A friend sent me this quote today. I love it.
“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
February 16 2011 | Garden Therapy | 6 Comments »
This year I haven’t made any resolutions. What I have done is set some goals, or maybe let’s call them proposals = less about achieving something and more about focusing the crazy which lives in my mind. I originally started writing about gardening on this blog but for those who follow will know I get on some tangent and run with it for a little while. I wish that I posted more about what I’m actually working on, but I find it difficult to muster up the dedication it requires to sit at the computer and write.
Proposal #1: Write about all the stuff I do. I take classes, learn new art forms, invent recipes, make things from scratch (like soap), learn how to grow stuff, etc, etc, etc. I need to write this all down somewhere and perhaps I’ll slow down enough to actually think about what I’m working on.
I think that staying still long enough to write down what I’m working on will help me also corral the ideas stampeding in my head. This brings me to another proposal:
Proposal #2: Connect Four. Have you ever played the board game Connect Four? The idea of the game is to build a line of four tiles on the board before your opponent does. I have a boatload (Titanic maybe?) of projects that have three tiles all lined up just waiting for that fourth (aka: the finishing touch). The plan is to start digging out projects once a week and FINISHING THEM. What I’ll do with them is another story, but I do see an Etsy site in my near future.
That’s it. Two proposals. And I started this week. Progress so far? Well, it’s been a bit like trying to catch a hyper, slippery fish. I fight against sitting at the computer (it’s sunny out/I should go to the park, I need to make cupcakes/the shower is on Friday, I feel like ginger ale/I bet I can make some from this gingerroot) and I’m not overly eager to pull out 3-tiled projects (where’s the excitement? The drama of something new?)
I did start to catch a few fish though. I’m sitting here writing now and I’ve been getting back in touch with some of my abandoned projects. Not a bad start and it’s so very interesting to me how difficult it is to channel my focus. I’m looking forward to more self-discovery as I work through these proposals because after all, I did enjoy writing this when I finally sat down. Perhaps a little discipline and structure will help this slippery fish.
January 06 2011 | Garden Therapy | 6 Comments »
This week we thawed out from that crazy November snowfall and I jumped at the window of opportunity to dig up the rest of the root veggies from the community garden plot. It was a very beautiful day at the garden. Even though the plots are a mess I found it quite romantic with the setting sun beaming through the skeletons of our summer gardens and sky-high pampas grass.
It felt great to get out and dig in the soil, and harvesting is always fun. While I was disappointed to only have a few pounds of potatoes, I did get a bunch more Gladiator parsnips and a ton of various beets that I didn’t expect. I roasted up this bunch of roots for a family dinner tonight.
Now that the community plot is officially put to bed for the winter I wonder weather I want to keep up the space again next year. I have enough room to grow a small variety of veggies at home and while I love gardening with the community members, it has lately been feeling more like a chore. Much of the food at the gardens gets stolen, many say because of the part of town we are in (notorious for homelessness and drugs) but sadly, the folks that I’ve seen steal are (gasp) other gardeners or visitors in suits who drive Hondas and show off their knowledge of growing food by cutting off all my garlic scapes or plucking a pumpkin. Mostly the thieves are foodies with a sense of entitlement and little concern for community. So that sucks.
Then there’s the growing conditions. The soil is poor and disease is rampant. Without daily weeding the plots are soon overrun with buttercup, horsetail, bindweed and in some cases the dangerous giant hogweed. This year I just wanted to grow squash. I ended up planting 10 types of squash and got about 12-15 orange spaghetti squash and downy mildrew killed the rest. I did also plant strawberries, potatoes, artichokes, tomatoes, beans, celeriac, beets, parsnips, peas, fennel, carrots, garlic, leeks, and kale, so I strayed from my focus and got a little of everything (except the celeriac which was a big failure). It’s fun to bring home fresh veggies and I haven’t really shopped for any in the grocery for the last 5-6 months. The number and variety of what is left after theft and disease is just a taste. Despite a valiant effort–I added manure to the soil, a bacterial / fungal mix that we bought at the farmers market and compost compost compost–the soil still lacked nutrition. This combined with the fact that disease is so quickly spread in a community garden space that I fought rust, mildew and blight daily. I certainly appreciate the fresh food I brought home, yet this alone is not worth the effort when I can buy the like at the farmers market each week.
Even if I never brought home a veggie I would still be a member because I joined the garden in the first place for the community. I wanted to learn from others, connect and share. In my mind perhaps I had the idea of a communal gardening group of people laughing and sharing huge baskets of fresh produce, while tending their lush green plots and beautifying the neighbourhood. The reality is that you see most of the members only at the monthly work parties. For most of the year I went to the work parties religiously. A few of the other members have the same commitment, a few. It’s great to see some of them, sometimes, but I wouldn’t call it a community. There is rallying around the condom/needle clean up and stopping the crazy dude from pouring rat poison on our plants, but it’s not quite what I had imagined. I’ve made a few friends at the garden though, so that’s something.
Now, as another year comes to a close I’ll reflect on whether or not it’s worth the effort or if perhaps there is another group or space that would be a better fit for me. For all the reasons above I almost gave up my membership last year, but something kept me there. The promise of something new, perhaps. Maybe this year some new people with join and keep me company at the work parties. Or perhaps I’ll get to run a seed starting project with the new greenhouse or learn something new. Who knows? But if I’ve learned just one thing about being a member of a community garden, it’s that it is about a whole lot more than just growing food.
December 06 2010 | Gardening and Growing Food and Harvest and Vancouver | 13 Comments »
I recently read this post by Kat about why she embraced failure as a gardener (trying + failing = learning + growth) and I was struck once again my the gravitational pull of guilt that lingers in my gardens. I fight it. I deny it. I give myself great pep talks about how the garden is there for me not me for it. That when I want to garden I will always have LOTS to do and when I want to do other things, well that’s life. I’m busy. I don’t always feel like dragging my tired ass out to the garden to weed yet another day. I keep strong and fight the guilt. If the plants die then they aren’t the right plants for me, I reason.
As Kat eloquently put it, “failure isn’t my favorite part of gardening, it’s PART of gardening. There is no escaping it. If one wants to grow in anything they do, one has to take risks.”
I believe all of this and love that she said it. We ALL fail sometimes and other times we just let things slide (die, shrivel, wilt). No one can do EVERYTHING with out going bonkers. Busy lives, busy days, family, friends, jobs, classes, etc, etc, etc. It’s a part of the process and a valuable one. So in celebration of all the half-ass projects that I have collecting in my house, that we all have collecting in our houses, I’m posting photos. Yes, graphic photos, of the less-than perfect moments in my garden:
Sometimes I forget about the bird feeders on a tree, in the garage, or in bird feed box. Then I get a creepy surprise like this crazy black fungus.
Or mold, sprouts AND crazy black fungus. Yikes, sorry birds.
Late blight can get away from me as much as I try to remove every branch, leaf, grain of soil that is contaminated. This Micro Tom tomato plant hid from me and my snippers on De-Blight Day and now I think those little tomatoes are rotting in my fridge.
This weedy overgrown mess is my back garden. I really need to divide the perennials, clean up the soil, and give it a good mulch for the winter. But hey, I’m just happy that I planted up the barrel with Gai Lan (Chinese broccoli).
A kind neighbour gave me some dahlia tubers which I promptly left in newspaper on my deck for 4 months until they sprouted. I still have no idea where to plant them.
And since the kicthen table is the holding ground for garden / food related projects, it is the wasteland for my collections like these eggshells I planned to use against the slugs that have been mowing down my lettuce seedlings…
…or basil clippings that have been there for months.
There is more out there: dead seedlings, seeds sprouting in packets, trees in need of pruning, and weeds, weeds, weeds. Ugh, and that box of fall bulbs I was due to plant last month is staring at me every day (plant me plant me plant me). But I say, “Damn you bulbs and weeds and guilt!” I have a beautiful garden that feeds me well and is completely and utterly imperfect. I shun the guilt, hold my head high, knowing I have a garden to work on whenever I want to enjoy a beautiful day outside, or get in a little garden therapy.
November 12 2010 | Gardening and Photography and Projects | 12 Comments »
I’m pretty freaking excited that it’s so warm here and everything is growing (sorry to those who are still under snow or that terrible Cali rain). I feel all the excitement of a new gardening year ahead. But when asked about my favourite season, I wasn’t sure I could choose.
Perhaps early spring is my favourite. The excitement of season’s change, the new growth, the possibilities. Each seed carries enough energy in it to burst into a new plant and it feels like that energy is rumbling beneath the earth ready to explode into eggplants and coneflowers and sage.
Then again in late spring it’s a joy to have so much lettuce that I’m forced to eat a 10:30 salad daily, and drop off bags of spring greens on the doorsteps of neighbours.
In early summer it’s wonderful to get my big seedlings out to their forever homes in the garden beds while the lush green foliage of perennials are filling up every corner of the garden.
And then in mid summer there’s the wonderful days spent resting in the hammock chair under my deck while the bees and plants do all the hard work to fruit and flower.
In late summer there are the new recipes I’m forced to create to use the masses of veggies that are ripe to be picked.
In fall there is the sound of canning lids popping in a chorus that sings about the freshness captured in each jar to be enjoyed in the colder months.
And in winter rest in the garden gives way to bustling emotions around family and change.
I can’t choose. I love them all. So what is your favourite season? I’d love to know.
January 28 2010 | Garden Therapy and Gardening | 8 Comments »
I was recently asked to share a little more about what Garden Therapy means to me. Virginia at http://www.container-gardening-made-easy.com/ interviewed me to feature on her blog and as I answered the questions I thought I should post those answers here as well, to share a bit more about myself. The first question asked me to explain how I use gardening as a healing tool.
The first thing that came to mind was my first gardening day of 2010, this past Saturday, when it was beautifully warm and sunny. I popped out of bed, put on my grubby clothes and scrub boots, and headed out to clean up the garden a bit. I dug through the brown foliage from last year’s beauties and was delighted to find new growth peeking out from below the spent plants. As I worked my neighbours waved and teased me for doing a spring cleaning in January while other people stopped by with their dogs to tell me how they loved to walk past my garden month after month. Not a flower was blooming, and most of what I was working on was mucky and dead, but for me the therapy from gardening is the activity not the results.
I started gardening to relieve the monotony of my days being forced to “rest” and “give my body a chance to heal”. But it proved to be exercise for my mind and body that is allows any pace I can muster. The mental exercise of figuring out the many biological factors that must be determined to successfully grow a plant provides as much diversity as the physical challenges hold. The benefit along the way is a stronger mind, a lighter spirit, and a better heart rate.
Gardening on that sunny, spring-like day had all the elements of what I need to heal myself: connection with the earth and people, nurturing new growth, laughs with friends and neighbours, physical challenges, and of course the warm sun shining on my skin. I don’t believe that healing should be about strict regimens and a “no pain no gain” mentality. I have enough pain already, we all do in our own ways, and so garden therapy to me is a way to be gentle and kind to myself. That’s what my sunny day in January did that no prescription drug or physiotherapy session can match; it warmed me up, body and soul, and gave me new energy to cope with life’s challenges. As the ground thaws making way for seemingly endless sunny days in the garden, I look forward to the gardening year and the nurturing both my plants and I will benefit from.
January 21 2010 | Garden Therapy | 3 Comments »
One of the reasons I got into gardening, was because of the community. Gardeners share gardening tips and plants and harvests, they create beauty in their front yards for the enjoyment of passersby, and they may even sneak onto your property and share in the labour. One day, I asked a man at the Community Garden how he was growing his potatoes. He shared with me his 200-year old technique as passed down by his Irish grandmother. He told me to dig a deep trench (about 2 ft deep) and put sprouted seed potatoes in there, sprouts up, then cover the potatoes with a little dirt just so that they had just a light blanket of soil, spouts showing through.
So, I went to my plot (which was about 100 meters from his) and dug my trench. He came over to inspect my work and pleased with my trench, he took my seed potatoes from me and poured them out on the garden edge. He took his 60-year-old gardening knife he started hacking at them (hey, wait a minute!): he cut some of the seed potatoes in half (Aaa! My potatoes!), and then made deep gouges into the other ones (this isn’t what it said on the package!). Yet despite my alarms I gave into his help and guidance and made an effort to trust this man, his 200-year old method, and his grandmother. I planted these scarred and bleeding potatoes in my newly dug trench, tucked them in for the night with some soil, and put some sticks on them to prevent the birds from snacking. Every few days or so, I was to come back and mound the soil up over the first few leaves of the plant. My new friend said he would “bring me some sand from his beach” to improve my soil and he picked off any large sticks or bark in my soil and swore at them. He then brought me a handful of worms and said, “My grandmother always told me that if you give someone worms for their potatoes, they will have a bountiful crop.” I was so very touched as I accepted the worms and set them free into my new potato trench.
A week later, my potatoes had grown a little so I added a bit more soil and some sand I had collected from the beach. Another week when I went to top up the soil again, I found leaf mould around the edges of the bed. And another week there were chunks of burned wood scattered around the plants. Now, a month or so later, my trench has turned into a hill with huge healthy potato plants above and I suppose about 500lbs of potatoes growing below. I have not seen this man since he taught me to plant potatoes, but he has been at my garden plot watering my potatoes, mounding the soil, and adding his own special brand of magic. It is this sense of community that I love about gardening: that a man I’ve only met once parents me and my plants while teaching me so much more than just how to grow potatoes.
August 17 2009 | Community Garden and Growing Food | 2 Comments »
