Bente is back. She's been gone for a month, in Denmark, attending her oldest brother's 50th wedding anniversary, which was celebrated in a castle. If she'll let me, I'll put up a few photo's and a description of the castle and grounds in another blog post. It has been very quiet without her here.
She came for a visit yesterday afternoon, having only arrived home the night before from Seattle, where her plane landed. We caught up on the last month, then went out to check my garden. I picked her some Tumbling Tom's, a few Brown Berries and on small Yellow Mortgage Lifter tomato for her dinner. I had been saving them for her to come home to. It's great to have her home.
Today is also grocery shopping day and I had a lot of ground to cover. As usual, I started with the Dollar Giant to get my "cheep goods" - large plastic containers for cereal etc; disposable plastic gloves for mixing up dog food; dark colored hand towels, because the white ones I was foolish enough to buy before turned gray and stained really fast from Richard using them to wipe greasy hands on; boxes of freezer bags; you get the idea. Then off to Walmart where I found...
...bargains! They are clearing out rectangular plastic plant pots for $1.00 each, the ones you can hang on your balcony or affix under the window, the ones I have outside the patio door on the ground for the deer to feed off the pansies, marigolds and geraniums...yeah, those ones. Of course I bought 10 of them, and had to restrain myself to that. I REALLY wanted to buy them all, for a $1.00 each, but didn't. Then walking back up the aisle, I found hummingbird feeders on clearance for $2.00 each so bought two of them. I enjoy feeding the little darlings in the summer.
Oh and there, in the cheese cooler, look at that...Armstrong cheese is on for a GREAT price, $3.98 each for 600gm block, regular $7.98. WOW! I grab 4 of them, walk away and then realize I really don't need that much cheese so put 2 of them back. Sigh, but it wasn't easy putting two of them back, I mean, well, gee, it IS a bargain, and you know I LOVE a bargain. Off to Extra Foods next to pick up the few things I will need there today. Then home to haul it all in and put it all away.
Tomorrow I will be going to Alberni Health Market, another of my favorite stores. Yesterday my friend Vicki, she of the ailing laptop that I finally got fixed for her, brought me her Kitchenaid Grain Mill attachment for my Kitchenaid Stand Mixer. She got it from friends in Seattle and has used it herself. I cannot wait to try it and grind my own grain for flour. Alberni Health Market carries Wheat, Barley, Rye, Spelt in bulk bins, so I will get a bit of each, grind it and then make some bread from it. There are several adjustments you can make on it to get a coarser or finer grind.
Kelly suggested going to a local bakery and asking them if they use fresh yeast. He says if I once try it, I will have a hard time going back to dry yeast in my bread. Kelly is a baker at Sobey's in Leduc, and they have people come in and buy it from them all the time. Tomorrow, on my way to the Health Market, I am going to stop at a couple of bakeries nearby to see if they use it and if they will sell me some. Just think, fresh ground flour, baked up into bread, using fresh yeast. What more can I ask for?
While showing Bente the garden yesterday, I noticed that two of my Bull's Heart tomatoes, as well as one large Black Prince, were nearly ripe, but decided to leave them another day to see how much more they could ripen on the vine. Today I decided to pick them and let them finish ripening indoors. Tomatoes need heat to ripen, and ours has vanished all of a sudden. Our temperatures have gone down to the high teens during the day...I find it chilly, even though I know it isn't.
The Bull's Heart tomatoes, you will see in the photo, are what is called a pink tomato, and they are heart shaped. This tomatoes, under optimum conditions, can weigh as much as 3 pounds! Mine weighed in at 5.4 ounces and 8 ounces respectively and the Black Prince is 8 ounces. Not bad for growing in a boat.
I have to tell you, once you try these tomatoes - these HERITAGE tomatoes - you will be hard pressed to go back to eating store bought ones. The flavor is incredible. I find myself having a salad every night for dinner with either Black Prince or Yellow Mortgage Lifter tomates in it. Damn, they are good!
I am still considering taking cuttings from these plants and keeping them over winter in the house. Richard just rolls his eyes and shakes his head and asks where I think I am going to keep all these plants. Well, there's the dogs room in the back, and I suppose my bathroom/laundry room could hold a couple and then there is the livingroom, I can put some in there, oh and the deck, I'll over winter some there, like I did last year. And the back porch, kept quite a few there, um, hmmmmm...
It's 9am and I am outside already rolling up the beach mats and the shower curtain on the garden boat. Going to be a hot one today, and don't want to burn things. Things look good, although I make a note to water later, after the boat is in shade. With the warm sun these last days, the rain of a couple of weeks ago has evaporated. I lose myself again in the beauty of the view for a while. Then become aware of a faint tap-tapping above me. I look up to see a pair of tiny Downy Woodpeckers busily hunting for bugs in the King apple tree. We wander about checking this geranium, that fuchsia, those marigolds, noting that most of the pots need watering as well.
I hear a starling, or starlings maybe, in the holly bushes making coaxing noises and of course, my Muttering Murder of Crows in the Cherry trees. They mutter to one another, either critiquing my apparel - pajamas - or checking out the tomatoes and peas. Yes, I AM paranoid about my tomatoes and peas, what of it!?
Definitely time for cappuccino.
Now I am dressed in my usual jeans and t-shirt and starting my day. Of course, Richard has been up and active since dawn cracked, but as I mentioned before, I am a very slow starter in the morning. I take notice of that summer annoyance - fruit flies - flitting around hanging basket of apples and make a scrunchy face. Richard comments on them and suggests I make my homemade fruit fly trap: a cone of paper suspended in a jar with a 1/2 inch of apple cider vinegar in the bottom; works every time...
...but not this time. Hmmmmm, curious. Two hours later and there is still a cloud of the foul creatures flitting about. I add white wine vinegar to the cider vinegar in the jar, then stand back and watch. They pay it no mind at all, instead start flitting around my face. I scrunch my eyes and imagine I can hear them snickering at me, chattering to one another with their tiny, high-pitched voices about the stoopid human as they get in my nose and eyes. Double scrunchy face.
Giving a shrug I go on with what I am doing; all the while my mind is working on the fruit fly problem. I look up again at my hanging fruit & vegetable basket and it strikes me - gee, maybe there is SOMETHING IN AMONGST THE APPLES THAT IS ATTRACTING THEM, DOPEY! So I start to remove the apples one by one by one by...eeeew GAK! There, right smack in the middle of the pile, is an extremely rotten apple, with dozens of tiny fruit flies practicing their dives: forward dive pike from a standing start, back dive in the tuck and, my personal favorite, the free position. Big Scrunchy Face here!
Richard dispatches the foul apple to the garbage and the little fruit flies soon disappear. I keep one eye watching the fruit fly trap, but see nothing. Still, I leave it there; it is after all summer and you can count on them being back, with their dirty little feet walking alllll over the nice fresh fruit and veggies and doing their level best to spoil whatever they touch...maybe its time for another cappuccino, I'm getting a tad bit testy.
We wander back out to the yard. Richard has gone to work - 12 till 8 today - but managed to mow the garden yard for me before he left. I notice that in the tiny pea patch - that has only two very sad looking pea plants, some Scarlet Runner beans, sage, thyme and tomato plants - there are some tomatoes slowly ripening. Maybe there will be some ready for Rylan to pick when she is here on the 23rd. Over at the garden boat, I see one tiny red Tumbling Tom tomato starting to ripen. Will save that for Rylan too. The peas are setting more and more pods everyday. There won't be gallons of them, but maybe we will get a small feed with dinner one night.
Back inside, I check the fruit fly trap. Ah Hah! Suckers! There are 3 fruit flies inside. Will leave it to attract more. Time to vacuum and tidy the kitchen, get dinner plans on go. Periodically I smugly check my trap. At the 4pm trap check, I don't see any fruit flies...I mean NO FRUIT FLIES! My eyes go slitty and search from side to side. How can that be? The little beggars have made a daring escape, and are even now laughing at me from behind their tiny wings. This trap is supposed to be inescapable! Does this mean that, as I have used this trap over the last few years on succeeding generations of fruit flies, the fruit flies have become smarter? have figured out ways to escape the trap and it's been hard-wired into their tiny fruit fly DNA? that I have to devise a different trap?
Naw, it just means I was careless when I made the darned trap and leaving a gap between the top of the jar and the paper cone, and they were able to push through. Phew, for a minute there I was worried about evolving intelligence in fruit flies. Not that there is much concern there. I mean, fruit fly intelligence, that's just laughable...
...still, I DID see a few fruit flies buzzing around my computer monitor the other day. And I DID see one sitting on my keyboard, moving from key to key until I chased it away.
Hmmmmmm.
First thing every morning I walk out into the garden yard to roll up the beach mats on the garden boat. The sun is shining beautiful and bright; the sky is that blue only an Island sky can be; there is a soft breeze kissing my cheek. I am entranced with the view of Mount Arrowsmith in the distance, across Cherry Creek.
I meander slowly around, checking the tomatoes, the peas that are left, the flowers, the herbs. Make a mental note to bring the loppers out later and trim back the weeping rose bush that is crowding the boat. Inhale the sweet scents. Get lost in the view again.
Gradually I work my way across the yard, checking various pots, until I get to the shed where the tomato and pea patch is. I untie the strings on the mats there and roll them up so the sun will warm the ground and entice the peas and Scarlet Runner beans to germinate quickly. And come to a screeching halt.
Let's back up a few hours...Before rolling down the mats over the pea and bean patch last night at dusk, I noticed that a few of the peas and one of the bean seeds had "popped" out of the earth. Hmmmmm, must have had the water from the nozzle turned up too high and washed the soil away from them. I poked them back into the earth and mounded some soil up over them. Still, it didn't seem like the spray of water was that strong.
Flash forward to now...Not only are those same pea seeds and that one bean seed popped out of the soil again, but a couple of the pea seeds have been.....CHEWED! I squint my eyes. Is that...footprints? Tiny little footprints and is that a HOLE AT THE BASE OF THE WALL!!?!! I follow the tiny footprint trail. There, to the right of the McKenzie Sugar Snap seed box and at the base of the wall, another hole! Is it a rat? The holes at the base of the wall are pretty small. A mouse? Then why didn't the mouse pack the seeds away? Could it be......MOLE PEOPLE???
Naw, we don't have moles on the Island. Do we? We have rats, and field mice and shrews. No gophers thank goodness, and no ground squirrels. But MOLES? On the prairies years ago we had trouble with pocket gophers. The little beggers would dig up under where your plants were growing and in the blink of an eye, your plant was gone. Pulled down into their burrow for the family stew pot. But back to the Mole People. Something had dug the holes, popped the seeds out of the soil and chewed some of them up.
Richard comes home from stacking bales and I nag him out into the yard for a look at the mystery. "Do we have Voles here?" he asks. Hmmmmm, Voles. I go to the internet to check. Yes, it says, we have Townsend Voles, which are a rodent not as large as a rat but larger than a mouse and they usually burrow near water. What it doesn't say, however, is if they have an appetite for pea and bean seeds. "Do you want me to set a trap?" Richard asks. "Not yet" I reply. But I am thinking about it.
What I really wish is that I had what my dad always referred to as a "ball-bearing mousetrap". That would do the trick. It's quick, efficient, humane and environmentally friendly. Safe. Leaves no carbon footprint. That should keep everyone happy.
What's a ball-bearing mousetrap, you ask?
Felis Domesticus.
Male.
Unaltered.
I still think it's Mole People. I'll keep you informed.
I am a gardener. Today I planted two kinds of peas: Laxton's Progress and an edible podded Sugar Snap Peas. I planted them in a narrow patch of earth measuring 12 feet long by 20 inches wide in the garden yard, up against a shed. Good shelter, southern exposure and when the sun hits it, lots of warmth. Way back in May, Richard had stapled stucco wire to the shed for me. First it was too cold to plant anything, and then we did the Garden Boat, so nothing got planted in that narrow strip of earth. Until now...
Today I planted the peas right smack up against that shed where they can climb the wire and give me pails and pails of crisp green peas. Pardon me? What's that? I am being a tad optimistic, you say? It's the middle of July, you say? Yes...so?
I live in a valley. Not just any valley but the Alberni Valley. On an Island in the Pacific. And not just any Island, but VANCOUVER ISLAND. Our weather patterns here are, well, different. We have microclimates. Wikipedia defines a microclimate as: a geographical zone where the climate differs from the surrounding area. The term may refer to areas as small as a few square feet (for example a garden bed) or as large as many square miles (for example a valley). And in my microclimate garden bed, in the valley, I planted peas; and 2 Patio tomato plants, 1 Roma tomato plant, 5 Celebrity Tomato plants, 2 Sage herb plants & one Thyme plant.
I know peas like it a bit cooler, so by planting the tomatoes, sage and thyme in front of them, I reason, they will have some shade on their toes and will keep growing. The tomatoes, sage and thyme will get lots of sun, which they love. In a microclimate like the garden yard, you can grow two crops a year. It's just that no one I know of ever does and the cute little Island Mule Deer ate most of the pea crop in my Garden Boat and I really, really wanted some home grown garden peas this year and no cute little Island Mule Deer, or cute little Island Bush Bunny, is going to stop me from my goal!
I planted the peas really thick. I mean REALLY THICK. My dad always planted his peas that way. Soak the peas overnight in water. Then chicken wire strung along the row, peas planted on either side of the wire and just as thick as you can. Not spaced out one or two pea seeds every few inches...oh no. Just as thick as you can along both sides of the wire. Lots of fertilizer. He harvested 5 gallon pail after 5 gallon pail of peas by growing them vertically. It's what I did in the garden boat and what I did by the shed.
In the photo at the top of the page, the Laxton's Progress is on the left up against the wall and the Sugar Snap peas are on the right...maybe. You see a wind came up and blew the empty seed packets around so they became mixed up and I am not entirely sure I have them right, sigh. I will have to wait until the plants produce pods to know for sure.
Oh and did I mention the Marigolds? I have all these Marigold seeds I saved from last year. I planted a big swath of them between the peas in the garden boat and they grew like crazy! Just broadcast the seeds heavily, watered them well, covered with a thin layer of potting soil, watered again and they are now 3 to 4 inches high and loaded with buds. That is my plan for the rest of the open space in that micro garden.
Now if I can just find another open space to put the cucumber, zucchini and acorn squash plants I bought. Hmmmmmm. Say, Richard, what about over there in the corner where the shed and the house meet? What do you mean you don't think so??!!!
I went hunting yesterday. No, no, not for a cute little Island Buck Mule Deer - for CD's. I have hundreds of them sitting uselessly on shelves: NT Workstation 4; Corel 5 Unleashed; Windows 95; Canon Creative; Adobe Photoshop 5; Best of Bill Cosby; CorelDraw 6; HP Idea Kit; and several hundred I-have-not-a-clue-what-is-on-them-and-don't-care CD's. I have a plan...
After Richard gets home from work, eats and then picks up two loads of hay bales from the field, he sets to work making the baler twine fence extension. I busy myself with cutting & tying raffia to all those CD's. I hang a few on the fence. Not fun. I let Richard do that and I just cut and tie. And cut and tie. And cut and tie. An hour and a half later and 3 forages through the old CD's on the shelf, we are done and it's 9pm. Now to hang the beach mats. Doesn't take long because: I HAVE A PLAN.
And it works. Using plastic clips from shower curtains we clip the beach mats to the metal bunk bed frame, two mats per side. Cover up all those chewed up Scarlet Runner beans. Then clip mats together at the bottom. Take one of the shower curtains and clip it to the front of the metal frame and hang it down over the front of the boat covering all those tasty little tomato morsels. TAKE THAT cute little Island Mule Deer. Now it is quarter to 10. We Are Done.
The yard light comes on and I go in and plug in the fence lights. There is a breeze and the raffia-tied CD's dance crazily, reflecting brilliant shots of light all around.
"All we need now is some Disco Music" Richard comments. I give him THE LOOK.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice is whispering something about barn doors and horses. Kind of apropos here.
Recipe For Loss Prevention
Take 200 old and useless but extremely reflective CD's.
Stir in hundreds of feet of baling twine.
Add raffia.
Tie.
Tie some more.
And still more.
Hang at varying heights from 6 inches to 1&1/2 feet from top of baler twine fence addition.
Stir vigorously in a breeze.
Make 2 trips to town to grocery store to purchase twelve 40" x 70" beach mats, on clearance, because you never checked the first time and thought all those folded up beach mats were only 13 inches wide, not 40 inches wide, sigh.
Hang beach mats from metal bunk bed frame in garden boat using plastic shower curtain clips.
Place potted plants at base of beach mats to hold them against garden boat to keep beach mats from blowing around because what the heck, that cute little Island Buck Mule Deer has already nibbled on those plants anyway.
12 Beach Mats on clearance: $26.07 on Debit Card
Making your garden yard look like a Disco Club - Priceless!
I don't eat wild game of any kind. I am not a hunter. My father used to hunt game for food. My husband was a hunter in his youth, to put meat on his family's dinner table. I don't eat wild game; just never could get past the childhood trauma of Bambi. There are lots of others out there like me. You know who you are.
Last night before closing up the garden gate, I seriously considered lowering the shower curtains attached to the bunk bed frame in the garden boat just in case some creature decided to visit. "Naw", I told myself "you'll just have to get up at 6am to put the curtains back up so you don't fry your garden in the heat." I am NOT an early morning person. "Besides, it's too early in the life of your garden to be worried yet, no peas, no tomatoes to eat".
If you have seen the photo's of my garden boat, you know that since the heat arrived here in the Valley July 1st, my garden has exploded. It is lush and green and vibrant with life. Roses blooming, squash blossoms, startlingly orange Calendulas, Geraniums just getting ready to burst into brilliant reds, yellow tomato blossoms everywhere, and, oh look there, the peas are starting to bloom!!!
My best friend Bente is a Dane. She loves green peas in the pod fresh from the vine. Each time she visits, we walk out to the garden boat and she checks the progress of the pea plants. "If you come out here someday, and your peas are missing, don't look at me" she jokes. We oooh and aaaw over how well the garden is doing, dream longingly of the day we can walk out and pick tomatoes and peas. How can I tell her.....
Before breakfast today, I made my morning pilgrimage to the garden boat. On the way, I looked at all my plants-in-pots that I have placed along the inside of the fence. The cute little Island Mule Deer made such a feast of my potted plants outside the fence last year that I moved them all inside the yard. There is probably about 75 to 100 large black florist pots with various veggies, herbs and flowers. As I passed by my pretty and highly scented pink rose-in-a-pot, I blinked. Twice. All the leaves, flowers and flower buds but one were gone. Hmmmmm. Well, it was right up against the fence, and the openings in the fence are roughly 3" x 6". I suppose a cute little Island Mule Deer muzzle could reach through but....hmmmmm.
I moved on down the line. Several pots away another rose, this one a fragrant, creamy white with the faintest hint of pink at the edge, was missing it's 3 blossoms. HMMMMMM! Now I am afraid to look. Afraid to turn and face my garden boat. I had seen from the gate that things in the boat looked normal, but up close? And personal? Oh, deer!
Did I mention that last year the cute little Island Mule Deer ate a lot of my plants-in-pots that were outside the fence? Or that one of their absolute favorite things was my Scarlet Runner Beans growing up the outside of that fence? And didn't I mention before how much they thoroughly enjoyed Richard's Soup Bean Mix Garden? How they munched it down to dust? Sigh...
So here is the GoodNews/BadNews part. The GoodNews is they didn't eat all the tomatoes. Nor all the flowers or herbs or onions. Missed the zucchini, the corn, the cucumber, the parsley, the chives, the marigolds...well you get the picture. The BadNews part: they picked those Scarlet Runner beans clean down to the stems. Nibbled on the tomatoes, LOVED THE PEAS, tried an onion or two, enjoyed the jalapeno peppers, munched up the soup mix beans and ate the geraniums in the bow of the boat down to almost nothing! Oh there are still about half the pea vines growing, in the middle of the boat where he - I know it was that cute little Island Buck Mule Deer who has been hanging around - couldn't quite reach...yet.
So after Richard gets home from work today, we are extending the fence upwards, then hanging old cd's from this extension as a deterrant (Can't you just picture the deer in the dark: "oh look, a Garth Brooks CD! I love Garth Brooks! And an old copy of Greeting Card Maker. Now you can make your mom a card.") Well, one of the gardening sites online swears that hanging cd's will keep them out of the yard.
Richard says that buck is going to look really nice in our freezer this fall. I don't think so. I don't eat wild game. I am not a hunter. Still, I have to be honest here...I think I am getting over my Bambi trauma. And how am I going to tell Bente about the peas?
A family of crows fledged their babies recently. They are a loud and raucous lot. And curious. Very, very curious. I hear them across the creek or the field when I am in the garden. And I wait....
Soon they will be in the big pear tree on the South side of the yard. They like to watch what I am doing, but I hadn't figured out quite why, at first.
When they are across the creek, they caw loudly, swooping and diving and chasing one another while they hunt, putting me in mind of teenage boys laughing, teasing and shoving each other down the street. But when they spot me in the garden, they fly over to the pear tree and sit there muttering softly to each other. Soon one or two will lift off and glide to the King apple tree above where I am working. And they watch. And they wait. After a while I hear one or two calling from the pear tree, as if asking what the others see me doing.
Of course I talk to them and I tell them to just never mind casing my garden. You see, I figured it out, what they were up to, and I don't trust them. They are fun to watch; fun to listen to. There is one who barks like a dog - I have dogs; more on that in another post. But back to the crows in the apple tree. I think - no, I KNOW, they are monitoring the vegetables growing in my boat garden, waiting for that first, fat, juicy, red or yellow heritage tomato to ripen. Or that first crisp, green heritage pea. And when I least expect them to, they will swoop in and steal them. I have their number. They are watching the progress of the garden and reporting it to their siblings. Letting them know how many days until pea pickin' time.
But I have a plan, see. It goes back to the bunk bed frame and the plastic shower curtains - my cute little Island Mule Deer deterrent. Which is now also my cute little Murder of Crows deterrent. I think. I hope it doesn't just turn into a cute little Murder of Crows perch for eating heritage tomatoes and peas. Hmmmmm, maybe I need to rethink this. I'll keep you posted.
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