The Sound Around You

On the way to my writers' group Monday night, I heard an interview on CBC's As It Happens about a project at the University of Salford in Manchester called Sound Around You

The idea is to collect soundscapes from all over the world in the hope that what we hear become as important as what we see when planning living places. The site is fascinating. You can select a location from a map, or hit 'shuffle' and see where it takes you. Along with the sound, the site provides you with a panoramic view of the approximate location; also, the contributor has a small comment about why they sent the sound in. Yesterday, I listened to a train coming into a station in Paris, an accordion player in Russia, a snippet of a pub in northern England and the wind blowing through grasses in Norway. As of the interview, Canada was sadly under-represented (I think there were four). Yesterday morning, a grey, cool November day, I took my trusty laptop outside and recorded the noise outside of my house, and sent it in. You know I think the world needs more backyard chickens:

Why not take part? The link above tells you how; share your recording here, too, or post in on my Facebook page here

I can't wait to hear from you.

Keeping Up With What's Her Name

It's true. I'll confess. I am a person capable of sub-human bouts of jealousy.

I nearly swooned when I saw this : Here's the original post

When I saw this on a friend's Pinterest board, I nearly died. I have been wanting a greenhouse for ages, and have spent many hours wondering how long my children could go without shoes and boots in order to raise the funds for a greenhouse of my own. The sight of an underused greenhouse in a neighbours' yard (or worse! filled with junk!) makes me weep.

With this post, I was saved! I spent a long time scouring the neighbourhood for discarded storm windows. It just figured: I saw them all the time around here, but the very time I wanted to actually have some, there were none to be found. Thankfully, an older home down the road sold in the fall, and the new owners were putting in new WINDOWS. I loaded up the Volvo with their old windows and brought them home.

I'm not sure my husband was as happy as I was.

I gamefully got to work. I set the windows up the way I wanted them and used whatever I found in the garage to screw them together. I soon had a 4X8 foot greenhouse, miraculously the same size of my garden beds... give or take. Then, I got stumped with the roof, ran out of screws and also spare timber.

Have I also confessed that while I'm a great starter, I'm a horrible finisher?

So there it sat until today, when my husband came out to where I was digging up gladiolus bulbs and asked me to help him get something out of the garage. He'd finally had enough: he'd finished the greenhouse, added some wire for strength, and it was ready to be moved out into the garden.

This will be moved as the crops are rotated. It will also keep the chickens out of the seedlings.

Admittedly, it's not so grand or beautiful as the one above, but it's mobile, mine, and it means I can go out and buy boots for my boys.

No Trespassing

Is anybody out there?

This morning, the CBC told me the beautiful weather would continue for only a few more hours. I left the house full of dirty dishes and unmade beds and got on my bike. I took a different route from my usual one, and when the stark trees on either side of Middletown Road curled around me I stopped for a breather. I straddled my bike, leaned on the handlebars and listened to a few confused spring peepers. Somewhere in the swamp a woodpecker was hunting for breakfast. When he took to the air I recognised the lazy, loping flight of the Pileated Woodpecker.

It was a moment of perfection. It was the kind of moment that makes you nostalgic for something which, if you're honest, you probably never had in the first place. But who cares?

Then I saw the sign nailed to the tree in front of me. It was a red dot with the words 'private' emblazoned on it. Then I saw the fence strung through the waters of the Spenser Creek. But the road was empty, the woods were still, and whoever wanted to protect this bit of Beverly Swamp was nowhere to be seen.

'Private' signs have been cropping up around here a lot recently, as new neighbours move in and the community shuffles its feet. I understand the feeling; I, too, have worried when a car parks in front of my house and idles there for minutes. But for the most part, I find the 'private' signs amusing. Out here, the closest neighbour is half a kilometre away. There is a surfeit of privacy, and the winter can feel very long, indeed.

So the next time you're lost on a rural road, and have to stop to look at the map, don't be surprised if a woman looking very much like me taps on your window and asks you if you'd like a cup of coffee. And please say 'yes'.

I haven't spoken to a real person in weeks.

Fall Chores

Too cold for photography. Enter Microsoft Clipart.

I'm sitting in my kitchen working up my iron will.

In the spring, I'm out in the garden no matter the weather. I've dug out beds in the pouring rain, I've planted spinach when there's snow on the ground, I've half-frozen my fingers and bent more than my share of spades on ice-bound earth.

There's not much that can keep me out of the yard when the temperature sneaks past 10 degrees and the sun gets soft.

I've got the spring chore list for my rotation beds memorised: turn under the winter rye, phosphorus and potassium for root crops, nitrogen for the lettuce, lime for the peppers. It's a real struggle not to put in just a few warm weather crops in April, because you never know.

Fall is a different story. I've got my bulbs ready to go, that's no problem. I wait for the first frost before planting them. Before that, I'm too busy anyway: the beans are still producing, and with some protection, the tomatoes and peppers continue to ripen. The ground is dotted with squash of all colours; they are revealed in an elaborate strip-tease as the plants themselves give up the ghost. Finally, the first frost knocks off the non-hardy. I've put it off long enough. There are chores waiting.

I make a cup of tea and try to remember what they are. Compost, for sure, but not on all the beds. Lime here and there. But where? My Journal is sitting on the shelf, but the wind is blowing a gale and the kettle is about to reach the boil again. Can't forget the bulbs, but as long as they're in before the ground is actually frozen, they'll be fine. And I'm still not sure where I want them.

Now the rain which was forecast has begun, and I've just seen an article about staying off saturated garden beds. The kettle is going to boil any minute, again, and is lime really a 'green' option? I forgot to turn the compost over, and I can't remember right now where the garlic is.

This tea is not going to drink itself, you know. And we may yet have a mild December.

Demolition Gardening

They had been staring at me for four years and I knew they had to go.

Three crowded golden spirea slowly baking and dying under the library window; I had pruned them and fed them and watered them. I even named them (Tom, Dick...Harry). But deep down, revealed to no one, I nursed a secret.

I hated them.

Dick was hauled out with a shovel in the spring and moved out to the perennial bed. I confess I forgot to water him, and after the summer we had I doubt he survived my tough 'love' policy. Tom and Harry were sitting pretty, so they thought, until I found a lovely little hydrangea plant on offer (hydrangea paniculata 'Jane') at the local garden centre.

What boy doesn't get nervous when a pert young lady walks into his room? What boy won't dig his heels in when the lady is set to kick him out of bed?

Thankfully for Jane, and my back, there was help at hand. And for those of you out there contemplating the removal of something too hefty for a shovel but to wee for a professional, may I reveal my ultimate gardening tool.

Okay, so it looks puny here, but Tom's roots went deep!

I yanked those boys out and cheered over my wheelbarrow. Now they lie in the Jardin de Refuse and if they take root and grow, good for them. Jane is now sitting pretty at the front of the house and eagerly awaiting all the rock garden plants I'll be putting in next spring.

But before you go feeling sorry for Tom and Harry, they have had their revenge. Their removal knocked this onto the patio:

Adding insult to injury: Oh my, look at those weeds.

and I tripped over it and twisted my ankle. I'll be limping my way to the garden centre for mulch today.

'Jane' (wee lass on the left) rules supreme.

Jane is accompanied by some wild garlic (may as well, it'll seed on its own, anyway), catchfly and moonflower. I'll replace the Black-Eyed Susan with sedum in the spring.

Handy Gadgets: Herb Scissors

Bonus Points if they match your herbs.

It's not that I'm cheap, it's just that it never occurs to me to look for a better way of doing things. And... I hate shopping.

I dumped torn chunks of herbs in my salads and told people I was into the 'whole herb' method of cooking. The fact that I was tired of slicing my fingers open while chopping herbs with a knife was cunningly never mentioned by moi.

I am nothing if not creative in my use of excuses.

But these herb scissors are great. True to form, I had seen them in shops but reasoned that I already had a pair of scissors at home and owning two of anything just seemed silly. Finally, I found them on a clearance shelf in Chapters Indigo in Ancaster.

"Owning two of something if the second item is on offer is not silly at all!" I told my son, and brought them home.

I should have bought some years ago. No  more 'whole herb' cooking for me (unless the recipe calls for it). They are fast, efficient, easy to clean and, she blushed, she is more likely to use the herbs in the garden because of the excuse to haul out the cool herb scissors.

Be warned, however: when your 6-year-old asks to borrow the kitchen scissors, watch which pair he takes. Playdoh is not so easy to remove from between the blades.

They are available at a number of retailers.

Diversity Rocks

My kids named him 'Froggy'.

 
Here we are, beginning the second full summer in Wonderful Westover, and I have noticed something. There have been hints, of course, but now I am sure of it.

Diversity has come to Schoolhouse Rocks.

We arrived 2 years ago in the middle of August. In the midst of all the unpacking we found notes left for us by the previous owners. On a box full of canning jars: "Jessica, these were my mother's. I thought you would find a use for them". In the workshop, on a bench strewn with tools: "Paul, thank you for giving my father's tools a home, use them well". Sweet people, the ones who sold us their home, and they left us a welcome home gift basket in the immaculate kitchen, too.

But one note, on two bins full of chemical pesticides and fertilisers caused a problem: "Thought you'd find this helpful in your new country garden". Not their fault, they couldn't know that I don't use chemicals in my garden or in my house. So here I was left with 30 POUNDS of chemicals all dressed up and no where to be used.

At the same time, I mentioned to my husband that there didn't seem to be quite the number of birds and bugs in the yard as I had expected. Our Etobicoke garden was a busy, buzzy, tweety place. Here, nothing. But, there's a lot of empty farmland around us, now, I thought. I guess the birds and the bees have better places to be than close to all these people.

In the fall, we carted all those chemicals to the waste depot, paid the hazardous fee to get rid of it, and went on a hike in the Dundas Valley.

The following summer, my sons and I counted 5 different kinds of butterflies in one walk through the garden. The weeds were thriving, something was devouring all my lettuce. I planted more seeds. The second batch of lettuce did much better. We found three snakes living in the vegetable garden. There was a HUGE toad living under the rhubarb I'd brought with me from Etobicoke. The clear, clean, spotless pond left for us by the previous owners was struggling with algae. There were seven frogs living in it and my goldfish gave birth to about 1000 babies.

I looked at the pictures taken of the yard before we moved in. I looked at the garden around me. It was a disaster

This year, I am sitting on the porch of the garden cottage, writing, and counting the birds who are bathing in the stream of the little pond. Robins, finches, flycatchers, sparrows, chickadees, warblers, orioles, cedar waxwings, an indigo bunting (they're nesting in a hanging coconut we put up for a bird feeder) and some guy who won't sit still for me long enough to find him in my bird book. A pair of hummingbirds have found the beardtongue in the cottage garden. There are some hawks nearby, we see them hanging over us in the afternoon. We have a new snake this year. More new butterflies have arrived. The carrots I left in the ground last year are flowering (I want the seeds). They are like giant Queen-Anne's Lace, and are covered with caterpillars. The dill and new carrots beside them are pristine and untouched. There's not a single hole in my lettuce, or in my hostas. I'm still working on protecting the pak choy, but I think planting them among the garlic and leeks will discourage the hungry critters.

The garden doesn't look so much like a disaster to me, anymore. It's neither neat, nor tidy. There are weeds. The pond tends to the green if I don't keep on top of it. I have twitch grass growing in the irises, darn it all. The grass is being taken over by lemon balm, of all things. The yard is attempting an assault on the gravel drive. When I was weeding the cucumbers yesterday, I came face-to-face with a very young finch. It was his learn-to-fly day. He looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him. We watched each other, then he decided discretion was the better part of valour, spread his wings, and flew away. There are bees in the nigella, butterflies in the monarda, and the neighbour's chickens are coming over for a visit.

Not a disaster, just diverse