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 »
It’s mid-June. Mid-gardening season. And I’ve posted a few things already so I’ll introduce myself here in the middle. But I’m sure it won’t be the middle for long.
Six years ago I bought a house in Vancouver, BC, with a yard that was a weedy, mucky mess. I started with just a few plants which grew and bloomed and created so much life to our outdoor space that I realized why people loved their gardens so much. I was hooked. I would daydream about what I could dig up next and what more I could plant.
Since I’m not one to enter into any new project from the shallow end, lucky for me I found a great project in need of help: this wonderful organization which gives jobs to people living with addiction in the Downtown Eastside. They needed a place to grow perennials and, as luck might have it, I had a sunny front yard I was willing to donate. I’m now hosting 400 perennial plants in my front yard. I designed the layout, broke my back digging beds (well, it FELT like it was broken), and planted, and planted, and planted. I was given these unlabeled little green things that I was to care for and I had no idea what they were until they flowered or sprung a distintive leaf. I poured through endless books and websites searching for them. I spent a year with them. And now, years later, I know them intimately. I went from having almost no gardening knowledge, to learning how much there is to know. I have gained great respect for Master Gardeners and farmers and all those garden sages out there (not the herb).
I am no master. I am, however, a quick study and someone who is passionate about learning new things. I took on perennials first, then chased the ever elusive year-round blooming garden, grew an herb garden, wrestled with a veggie garden, and started sprouting in the winter. This year, I’m espalier-ing a 4-Pear tree, I have over 100 varieties of food which I grow as a potager garden in the front of the house and in the back beds, and I have a plot at one of the local community gardens where I meet the most fabulous people. I love to take photos and report snippets that I learn along the way, so here I am, beginning in the middle, reporting on the past, present and future of my wonderful gardening world.
The Zen Garden under the deck provides an great view of the back garden.
June 19 2009 | Community Garden and Flowers and Gardening and Growing Food and Vancouver | No Comments »
