the use of the tools, the routines to maintain a steady pace as well as maintain sanity had all been worked out the previous year. 3) I was in better physical condition this year.
This year, the seed packets were pre-sorted during the winter into the slots in a liquor bottle box and the divisions labeled in heavy pen on the outside of the box.
Graph D r
D
r Johari Window In 1994, the sorting of the seeds had taken a day and a half of a ten-day planting visit. This
activity helped me adjust my mind to the physical task ahead, but while I was doing that the garden
didn't get planted. This year, the first day of my visit, was spent IN the Flower Garden. I planted three annual
beds, weeded perennial beds and walked the garden. I am still looking for an activity that will get the task started quickly and productively and
will adjust my energies to the garden-and vice versa. One option is to rake the old rye straw
surrounding the gardens into piles, or to break up the rye straw for scattering after seed planting. Last year, I planted the Blue garden and began to plant the Red garden. This year, I began to plant
the Blue garden; moved to the Red garden and planted red flower seeds until the area was filled;
then stepped into the Yellow garden and planted two yellow flower beds and, lastly, returned to
the Blue garden to ALMOST finish planting those beds. Ken disced an area in the originally proposed pond area to plant herbs but I didn't get to
that task. Fri. May 10/96 Tues. April 22/97 Farmer Ken now has two apprentices to help him start seeds in the greenhouse, and plant
potatoes, onions, peas and carrots in the fields, and spread fertilizer, and cut asparagus, and
transplant seedlings. During the day, Farmer Ken explains the fundamentals of organic farming,
adding details as they work. When the tobacco planting starts on the neighbouring farms toward
the end of May, they'll move on. Having earned their college tuitions by planting and harvesting
tobacco, they walk the fields with cigarettes in their mouths. This year is well ahead of other years because April weather was nice, and the greenhouse
planting went quickly, and Farmer Ken found the right soil mix for the seedlings (and didn't have
to restart some). Many of the perennials, biennials and re-seeded flowers are already up in the
gardens. Farmer Ken is fertilizing the beds in the Flower Garden as he rototills so I won't need to
add anything when I plant. Mon. May 12/97 The ingredients of each meal are often determined by the fresh ingredients in the kitchen.
Today, a banana is reaching the end of its edible life in the fruit bowl on the table. In the fridge are
eggs, bread and milk. So, today is Banana French Toast day! With a topping of dark, end-of-season maple syrup. I had grown up with French toast, but had never had the banana included. French toast is
normally bland. The overripe banana adds body and flavour which can easily handle the strong
dark maple syrup poured on top. During the year, Farmer Ken combines this dark syrup with ground mustard seed to
produce a Maple Mustard mix for his customers-hot stuff! As he had some syrup to spare, we
were able to use it for breakfast. We felt quite regal! This syrup is a product of Spring Arbour Farm. Each spring, while the snow is still on the
ground, Ken trudges down into the valleys of the farm and taps the maple trees. He boils down
the sap to produce syrup. * * * * * Out in the Flower Garden, Farmer Ken and an apprentice transplanted mint and tarragon
seedlings in the area just south of rhubarb, in the herb beds. They then shaped the remaining beds
in the Blue and Yellow gardens, using metal rakes to pull the soil into long curving humps. We had trouble with a section of the Yellow beds. The apprentice could hardly get the
rototiller through the thick grass. Ken mounded the rows and then I pulled and picked out as
much of the roots as time allowed. I was able to clear only about 1 metre of a row before dark.
Lots more to do there if time allows. Farmer Ken put sawdust mulch around the herbs to retain moisture and hold back the
weeds. On this land, when the soil is clear and seedlings planted, there is a fresh covering of seeds
from the surrounding grasses covering the bed within a day. Sparrow - light front/ white eye ring/ striped from head to tail Thurs. May 15/97 Yesterday was a beautiful day. I planted ALL day. Last night, it rained. Today, there is a STRONG wind blowing soil from the neighbouring tobacco field to the
west across Spring Arbour Farm. The temperature is only 11Ί C. Not fun. After planting three
beds, we came in. A Baltimore Oriole had a serious discussion with Farmer Ken and an apprentice as they
worked in the farmyard Tuesday, transplanting seedlings into larger pots. The farm is now ready for asparagus harvesting. The asparagus-grading cutter has been
cleaned and sharpened, the cardboard shipping boxes have been bought, the cooler prepared, a
new white chalk board hung on the wall listing large consistent orders to be filled and day of the
week for filling. The flower seeds are all planted and the greenhouse seedlings are growing. Farmer Ken has made his first two runs of this year into the city to deliver fertilizer and seedlings
to his customers. Tues. May 20/97 This was a COLD gardening year. Until the last few evenings, I would head straight for a
hot bath to counter the effects of hypothermia. I made a minor complaint about the need for an outhouse for females, especially, out near
the flowerbeds. The long walk to the farmhouse often precludes heading back to the farmhouse
when nature calls. And when the van is available, a drive back seems like an unnecessary waste of
gasoline. A woman, then, has to be rather creative in locating the appropriate spot. My last year's
washroom spot was taken by the huge dead snake that Ken had accidentally disced while it sunned
on a warm day. I used the area around River Road and Painter's Valley but found it rather open
and unsatisfactory. In the end, the shrubs south of the flowerbeds appealed most-so long as no
one was in the asparagus patch on the far side of the valley. Ken commented that he was planning on using the trimmings from the lumber-making
exercise to build the outhouses. I'll keep my fingers crossed on that one. I did notice that when he
decided to harden off larger plants from the greenhouse, he used these trimmings as the support
poles across the tops of 1 x 2" frames in the uncovered portion of the old tobacco greenhouse.
Either this use would have to change or I would definitely be out a facility. I suspect that I'll have
to find a portable, moveable screen, or become less concerned about the possibility of being
observed. I found much time was wasted with cold and frustration this year. Prior to departing for
Ontario, I had produced charts of the garden as well as unlabelled outlines that could be filled in
with new information as I planted. When I arrived at Spring Arbour Farm, they were nowhere to
be found. The labels in the garden from last year had been moved to the walkway and I couldn't
generate enthusiasm to move them back into the correct beds. Later in the year, I discovered the
charts in my studio at home. Ken and his two apprentices rototilled some of the gardens and worked the soil into beds
and I redrew the charts as I planted seeds. The last day, I outlined each bed on the chart with a
colour denoting PERENNIAL, ANNUAL or BIENNIAL. Hopefully, I can also mark the labels on
each bed so that PERENNIAL and BIENNIAL beds are not dug up next year. Mon. Aug.10/98 This year, 1998, the daily temperatures were in the high 20s or higher, EVERY DAY.
Without any rain, workers AND garden began to wilt. With the sprinkler system in place, the
plants thrived and the workers found new energy for their tasks. In other years, the garden behaved very differently in early May. Temperatures were much
lower, and cold rain chilled the workers and often curtailed/prevented planting. In consequence,
there was a mad scramble the last few days before my departure. This year, there was not nearly
the same bone-chilling labour. Still the same last-minute scramble, though. Maybe that never
ends. We just added more tasks to the list this year! Fri. May 7/99 Half the Red garden is weeded. One day left to finish the beds. The Sweet William has
become a real pain. The beds have become overrun with grass and it's difficult to remove the
grass without disturbing the flower plants. Ken used a mulch of turkey straw and sawdust on
perennial beds in February when the weather was particularly mild and the plants were starting to
grow. The mixture is so strong, yet, that many of the plants were smothered. The Blue garden
calls. I found a large hole dug in the original blue flax bed, with several small diggings. Some
animal has been busy. It took me much less time to clean out the flax beds than formerly. Good
batches of curly-leafed dock were scattered through the gardens from one year's compost. That's
fine to cook in borscht, but doesn't enhance the flower gardens. Its dark brown spike of a seed
head adds a nice contrast in roadside ditches in the fall. I'm not finding worms this year. Only cut
worms-many. As I dig in the Blue garden between the two Blue Flax beds, I come across the occasional
purple and yellow pansy plants, smiling through the grass. I carefully dig around the plant, leaving
it as a sunny reminder of the rows that Ken had transplanted from the greenhouse last year. Mon. May 8/00 Joan has been here. Daffodils and tulips decorate every room. I arrived at the farm last Tuesday evening. Wednesday and Thursday, I weeded the Sweet
William bed at the front right corner of the Red beds, and all 15 Echinacea/hollyhock beds around
the southern border of the Blue beds, and the central blue flax beds, and the Shasta daisy plants to
the east of the blue flax. Ken started and then I finished spreading compost over all these beds.
The darker coloured compost gives a nice definition to them. For the last three days, I have
weeded walkways and removed dandelions, blue flax, grass and major weeds from the beds-almost
all of the Blue bed area and some of the Red beds. In the Red beds, one major poppy bed has been
weeded and its pathway cleared, and the grass has been removed from a pathway not cleared last
year-a huge job. Hopefully planting today. Sun. June 18/00 I begin each year of gardening with high expectations of achieving my goal. Our first meals
together, I sprinkle my conversation with talk of my activities in the Blue garden and in the Red
garden, and my hopes and expectations for the Yellow garden. As the days pass, I continue to talk of my progress in the Blue garden and in the Red
garden, and I begin to worry about the Yellow garden. That Yellow garden begins to recede as a
possibility. But I continue to hope. Even on the last day of work in the gardens, I proclaim that I
can still do some work in the Yellow garden. Occasionally, I'll pause in my weeding and planting to give thought to the Yellow garden.
Once or twice I wander through the beds, looking for perennials to weed around, or shapes of old
beds to begin to delineate. As I walk through the grass, which grows taller each day, I wonder
how to approach the task of clearing. Then I return to the more civilized Blue garden and Red
garden to work with renewed vigour in an effort to finish those tasks. But each year, the Yellow garden defeats me. Not forever, I hope. Not forever. Tuesday, May 9? /01 a.m. Rain Asparagus grading is done in the southwestern corner of the big old
wood barn. Along the south wall is an eight foot long, narrow table holding an
electronic weigh scale with its meter attached to the wall at eye level. Beside
this is a low-sided tub containing water and a stack of absorbent pads. Under
the table is a stack of flat, die-cut box forms. Across a narrow aisle from the long table is a large square table holding a
circular metal plate about 4 feet in diameter. This plate holds two different
vertical rings, one 7" and the other 9" from the outer edge. It is divided into
pie-shape compartments (minus the narrow portion cut off by the vertical central
rings) by rows of 3" nails. Asparagus spears are laid in the chosen length compartments, head in,
filling each compartment. Then the plate is rotated past a saw mounted at one end of the table.
This saw cuts off the asparagus ends at the required length. A box is made from the flat pile and placed on the scale. An absorbent pad is placed in the
water and then laid in the bottom of the box. This box is weighed. Then the asparagus is
transferred from the table to the box, with their bottoms on the wet pad. When over 20 lbs. of
asparagus sits in the box, the box is removed from the scale, and its lid closed. The box is then
stored in the walk-in cooler around the corner. The lid only covers 2 or 3" from the edge of the
box, the centre remaining open. The lid is half open, and about an inch higher than the asparagus,
to allow room for the spears to absorb water and continue to grow. 3:10 p.m. Working in the Flower Garden. Startling lemon and black goldfinch on foxglove stalks.
Turned over grass in 1 plot in Yellow garden. Cleaned 1 bed beside mid-path in Red garden.
Removed dead stems from border beds in Blue garden: Echinacea and black hollyhocks. Wednesday, May 9? /01 Day 1 of "Delivery Day" for Ken. "This year," I thought, "I'll even get to the Yellow beds." I would spend equal time in
each colour bed every day. This, of course, was the consideration miles away from the realities of
life on a farm. "What do you usually do with them?" I enquired. "Remove them with a stick and leave them on the ground,"
was the response. And, then, Farmer Ken returned to preparations
for a three-day delivery trip into the City. The next morning, I found a pointed stick and headed for
the fruit tree. One look at the nest and my plans altered. Opening
the nest in winter or early spring would have killed the babies. But,
unfortunately, this was Departure Day for these Ύ -inch worms.
The blossoms were in full bloom and the leaves were just coming
out, fresh and juicy. I headed back to the house for a plastic bag,
and purposefully set to work. One tree in the yard, two trees off the
walkway near an old manure pile, five trees in the orchard and two
trees near the Grand Allée. THEN I could begin work in the garden! And, my, those leaves and blossoms look good! Sept./01 Dug one more patch of Yellow beds. Removed a few more grass roots. Helped
Ken-weeded around chives as he cut a supply for customers-and pulled dandelions from the
oregano bed. [ This bed was completely filled with a 2' high wild aster with tiny white flowers.]
Ken left to make deliveries in the City about 12:30 p.m. He'll likely return Friday afternoon. By
12:45 p.m., I'd finished removing grass from 3rd Yellow bed. In the Blue beds, I pulled some
more sumac roots. I completely weeded the Meadow Clary bed, and moved 3 plants that had
taken root beyond the designated area to fill in the bed. This plant really expanded this year. Joan
says it'll fill a garden, given half a chance. 4:00 ish - Spread Compost on Meadow Clary bed and then covered this with broken
Clary twigs from last year, to hold in moisture. The dried stems from the previous year are about
pencil thickness and perfect for protecting the bed and gradually adding body to the soil of the bed.
I weeded one more bed in Red garden, this one North of the east-west walkway in the centre of
the Red garden. Then I fertilized yesterday's cleaned bed and some of today's bed, and violas, and
sage, and Sweet William (that Ken had weeded in the front row, South end of Reds.) [On studying
my photographs from last fall, I later realized that I had weeded this bed myself last fall! I
promptly phoned Ken and retracted my thanks for his help!] Meadow Clary photo Cut asparagus from 6 - 9 p.m. 67 lbs. By sunset, I could hardly move! Thursday, May 10? /01 Today was asparagus cutting day
ALL day. No Flower Garden work today: The whole day was devoted to asparagus picking. I picked
asparagus from 9:50 am. until 2 p.m., took the tubs into the barn and weighed them, and then
staggered into the house to rustle up some lunch. Out again between 4:50 p.m. and 8 p.m. Before
making supper, I put the garbage out at the roadside for pick-up tomorrow morning. Having
trouble managing internal body heat. Sitting around all year is not a good strategy for surviving a
day of picking asparagus in the hot sun! Friday, May 11 ? /01 Ken arrived back at the farm about midnight last night, and staggered up to bed. His
original plan had been to return some time today. At 10 a.m., I had my shovels in the NEW yellow double-wheeled wheelbarrow and was
walking along the farm road, pushing it the half mile to the flower gardens. I cleaned out one more bed in the Blue garden and hacked down some of the larger
staghorn sumac at the west end. I had dug up numerous sumac roots the previous day, and had
left some pulling unfinished, with the roots left above soil, like large coiled snakes, in front of the
tree "nursery" now grown tall into a bordering windbreak. The Meadow Clary and Shasta daisy beds in the centre of the Blue garden are now clear of
weeds. I cleared weeds as I listened to "Northanger Abbey" by a favourite author of mine from my
university years, Jane Austen. I remember travelling through her home area during a trip to
England with my parents, intrigued to discover that the landscape we saw was the countryside she
described in her books. In the Red beds, I cleared weeds from most of a third bed of mixed hollyhocks and rose
mallow. As well, I finished off the previous bed and began to work on the tiny poppies and some
of the pinks (Dianthus). I also moved the irrigation pipes off the Red beds, which reminded me that I had begun to
clean the hollyhock bed at the East end. It won't take long to finish clearing it. No Yellows today. Joan arrived on the farm about 3 p.m. Sunday, May 13/01 Mother's Day Candle and card from Ken and Joan. Quiche for breakfast. 11:15 a.m. - 3 p.m. Blue Garden - Cleaned and fertilized 3 iris beds, Meadow Clary,
Shasta daisy, and Mountain Penstemon. Put sawdust as a pathway around these. Dug weeds out
of one path between hollyhock/Echinacea beds: there are about 14 such beds. 4:45 p.m. - 9 p.m. Still working on the rows on either side of the centre, east-west line
through the Red Beds. 1 bed ready for compost and Cosmos seeds. 1 pathway ready for sawdust.
Back side of iris plantings in the Red beds cleared of weeds. Just started clearing grass from the
front (west) side. Removed a few more weeds from front beds of Sweet William and Dianthus
(Pinks). I moved at a good steady pace today. While working, I listened to two more tapes of
"The Ground Beneath Her Feet" by Salman Rushdie this afternoon. His cross-allusions set my
head spinning, trying to remember where they come from before he made another one. He even
mentioned the gene change which happened when immigrants crossed the Atlantic, a detail I had
learned during the past year. Rushdie obviously pays attention to the latest news. Kari called and left a Mother's Day message. I finished reading "The Yearling" today-a tough ending. Having trouble with temperature changes today: one minute it was warm enough to
consider changing to shorts; the next moment I didn't have enough clothes to put on.
Hypothermia got me this evening. Tuesday, May 15/01 Sweet William photo I
also
weeded
and edged
some Dianthus beds. It's probably time for a major re-seeding of Dianthus. There used to be a
very large bed of Dianthus that managed itself for several years. Now, there are several small
plantings but no large, substantial bed. In the afternoon and evening, I weeded two beds on either side of the central east-west
pathway of the Red garden towards the east end-large beds of rose mallow and hollyhocks, with a
lupin or two thrown in. I cleaned out pathways and then tackled the pathway east of the Dianthus plus the grass in
the Dianthus. It's just about finished. I weeded a little in the tiny Shirley poppy bed. By 8:30
p.m., I could hardly move; my fingers were a shambles; and I still can't see the light at the end of
the tunnel. It all seems SO IMPOSSIBLE! Although the area around the central pathway is clear,
if I lift my head, I can see "acres" of beds on either side, still filled with grass! Dianthus bed photo Ken took asparagus to "Field To Table" and to another collective and some new
customers, and made some catch-up deliveries in Toronto yesterday afternoon and today. Plans for tomorrow: Yellow -- clear two new beds -- plant two beds Blue -- western Echinacea bed -- plant Bachelor's buttons -- clean and fertilize Echinacea and hollyhocks along the southern border; add some
seeds -- dig and plant rectangular long-bed area in Blue beds, and fertilize -- plant more Foxglove to extend the border. These plants give a nice shape to the
garden in winter. -- clean up Echinacea near roadway
at southern edge. -- fertilize cleaned beds beside
central pathway -- use sawdust on pathways Clean up and find a place for detritus. Wednesday, May 16/01 Today, I started for the Blue garden but
didn't get there. I walked to the back (East) of
the Red garden and started pulling clover. I
removed clover from four beds of mixed hollyhocks, lupins, and rose mallow, teasing apart roots
entwined around the stems of the flowers. Then I weeded the foxglove bed at the South end and
began to dig a second border bed continuing the border line towards the central pathway where it
reaches the eastern border of the Red garden. I like the line these plants make as a southern border
to the Red garden. I was so tired last night that I couldn't stop twitching as I lounged on the couch eating
supper and watching "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy". It was interesting that very little of yesterday's plans got transferred to today's exercise.
Plans are only ideas until they are executed. Friday, September 27(?)/01 This year, an irrigation pipe lay across, rather than under, the northern roadway that runs
along the western end of the Flower Garden and down to River Road, so driving in a circle around
and through the flower gardens was not possible. With the temperatures in the high 20s in the
garden, I parked the truck on the pathway running the length of the southern edge of the vegetable
garden. When I sat in the side platform of the van, I could see along the Flower Garden roadway
and into the Red beds. There I could enjoy the view while I drank water-thinned juice, nibbled on
local Picard's peanuts, or changed the tape in my Walkman. All in the shade. This fall, I listened to Michael Ondaatji's "In the Family", as well as "In The Fall" - a story
of a black/white family's generational lives. Then a Travis McGee tale about murder in Florida. I
also listened to some of Bill Bryson's "A Walk in The Woods". As it is a fixture at Spring Arbour
Farm, I can continue it in future. Sunday, May 5, 2002 1 p.m. - I spent the past hour standing at the middle of the south end of the Blue garden
with my hand above my head holding a Walkman in the air. I was listening to Fred Waugh reading
a piece from his new book, "The Diamond Grill", and then listening to Stuart McLean telling his
April Fool's Day story about the Polka Palace and the changing wall painting and the flaming grout
and the sheep pasture and the lowering seat and the increasing supply of food. I was supposed to be pulling weeds out of this garden but every time I changed my position
or tried to lower my hand, I got a religious service from an overlapping radio band. As I couldn't
afford to miss a word of the stories OR the music (which spoke to me of two years spent in
Alberta in the '60s, and of attending the Calgary Stampede and watching Wilf Carter yodel), I'm
sure the garden will forgive me. My laughter rolled out over the flower beds spreading the
happiness I was sharing with so many other Canadian listeners. This land I stood on welcomes me
each time I visit. I work through my frustrations, my sadness, my anger while I husband this land.
And today I shared my joy in return. Later in the day, as I pulled grass and dug dandelions out of the Sweet William beds, I
listened to Rex Murphy with his phone-in program on CBC. His topic was the current discussion
on privatising Hydro systems. As I weeded, I kept my left hip pointed northwestward to receive
the signal from the transmitter in London: It was a challenge, but well worth the effort. Contacts
and callers from California to New Brunswick were knowledgeable and informative. I felt like I
had a well-rounded idea of the complexity of the problems, and a very good grounding for
discussions on the topic. I worked flat out in the garden from about noon to around 8 p.m., maybe 7:30 p.m. In the
Red garden, I cleaned out the small Sweet William bed and the front of the long Sweet William
bed. In the Blue garden, I pulled weeds for about a foot in beside the roadway, and cut off the flax
straw from the eastern bed. I removed the Echinacea stems and heads from two of the eastern
Echinacea beds and began digging out the grass. In the Yellow beds, I cut down and removed the old sticks from the tansy. These two
plants are huge and spreading rapidly. The Yellow beds are becoming over-run with staghorn
sumac and black locust. I must try and get to them this year. The weed cleaning I did last fall left a lower looking, more open garden to return to. Time
will tell if that's positive. Where I didn't clean last fall, the task looks daunting. Monday, May 6/02 While I worked, I listened to Michelle
Cresswell's story, "Sea Witch". This day, I had pruning sheers with
me. In the Yellow beds, I cut down a few
skinny black locust trees and pruned branches
off a few others that were too fat to use
pruning sheers on. The whole exercise
seemed rather awkward, and still leaves a lot
of unwanted trees for me to figure out how to
get rid of. By that time, rain had set in, so I headed back to the house. While I made lunch, Joan
packed up and left for Toronto and work because the civil servants had ratified their agreement
and were no longer on strike. She had spent eight weeks at the farm weeding her Monet gardens
around the house. What a huge task this has become. After lunch, I curled up on the sofa and went to sleep. By tomorrow, my muscles may be
sufficiently recovered to get out again to a full day of work. Late this evening, I decided to go over to the Big House to watch Ken lay copper piping to
the two hot water heaters. As I stepped out the back door of the little house, rain was seeping
down. Walking along the pathway, I could see the lighted farm sign at the roadway in the distance
as a disembodied light floating in foggy space. As he worked, Ken talked about building the house. Everything is on an eight-foot grid.
He wanted zero deflection (no bounce) so the house would feel solid everywhere one stepped. So
plywood is glued to joists and then nailed and screwed every eight inches for base flooring. There are three separate electrical outlets to the greenhouse with special shut-offs (Ground
Fuse Interrupts) to prevent electrical shocks when touched with wet hands. The well goes down 50 feet. May 11/02 On Thursday, the mourning dove returned to the garden, and the chipping sparrows came
back to the trees behind the house. Monday (Yesterday)[doesn't compute with above date], I walked the wheelbarrow back to
the house about 6 p.m. It has been very windy all day, and cool, but sunny. I knew that the window for picking
fiddleheads was two or three days, so I took a knife and headed along the path beside the barn and
down into the woods along the valley slopes. That area is boggy, with big skunk cabbage leaves
growing where the groundwater seeps out on its way to Venison Creek. Some May apple leaves
were closed umbrellas, but others were open wide. The trees overhead were in winter garb
allowing the sun to reach the slope. And there were the fiddleheads. Some were already opening
into fronds, too late to pick.
D D
D r D r
r r
Daffodils are blooming in a clump beside the roadway above the valley slope. These were
obviously discarded houseplants from some earlier year. Now they grow
proudly at the edge of the farm roadway, brightly signaling spring each
year. Trilliums are blooming on the long valley slopes, huge tapestries of
white and green. And the tulip beds
around the house are full of colour:
bright yellows, strong reds, white and
pinks.
It's always fun to turn on the irrigation system. On this farm, water is pumped, by the
tractor engine, up the long slope from the valley stream, through pipes laid across the garden.
Standing on the roadway through the
gardens, I hear the engine begin to turn over
in the distance, then the gurgle and spurt as
the water reaches one sprinkler head after
the other. As all the sprinklers, high above
the garden, start to spray and turn, the
garden seems to come to life. The
temperature drops a few degrees and the
moist spray makes breathing and working bearable again.
Helped Ken grade asparagus in the barn.
Within a day of my arrival, I mentioned the silk moth web in the apple tree in the yard. It
looks like a tent caterpillar nest.
With the warm weather last week and the rain one night, the asparagus is
leaping out of the ground. And the chief, and only, cutter was not available, so
that leaves the task to me. Asparagus cutting is a slow, backbreaking task.
Nothing seems to make it easier and still allow a profit to be made on its sale.
Four tubs are placed at 20 or 30 foot intervals along a row. With what looks like
a grain-scattering bag hung from the shoulder or hips, the picker walks along the
row, bending down to cut the asparagus at ground level. Each handful of
asparagus is placed in the carrier until a tub is reached. Then the contents of the
carrier are placed in the bucket, all facing the same way, and the picker moves on
along the row towards the next tub. When I labour in the asparagus fields, I begin to challenge
myself. "Just another row
. I'll pick another hour
. Maybe last a little longer until the sun sets
maybe I can pick more than I did yesterday
" then, when I return to the barn with my load, I
weigh the contents of the tubs! Asparagus picking is WORK, and my reward is the total weight of
what I have managed to pick before the stalks go to seed!
I spent the day in the Red garden. I cleaned up
the two Sweet William beds at the front-south end-and
cleaned up the rest of the Iris beds in the 2nd row in
from the roadway. I kept running into teardrop-shaped
burrs, which tore at my fingers.
The garden from the Iris beds eastward across the next three flowerbeds and pathways is
covered with tiny purple and yellow viola. They're beautiful! Because I had cleared the grasses
from this area last fall, the seeds found space to germinate before new grass seeds could cover
their beds.
Red - clean clover out of Foxglove
I managed two "bull" days this trip, where I pulled out staghorn sumac roots and cleaned
out goldenrod roots. Once a week is probably all my body will allow during any one trip. For two
years, I removed dandelions brought onto the farm with compost. As soon
as I finished getting those under control, I was confronted with staghorn
sumac that has moved into the garden from the tops of the valleys via bird
droppings, and goldenrod that likely came with the compost. Goldenrod
grows like grass; its roots weave above and below other goldenrod roots
to form a thick mat, preventing other plant growth. Unlike grass, whose
roots can often be pulled straight out on the horizontal at the base of the
original plant though, goldenrod roots are finger-thick and must be pulled
back to the many-branched nodule. If the nodule stays in the ground,
multiple new roots begin to grow quickly.
Joan cut some iris roots out of the gardens near the little house, so I took them out to the
Red beds and planted them in a curving bed that never seems to grow anything. The leaves will
make a nice curving line behind the ones Joan planted a few years ago in the second row from the
roadway. Those ones are coming along nicely, looking very healthy.
I walked among them, culling two or three curls from each base, and leaving at least half of the curls to develop into ferns. Jubilantly, I returned to the house with a good batch. My timing was right this year.
As soon as I returned to the
house, Kenneth came charging in.
He had returned from the City about
four hours ahead of schedule. A
possible ground frost had been
forecast and the fields were full of
half-sprouted asparagus, and there
were dozens of flats of seedlings on
the ground outside the greenhouse.
For the next hour and a half, we trudged back and forth across a five-acre field of asparagus cutting anything higher than three inches. At one point I asked if one could charge a premium on the market for asparagus tips. "Definitely", came the response. One would like to, anyway.
With no light left and virtually no harvestable asparagus left in the field, we reluctantly returned to the farmhouse, hoping fervently that frost would not claim the multitude of tips showing above the surface just waiting for a sunny day to turn the past two days of rain into fat green stalks.
Next task: Move all the flats of seedlings from the yard into the greenhouse.
Ken gulped down a bagel slathered with peanut butter to sustain him for the next couple of hours, and left for the greenhouse and the flats of seedlings outside: he had eaten sushi for lunch-a L-O-N-G time ago.
Minutes later, he was back. The roof plastic of the greenhouse had blown. The heavy
winds of the past two days had torn a long gash across the roof.
In the old
greenhouse, the plastic had been tacked down along every roof
truss of
the original tobacco greenhouse frame. Having to build the new
greenhouse across the front of the new house as well as cover it with its
removable plastic, he had been unable to take the time to add extra struts
to
support the sloping part of the roof. Now, instant repairs were
needed.
Out came the red Tyvac tape, left over from insulating the big house, and the large X-acto knife.
And out went I-to cut pieces of tape.
Once the hole was covered, we took 2' x 1' planks out to the yard, loaded each with a flat full of seedlings in 2" square pots and carried it into the greenhouse. At first, we kept pace with one another, each going out a different doorway and removing flats from opposite ends of the long greenhouse wall, never meeting at the flats in the yard: when one of us was out, the other seemed to be in. We filled all the self-watering platforms in the greenhouse with flats, and then filled the spaces on the floor beneath the platform. When those were full, we edged the house porch and then surrounded the parsley that had been planted straight into the sandy soil in an open space. Gradually, I slowed down until Ken was taking 1½ flats to my one, and then two. By the end, I'm sure he was moving three to my one. But the job got done!
Time to prepare supper-at 10:30 p.m.! Just in time to listen to the next chapter of "In the Skin of the Lion", by Michael Ondaatje, on CBC.
We took my new toy, a Star Navigator, outside the other night. This is a large, flat, hand-held "machine" that lights up various star charts in red. Once you tell it what constellation, or planet, or star you want to see, and follow a few instructions, it tells you whether it will be visible on that particular night, and where to look for it in the sky. As it was a chilly night, we weren't too sure if it was doing the job we needed. But we had fun trying. We were intrigued, too, with the line-up of five planets in the north-western sky.
* * * * *
The asparagus fields did freeze that night. All those beautiful tips turned to a watery green colour, signaling the roots to send out another shoot. Above ground, we waited.
Yesterday, the male cardinal started its repetitive "Alright, alright, alright ."
I am finding worms in the Red beds, worms and worms and worms! Hallelulia! How many years has this taken?
Two nights ago, I dreamed of a worm slowly sliding out of a hole in the ground and the next day, one did, and another, and another and another.
I still found cutworms, but their presence was amply counterbalanced by so many earthworms.
* * * * *
The chipping sparrow is a totem of mine. I find him in places I treasure.
One summer, while Ray was studying at U. of Calgary, he took a job doing soil surveys in the Kananaskas Valley, just south of the road to Banff. He found a little old house/cabin in the hills beside a stream for us. We put a sheet of plastic over the worst holes in the roof and had a cosy place for the two of us to stay. While Ray was away during the day, I befriended the chipping sparrow that lived outside our window.
At the Spring Arbour Farm farmhouse there are chipping sparrows. I know this is a good place to visit.
I ate papadoms (rice/lentil flour) for the first time on this visit.
* * * * *
This was a good year for maple syrup. Because the snow levels at the Narrows before the garden entrance were low and the valleys were not chest-height in snow, Ken was able to tap his usual trees, as well as many more.
One year, he had five jars of maple syrup on the kitchen windowsill. Each was a different shade of brown. He explained that these were the five stages of the maple syrup making during the season. One even had a pale green tinge, the early sap rising (?).
He explained that the quantity of sap was higher this year then other years, but the quality for quantity was lower. That meant he had to boil the sap longer to achieve the right consistency.
* * * * *
The burr grass is practically gone! I found one burr well along the beds behind the front of
the Red beds: that's all! My efforts last fall have paid off. The pathway into the Red beds at the
southern end has been impossible to work near for some years
because of an annoying patch of this burr grass. The old burrs
are hard and spiky, and the needle-sharp burrs would tear at my
fingers, even through gloves.
The south half of the Red beds looks like rolling parkland. The greenery is an all new-growth weed, a complex of many different plants. [Where does the iris fit?] But across the whole area is a flowing meadow of tiny purple and yellow violas. Intermittent flows of pale Peynes grey dianthus leaves add dusky humps in the viola patch. And at the back (east) are intermixed patterns of rose mallow, hollyhock and lupin leaves, about 6" high, each with a different leaf pattern and shade of green to add dimension to the back of the garden.
This year's "bull" job is cutting out the remaining staghorn sumac from the tree "nursery" around the north and west border of the Flower Gardens. I had done half the job last fall. This spring, I added Black Locust to my list of removal tasks there. Those had spread into the Yellow beds from an erroneous purchase and planting in the first years of the Garden.
The poppies no longer hold the paper wasp nest of last year. So I can work there without fear of being stung.
Black flies are eating me-my head, through my hair, is bloody.
Having taken off my navy sweatshirt, they are fewer. When packing for this gardening trip, I forget that blue, especially navy blue, attracts black flies and mosquitoes.
Laundry day, today, at least for underwear. As I write, the washing drapes over the open-slatted benches near me on the back porch, waving in the sporadic breezes. Yesterday's wind would have dried them in minutes. Today, I write and make notes as I wait for them to dry.
Thursday, May 16/02
I felt right at home, perched precariously on the top of a ladder, reaching blindly above me for a solid spot to place a balancing finger. Every time a light went out or a spotlight needed re-aligning in our toy store, I or my husband, Ray, climbed the ladder to our 16-foot high ceiling. In twenty-five years of business, we only found two employees unparalysed/unfazed by heights. So to avoid selling in the dark, we climbed sixteen feet to the ceiling.
Today wasn't quite so tricky, but I've added a few years to my balancing muscles and the ladder was light aluminum and the base was sand, and I was alone, with no hope of rescue for 24 hours. So, lower height notwithstanding, I was careful.
The greenhouse roof is one forty-foot long sheet of plastic, with no cross struts. Those heavy winds of three days ago had torn a 16-foot long slash at the eastern end, two feet above the top of the vertical outside wall. Today, the wind was as strong and I was alone. I wasn't interested in nighttime repairs, so I started early. I taped everything that looked at all like a hole, or threatened that it might become one. Then I took some work and coffee out to the greenhouse and mounted guard. The taping process in broad daylight under a flapping roof was as precarious as I wanted it to get.
The greenhouse is a warm place to work. The two houses are still cold inside and require some heat from the furnace to take off the chill. So I took a cup of tea and set up a chair and a couple of TV tables on the front porch in the greenhouse. Green and growing things surrounded me.
After a while, I started out to the back fields to dig out some more grass from the flower gardens. As soon as I started digging, the rain began pelting down. The forecast had been for thundershowers during the day and I didn't like my chances out in the centre of an open field. So I picked up my shovel and trowel and tapes for "Tough Cookie" and plodded back to the greenhouse.
In the evening, a new challenge arose. I laid plastic over the plants to give them extra protection/help them retain heat through the night. But rain seeped in over the rafters and dripped down on top of the plastic forming heavy pools of water on the plastic over the plants. What to do. If I left the plastic where it was, the weight of the water might break the plants. If I removed the plastic, the seedlings might suffer in the cold.
I went outside and taped down the flap of plastic that covered the crossbars at the top of the wall to prevent so much water running onto the cross-bars. In some cases, the plastic covering the top had holes in it from a hailstorm a couple of weeks ago. I couldn't deal with and so had to ignore them. As I was working outside at this time and knew I couldn't reach the holes from there, my brain didn't make the leap to solving the problem from Inside the greenhouse! Oh, well. Then I went inside and pulled the plastic back from the 4" of plants closest to the wall so the water could drop down on the plants, seep down through the soil and run off down the sloping trays to the outside drains.
I tried to reroute the eastern drainage "ditch" to the septic field away from the still-open sewage drain hole near the eastern end of the south wall of the house. Then I noticed an unfinished roof drain happily dripping straight into the ditch. I checked the basement, but it was dry. So I knew the basement wall was doing its job.
The rest of the day seemed to be nothing. I read a few chapters of a book, wrote a few pages, mapped the new apple orchard planted in the asparagus field just west of the barn, and gardened for two or three hours. It was a pilot's-type day ... long stretches of doing nothing while I waited to do something.
[Ken later explained that his solution to the rain-inside problem was to turn the 2x4 running across the top of the wall from flat to vertical. That would tighten the roof plastic so the rain would run straight off the roof.]
May 17/02
In the morning, I repaired the roof of the greenhouse by taping every minor tear that looked like it might be the start of a long slash in the plastic of the roof. I found the roof intact.
May 18/02
I restricted my work to the Blue garden both in my short work time yesterday and my "full" day today.
I cleared the grass and patches of big leaved clover out of the Blue Flax near the roadway, and completed a yard-wide swath around that.
The clingy tendril-spreading weed [spear-leaved goosefoot] that
swamped the foxglove in the Red garden last year has now filled several of the
beds in the Blue garden. They surround the iris bunches. I'm only doing a
cursory cleaning in some spots.
The Echinacea-hollyhock border beds in the Blue garden are virtually clean. Next task there is fertilizing the plants.
Once finished the beds beside the roadway, I moved on to the beds west of the middle Blue flax bed. Dandelions fill the walkways but are easy to remove because of the wet, wet sandy soil. That task is well begun.
The original Blue Flax bed in the centre of the Blue garden is a shadow of its former self. A large wild rose bush holds centre court, but NOTHING fills the rest. In the past year, I've removed sumac roots and much goldenrod. Now only two sides of the old beds hold big old flax plants.
The whole garden has Blue flax plants scattered throughout, so when the flowers bloom, the whole garden should look pretty.
* * * * *
Fri. JULY 5/02
I got out to the fields about 11 a.m.; the heat was already high. While Ken planted vegetable transplants in the beds around the Flower Garden, I weeded. I discovered zinnias growing in one of the beds I'd transplanted iris to in the spring. We hadn't had germination in that bed for years. I pulled weeds from much of the front row of the red-pinks, next to the roadway-very little new germination of Dianthus or Sweet William there; hopefully the healthy old plants will spread. There I weeded a goodly portion of the foxglove. I discovered lots of new foxglove plants spreading throughout the south end of the Red beds. They will help define this border very nicely in future years. I found a startling patch of rose mallow in the Yellow garden. Soon there could be pale pink rose mallow flowers in every part of the flower gardens, just like the Blue Flax and Sweet Rocket.
There are zinnias growing in both of the new iris beds. I had planted the iris to give shape to this area of the garden. As nothing had germinated in these beds for years, in spite of constant sowing, the spiky leaves of these plants would give the impression of growth. Now my zinnia seeds had germinated! Whoopee! Two kinds of plants in both long curving beds! What a treat.
Listened to "Safe Harbour" by Luanne Rice
Day 2 [Thurs. July 4?]
In the Blue garden, I made a dent in the cleaning of the Echinacea beds. I found the yellow yarrow beds north-west of the Blue beds still quite clean, so I pulled a few more goldenrod from the neighbourhood. Every chance I got, I pulled out new sumac growth. Hopefully, I can slow down the invasion by removing the new growth each time I come.
By 3 p.m., I was bushed. The heat was strong and I'd run out of gardening steam. Ken had finished transplanting so we drove down to Venison Creek to try and start a recalcitrant tractor and get the irrigation system up and running. He worked at it for an hour, with some help from his neighbour, Roger, who drove by on his way to his other tobacco fields. No luck. Back at the house, he phoned until he found someone to come out to fix it. When the man asked where he lived, Ken said, "On the N-S Walsingham town line."
After a pause, the man said, "I don't know where that is."
Ken said, "It's the 7th Concession Rd."
The man replied, "Oh, I live on that road."
In the late 1800s, the railway was put in to Port Rowan. The people of Norfolk County were charged a fee for this. Those living north of the 7th Line, just north of the town of Walsingham, said it was too far away for them to get any benefit from this station so they refused to pay. The 7th Line became a dividing line between those who had to pay the fee and those who didn't. Hence the name, "N Wals S Wals Town Line". The "locals", though, refused to call it that and continued to call it 7th Line. So, 120 years later, anyone who grew up in Norfolk County calls the road 7th Line, even though the signs say N Wals S Wals Town Line. Only recent arrivals read signs!
After our return to the house yesterday, I lay down and read, not moving until I'd finished reading Jeffery Deaver's book, "Mistress of Justice," with two cross-fans playing over me to temper the heat.
Ken, on the other hand, had work he needed to do somewhere.
Tues. JULY 9/02
Gardening is moving apace. I can last in the heat until about 3 p.m., at which point, I return, collapse onto a couch and read until LATE supper, after which I wash the dishes.
Last night, I watched "Kundan", the story of the present Dhali Llama's early years until his escape from Tibet.
In the past couple of days, I've cleaned out the new iris beds and unearthed a row of zinnias in each one. In the one day since some of the plants were weeded, the leaves have grown bigger and the plants look sturdier.
In the foxglove beds, I've cleaned the new one to discover very little new growth from the seeds I planted. It might need an over-winter for them to germinate. The plants in the old bed have expanded very nicely and are moving further into nearby beds. As I cleared weeds near the bed, I kept finding new growth, and cleared around the new leaves to give them more space. What a treat to see them growing. Hopefully, the weeding will give them room to grow strong.
Part way through the day, I took a "break", moved sideways into the vegetable rows, and weeded about two-thirds of a row of herbs as well as the adjacent potato and tomato rows. That row looks wonderful now, flowing in a giant question mark shape through the vegetable patch!
I started reading one of the books we gave Ken at Christmas, "Botany of Desire" by Michael Pollan. I'm in the middle of the chapter on Apples and the story of John Chapman, "Johnnie Appleseed", the American Dionysus. What an interesting approach to writing a book.
Sumac is spreading. On my arrival into the flower gardens, I took up the pruning sheers and cut out every stem I could find. Hopefully, this will keep the sumac in check until I can dig out the roots. When I find the plant in the Blue and Red gardens, I pull, in hopes of eliminating it there.
The Bachelor's Buttons did not germinate well this year. I suspect that lack of irrigation did not help. One large plant made it into bloom at the southern end of the bed. Possibly the water from the irrigation system reached just that far.
I was able to clear the Echinacea bed west of it, though. And there is now a sturdy bed of Shasta daisy growing on that western side of the disastrous Blue Flax central bed. The Goldenrod removal really decimated that bed except for its perimeter.
On Saturday, I spent some time in the poppy beds. A few of the poppies are now disentangled from the clutches of surrounding grasses. Summer seems a much better time to weed these plants because they set their blossoms so early in the spring that I'm afraid of disturbing them at that time.
JULY 28/02
I walked and walked this year. In other years, the half mile walk to the back gardens seemed a major challenge. This year it was an easy trip. I walked with the tools in the wheelbarrow or carrying what I needed. When I needed to go, I walked. When I was able to take the van, it seemed strange, almost unnecessary.
Before visiting the farm this year, I knew I had to prepare for the physical exertion. Each evening, I would listen to "The Arts Today" on CBC, followed by a chapter or two of a Canadian novel while I strode up and down my city block. My cats would join me. And each day, I would walk five blocks to my studio and climb five flights of stairs.
In previous years, Morris Dancing and English Country dancing plus ten days of swimming lengths in a Florida pool had prepared me-but obviously hadn't developed my walking muscles. It seems that walking prepares you for walking. The problem with walking is that you need to continue walking. When I spent hours standing or crouching in a garden pulling weeds, my leg muscles craved the long walk back to the farmhouse just to stretch and move, and possibly get the blood circulating once again.
JULY 29/02
If Joan is at the farm, we go swimming at three o'clock. As my energy levels start plummeting, about 4 p.m., this gives me ample time to be up to my neck in Lake Erie water, soaking work-weary muscles and coming to terms with the fact that I really can't get all the work done that the gardens require. We bob up and down in the rolling waves for an hour or so, chatting about our lives. I suspect that Joan "collects" swimming spots. She has a multitude of stories of the many places she has picnicked, swum and read newspapers as a change of pace in a long drive to a mediation meeting: swimming in reeds, swimming at 11 p.m. outside the back door of a motel unit when the water was absolutely still/calm and waking up the next morning to an unswimably stormy lake, swimming all alone in a deserted park, soaking in hot springs around the world. Then we climb out and head to an ice cream parlour for a treat. At home again, I head back out to the flower gardens while Joan addresses the challenge of supper. While supper cooks and the sun climbs down the sky, she listens to a story on a CD or tape while she pulls weeds in the Monet Gardens beside the little house.
Last fall, we swam every time Joan was at the farm, each time thinking we were swimming for the last time that season before the water and the weather turned cold. After I left (in mid-September?), she even managed one more swim.
We hoped to open the swimming season this year with my visit in May. No such luck. The weather did not co-operate.
Monday, Sept. 23/02
Two days ago, the nighttime hours were the same number as the daytime hours. The next day, the temperatures dropped in the late afternoon and the night was cool.
Today was cooler than the previous days, but warm enough for shorts by mid-day.
It was a frustrating day. I worked flat out from late morning, after chatting with Joan on the sunny back porch. She is off to the City and our paths won't cross again this trip.
I worked in the Blue beds. I cleaned out a few more beds of the Echinacea border and made a pathway along the north side of the Echinacea by removing everything. I made a 4' x 4' (or so) bed to hold Canterbury Bells from the greenhouse. Then I cleared the Shasta daisy bed and its adjacent pathways. Stepping sideways, I dug out a few goldenrod from the old Blue Flax centre bed. I also pruned back three of the wild rose bushes near the roadway. I fertilized the four iris beds.
Then I dug out the curving bed Ken had rototilled adjacent to the old rhubarb beds, and planted 25 new rhubarb plants along it. I put compost in the bottom of the hole, inserted the plant, put back the soil, topped it with another layer of compost, and then watered it in.
Next, planted Lychnis seedlings behind the iris in the Red beds.
I turned over soil around half the lavender beds but the sun set before I could find a place for the new plants. Tomorrow, . . .
Chapter 7 Dancing in Spring 2003
Sunday, May 4, 2003
I managed a whole day in the gardens today. I finished cleaning the Canterbury Bells bed and then moved on to the smaller Shasta daisy bed to the east of the original Blue flax beds. I began the long Shasta daisy bed west of the original blue flax bed but bogged down. I cleaned one more Echinacea bed and by the end of the day had removed most of the Echinacea heads in the whole border.
In the Red beds, I cleaned a couple of poppy beds, began to work at the back (east end) of the centre line and began to work in the grassy swath taking over the area between the poppies and the pink flowers.
In the Yellow beds, I removed all the piled up sticks that I had sawed off two days ago, and dumped them in a pile at the north end of the tree nursery, out of sight of the flower gardens.
Monday, May 5, 2003
Thunderstorm day today, so I stayed inside and read "Seeds of Change" and listened to CBC. After lunch, I collected my laundry and headed over to the new house to wash clothes and soak in the new tub. The rain had stopped so I changed my mind, walked out to the Flower Garden, and rooted out grass from the poppy beds. From 3:30 to 7:30p.m., I cleaned the equivalent of about three beds. These are not organized beds, per se; just a bunch of poppy plants spread over a large area. My task was to remove the grass surrounding each plant, and gradually join the weeded areas.
Early this morning, Ken took the tractor into the Yellow beds and dug a couple of trenches as well as digging out the old oregano plot near the roadway. He also dug a long trench along the eastern side of the roadway from the Poppy beds north through the black locust that had crossed the roadway from the tree nursery.
In the fields I listened to another cat mystery-very easy listening. "Cat in an Indigo Mood" by Carole Nelson Douglas [A Midnight Louie Mystery].
In the woods on the eastern and southern edges of the gardens, there are scattered low trees with many startlingly white flowers blooming. They look very wispy in the leafless dark woods. In the hedgerows, these blooms mass into white showy displays.
I walked the asparagus fields as darkness fell, in search of the few asparagus stalks long enough to cut for supper. We had a nice feed of them along with spaghetti and a jar of Ken's tomato sauce (peppers and a little cinnamon in it) topped with grated cheddar. Dessert was cut up oranges and mini-brownies, plus tea for me, and Chai for Ken.
Tonight, the forecast is "thunderstorm", and that's just what it's doing, with large lightning flashes, thunder and rain.
Tuesday, May 6, 2003
This morning, I made "Wild Rice Crêpes (With Berries)" without berries and with Ken's maple syrup.
Out in the Flower Garden, I dug two or three poppy beds-ALL day! A deadly job but they did look good when I finished them. At the tail end of the day, I sawed and pruned out a pile more sumac and black locust growth from the tree nursery. What's left isn't overwhelming.
Ken moved compost all day. He loaded the front of the tractor, drove it to the beds and shovelled it into the ditches he had dug. A HUGE job.
I listened to "Fortune's Hand" by Belva Plain today. I did NOT like the conclusion. It seemed decidedly unfair to the male protagonist. So I ended up the day quite depressed.
This evening, we watched a DVD programme on Canada while our clothes washed and dried.
When Joan had first acquired a dishwasher for their house in the City, they had loaded it with dishes and soap, turned it on, and then gone for a walk. As they walked, they said, "We're washing our dishes!" Watching a movie while the clothes churned away in a washing machine felt the same. Most satisfying.
Wednesday, May 7, 2003
I left the house at ten to eleven this morning and returned after dark, at 9 p.m. Ten hours. In all that time, I managed to clean THREE flowerbeds! And help Ken spread compost on a few others. A long, dreary day. My muscles have yet to adjust to the new work patterns. Some of the time, I pulled grass while seated beside the bed; other times I crouched; and then I dug for a while in one bed and then moved over to dig for a while in another. By the end of the day, I had cleaned one yellow bed, one front poppy bed and one 3rd-row bed just to the north of the centre line. My various manoeuvres today seemed to preserve my lower back and hip so I could move without staggering at the end of the day.
The tapes I listened to were more positive then yesterday's. The first was an Adam Dalgliesh story called "Unnatural Causes" by P.D. James-a good solid mystery. The second was "Rage of Passion" by Diana Palmer, a truly romantic sizzler-just what I needed.
The second floor of the little house is half bedroom and half sittingroom. The sloped attic ceiling had been finished by the previous residents: white plaster framed and crossed by old ripped tobacco kiln boards (weathered grey). Ken closed in the lower slope with a vertical wall and covered it with off-white, marbled wallpaper. The two end walls and stairwell walls he covered with a beautiful soft marbleised blue wallpaper. The double bed angles toward the east window where Joan has put a tiny bouquet of miniature daffodils, cilia backed by a sprig of evergreen. Across the foot of the bed is draped the beautiful purple/magenta Hudson's Bay Company tercentennial blanket, while the bed itself is covered with a patterned green duvet. I feel cosseted there.
Ken picked asparagus today. He managed to find about 15 lbs., which
he'll take to McSmith's for their Mother's Day sales. (Kathy McGregor)
Thursday, May 8, 2003
"During the summer," Ken says, "Joan pulses the flowers in the gardens around the house. Before she leaves for the City at the end of the weekend, she de-heads every flower so that when she returns the following weekend everything is in bloom again."
Out in the Flower Garden, I planted Monet's Choice Marigolds and California poppies, and then moved over to the Blue beds and dug out half the east-west rows.
At 7:30 p.m., I headed back to the house and Ken and I left for McSmith's farm in St. Thomas, an hour west of Spring Arbour Farm. Kathy McGregor and Gary Smith are organic farmers living just north of St. Thomas. When they settled into their life's work, they combined their two names into McSmith's Organic Farm.
When he went out into the asparagus fields this afternoon, Ken managed to
find another 45 lbs., to add to yesterday's 15 lbs., so he was quite pleased.
[During our trip, I took him out to dinner at a "Fine Food" restaurant in Aylmer; at least, that's what their sign said. I had a hot turkey sandwich with canned mixed vegetables and rice on the side. The turkey was pretty sad!]
At McSmith's, we sold them asparagus for their customers and bought eggs and lettuce for Ken's.
We were home by midnight.
Friday, May 9, 2003
Today I worked in the Blue beds again. Two-thirds of the east-west Echinacea/Hollyhock beds are clean, as well as some of the Rose bush bed and some of the western Blue Flax bed. I finished listening to "Isle of Dogs" by Patricia Cornwell. This was an "Isle of Dogs" year. While searching for a book to read in the airport in New York, I picked up "Isle of Dogs", thinking I had found a Patricia Cornwell book I hadn't read. After the first page or two, I knew I'd read the story, but the historical detail and the characters intrigued me enough to enjoy it again. After reading it in Florida, I left it for my sister to read as her visit followed mine, with instructions to leave it in the exercise room at the condo for others to read, knowing that I had a copy at home. On my return home, I discovered that I didn't have a copy: the one I had read probably belonged to my daughter or her mother-in-law, as we all read similar books in the summer. As I usually forget the contents of novels, except for emotional details, I was sorry not to have the book on my shelves to remind me. Then Joan presented me with an audio copy from the library. No chance I'll forget the contents of that book!
Then I listened again to "Rage of Passion" by Diana Palmer in an attempt to work in the area where the Japanese climber died in "Into Thin Air". I'm still not finished.
Just before dusk, the light across the flowerbeds was beautiful, ethereal. I paused to appreciate the colours/scene.
As I worked into the evening, I listened to Mary Lou Findlay and Barbara Budd interviews (As it Happens-CBC Radio). What a treat. Then I stayed in the field an extra hour listening to Noah Richler with his Friday night summary of the week on radio. I laughed in delight at his choices, many of which I had heard during the week. ["Rage of Passion" has surely set me up for happiness.]
I returned to the farmhouse at 9 p.m.; nine hours of non-stop digging.
Joan arrived this afternoon and we enjoyed our usual Friday grilled chicken dinner at the table in the big house with gorgeous flowers in a large copan blue glass vase and a friendly fire in the beautiful dark green enamel Waterford stove. [Joan's friend, Linda, is now President of the Toronto Red Cross (Joan's old position) and, in June, Joan will become President of the Ontario Red Cross.]
Saturday, May 10, 2003
Ken cooked French toast for Joan and me at breakfast.
Out in the gardens by 11 a.m.
I cleaned out about 6 of the perimeter Blue beds and almost finished the east-west beds while I listened to David Suchet reading "Murder on The Orient Express" by Agatha Christie. What a wonderful voice! Hearing his various voices, you realize that he really acted the Hercule Poirot role.
Once, when I lifted my head from weeding, I saw a wild turkey fly up through the valley trees: a large dark shape flapping through the grey bars.
Back at the house by 5 p.m.
Joan had made us a wonderful wild rice, chicken and green pepper and mushroom concoction topped with dumplings and a side dish of corn-on-the-cob for supper. Then we hustled into the car and drove to Lynedock, south of Delhi-an old church in Cranberry Creek Gardens-for a Presentation of "Some Enchanted Evening", celebrating the music of Richard Rodgers (& Hart, & Hammerstein). The singers were world class, classically trained.
Robert Missen - He looks Mennonite, but name seems Belgian
Judith Lander - We would have seen her in Jacques Brel c. 1971 (not classically trained. Instead, a confidant stage presence with facility in introducing and explaining pieces.)
Mariana Bell - contralto
Caroline Davidson - soprano
Lona David - wonderful accompanist
The owners of Cranberry Creek Gardens are Jody and Ingrid Bodnar. Jody worked for The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. During major cutbacks, he lost his job and had to scrabble together a living. He moved an old church from St. Williams on Lake Erie, ten miles to the south, and uses it for performances and celebratory events like weddings and receptions.
His neighbour is Maureen Forrester's agent, with many contacts in the performing/musical industry, a great help in locating available performers.
Sunday, May 11, 2003
Mother's Day today. Ken made pancakes that contained raisins and dandelion flowers; Joan gave me a card and a bag full of chocolate and cocoa goodies. During breakfast, we listened to Leonard Cohen songs sung by a variety of artists.
I took my camera and photographed black knot on the plum trees in the orchard. One tree, black with knot, had fallen over and another was half damaged. They're all being killed off. I removed a couple of caterpillar nests from apple trees. Their leaves are already out.
Then I wandered back to Painter Lane and walked down the roadway to the creek to look for fiddleheads. No luck there. While I listened to the last two tapes of "Murder on The Orient Express", I cleaned three more Echinacea/Hollyhock beds in the Blue garden, along the southern border. Then I took the tape back to Joan so she could take it with her on her return to the City to exchange for more tapes at the library.
Joan is very comfortable in libraries. While she was growing up, she worked in libraries, doing all the tasks required to keep a library functioning. So now she rents Talking Books from any library available and knows all the tricks of returning on time, where and how. And I am a lucky beneficiary of all her years of practice.
I took my sketchpad to the valley behind the barn-and there were
fiddleheads. I picked a big batch and then settled down to sketch a
Mayflower leaf and bud. The result is a somewhat dancing caricature of
the umbrella-shaped original, but the outline is correct.
After a quick lunch, I headed back out to the Flower Garden. While I dug out half the area where the Japanese lady had died while climbing Mt. Everest in "Into Thin Air", I listened to "Still Me" by Christopher Reeve-Inspiring. This is a good tape to overlay a tragic story.
The wind was strong and unpleasant today. I was glad to have my Gore-Tex jacket to cut it. Out in the spring fields, the jacket adds a dash of deep magenta against the green, like a huge flower, even when it's just lying beside the pathway waiting for rain or cold or wind. At 7:30, I packed up and headed for the asparagus fields just beyond the Narrows. I had seen too many stalks on my walks earlier in the day and so had brought a knife and plastic bag with me. After some time, Ken drove up and the two of us picked until we couldn't see any more.
While Ken prepared supper, I began to watch "The Matrix". As the sequel has just been released to the movie theatres, and CBC has had several commentaries on it, I wanted to refresh my memory of the original. After supper, we both quit, headed for separate houses, baths and beds.
As I hadn't slept last night until 5 a.m. and rose at nine, I was ready to quit.
Monday, May 12, 2003
A wet, windy day. I went out to the gardens for a short while until it began to rain. Beginning to get chilled, I returned to the house, listening to "Ransom" by Julie Garwood, a good British historical fiction from the era of King John. While listening, I climbed the outside stairs to the 2nd floor of the big house, went into the large open area inside, and did the first cleaning of flower seeds from previous years. Then I returned to the little house, put my feet up and continued listening. When Ken came in, I went upstairs to finish listening, unsociable but determined. I made Rice Krispy cake, washed the dishes and then spent the rest of the day reading "Seeds of Change". At one point, I inked in my sketch of the Mayflower leaf. I couldn't get warm so I lit the furnace. When Ken returned, he showed me how to set the damper to help the fire burn. Then he showed me how to wiggle a couple of buttons on the side of the TV modem so I could watch the rest of the movie, "Matrix". During supper, we watched "Mission Impossible II", with Tom Cruise. I had made Jell-O earlier so we had dessert tonight.
What a dull, pointless day. I probably needed it.
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
I was out in the Blue beds by about 11 a.m. this morning and worked through until about 8:30p.m.. I have one bed yet to clear at the western end of the Blue bed border of Echinacea/Hollyhocks-What a long, tedious job.
I finally remembered what had occupied the space in the Blue border bed near the roadway. Two years ago, I had continually brushed against a large bunch of plants, catching a multiple of seeds on my clothing. I would continually pause and pick off the seeds. By last fall, I realized I was scattering goldenrod seeds throughout the garden. So I pulled out and discarded the plants, and then proceeded to pick out and discard every seed that clung to me. Echinacea or hollyhocks will look much better in that space.
While digging today, I listened to "Ransom" by Julie Garwood, for the 2nd time. Then "Deadly Decisions", by Kathy Reichs. Great reads!
At home, I tried to help Ken bring in the seedlings from outside back into the greenhouse, but only managed about 6 or 8 trips before my energy gave out. The temperatures are going down tonight and Ken couldn't risk leaving the seedlings outside.
It's 11 p.m. and I'm so tired I can hardly move without crying out. I've listened to much of the CBC morning programme re-runs between 8 and 9, followed by Ideas from 9 to 10, and Nora Young between 10 and 10:40 p.m., and the winning CBC novel from 10:40 to 11 p.m. Ken made supper, we ate it and I washed the dishes during that time.
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
Today was "frustration" day. I weeded HALF the eastern Blue Flax bed; I weeded MOST of the western Shasta daisy bed; I finished weeding the penultimate border bed in the Blue garden and went on to weed around the hollyhock in the final bed. I still have to finish each of those tasks, finish weeding the Blue flax bed between the eastern bed and the east-west beds, weed the long western Echinacea bed, clean the area between the rose bush and the Shasta daisy bed, clean and plant the Bachelor Button bed, and clean and plant the whole central area. THEN I can start in the Pink Red beds.
Today, I also helped Ken fill compost bags at the steaming heaps beyond the gardens(I held while he filled), cut chives in the herb garden, and dig wild leeks in the valley.
While I worked, I listened to "F is For Fugitive" by Sue Grafton-unabridged this time. It's strange to listen to someone else reading the book.
After supper, Ken left to deliver to customers in the City-mainly compost and seedlings at this time of the year.
Thursday, May 15, 2003
I was in the Blue beds by about 9:30 this morning and dug and cleaned in the eastern Blue Flax beds until about 3:15 p.m. when I trudged back to the house to eat lunch-with my feet up! Weeding is a stationary occupation. After some hours, the blood starts to pool in my feet.
Then I took the wheelbarrow and some tubs out to the asparagus field where I picked until the sun went down at 9 p.m. I DO NOT MOVE VERY FAST! I picked the north end of the field between the two middle small trees while I listened to the radio.
[Back at the house, I talked for a while with Kari and then with Ray in Manitoba-to tell him to watch the eclipse of the moon since he has clear skies and I have cloudy. Rats.]
I can hardly move.
I put 5 Bachelor Button flower seed packets in the fridge for 5 days to speed up germination.
Friday, May 16, 2003
Cool and rainy today. This morning, I washed and dried my clothes and bedding plus a few other items-like towels, face cloths, dishcloths, and dishtowels. While this was happening, I read Organic and Heritage gardening books.
The light was wonderful this morning for photography so I took flower photos:
Tulips and daffodils by the well
The yellow and blue-red Monet Gardens
The red bud trees with daffodils and tulips behind
The apple tree with pear blossoms behind
When the rain stopped, I walked out to the Flower Garden and dug for a while in the Blue beds. When my rear end became wet from the rain, the cold drove me back to the house and a hot bath.
Joan came in and told me her work history. It was sure nice to have a talker around.
Saturday, May 17, 2003
I've lost a black sock while doing the laundry. I back-tracked between the two houses, opened the washer and dryer and gave the tubs a spin, shook out the sheeting on the couch and chair in the living room, unstacked my clothes-no black sock. But, Ken found an unassigned/unclaimed/undesignated pair of white underpants lying around!
I listened to "David Copperfield" while I finished weeding the Blue Flax beds-a nine-hour job. I wept for the characters as I weeded, stopping to blow my nose at particularly sad events. By the end of the day, I'd run through all my facial tissues. The second half of the last tape was garbled so I couldn't hear the conclusion.
As I walked towards the barn with the wheelbarrow this evening, a bat flitted through the air in front of me.
For several days, I broke my trip back to the house by wandering around the plateau near the top of the sand borrow pit. My search was for morels and this was the one place I knew I might find them. This year, I found half a dozen, and we served them in different ways.
This evening, I cooked fiddleheads, morels and Vidalia onions in butter as an extra vegetable for supper. Joan cooked corn-on-the-cob and sliced green peppers and pork chops on the grill. For dessert, we had blueberry pie and strawberry-cream. Ken finished it off by offering us Governor's Table chocolates.
Sunday, May 18, 2003
Scrambled eggs with morels and Vidalia onions for breakfast.
Vidalia onions are a special treat for us. We eat them regularly when we visit Florida in winter. They require long light days to grow big and sweet, so the farmers of Georgia are able to/can grow them. As they don't transport well, we seldom get them in Canada. Our fond memories of southern adventures surface as we enjoy the light flavours at breakfast.
In the tree nursery, I cut down just about the last of the sumac and black locust shoots so none remains between the initial two rows of trees. Now to get them out of there. In the Blue beds, I dug out the long western Echinacea bed plus a whole bunch of dandelions, moving inward in the garden toward the rose bush bed. Lots to go still.
Just before sunset, Anne Wynia helped me weed two of the curved Red beds-fun and easy with two sets of hands and pleasant conversation.
After supper, Anne and Dolf came over to watch fireworks and to listen to the night sky tape, "Tours of the Night Sky", produced by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Sherwood Harrington has a wonderful voice to listen to. We sat on the second floor balcony to watch the shows.
I solved the problem with the last tape of "David Copperfield". Part way through the first half, the tape would hit a snag and my machine would start reversing, so I listened to two half-tapes repeating and turning themselves. When I finally figured out what was happening, I held my "return" button until the tape wouldn't move, wound the tape for a bit by hand, and continued. I finally heard MOST of the conclusion, at least enough to be satisfied.
Monday, May 19, 2003 - Victoria Day
The bob-o-links are back! They gabbled across the Flower Garden today.
I tried to solve the problem of IMPOSSIBLE grass in the original Blue Flax beds as I listened to a Canada Reads book [that I hadn't heard] on CBC-about an East Indian mother and daughter. The third tape broke when I rewound it, so I don't know the conclusion. The "soil" has not been worked for 12 years and the grass won't budge. In desperation that I would give up on the grass, I cut a swath two feet from one edge; and then I cut another swath two feet from the first. That gave me the courage to clean out the grass area between the swaths. I wonder what I'll do to trick myself into finishing the WHOLE chore.
At 4:45, I headed back to the house. On the way, I stopped at the woods along the barn road and pulled a bunch of garlic mustard out of the woods. This garlic mustard is an unwelcome intruder, as it blocks out the native understory plants.
Joan and I showered and drove to Mississauga where she left me, and then she continued on her way to Toronto. Ken was also heading for Toronto, but much later in the day. He is scheduled to deliver many pounds of asparagus to "Field to Table" at 9 a.m. tomorrow.
[Ray phoned just after we arrived at Dad's house and we had an enjoyable conversation. He told me of getting the pump oiled and working in the dugout. Finding the irrigation pipes plugging up, he stuck a pole in the underground section and, discovered that it was full of garter snakes that had crawled in last fall. Too close to the surface, they had frozen to death. So he had to dismantle things and clean out the bodies, reconnect things, tighten loose joints, and THEN watch the water flow. Once that job was complete, the temperatures dropped and it rained all day Sunday!
Ray said there's a Scarlet Tanager in the neighbourhood just south of Lake Winnipeg. Wow!]
[This was an inconclusive week.]
Tuesday, May 20, 2003
As it turned out, Ken didn't leave the farm until early this morning, drove 2 ½ hours to his 9 a.m. delivery, in the middle of Toronto, turned around, picked me up in Mississauga just after noon, and drove straight back to the farm.
It rained all day yesterday. Ken lit a fire in the furnace for me and I spent the afternoon and evening in relative comfort-indoors. We ate supper while we watched "Being John Malkovich". Weird.
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
[Ken and I talked about family and parenting styles. As we are 7 years apart in age, we grew up under quite different home conditions.]
I tackled the heavy grass area of the Blue beds again. Still only a dent. The soil is packed so hard that simply pulling out the grass and leaving the Blue Flax plants is practically impossible. I also took the clippers to the remaining sumac and black locust stems between the trees in the tree nursery.
I listened to "In Potter's Field" by Patricia Cornwell, and then began, "A Bad Detective".
Thursday, May 22, 2003
With less than a week to go, I needed to take drastic steps in the garden. I decided to move into the Red beds even though the Blue beds are still VERY ragged. I would clean two long beds in the Red garden, if possible. If there were any time left over, I would go back to the Blue beds. It took me exactly nine hours to finish two twenty-foot beds. Done!
If I get out to the fields before noon, I can work on the Blue beds, or weed the yellow yarrow, or dig out the front bed on the north side of the centre pathway, or plant seeds, or move compost, or move the sumac and black locust trees I cut down or or or But only BEFORE twelve noon Maybe I could start at 6 a.m.!!
Moths and butterflies are proliferating:
A beautiful tiny monarch-like one.
A dark, bark-coloured moth flitted ahead of me and landed on the roadway, landing facing me. When I approached, he did it again and again-flit, land facing me, wings out flat.
Pale, pale yellow moths.
The bats were out again above the barn roadway as I walked up the road at sunset.
Friday, May 23, 2003
I reached the Flower Garden about 10:30 a.m., and started to work in the Red beds. I cleared a front bed just north of the central pathway through the Red beds. Then I started in on the 3rd bed in-behind Joan's iris bed. I finished it and started to work on the bed just north of it. Then it started to rain in earnest. It was 5:30 p.m. As I began pushing my wheelbarrow to the house, Ken drove up. I put my tools and supplies in the van and Ken turned over the wheelbarrow beside the roadway; quite a concession, as he insists ALL tools be returned to their storage place EVERY evening. We drove down to the orchard to check it out; and then drove back to the house.
After snacks and conversation, I left to clean seeds in the open area of the second floor of the big house.
I feel quite depressed.
Saturday, May 24, 2003
I read newspapers in the middle of the night and, hence, slept in until 10 a.m. I was out in the fields between 12 and 1 p.m. I managed to clean out the Red bed just to the south of the central pathway-3rd row, and part of the 4th row. About 5 or 6 p.m., it started to drizzle but I just couldn't stop. I needed to get that job done.
This evening Joan prepared a lovely bath for me, complete with new bubble bath, cocoa and snacks. It took quite a while for my toes to thaw from the cold. I had my leather shoe supports in my boots but the toes had nothing but rubber boot between the cold, wet soil and me.
My clean black sock appeared in the greenhouse. As Joan put it, "That's Ken's story and he's sticking to it."
Joan made a lovely supper of chicken plus wild rice casserole (cheese on top) and baked sweet potatoes. While we ate at the large table made of beautiful woods from the valley, we watched logs burning behind tempered glass in the dark-green enamel stove, and talked about their trip to Ireland.
Sunday, May 25, 2003
This was the last day of concentrated cleaning of flowerbeds. By the end of the day, the two foxglove beds were clean, all but one of the iris beds were clean; which meant that the southern curve of the Red beds was finished.
My Walkman [Panasonic] is giving me trouble: now I can start it backwards and it will turn to forward at the end of the first side; but I can't start it forward. As I dug, I listened to the radio-Stuart McLean in the foxglove beds-then turned on a tape for the Iris beds.
We ate in the big house, where Joan invited me back to the farm in July.
Monday, May 26, 2003
Today was Blue bed planting day. I spent the first couple of hours filling compost bags, loading them into the van, transporting them to the gardens, and spreading compost on the Blue beds. Then I weeded the two yellow yarrow beds and reseeded and composted them. Next, I dug and turned over the soil in the western Bachelor Button bed, composted and planted the seeds. I dug the remaining area of the long Shasta daisy bed, composted it, and put in a couple of rows of seedlings; then I planted seeds in every open area in the two Shasta daisy beds. Next I dug and composted a bed between the Shasta daisy and the Bachelor Button bed, and seeded it.
I used up the Blue bed seeds from '00, and'01, and '02 as well as previously. In the old beds, I planted Bachelor buttons-row on row on row. In these beds, I listened to "Devil In a Blue Dress, an Easy Rawlins Mystery", by Walter Mosley. Good listening.
As I planted, I listened to the radio or a tape. When I had trouble with the tape, I turned it off and just worked.
There is still a lot of empty space in the Blue beds, uncleaned, but I can do no more.
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
Last full day for the gardens.
I took a tub of seedling pots to the Garden and planted them as well as some packets of seeds. I moved three bunches of violas over to the Blue beds to see if we could get some coverage of the Blue beds with some wind-driven seeds next year.
I listened to "High Five" in the morning, and quite enjoyed it. Then I started listening to "Wuthering Heights". I'm half finished sobbing my way through. Hopefully I can finish it tomorrow.
As I left the fields at 9 p.m., fog was seeping across the tobacco fields to the west. As I took my laundry across to the washing machine in the big house, the stars shone overhead while a light "rain" touched my skin: [Fog?] The mist had reached our fields.
Wednesday, May 28, 2003
My last day.
I love the variety of plant shapes in the Blue beds this year. The large, pointed leaves of the Echinacea plants fill the southern border beds; the Meadow Clary/Sage form a multiple of satisfying rounded humps in the middle of the garden; three bushy sage plants march in a grey-green diagonal line, beyond the Meadow Clary/Sage, toward the long row of pointed Echinacea plants which form the western border in front of the nursery trees, with the hope of blue Bachelor's buttons in a long newly seeded row in front; powder blue flax flowers dot the green landscape of one large square bed, and small bunches are scattered throughout the remainder of the garden; mauve heads of Sweet Rocket wave through the Blue flax and in individual clumps wherever their seeds landed in past years; flowing lines of dark green Shasta daisy leaves hug the ground on east and west sides of the original Blue Flax central bed which awaits a future cleaning.
This year, the eastern edge of the panhandle of the asparagus field holds the interview that was on CBC, with the woman who "blew the whistle" on Enron. Whenever I walked or drove along the roadway past those rows, her clear voice spoke to me and parts of the interview replayed themselves.
Chapter 8 The New House
Tues. April 22/97
Last weekend, a portable sawmill arrived at the farm. They, first, squared all the logs that had been cut and towed to the house site during the winter, and then made them into lumber. The operator knows how to cut the lumber so the strength of the grain is maintained. The cut wood was carried to the top floor of the barn, laid in a cross-hatch pattern to allow for air movement as it dries out for a couple of years.
Wed. April 23/97
Last year, 1996, the fridge at SAF quit at the beginning of May. We emptied the fridge into big plastic buckets and put the contents into the walk-in cooler in the barn where Ken keeps cheese and eggs that he acquires for his customers, and the asparagus he picks on the farm. Ken started up the refrigeration motor and we sorted the fridge contents onto the shelves.
Ken had built this cooler the year he and Joan bought the farm. There is a small shed with sloping roof attached to the barn. He used a third of this space for the cooler, lined it with 4" thick foam polystyrene, attached a heavy freezer door, inserted large fans in the room, installed a compressor in the barn, and put shelves on two of the walls.
Every time we prepared a meal, we trudged the 100 yards to the barn (rain or shine or black night), sorted through our choices, filled a plastic tub with supplies, and returned to the kitchen. After the meal, leftovers and basic supplies were returned to the cooler shelves.
Most times, that laborious exercise would be good motivation for quickly replacing the fridge. But this was spring planting time and all energies were directed towards planting seeds and transplanting seedlings in the greenhouse and preparing the gardens for seeds and transplants.
One day, annoyance overcame the press of planting and we drove into nearby towns to look at fridges. We asked questions about size, contents, freon, colour and cost, made notes and drove home. Meanwhile, in the City, Joan spent her lunch hours touring the major department stores. During evening phone calls, she consulted with Ken. By the time she arrived at the farm, she had a head and notebook full of information to compare with Kenneth's. The weekend after I left the farm, they went shopping together, found what they wanted and settled on a price. When the fridge was delivered, Ken had to remove the doorframe from the little house to get the fridge into the kitchen. (The men delivering the fridge wore open-toed sandals!)
The old fridge was 1960s olive, and huge. In the tiny kitchen, it dominated the room. The new fridge is white, and huge, but it doesn't have quite the same presence as the old olive monster. The next logical replacement should be the 1960s olive stove, but time will tell. It has far greater survival power because Ken has figured out how to repair it!
(This year, "we" plan for the new house on the separate lot.)
Prob. Feb. 10/98
Ken picked me up at the Toronto airport (YYZ) at noon yesterday and we drove west, stopping at several stores on our way to the farm. As we drove, Ken mentioned the Todds, environmentalists from New England. They visited Spring Arbour Farm last spring and have mentioned it since as an example of a farm that works with nature rather than against it.
Stepping out of the newly acquired delivery van at the back door felt like coming home. The time of year was different, but the land was the same, just resting.
I toured the farm on foot, analysing and assessing. This past winter, Ken built a deep cabinet for the farmhouse kitchen, to hold pots. He used some of the beautiful wood from the valleys of the farm in the construction, pale maple accented with dark red cherry. It is destined for the new house some day, but looks very comfortable in its present location, well settled in and FULL of pots and pans.
Using a special computer programme, he has drawn up the plans for the new house, has a carpenter friend available to help build it and a couple of farm apprentices lined up to help plant the gardens while he does the building. He expects to start building this spring.
Yesterday, we chatted in the back field with a neighbouring tobacco farmer who was riding a three-wheeled, fat-tired vehicle across the property. Roger helped Ken with everything he didn't know about farm machinery, and wells, and pumps when he first moved onto the farm. The farmer mentioned that tapping the maple trees for sugar could happen soon. Ken was surprised that he would be able to start so early. BUT as we had walked into the hardware store earlier in the day, we had spotted a display of used maple syrup buckets and had bought ten! [As he turned to leave, the neighbour said, "'Bye, Ken" to Ken and "'Bye, Shirley" to me. The mailbox out on the road says "Joan Shirlow and Ken McMullen". Joan and I must have some similarities-shape, maybe.]
This has been a mild winter at the farm. Very little snow remains and plants, uncovered by snow, might start growing and could be caught by cold in late February/early March.
We picked fresh parsley and oregano in the herb garden. Ken had Brussels sprouts, freshly picked, last week.
Feb. 10/98
On our tour of the farm, Ken pointed out three trees he wants to pull out of the valleys today and tomorrow. Two were leaning in the fall and fell over during the winter. He also found another fallen tree, a yellow birch, which will make good firewood. He says yellow birch is a good structural wood but white birch is too light. It would make fine white dollhouses because they don't require strong wood.
The Flower Gardens look like they were full last year. Lots of old stems remaining in the beds to catch the snow. An iris showed up in the Blue beds last year. In my first year in the garden, I think Ken and I transplanted some wild iris from a very damp place in the valley. We didn't see them in the garden after that. But last year, there was one, in a different place, I think.
Later in the day, I helped Ken pull the logs out of the valley. After cutting down some trees, he had topped them and taken off the limbs. With me in tow, he climbed down the hill, attached a long chain to a log, returned to the top of the hill, and attached the other end of the chain to the hitch on the back of the tractor. Then I climbed on the tractor and Ken stationed himself back at the top of the hill. From there, he could watch the log and tell whether it was coming smoothly up the hill. Every so often, I would stop the tractor and Ken would climb down the hill to remove the end of the log from an obstruction. Then he would return to the top of the hill where he could observe safely, and we would continue. We pulled three logs out that day, and laid them on the flat.
/02 fir /01
The specs for building the new house have changed. Joan convinced Ken to contract out the digging of the basement, the pouring of the concrete, the framing of the house, the wrapping in Typar, the hanging of the doors, the setting of the windows, and the laying of the roof base. They left to drive Dad south to Florida at the end of January; digging would begin when they returned.
Mon. May 8/01 - 3:30 p.m.
Day 1
Yellow Beds - One 6' bed dug and grass removed. With a spade, this task takes a long time. The grass roots are so thick it is difficult to get the spade into the ground. Then, if all the roots aren't removed, the task is pointless because regrowth is very quick.
- outlined one other bed
Blue Beds - uprooted several Sumac stems at West end
Red Beds - took down old hollyhock stems from an eastern bed
-pulled grass away from a poppy beside roadway
Herb Beds - Chives - removed grass from 1 square foot of bed - around the chives
* * * *
The new house has been raised! The roof is on, the framing done, the porches in place, the windows and doors in place, and the Typar wrapped around the whole place. What a magnificent structure! It feels welcome inside, too!
* * * * *
Leaving the pouring rain, I enter the new house and walk through the second floor to the small east porch. It is roofed and, hence, rain free. A lawn chair there provides a comfortable viewing seat. The valley trees half a city block away are higher than this two-storey house sitting on top of the slope.
The valley trees are at the Seurat stage, millions of dots in multiple shades of green and yellow. Individual tree shapes are quite distinct. The oak leaves are tiny pinpricks of green. Three crows fly above the trees from a mile or two away and then glide past the house. As the rain lessens, the bird activity increases.
Through the undergrowth below me fly catbirds-slate grey shapes, always secretive. Through the green treetops, two startling red cardinals stand out: one whistles its continuous up-sliding note. I make notes on a bird for future reference to a bird book:
1 faint wing bar, pale front, looks like a bandit in the striping.
At the edge of the barn to our left, a swallow slides under the old eaves. K - k - k - k - chew - chew - chew - chew sounds through the trees.
In the bushes far below, tiny shapes hop from branch to branch.
All-right, all-right, all-right, all-right -Oh. An oriole.
Through an opening in the trees to the east, mist covers the dips in the distant tree cover (for a mile or two).
Looking down to my left, I see a TINY bunny hopping cautiously across the yard behind the barn. A robin calls from the house lawn.
Jan. /02
A panorama photograph, taken from the second floor balcony of the new house, shows the barn to the right, with its back lawn beginning to slope down towards the river to the east. Directly north of the house is the van. Beside the van are the two fruit trees from which I had removed a nest of silk caterpillars in the spring. On the far side of the van is a five-acre field of asparagus that wraps itself around the north and west sides of the little house that Ken and Joan have used for the past eleven years.
Just to the left/west of the balcony, between the new house and the little house, is the old tobacco greenhouse and attached/adjoining shed. Plastic sheeting covers the portion Ken has used to germinate flower and vegetable seeds each spring.
And in the middle of the panorama is a roadway. The right arm of this upside down "T" takes the tractor down to a parking space under the northern end of the barn. The left arm of the "T" takes vehicles to the "U"-shaped gravel roadway around the little house and along to the Concession road that fronts the property. The leg of the "T" is the road which edges the asparagus fields, with sumac separating the roadway from the hardwood trees rising from the long slopes into the riverbed fifty feet or so below the asparagus fields.
As an exercise, I walked along the roadway, stopping at every curve in the road to photograph the next section. In retrospect, it couldn't be done in such a way that it could make sense to a subsequent viewer of the photographs. In each photograph, the distant roadway narrows in perspective, so the succeeding photograph cannot be joined to it at its wide, close-up end.
As I walked along, I also took photos of sights viewed from the roadway. Green Lane, leading eastward to a dark pine stand, looks like a secret cave entrance in the distance, giving no indication that this path is many yards longer than the camera eye can see; and no sign of a long steep pathway to the left of the path leading down step by slippery step through damp ground under tall hardwood trees to continuously moist skunk-cabbage beds with their huge leaves; and no sign of the dry sandy pathway leading to the right through the evergreens plantation above the eastern valley.
The camera lens also does not show that the roadway continuously slopes downward for the first third of its distance. Only a drive or walk along it shows that. The road first slopes just past the barn where an open flat area holds several birdhouses. These seem to rise on their flat land as the walker descends with the roadway
.
May 4/02
Day 1 at SAF for 2002. It was a day to tour the land, see what changes had occurred since my last visit, discover where Spring was at in the gardens, and reconnect with the farm and its people.
First step was a tour of the new house to see what progress had been made. The east wall had a full covering of beige vinyl siding, as had the tall part of the north wall. Where a long balcony split two-thirds of the north wall into two levels, the bottom half was completely covered while the top half had most of its insulation on.
On the south side, above the Concession road, a new porch roof ran half the length of the house. Beneath it and extending out the same distance again, a plastic-covered greenhouse was filled with seedlings. As well, the yard beyond the greenhouse was covered with flats of seedlings being hardened off for transplanting. The greenhouse was a master work of construction, built mainly from the wood of the original greenhouse, just west of the house. And inside was a huge cistern fed from the eaves troughs above. The trays for the seedling flats were designed to be self-watering from the overflow from the cistern. A small pump, connected to the well water for the house, assisted when water from the roof was slow in coming.
In the main room at the east end of the house is a beautiful dark-green enamel stove from Waterford, Ireland. What a striking centrepiece. Ken and Joan were so impressed with it that they bought a new set of andirons to stand proudly beside it. The chimney has been installed and is in working order, well tested from the day of purchase.
In the north yard is the new well with a Peace rose planted in front.
When Ken picked me up, his van carried two huge hot water heaters. In the kitchen, already, were the components for the commercial sink. And on other trips came toilets, sinks, showers and tub.
Outside, I passed the familiar old barn with its lean-to containing the large walk-in cooler that Ken built years ago to hold asparagus on its way to market, or onion bulbs or potatoes prior to seeding, or eggs and cheese acquired locally and held until delivery day. A portion of the shed also holds drying racks for drying herbs or making fruit leather. The remainder is for minor tool storage, and basket and box storage.
I followed the curving roadway above the valleys. To my left were always the asparagus fields, disced in preparation for spring growth. Nothing showed above the soil yet, but I could sense the energy just below the surface, awaiting those few warm days to spring up.
When I reached the open "plaza" at the north end of the eastern asparagus fields and opposite the distant little house, I walked up a minor slope that runs around an old sand borrow pit. Searching the ground, I looked for morels. Not yet.
I continued my walk westward, with the asparagus fields on my left. No leaves had ventured out on the staghorn sumac to the right of the road or the huge old deciduous trees reaching up from the valleys. Spring seemed some days' distance away yet.
As I walked, I noticed large entanglements of torn and cut branches that used to be overhanging trees at the top of the valley. The south-facing trees and shrubs had suffered greatly from an early spring ice storm. Following the storm, which sheathed the trees in ice, there was a brief thaw. Next came winds of up to 10 km. per hour from the northwest. Any trees without support on the south-eastern sides were toppled. Most forest trees didn't suffer because they were surrounded by other trees. But the tall poplars near the original compost heaps beside the open "plaza" were on the south-east side of the forest, and thus unprotected. They bent over in tall arches, unbroken but unable to straighten.
At the far west end of the asparagus road, I walked south across the Narrows and turned right, along the roadway past the vegetable gardens. At the mid-point, I turned away from the valley-top road and walked along the central roadway of the Flower Garden, running between the Red beds on the east and the Blue beds, herb beds and Yellow beds on the west. This was my stomping ground. What I did in this area was what got done. My brother would add seedlings from the greenhouse to some of the beds, but the rest was up to me.
The Red beds on the east side of the roadway were a sight to see! Last fall, I had cleaned grass out of half the beds. That open area was FULL of tiny purple and yellow viola-a beautiful carpet flowing across the curvature of the beds.
The Blue beds still had their winter stems of Echinacea and hollyhock plants, and goldenrod was creeping in from the tree nursery on the west. In the Yellow beds, the sumac was pointing skyward between the old mullein spikes, and goldenrod plants were growing in from the old tree nursery at the northern end.
As I walked past, the Oriental poppy plants in the Orange-Red beds looked very fresh and healthy. Some grass had been cleared last fall so I looked forward to continuing I always feel like a sculptor, removing the surrounding "stuff" to expose the shape inside.
Past the Flower Garden, the roadway curves east. I wandered down Painter Lane to look
at the swollen Venison Creek. There were only a few yellow Coltsfoot still blooming, looking
suspiciously like Dandelions. Only the leaves tell a different story.
Back at the top of Painter Lane, I turned north to inspect the new "forest" planted by the local Conservation enthusiasts early last (?)[2 years ago?] year. The young trunks are having a tough time reaching the tops of the grasses.
Reaching the roadway that passed the compost heaps steaming away, I followed it past the "Grand Allée" of trees Joan and Ken had planted in a North-South line from this orchard roadway to the northern property-line roadway above the Venison Creek valley. On its east side is another newly planted "forest". These trees seem to be pushing ahead faster. More of the trunks can be seen above the prairie grasses.
The orchard was blooming: Cherry trees, pear trees and nut trees. White and pink blossoms greeted me. Last year I had removed several silkworm nests, so I inspected rather carefully. No nests this year! Hooray! If they were in the valley trees, that didn't matter to me: the caterpillars were too far away to reach the fruit trees.
The orchard is the farthest land along the top of the valleys, so I walked through the trees to the roadway running along the northern boundary of the farm, still above valleys. Travelling west, I passed the spot where Ken and I had pulled trees out of the valley to provide lumber for the new house. Beyond, to the south of the roadway, are huge raspberry patches to provide fresh fruit for sale, as well as jams and jellies.
Rounding the northwest corner of the farm, I followed the roadway as it bent inward as it moved away from the western boundary of the property. Large open fields sloped eastward towards the tops of the valleys, long vistas of grasslands. Past the long, mixed compost heaps I walked, and crossed over the Narrows to the asparagus fields. This time, I followed the western roadway the full length of the asparagus field, with the hedgerow of trees and bushes between me and the neighbouring tobacco farm. No asparagus in sight, no leaves on the trees.
At the end of the roadway, I reached the Concession road, turned east and walked back to the farmhouse. I had done a complete circuit of the farm, and said "Hello".
Thurs. July 4/02 [Wed. July 3/02]
Travelled yesterday to Hamilton with Ray and then to Spring Arbour Farm with Ken while Ray drove off to stay with Dad. On our way to the farm, we stopped at Home Depot and bought enough fencing to edge the second balcony of the new house. The temperatures were about 30 degrees C. and the road surface of the parking lot felt like it was melting under our feet as we loaded the heavy boxes into the van.
In the evening, I toured the farm-AFTER we woke up from naps. We had stopped at KFC for a heavy lunch, which put me to sleep on the road home, and almost put Ken to sleep at the wheel.
While I was touring the farm, Ken spent the evening figuring out how to put up the white fencing around the two sides of the second balcony. Its presence added a satisfactory dimension to the upper deck. Completion only awaits a couple more pieces that were not available when Ken made his purchases.
Later, while I read, Ken made strawberry and lavender jam. After he had cut the lavender, he brought the bowlful in for me to smell. It not only smelled beautiful; the long grey stems and purple flowers looked lovely, too.
Tuesday, July 9/02 [Sun. July 7/02] 10 a.m.
Spring Arbour Day happens each year on the Sunday following July 6, the day and month
on which Joan and Ken took possession of the
farm twelve years ago. This day proved sunny and
hot, this year, allowing events to take place
outside.
Lounge chairs were set out in welcoming colour patterns along the north porch.
Guests were invited to come between 12 noon and 6 p.m.
When the early guests arrived, they were offered cool drinks-watermelon, peach, pink lemonade.
About 1:30 p.m., Ken took the guests on a tour of the farm. They walked around the asparagus field to the vegetable gardens, the flower gardens and the compost piles. From there, they went down Painter Lane to Venison Creek and then back up and along the road past the New Forest on the north and the currant bushes on the south to the orchard.
As each new set of guests arrived, we sent them after the others. By the time they returned, they were ready for cold drinks and watermelon slices. In the house, Ken took everyone around in twos and threes and explained the layout and proposed progress of the building process. I overheard the talk about the "living wall" with water flowing and a huge fish tank. The plastic roof and upper walls of the greenhouse had been removed a day or two earlier so what the guests saw was the lower wall supports and the flats containing the last of the transplants, as well as the cistern and its downspout from the eaves trough, and the small pump to add extra water from the well when the overhead source dried up, and also the permanent porch under its roof.
Out on the back porch, we sat and chatted for a while, looking out over the asparagus fields edged by the tall valley trees; and then Joan barbecued hamburgers, sausages, yellow peppers and mushrooms. Inside the house, behind the screen doors, stood the serving table. There were hot beans for the vegetarians, as well as couscous, raw carrots, macaroni salad and green salad. As well, there was a continuous flow of cold drinks.
After sitting on the back porch and chatting for a while, the guests left. Ray and Dad stayed around until about 6 p.m. At one point, Ray and I drove out to the vegetable gardens to check on the New Brunswick beans he had planted on our last trip. We weeded, and entwined the growing tips onto the chicken wire. There was No germination of the Sweet Peas I had planted on the other side of the chicken wire. Those seeds were old, and obviously didn't like waiting several years before being planted.
After Ray and Dad left, the three of us packed up everything and cleaned up. As we had been washing dishes and glasses all day, the clean-up progressed rapidly, and we were finished in good time to have a salad supper and send Joan off to the City about 8 p.m. to prepare for her Monday job.
Ken and I promptly collapsed, both heading off to separate houses and books, solitude and sleep.
Monday, Sept. /02
Ken finished mounting the vinyl siding on the top of the north side of the big house yesterday, above the porch. It looks wonderful! It was fun to see the spaces in the blue foam insulation covered, and then the west-facing wall covered with siding on Friday.
Ken and Joan have chosen the siding for the other two sides, a "Cultured Stone" veneer by Owens Corning, called "Mojave Pro-fit Ledgestone". It comes in modular components 4" high and 6" or 8" long. Now Ken will lathe the two sides of the house, and then glue the siding pieces into place.
* * * * *
At the farm, Ken took me on my usual guided tour of the changes since my last visit. During the winter, a work crew installed two furnaces and all the accompanying ductwork in the new house. While they worked, Ken installed big pink bats of insulation in all the exterior walls, and two layers on the second floor ceilings above the vapour barrier. The house is now doubly insulated: blue foam polystyrene on the outside and fibreglass on the inside.
Having finished a section of the installation task, the workmen would leave. When they failed to show up after some days, Ken would phone to ask when they would return. "Oh, have you completed the next task?" would be the response.
"What was that?" he would ask. They would tell him what he was expected to do; he would do it; he would phone them; and they would return for the next installation. And so it went all winter. Because of the installation, Ken framed in one room on the 2nd floor. Of course, the ductwork installation still isn't complete, but the furnaces work. It was cool enough the first two days of my visit for him to have a furnace on.
For Christmas, Ken built a high bed for the waterbed using magnificent spalted maple wood. The wood had just begun to rot when it was cut, leaving a dark line in the grain of the wood. On the finished product, the grain is emphasized, showing a pattern unique to this bed. Lying down in this high bed, they see clouds and light through the windows around the room. Sitting up against the backrest, they can watch the avian activity at tree and barn roof height.
In the bathroom, the fixtures have been hooked up: large, triangular bath tub (complete with water jets), sink, toilet, clothes washer, and clothes dryer. At soon as Ken finished the connections, Ken and Joan each took a turn at the bathtub, and washed all their clothes in the washing machine at the same time-until the well ran dry! Now they're a little less free with their use of water, but, oh, it was fun while it lasted!
This is a milestone year, though. With the clothes washer and dryer hooked up, we can wash our clothes any time we want. Joan doesn't have to cart a couple of baskets of laundry into the house in the City at the end of every weekend and then be at home enough hours to manage load transfers, and clothes folding to avoid wrinkles. And I don't need two suitcases to carry all the changes of clothing needed for my whole stay. (I certainly didn't have the time or energy in past years to do any hand washing and, knowing the weather, I'd need to dry clothes when it was raining outside.) This year my small suitcase only had to hold the variety of clothes required to accommodate the vicissitudes of the changing weather patterns of spring: freezing temperatures or 30° C, rain, hot sun, winds. After years of over-packing, this seemed easy.
Ken has now taken on the task of washing clothes when he is alone on the farm. But first, he followed his usual practise when confronting the unknown. He looked for instructions on the Internet! Then he went to the store and bought washing compound. And for the next two weeks he varied the quantities of materials he shoved into the machines, and watched clothes wash, through the window at the front of the machine!
In the greenhouse along the south wall, he constructed a new system for the plastic roof. The sloping roof, which joins the permanent porch roof, is now several separate eight-foot panels with inside framing to which is stapled the plastic sheeting. Each panel is set in place and can be removed as a unit for storage at the end of the seedling season. As the plastic will only be exposed to the elements for 4 or 5 months of the year instead of 12 months, it might last a year or two longer than it did on the former greenhouse. The plastic certainly won't split in a wind this year, anyway! The whole greenhouse is now sectional.
This year, Ken started his seedlings by scattering many seeds over 4" pots. The seedlings are now growing in large quantities in each 4" square pot. When he transplants single seedlings into 4" pots, he can find as many as 36 plants in a single pot. This way, there is not much room for weeds. This is a new approach for him and seems to be working.
A sturdy new chestnut hat stand graces the back entrance to the big house. It was acquired at a silent auction during the winter.
The beautiful large table made of woods from the valley has been moved to a central location in front of the fireplace in the new house. And the resultant free space in the little house is filled with a large puzzle in progress, laid out on a sheet of blue foam insulation. As Ken and Joan sleep in the new house, I now sleep in their old bed upstairs in the little house-Heaven! My "stuff" can now fill the upstairs, without intruding on the main floor (too much).
Chapter 9 MEMORIES OF SPRING AT SPRING ARBOUR FARM - May, 2000
1. Fresh flowers in EVERY room. Replaced as soon as Joan arrives for the weekend.
2. Amazing tulips in the front, side and back gardens.
My "Mother's Day" fringed red tulips on the kitchen table.
The white tulip in the bathroom, so full of petals that it looked like a peony.
3. The "live mouse" trap set on the "runway" beside the stove to intercept the new arrival via the electrical wire railway.
Meeting one of the evictees on the farm road as he journeyed back to the house. I'm sure he carried a pack on his back! He stopped when he spotted me, thought quickly and jumped off the trail and into the tall grass. His eyes were so big in his little face.
Kenneth's stunned look of horror when I told the story. His worst fears were being confirmed! He was just catching and releasing the same mice!
4. A test batch of asparagus soup that a gourmet chef might prepare.
5. A walk in Selkirk Park with Joan, guided by John Miles. The man's knowledge of plants is encyclopaedic.
Copying Joan's list into my notebook and being again overwhelmed by both the knowledge shared with us and Joan's practicality in producing such a list for later referral.
Shagbark hickories HUGE climbing poison ivy
Rare American Columbo with its big tender leaves
Herb Robert "Sedges Have Edges"!
Solomon Seal & False Solomon Seal
Arrowwood Viburnum growing as thick as bamboo
Red bellied woodpecker
6. Visiting McSmith's Organic farm on a rainy, unplantable day. Observing the huge variety of activities required to earn a family living from a mixed-farming operation. (80 regular customers)
7. Cutting asparagus. The satisfaction of clearing a small area of a field.
"Far From the Madding Crowd"
Gabriel Oak first met Bathsheba about 8 p.m. on the rise at the middle of the western asparagus patch near the roadway. She will always be a sprightly young girl cavorting on a horse and losing her hat in that part of the field.
8. Listening to "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer as I removed dandelions in the Blue Beds in the back fields. The straight east-west gardens between the flax beds hold the death of the Japanese lady climber and the interview with her husband. The clover in this bed was thick and difficult to remove. I mourned the death of this lady each time I stepped into the area, as the tape replayed itself in my head.
9. Guy Vanderhaeghe's "The Englishman's Boy" lives in the mid-northern rows of the asparagus field. He lost his buffalo-hunting partner and battled the Indians in that field. He lost his wife and found help for his child in mid-field. There were many Kleenex pauses as he lived his life and I cut asparagus.
10. Listening to Thomas Hardy's "The Return of the Native" playing out its sad tale as I cleaned out and planted the Red beds. This was a Thomas Hardy year. Long tales require l-o-n-g jobs! The Redman did win his lady love in the end. Every so often I would be interrupted by Sue Grafton reminding me of a former lettered mystery as I wandered the Red beds.
11. Walking towards the cliff top for a washroom break and being side-tracked into weeding the lime-green/rusty-maroon colour mix in the lettuce beds. Standing to admire the curved, triangular pattern of lettuce rows edging the flower gardens.
12. The feeling of satisfaction that came over me the night I realized I no longer absolutely had to lie in a hot tub for an hour at the end of the day. It only took about a week and a half.
13. Enjoying another Mother's Day dinner with Joan and Ken and the Potters, especially the upside-down fresh berry cake.
14. Recovering full use of my right arm and hand TWO WEEKS after returning home. No longer having to eat with my left hand because the muscles in my right fingers wouldn't work.
15. The frustration of thinking I MIGHT be able to plant the Yellow beds and never quite getting to them.
16. The satisfaction of FINISHING removing ALL the larger dandelions from the Blue beds, a task that took two years to complete.
17. The satisfaction of completing the pattern of the Blue beds: cleaning all pathways before depositing the cleanings from the beds, forming and clearing all beds destined for seedling plantings from the greenhouse, removing almost all the weeds from every bed, planting annual seeds in all available beds, planting new (albeit pink instead of black or purple!) hollyhock seeds in the old border beds.
18. The satisfaction of covering EVERY old and seed-planted bed with a compost of turkey manure plus
sawdust.
19. Being chagrined that "The Englishman's Boy" and "Bruges" have become one story in my memory. Stacey Keeche's voice is marvellous, but it still didn't help me remember the plot of "Bruges".
