Planting/Planting/Planting

I have moved lots of soil in the last few weeks to prepare for this year's planting rituals. My wife finished off a majority of her planting last night and as I wander through the garden I am impressed with all the work that has been done and the degree of order I witness in the garden. There are still some areas of uncontrolled wildness to address but overall it looks good. The next big challenge is going to be to stay focused and keep the garden "tended" for the season. Fortunately we plan to be around home for most of the summer so the hours will be available to us for "tending"....

The Pots..The Pots...The Pots

I have been "managing" compost for the last week or so in order to create potting soil for the myriad of pots that became available to us last year. Satisfying work for sure...

Little by little the 2011 garden is coming together...

Prepping the Pots

Last evening I spent a couple of hours filling our patio pots with soil. My wife is back in town and she is going to make her annual pilgrimage to the nursery (or nurseries) to get what she needs to make the pots colorful and vibrant... . It was satisfying to get the task finished...

The Rain Stops=Hands on Garden Time...

After 5 days the rain has finally stopped. I felt inspired and motivated to get back outside and into the garden so out I went. It was a good productive day working the soil and sprucing things up.

First of all I tackled the large flower bed under the Mountain Ash tree yesterday. The bed had fallen into a neglected state and needed some TLC so I got down on my hands and knees and worked the soil for a couple of hours. I cleaned out lots of crab grass and dead foliage and trimmed around the edge taking the discarded grass and placing into my compost heap in the back driveway. It looks much better now but still needs work. My wife will be arriving home Monday night and I am sure she will turn her focus to further refinement of the space.

We have 3 large cedar bushes at the front of our home. One feature is birds use the branches as places to hide and keep warm in the winter so we have a continuous bird show going on outside our living room window which my wife and I enjoy witnessing throughout the season. Unfortunately the inclement weather over the last few winters has not been gentle on the cedars with a couple of them having dead branches about the third of the way up their trunks. I had been toiling with the idea of having the bushes taken out but I kept thinking about my feathered friends and their winter hideaway so I had taken no action. Yesterday I realized taking "no action" was not an option because the bushes were looking very ratty and neglected. I stood in front of the center Cedar and contemplated my next step getting a feeling for how the tree looked and what it was telling me to do. (from an intuitive point of view). Suddenly it came to me that perhaps I could trim all the branches off the bottom half of the bush (some of which were not dead) which would result in more of the look of a Cedar tree and allowing me to retain the greenery for at least one more winter. With nothing left to loose I got out my trimming tools and went to work. The result is a lot cleaner looking tree with the added bonus of the brick facing of our house being showcased in a more appealing manner. Win/Win for sure..Now 2 of the 3 cedars are cleaned up resulting in a truck full of discarded branches and foliage ending up being recycled into compost at our waste handling facility. The whole process felt good and I felt energized by the results..

Next I tackled lawn maintenance.Like other areas of our yard the lawn has seen better days-my wife and I do not like applying chemicals and lots of water to the grass areas (during the summer) and because of our "values" these areas the lawn has returned to a more natural state which includes a infusion of Sweet William ground cover with a dusting of daisies and other assorted "foreign" growth. By our neglect we are allowing the areas to return to a more "natural" state-one that does not actually meet the socially excepted criteria for a well manicured lawn. I am sure our neighbors have noticed our neglect but are too polite to comment (to our faces anyway). Natural state or not, lawn mowing is still required!!!

In order to mow one needs a tool to undertake the task-so out comes my lawnmower-gas powered and often very difficult to start up. Two trips to the repair shop last year did not resolve the starting problem which required me to inject the carb with starting fluid (ether) at every pull of the cord. I had actually contemplated returning to a push mower last season but hadn't got around to making the purchase. So for now being "gas powered" is my only option. So I took the mower out of the shed, primed it and pulled the lever (dead man throttle) resulting in the cable snapping. I jury rigged a solution to the problem by wiring up the lever the cable attaches to. The mower would not start. After numerous pulls of the cord (and injections of starting fluid) I gave up in frustration. I knew in my heart and my head my relationship with this mower was over. I contemplated my options which included the purchase of a new lawn mower ( I was not too enthusiastic about spending the money or dealing with the packaging/assembly that would be required) and decided in my wisdom to return to the repair shop and see if they had any used lawn mowers for sale this season. They did and I purchased the same make and model (only newer) for $100 plus GST. I made sure the mower started then negotiated $25 off the $125 asking price to offset my service expenditures of last season. The new (used) mower worked great and I got the lawn mowed...

All in all a good day in the garden.....

Trees. Trees. Everwhere

I spent some time yesterday looking at all the trees in our yard. I really can't identify some of them. I would like to learn their names and origins. Perhaps I should be spending less time on the Internet looking at classic trucks and more searching out the names of trees that call my yard home....!!!

Lots of Rain/Hugging my Fir Tree

My gardening activities have ground to a halt due to large volumes of rain over the past few days. The weather has become much cooler with heavy cloud cover and intermittent rain showers which is dampening (no pun intended) my enthusiasm for being outdoors. I am eager to get back to working the soil but I think it is going to take a couple of days of drying out before I can do so.

Over the past few years I have read a number of passages around the life of trees and the importance of recognizing the individual nature of each tree and being grateful for it's presence. A few nights ago I was out having a hot tub late in the evening and I decided to hug our large Fir tree that acts as a sentinel for our yard. I placed my heart against it's bark and interestingly I received a sense the tree was not well...I readjusted my position and continued to sense the same feelings...I stood back and contemplated my relationship to the tree and realized that I have been concerned about the interference of it's branches with my roof line and the continued shedding of needles and perhaps I was superimposing my "justification" for a potential pruning or removal. I will try to reconnect later

Ancestors , Rain and Chives

Last evening I phoned my parents to catch up and talked to my dad about his father's passion for gardening. He had 3 allotments and a backyard flower garden so he kept very busy tending his plants. Dad said he had a passion for gardening but it was also driven out of necessity to provide food for his family.(particularly during the Second World War when people were encouraged to grow their own crops to assist with food distribution). I asked dad if he helped out in the garden and he said other than as a young boy "no".

It was raining steadily yesterday which is great for the garden and the trees but unfortunately the change of weather through off my "garden time". I attempted to weed in the rain and did so for about 20 minutes but got distracted when I noticed the gutter downspout was blocked and rain was pouring over the side of the evestrough-so a change of direction was dictated by necessity.

This morning I harvested a handful of chives and put them into my egg salad English muffin. Excellent taste....

The Space and the Time

My wife and I always start out our gardening season with real enthusiasm and focus and as the season progresses we start to disconnect from the space spending less time "tending" to the needs of the garden. This pattern has repeated itself to varying degrees year after year. Until this spring I hadn't really thought about the pattern and what it means in the bigger scheme of things?

Our relationship to our garden "might" represent our relationships to other undertakings in our lives. As I write this passage I realize I have to change the "we" to "I" for I can not speak authentically to the collective "we"....

"I" am the soil mover. compost guy, raised bed maker and flower bed creator to name just a few of my many tasks. I do a lot of the "grunt work" in the garden which I actually enjoy. Soil making and giving back to mother earth is something I value highly and I spend time tending to my compost piles throughout the season. I smile as I sift out the finished product and see how the following year's crops value from the rich composted soil.

Both my grandfather's were avid passionate gardeners. I was thinking about one of my grandfathers yesterday as I worked in the garden removing weeds and dead raspberry canes. I moved away from where he lived (England) when I was 6 years old and he died a few years later so I don't really recall my times with him. I focused on my task and marveled that the memory of him would come to visit me in the garden. The wisdom of the ancestors flowing up from the earth and giving me a sense of connection. My father doesn't seem to be that interested in gardening although I know he has helped around the garden for most of his married life. My mother is the enthusiastic one and she "tends" to the spirit of the garden in my parent's world.

I have been watching the series " Recreating Eden" which I have found remarkably motivating from the aspect of looking at gardening in a much broader sense with respect to how the act of gardening can define my life. This is the focus of my BLOG.