Category: Gardening
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COVID-19: the first six months
I had a haircut scheduled. Fiona was supposed to be doing her driving road test in a few days. It was March 17th, 2020. A week later my hair was longer than ever, and it would continue to grow for another 12 weeks, and Fiona was still a student driver. And then, with gloves for […]
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Back to the garden
Although I’ve kept herbs and occasional greens growing next to the deck, I haven’t grown a proper garden since (checks blog archives… ) 2008. That must have been the point at which the water line broke, and I started taking on more of the summer Suzuki institute administration, and the kids were losing interest in […]
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Spring Forward
The time changed yesterday and today it felt like spring. Spring has been teasing us for at least a month. Yes, a month, since the beginning of February. We’ve had almost no winter this year and almost no snow since the week of Christmas. I’m grieving the missed skiing. But at some point you just […]
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Bokashi experience so far
Last fall we started using a bokashi waste system. All food waste, including meat, bones, dairy and small amounts of oil and fat, went into a plastic 5-gallon bucket with a lid, combined with sprinkles of a microbial starter. We used a potato masher to pack down the waste as it accumulated, creating a fairly […]
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Bokashi
Bokashi bin, and wheat-bran starter Okay, it isn’t pretty, but it’s pretty cool. We’ve been outdoor composting for more than 20 years. We tried indoor vermicomposting for a while, but despite our best efforts couldn’t entirely prevent fruit-fly outbreaks. We don’t have a garage, so the worms were on their own outside, and eventually bears […]
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Macro perspective
I put the magnifying lenses on the DSLR camera the other day and Fiona had fun shooting up-close photos around the garden. A change in perspective is truly magical. Thyme Parsley Lupin top Rosemary Hawkweed Hens & Chicks
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Tea progress
Fiona’s tea business is taking shape. Some organic ingredients have been purchased. These have been combined with wildcrafted ingredients like rosehips, peppermint and wild ginger. The wild ginger in particular has entailed several trips along trails for collecting but we now have heaps of the stuff. Two herbal blends are shown. On the left is […]
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Fallow days
We’re enjoying a well-deserved few fallow days. Besides the bike rides, runs and swimming days, we’re attending to a few lingering jobs at home. We finally finished disassembling the play structure. This involved sawing timbers away from seized bolts and digging out the four concrete footings. Now it only remains to transport the sandbox sand […]
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Moving a pond
This is where the pond and waterfall used to be. Under the apple tree about 20 metres from the house. A lovely shaded area, but with no seating nearby we rarely enjoyed it. Now that we have a deck, I decided the pond and waterfall should be there instead. Over the past couple of days […]
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Milo, and the Slide
Fiona and I went to the garden center in Nelson this week. We bought some bedding plants as well as some shrubs and herbs for the garden we’re creating in front of the deck. Our old kitchen garden was clear-cut and covered when the deck went in, so we’re starting anew. Just as we were […]
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Silted up
I love our water system, I really do. Our supply is gravity fed, fresh mountain spring water and it’s free and plentiful and all ours. It comes from high up a mountain that has no human activity on it. It is to a certain extent surface water, though, so it does run the risk of […]
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Spring dinner
I love this time of year. Garden fresh lettuce, chickens laying like crazy, the rhubarb is still plump and vigorous. Down the road it’s calving and lambing time. Tonight for dinner I think we’ll have lettuce and wild greens with a sweet vinaigrette made with garlic and dandelion syrup, and crêpes with rhubarb filling. Mmm… […]
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All mucked out
Oh, look at this stuff! It makes me so happy and proud! Procrastinator that I am, I prefer to just keep adding straw to the chicken coop to keep it relatively fresh. I do one big mucking-out a year.This was the weekend. Six wheelbarrows-full of the stuff. Amazing rich, half-composted, nitrogen-laden stuff it is, mixed […]
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First crumble
It’s hard to believe, from looking at this, that there was 8 inches of snow on the ground a scant 3 weeks ago. Temperatures are still cool here, but the rhubarb is loving the weather. Fiona’s peas, chard and spinach are all sprouting. Our tomatoes and peppers are growing lanky in a friend’s greenhouse. Today […]
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Community garden cleanup
Every spring and fall we participate in a big clean-up bee at the community Reflection Garden. This year’s spring clean-up seems much earlier than in past years though that’s really only an illusion resulting from our unusually long winter. It’s snowing outside at our house as I type. But the garden is on the lakefront, […]