Bright spots

Today, after a typically soul-crushing trip to the (shudder) mall, we walked home from an unusual direction.  We saw the house from a perspective we rarely get; looking at our side yard from far away.  The marigolds shine out from a great distance.  What happy little plants they are.

Gone as a consequence of being forgotten

The strawberries are dead now.  I completely forgot to water them or tend to their needs in any way, shape, or form.  

The chives aren't looking that good, either.  So much for the casual transplants from the plot.

On the other hand, the raspberry is looking pretty nice.  I hope that those things that used to look like incoming blossoms and are now dangling are going to turn into yummy fruit.  

What, no feathers?

The sidewalk that borders the side yard has been seriously uneven since we moved in.  There's always been that juddering moment when the snow shovel finds the cliff edge between two vastly different chunks of concrete.   I guess now that the municipal plough does our walks, they've received notice about the problem over in city hall, because we came home from work today to find the most uneven patches of sidewalk tarred over. 

And, as a special bonus, they tarred over some of my beloved side yard!

Look, they got the iris:

And they did quite a thorough job on the remains of the daffodils.  

What artistry!

What, did they think I wouldn't notice?

Silver lining

The front is as yet unfinished.  It's still only one-third tackled and very much looks it.  

However, today I found a good thing resulting from the clean-up.  Usually all I notice about this shrub is its dying bits.

When I did the rounds this morning, I noticed new growth!

I am not going to pretend that the new growth is anything to do with the actions of Saturday afternoon, but I doubt it would have been visible without them.  So, slaving away for hours to gain a couple of square meters of garden gives me something besides an aching back, after all.

Culinary Herbs

The garden at home is not really meant to produce edible things.   Too many dogs relieving themselves on the leaves, too many passers-by using the soil as an ashtray, too many chips of paint from an uncertain era dropping from the house.  Nonetheless, there are a few herbs in there.  I grow herbs mostly because I like the big green patches that they can produce.  The walking thyme, for example, can get where it wants to go in no time at all.  The lavender is not fulfilling my dream of fragrant drifts throughout the beds, but it keeps growing and I like that about it.  The stuff I've been calling mint isn't mint after all.  Probably oregano.  I tore a chunk of it out this evening.

It was muscling in on the gladiolus territory.  I love the herbs and their obliging way of growing healthily in whatever there is, but I can't let the glads get suffocated.  I'm quite emotionally invested in the glads. 

Last weekend, I brought home from the plot some strawberries and some chives to plant at home.  Chives and parsley are culinary herbs I would love to have patches of at home.  

I never use a whole "bunch" (as defined by the grocery store) of chives, and I often don't use up all the parsley, even though I do try.  The obvious answer is to grow them myself and take small bits when necessary.  

I would be delighted to get an indoor herb garden going, but there is the question of which window is Chutney-the-cat-proof.  The chives I planted at the beginning of this year were growing alright but they got a mysterious mould-like substance in their pot and I didn't dare let it linger.    The undead basil is still growing on the window-ledge.  I even pinched it to encourage it to grow out instead of up.  It will need to go out soon enough.  

I should try again with the indoor garden, but in the meantime, I have some chives to keep me going in the summer months.  Let's hope that they survive. 

Who dat?

I found several of these when I was messing about in the back this evening.  What is it?

Expectations

Yesterday, I thought I'd feel better if I did something about the front and I didn't; I felt grumpy and tired.  Today I thought I'd have a crappy time at the gardening meeting and I didn't; I had a good time and learned a lot.

Actually, what I learned was how to sieve compost.  At the allotments, there are compost piles and apparently one of them has matured into some really nice black earth.  But it's black earth filled with twigs and rocks and the occasional plastic cup lid (we're in a park, after all).  It turns out that we have a big mesh-bottomed container that fits nicely over the wheelbarrow and all you have to do is pitchfork compost into the sieve, shake it around, and suddenly the wheelbarrow has all of this lovely soil for you.  

I was (sternly) informed to put it on top, not to work it in to the soil.  Useful, because I would have worked it in for sure.  

In truth, the best thing about it was that I got help from another gardener (quite forcefully ... she came over and hijacked me from what I was doing to get another barrow full before she left) and then I helped someone else when she came to get the barrow from me.  

I planted 2 tomatoes.  They were free.  This is a shock to learn, but the public gardens has lots of extra plants and they want good homes for them!  Wish fulfilment time!  One of the more active gardeners produced a largish number of tomatoes (I didn't even know that they had tomatoes in the public gardens) and said we should all take some.  The gardener says she'll share her public gardens contact info (she says he's called Dave) so the rest of us can maybe score some pretty flowers or something.  

The tomatoes won't be able to produce fruit.  The plot doesn't get a lot of light and the city doesn't get a lot of hot summer.  But they were free!  And ya gotta try sometimes anyway.  So, I have put one tomato between the onions and the potatoes and anther between the potatoes and the walking trench.  I dutifully covered them with compost, but I totally forgot to water them, so they are probably done for right out of the starting gate.  What an idiot.  What an inconsistent gardener!  

I also brought home some chives and strawberries, which I am planning to put into the back this afternoon.  

Meditation on a soon to be aching back

I had a go at the front this afternoon.  

When I put the calla lily in at the beginning of the month, I did a little bit of scrabbling with the hand-held claw, just to unseat the weeds starting to take hold.   More fool I.  What I actually did was loosen up the compacted soil so that lots and lots and lots of weeds, not just the most persistent, could get a foothold.  What emerged was a swath of green, each plant needing to be pulled out individually.  Ugh.

Every year we try to do something about the front.  It needs new soil, it needs less compaction, it needs shade-loving plants.  What it really needs is to become a raised bed.  More than half of all the problems it has are because people and their pets storm across it a million times each year.  It's a chicken and egg problem and I certainly haven't moved any closer to solving it by my labours this afternoon.  The front is hard to deal with. It's deep so there are plenty of bits that are hard to reach.  It's compacted so it's a lot of hard labour to move the soil at all.  It therefore gets neglected, which makes it harder to deal with.  There are more weeds, nastier un-dealt-with piles of leaves and mystery detritus , more crap dumped there by passing drunks, too.  The soil needs improvement, for which one needs to be able to dig up the soil that's already there but I can't because it's compacted and it's compacted because I have neglected it for months and I have neglected it for months because the side yard is much more rewarding because it has better soil and I do give it regular (-ish, I am the inconsistent gardener, after all) attention.  

I have fantasies about getting rid of the whole thing.  Given a bottomless budget, I'd make a pretty bay window take over half of the yard and put a front porch over most of the rest.  I'd leave a little corner of it as a sunny raised bed/window box for the nice bay window.  That's fantasy.  

The reality is that I spent two and a half hours this afternoon breaking my back and shoulders to get the weeds moved out in order for the earth to be squishy under the feet of the first 20 passers by and the rest of the patch to be more receptive to the next batch of weeds.  It's not like I have a plan for what goes in instead.  It's not like I have a stack of shade-loving annuals waiting to be put into the freshly turned (but still nutrient-free) soil.  I KNOW that the weeds will win this one, even if I do go back and get the second half turned tomorrow (unlikely, by the way).  Umph.  That's why the front gets neglected.

There was an elderly lady with a magnificent eastern european accent who slowed down enough to let me know that lily of the valley is her favourite and now the yard would be much better.  This is nice but it tells me (what I already knew) that it's been an embarrassment.  

There was a very nice young woman who saw me struggling and puffing and cheered me on with an "it's coming along!".  

There was a slightly creepy depressive woman who came and sat uninvited on my front step to say that she'd been living next door for 3 years and had been watching us trying to make the garden.  She "had to move" because the "competition was just too high" (I take this to be a euphemism for "I can no longer get away with being late on rent").  She said she loved to garden so to make conversation I asked her for advice.  None of it was useful.  "Plant things that attract friendly insects" (what things?  what insects?) "We used to use fish for fertilizer, when I was growing up" (I bet that's really great in the country when you have a supply of fish and a lot of fresh air to mask the stink of the rotting fish carcasses in your garden ... not so great in the city when you have neither).  She also said that she'd taken flowers from our garden and tried to grow them in her apartment.  I won't be missing our thieving, spying neighbour.  

On the other hand, it was when we finally tackled the front a couple of years ago that our lovely neighbour to the south came and introduced herself.  She has shared wonderful plants with me (for all my felonious intentions, I haven't actually got the guts to really steal plants from anyone, especially not people whose gardens are visibly struggling), including the iris which is so beautiful (in the side) at the moment.

This is a rambling grumpy post.  I'd promise better for tomorrow, but I'm off to a gardening association meeting first thing in the morning and they always leave me wishing they were shorter.  

It's some consolation that it's really obvious that something happened to half the yard today.  I took a picture at the 1.5h mark and again when I'd had enough.  The lush green growth is all stray grass and wandering weeds.  Where there's light coloured soil and no green is where people walk.  It's where people walk all the time.  All the people.  All the time.  Hard to get motivated to improve it.

Grump harrump.

Centipost

Today I have been trying to plan something fabulous for my 100th post.  

I've given up.  If  I wait until I generate the perfect post, I will be struck dumb eternally.  

In general, I have enjoyed the post-a-day thing.  I don't do it religiously, but I am happy to have most days (that I'm in town, anyway) covered.  It adds up very quickly.  It also forces me to write something and to think about the garden every day.  Both of those are worthwhile goals.  

Given that I am trying to "feed the blog", I sometimes wonder if I am better at tackling things in the garden (ie a better gardener) than I would be without the blog.  I would like to think not.  I am certainly taking more pictures, and I am certainly thinking more about the garden.  I guess I can point to occasions when I have seen things (the gladiolus sprouts, for example) early that I probably would have noticed later were I not constantly scouting for interesting photographs and material.  The truth is that I know I am the only one reading.  It makes it easier and it makes it harder.  No external pressure, but plenty of my own crazy "ooooh, post 100! Better make it good!".

Cut

On Tuesday morning I cut some of the gazanias.  

My book said that flowers should be cut in the morning when they're firm and fresh.  It also said that they should be cut after their petals were open.  I was unclear about whether it meant after the flower had reached the point of maturity where the petals opened, or after that moment in the day when the petals were fully spread.  It also said that flowers like daisies (which I rather think gazanias are) should be cut when the petals were fully open but the central flower still tightly closed.  I'm unclear about this one.  "Central flower"?  Not following.  My book also said that flowers that secrete a milky liquid should be seared in boiling water and any fresh flowers cut should be immediately immersed in tepid water.  I didn't know that the gazanias would secrete a milky substance when cut, but I found out.  I also found out that the leaves of the gazanias have white undersides.  

So anyway on Tuesday morning I went out with a bowl of tepid water and a sharp knife and sliced into a gazania that had closed petals but I knew was mature enough that had the sun been higher the flower would be open.  It bled milk into the tepid water.  I cut a few more. 

I then brought the flowers indoors, boiled some water and re-cut at a sharper angle, dipping the fresh wounds into boiling water before putting them finally into plain old water from the tap in a tarnished silver sugar bowl.  (I'm not into advanced planning here at the inconsistent house and so the cut flowers were going into the thing that appeared to be the right size.)

They were, of course, still shut.  I had a thought that maybe as they warmed up they would open.  Since we've turned off the heat for the year the outside and inside were not very warm for a couple of days.  It was reaching highs of about 12 and very rainy and grey.  The flowers did not open.  I wondered if perhaps I had cut them at a bad time.  I wondered if they just needed sunlight like their still-attached-to-roots brethren.  

This afternoon, the sun came out at last.  The windowsill with the cut flowers started to warm up and shine up and now I have a little tarnished sugarbowl of pretty bright-faced gazanias.  

   

The theory is that good-for-cutting flowers will actually produce more blossoms if you cut them.  That's the theory.  We'll see what plays out in my garden.  

Up Next

It looks like the daylily, which by rights should have been killed by my monstrous treatment of it last fall, will bring us flowers this year!  Of the five daylily clumps, only one doesn't have a visible bud.  Of course, the one that isn't showing a flower yet is the one that spent longest out in the cold and rain.  

Also soon to flower(?) is the mystery plant in front.  (A mystery plant in front, really.  There's plenty of mystery to go around out there.)  I pulled it all out last year, thinking it was a weed.  It clearly isn't, but I don't know what it is.  It looks like a sort of onion-y chive-y thing.  We'll find out soon enough what its nature is when it blooms.  Or maybe bears fruit?  I am not sure what these will turn into.  

Not coming up next and probably not coming up next year is the brunnera.  Too bad.  I would have liked to have a little blue patch in the front there.  It hasn't enjoyed its time with us at all. It was so pretty when we first brought it home.  

A little bit glad

The gladioli are already poking through!  Since I'm used to the bulbs that go in to the ground in the fall and come up in spring, it's hurting my brain to believe that these ones can start sprouting in a few weeks.  

Admittedly, they're not huge yet. 

Still, this summer bulb thing is great!

Wet Day

After a longish dry period, we had a heavy thunderstorm last night and rain all day today.  

The plants, which I have not been faithfully watering (maybe that's the problem with the zinnias), are for the most part lapping it up.  The probably-iris is holding a pool in its petals and pretty droplets as well.  

The actually-iris is not holding up so well.  It looks sodden and miserable.

Potato heads

The first potatoes are peeking through now.  The one in the garlic corner is most definitely up and at 'em.

Only one of the set of four is showing its head.

The peas are amazing.  I can't believe we have actual peas from our first batch of indoor peas!  We ate some peas this afternoon.  They were sweet and perfect.  Yum.

The healthy ones are producing lovely flowers.  

Even the struggling peas are really pretty.

The new ones are coming up OK, too.

The beans are growing like crazy.  They are also getting a bit eaten.  

I had to thin a bit this afternoon.

As I've said before, I hate pulling out a living plant.  It makes me worry that the one I've left in will die and then I'll regret my choice.  

The radishes are flourishing.  I look forward to the first bite of radish. Not too long to wait, by the looks of things.

The beets seem to be OK.  They got thinned yesterday and so far none of the ones I left behind are dying.  

The onions need thinning.  Oh, yes they do.  They do resemble grass.

Actually, they look a bit like a magical forest in this picture.  I used my work camera's super macro for these.  Pretty good, I think.

The forest needed thinning, no matter what. 

I did some thinning (this is the same region as above).  

I couldn't face the whole row, though.  The pile of tiny dead bodies was very high.  

More thinning later, I guess.  Hopefully, more delectable peas, too!

Onion grass

We stopped by the plot on our way home this afternoon.  No camera; no pictures. 

The walking onions are looking pretty good.  We should figure out something to do with them.  Pasta maybe?

We thinned the beets and radishes and got rid of a weed or two.  We need to address the problem of the enthusiastically-planted scallions.  This is entirely my doing.  I planted all the seeds in the package and I didn't worry about the separation.  I reckoned that we could do the thinning later, and besides the package was over a year old so I could assume that the germination rate wouldn't be high.  Oops.  The overall effect is very like grass.  Thinning is the wrong word.  I need some way of getting rid of huge clumps of scallion sprouts. 

Maybe I can combine the sprouts with the walking onion flowers for a pungent addition to potato salad?  

Seeds

The grape hyacinths are doing the thing they do after they finish blooming, which is to sprout rather interesting-looking plate-like things.  I have always assumed that they were something to do with seeds without actually considering that my grape hyacinths grow from bulbs.  The bulbs can be split after they get to be big ... they grow a sort of offshoot.  No seeds required.  

So when I noticed that there were some little white bobbules on stems amongst the dying leaves of my pickwick crocuses, I should have thought harder than I did (I thought: "oh, I missed some dead flowers.  How clumsy").  

This morning, one of the bobbules was burst open and there are seeds inside.  And there are lots of other bobbules popping up out of the ground.  

Most definitely, I have crocus seeds.  

What do I do with them?