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 ¾" 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.