the garden path

One of the reasons for my truant behaviour of late is - of course! - the garden. Not quite the ‘dog ate my homework kind of excuse’ but not a fair one either if you stop to think about why I started this blog. So here is an update on some of my gardening activities of late - actually OUR gardening activities of late because I would still be labouring over these tasks were it not for my beloved…

Here’s my advice for anyone interested in doing the same:

Start with some cedar from taken from and sawed in the in-laws’ backyard. (Preferably while they are on vacation.)

Next, add some half-baked instructions and a dedicated partnership…

Third, read the FINE PRINT.

Lastly, dig in!

heirloom plants on sale!!!

For anyone in the Ottawa area who DOESN’T happen to have 50 or so tomato plants lying around, just ready to be planted, you can check out Greta’s Organic Gardens, opening on May 15th. Yes that’s in TWO days - just in time for the Canuck long weekend coming up.

Greta does a mail-order heirloom seed business year round but in just a few days she will open her gardens to the common folk. She’s got vegetables, aquatic plants and… fish? Not sure about that last one but her flyer claims over 100 different varieties of tomatoes and, knowing Greta, most of them will be heirloom varieties, which means you can harvest the seeds yourself in the years to come. You can find her at 299 River Road, just south of Hunt Club.

ketchup catchup

I am a slacker these days with much fewer posts on HPD. I’m also slacking on my own blog surfing though, so maybe you’re like me and you are too busy enjoying the outdoors to notice. I’m hoping to blog about some of those outdoor happenings soon, but in the meantime I will leave you with this: yesterday I counted up all my tomato seedlings that have hardened off successfully. There are 50 of them.

Call me Heinz.

buried nose

Just as I was finishing In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, Green Bean Dreams issued the Be a Bookworm Challenge for the month of May. And since my family, friends and co-workers are soon going to be sick of me saying (in a screechy-high voice no less) “Well, MICHAEL POLLAN SAYS blah blah blah…” I thought it was the perfect opportunity to pick up another book.

And WHAT IS IT? you ask. Well, let’s just say that Jeffrey Sachs has caught my eye of late.

P.S. I will be doing my DARNEDEST to get this book done in May, but… remember when I said I was abandoning all coursework this summer? Well I caved. Textbooks and Jeffrey will be in direct competition this month. OH! and gardening!!! More on that later.

magic pot

Ahhh, the magic potmaker… it’s time to update.

First off - I LOVE the magic potmaker. It’s easy, and it works, and it’s environmentally-friendly. And for those that agree, you can meet me on the Lee Valley shop site.

So, yes - the pots rock… with one small exception… I have almost NO idea what I planted in each one.

You see… I wrote the plant names ON each pot and now… well, after several waterings the ink has bled. So the magic potmaker - albeit lovely and magical, has made my seedlings somewhat mystical.

It is a small challenge, yes. But they will still grow, right? That’s all that matters for now.

sugar and spice and everything nice…

Finally! An update on the Roma tomato seedlings. Here is what my best and brightest looked like a week ago:

For those keen-eyed readers, you will wonder what is dusted on the leaves. Cinnamon! YES!!! I heard that cinnamon is good for warding damping off. And since damping off had thwarted my last round of seedlings, I plied this second round with sugar and spice and everything nice (not really, for the sugar - but doesn’t it sound nice?). So far, so good, because here is what my best and brightest looked like tonight:

WOO HOO ROMA TOMATO SEEDLINGS!

my crowning glory

Hmm, well tonight I was the crazy lady - this time at my yoga class. Honestly, this really shouldn’t be new to me anymore. Half the time I abandon having real conversations with people because I just don’t have the energy to wear the Crazy Lady Crown ALL THE TIME. But sometimes, like tonight, I blurt out my passions and beliefs, thinking that SURELY they will be well-met… HOW could anyone think otherwise?!?

Tonight it was about reverse-osmosis water systems, and gosh-darn-it! -aren’t-they-awesome!!! Well… you already know how I feel about filling up my Brita, and I’m afraid most other capitalist water filtration systems are going to fall on the same side of that equation for me. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not fighting capitalism here. There are other people who do that battle better than me, and to be perfectly honest, I’m not really anti-capitalism. More like anti-BIG business and governments that support them.

So, back to reverse-osmosis. SURE reverse-osmosis may be absolutely awesome from a health perspective, as I tried to tell me fellow pretzels in tonight’s class, but if it is then we should be lobbying our town to provide us with that system! That comment met some downward dogs with raised eyebrows.

“OUR TOWN CAN’T BE TRUSTED TO DEFINE HEALTHY,” the sun-saluters told me.

“Then talk to the town and tell the town what it should be doing,” I said, “This is how the political system works.”

“No, it won’t work,” the Warrior Ones answered somewhat snootily, “They don’t listen.”

I sighed into my upward dog and wondered once again, how words had transformed me from someone with worthwhile ideas into a crazy lady who has pushed the bar too far. On my way home, I wished that I had thought to remind them that we need to push for changes that will benefit ALL, not just the ones who can afford things like reverse-osmosis systems. But perhaps I would have met even more resistance with that thought.

After all, I’m just a crazy lady who ties herself up into pretzels.

why… I’m blushing!

I do love ranting, raving, pondering and plundering through this blog, so it is SUPER rewarding to have others take note of it. I was touched to get this award from Deborah over at From Here to Eternity:

I’ve been thinking about who to pass this on to - as I understand that’s the custom - and I’ve come up with a list of some of my favourites. Now I think I am supposed to pass it along to ten others, but that doesn’t seem quite as special to me as acknowledging my genuine favourites, and I’m a rulebreaker, so here goes. I’m passing this award on to my favourite breakout bloggers - even though some may not really be breakout, somehow they are for me, if only because of my recent discovery of them:

• Hello Trees
• Unstuffed
• I Wet My Plants
• Naked Tomatoes

Thank you all for making my blogosphere that much richer!

food glorious food

In case you haven’t noticed, food is ON the agenda these days… the international agenda. You’d have to stick your head in the sand to miss out on the rising food prices and food riots around the world. People are starting to question agriculture and food policies – and that’s a good thing because those policies ain’t working so good these days.

I don’t have all the answers. No one does. And that’s why people need to get out there and TRY TO UNDERSTAND what’s happening. So, read, read, read, and read some more!! Try publications from the Earth Policy Institute, like this one. Or pay attention to pundits, like Michael Pollan, on subjects like this. Be THANKFUL for your food, and consider making alternative diet choices. And last - but most definitely not least - seek out farmers and food producers. Talk to them and listen carefully to what they’re saying.

Food is not aplenty.

P.S. For Ottawa-area folk, here’s one place to start paying attention: check out an upcoming talk organized by the National Farmers Union: Farm Leaders Speak Out on a Globalized Food System. Colleen Ross will discuss food sovereignty, and Ubali Guerrero and Miguel Colunga will talk about how international trade agreements affect global agriculture. It’s happening on May 1^st, 7pm, at Union Hall – just outside of Almonte.

battlefields

This spring, my beloved - white knight that he is - had decided to do battle with the dandelions in our lawn. Now, THANK GOODNESS he is not a black knight who might use pesticides. Instead, he practices traditional warfare, sparring with a dandelion weeder. Otherwise, this fair maiden would likely leave him! Last night, he engaged in a lengthy session that resulted in this bloodshed:

The prisoners might have walked off, had it not been for our heroic warden.

However, despite my sworn pledge of allegiance, in the middle of the battle I stole onto the field and grabbed the prisoners. I knew there was a better way. So I rescued as many as I could and brought them inside for amnesty.

Unbeknownst to the two soldiers, I cleaned up the wounded and invited them for dinner. They joined us incognito, camouflaged in between other greens.

My white knight would agree that our salads were simply divine last night.