Haiku for the season

Rain beats the windows

in 2/4 time. The wind sings

off-key just like me.

Long-Distance Gardening

It's that time of year when I need to get my garden starts going, but I also need to be up at the church renovating. I've left Son #3 in charge of watering the seedlings and manning the fort in my absence, and Son #2 and his partner have agreed to mind the garden while I am travelling this summer. I've told them if they'll keep an eye on things, they can have whatever ripens in the garden while I'm gone. Cooperatively, we might be able to pull this off. The garden feels more important than ever right now, with food costs and shortages being what they are.

Meanwhile, a neighbour has offered to show me where to find wild ramps, so we'll go out foraging sometime this spring. What treasure!

It has to be said...

I usually try not to get into political discussions on this blog. But I'm watching the news, and my jaw is hitting the floor. The nukes are lining up in Eastern Europe, climate change is now climate chaos, bird flu is wiping out the poultry industry, banks are collapsing, people can't afford groceries, trains are derailing, North Korea and China are flexing muscles, Israel is in turmoil, Paris is erupting, thousands of jobs are being lost, famine is looming, children are being shot up in their school rooms, thousands of migrants and refugees are on the move, and politicians in the U.S. are ... passing laws about what third-person pronouns we're allowed to use. Really? So much to choose from, and this is what they focus on?

I feel like I'm stuck in some absurdist theatre.

Revving up for the season

We're getting buds, and I expect they'll flower in the next couple of weeks. I'm so eager to get out into the garden! I admit it, I've pre-ordered my garden soil about 7 weeks in advance. I'll be topping up one older bed to plant some new asparagus crowns. I've direct-sown some lettuce, kale, onions, beets, spinach, carrots, and rapini. I have to go out of town for a couple of weeks, so I'll be getting a late start with the seedlings, but I have everything ready to go when I get back. I've raked up pine needles to add to the potato bed, and I've taken the mulch off of some of the other beds. I think for a couple of the beds, maybe for the squash and tomatoes, I'll keep the leaf mulch on and plant through it, and see how the "no till" method works.

Thinking about putting in some grapes up at the church we use as a cottage. Might plant haskap berries up there too. They can manage on their own, since I'm not there very much, and can be establishing themselves so they're ready when we move up there full time. I'm also toying with the idea of borrowing some of the neighbour's space to grow pie pumpkins, which won't fit in my own garden.

I've been watching Homestead Rescue. I've been reading Caleb Warnock's book on self-sufficiency. I've been pondering the seed catalogues and combing through my old gardening notes. I've updated my garden log. I've sorted through my seeds and categorized them by when to plant. I've bought a new pitchfork. Now if it would just warm up!

Signs of spring, and getting the garden ready

The daffodils and hyacinth are starting to nose out of the ground. The onions I didn't harvest last year are about four inches tall already. There's still snow in shady patches, but the temperatures are rising. Birdsong has returned to the early morning, and I think the song of robins is the happiest sound of spring.

I think I've been watching too many Youtube videos on gardening, because this year I seem to have this weird fear that I don't know what I'm doing. I've been growing vegetables for 35 years or more, and I've always done pretty well. My harvest varies from year to year, but there's always plenty. So why am I suddenly second-guessing and over-thinking? Is it because, with rising food prices and coming shortages, I am putting too much importance on the results and forgetting to enjoy the process? 

Maybe. All I know is I'm plagued by doubts and questions. Is it too early to remove the mulch from the garlic? Am I amending the soil properly? Do I start the seedlings now and trust that the last frost date will be the same this year? Lately it has been unpredictable. One year I can plant in the third week of May, and the next year it's too cold until June. And at the other end of the season, some years we get frosts in September and sometimes not until December or even January. So how can a person possibly predict and plan?

I'm paralyzed by over-information, I think. It's the same feeling I get when I over-plan my writing and spend all my energy outlining and plotting and never get to the actual writing. I've watched the advice of too many experts. I need to turn off Youtube and use common sense and experience and just do stuff, you know?

In the end the seeds can be trusted to know what to do.

The end of the Life is Good challenge

For the past ten days, I've posted on Facebook photos of things that bring me joy. The point of the exercise was to lighten and brighten social media, but it also lightened and brightened my life. I found myself searching for things to be grateful for, which is, all in all, a good way to approach life. It's easy to get caught up in the gloom of geopolitical events and forget that we still have much to be happy about.

So here are a few more happy things:

Writing Notebooks

For years now, I've always carried a small notebook with me, where I jot down plot ideas, phrases and titles I like, good quotes, interesting historical notes, and other things that can inform my writing. I've referred to them frequently for inspiration and information.

Three years ago, when we went into lockdown, I no longer really went anywhere, so I kept the notebook on the side table by the couch rather than my backpack, but I still jotted down things that caught my interest or sparked ideas. However, the contents seem to have changed since the pandemic. Thumbing through it this morning, I realize I've written down a scattered mishmash of things (and I've also realized how much Youtube I must be watching). Here's a sample:

• How to dehydrate and powder squash into flour
• How to build your own radiant heater with carbon fibre, copper pipes, and fire brick
• "Desire impoverishes us."
• A 17th-century recipe for Egg-Pear Pie
• How to use the sump pump to supply self-watering raised vegetable beds
• Small Town Businesses that Won't Fail
• How to buy land anonymously
• Balcony railings have to be 42" high if over 5'11" from the ground
• Haskap berry bushes don't have thorns
• Loons are solitary and mate for life, and they live in pairs in the same general area, but they are rarely seen together.
• Hope Haven Therapeutic Riding Centre in Markdale is expanding.
• Things to eat to reverse insulin resistance
• Which herbaceous plants are nitrogen-fixers
• Olive oil can apparently boost immunity, fight viruses and bacteria, and reduce respiratory infections
• Nomad Microhomes have a DIY flatpack house
• A recipe for Crockpot Butter Chicken
• A Barbara Kingsolver quote about how attending to tasks can make them "part of a good day, rather than just a rock in the road to someplace else."
• How to sew dog poop bag holders
• Clever ways to store Christmas tree ornaments
• How to deter locusts

How I'm supposed to get writing inspiration from that, I'm not entirely sure... But it tells you how varied and crazy my brain space has become!