Life in Cowtown

I’m back from sunny Cuba, and unlike my last trip it was a rather mediocre vacation, mainly due to the family choice of hotels. Travel tip – if you’re going to Varadero don’t stay at the tip of the peninsula. The marshy and boggy land spawns mosquitoes like Manitoba’s forests do, and no amount of spraying they do can diminish their staggering numbers. Also the beaches suck.  But days were still sunny and beautiful, we saw our friends and got the customary sunburn so of course it wasn’t all bad.  

While I was gone Iceland exploded in a truly cool and expensive eruption and I wanted to share a link to the coolest photos of the volcano I’ve seen to date. Here. Nothing drives home the power of nature better than events like this and it’s impossible to see the photos without appreciating just how powerful the planet is and how insignificant we are.

The garden is feeling neglected, so my to do list this week includes deeply watering my trees since we are in a drought and they could use a long soak, repotting my tomatoes into tall containers – likely pop and milk jugs one more time before they go outside, and planting peas. Since we’ve had such a warm spring I could’ve done this already, but I procrastinated so in they go now, along with lettuce. Since we’re still a month away from last frost I should still be good for time. This year I’m planting an heirloom variety that happens to be a bush pea since they climbed too well last year and were flattened by the winds into a messy jungle. I also need to rake the grass somewhere in there… busy time spring is.

P-p-p-peas

I also need to sort out a solution to hardening off my tomato seedlings. It was a pain in the butt when I only had nine plants, but this year I’ve got triple that amount and hauling them up and down the stairs is a dangerous and time consuming proposition. I’m contemplating rigging up some sort of permanent like shelter a week or so before they go outside. Anyone have any solutions to this problem? This seems like the most PITA part of the whole seed starting process.  If my interest in growing food continues (and I have a feeling it will), I may simply have to get a greenhouse and save myself the headache.

My cats rule and I love all three of them in very different ways, but the depths of my white deaf boy’s weird behavior know no bounds. He’s recently learned a new trick – locking himself in the bathroom and hollering on top of his lungs to be let out. His process is as follows: he goes into the bathroom and sniffs around for a few minutes. Then he backs into the bathroom door butt first until it closes. Then he turns around and starts yelling at it indignantly. If we’re not careful and leave a wedge of some sort he’ll spend the whole day locked up in there alternating between screaming and sleeping until we get home and let him out. He’s so special it hurts.

Anyhow it’ll be a busy week and I’m thrilled that summer feels around the corner.

I’m back. Literally and figuratively. Since working non-stop since mid-December, celebrating a birthday and taking a quick week off to jaunt over to a slightly warmer but much prettier British Columbia, I am finally easing back into my slightly boring but predictable schedule. Over the last few weeks I ate a ton of food, skied a ton of slopes, ate some very expensive jam (which I will tell you about in due course), read some great books, and in general kept myself all too occupied, which happens to be one of my least favorite things to do. I enjoy my downtime and go out of my way to plan a life where I have plenty of it.

But in the meantime I was looking at this picture of a bunny I took some weeks ago, and pondering the huge abundance of wildlife that shares with us this land called Canada. It’s kind of hard for people here to understand, but this is one of the very few places in the world where animals and humans share any kind of space voluntarily. In most countries the only birds you see are pigeons and the only animals the stray cats and dogs skulking in the streets. The rest are scarce to the point of extreme rareness and reticence.

Many people that move here cannot believe that rabbits and deer are frequent visitors within the city, fearlessly venturing on our lawns and hopping our fences. That squirrels are not only common, but cheeky, and that folks routinely name the chipmunks that drop by to pilfer bird feeders. They are astounded to hear coyotes howling at night, and see huge elk crossing the highways, never mind the foxes, ducks, geese and many other denizens of any average Canadian neighborhood. Certainly no bears have ever entered their hospitals like they did here a while back, and no animal crossings are built so that critters can cross the highways safely.

The reason animals shy away from people in most of the world is because they are prey there, and feel it keenly. The plump ducks, geese and rabbits would quickly be poached by families thankful for a free dinner, deer would be poached too, never mind the season, fish would be caught until there’s none left, and the predators would simply be exterminated. Not that North America doesn’t have those tendencies from time to time, but overall animals fare much better here than elsewhere.

It’s funny to me how we mourn the animals that have to be shot due to posing a hazard to people and whose numbers drop as we take over their habitat, but as soon as an enterprising species acclimatizes itself to living around us we call them a nuisance, like the unfortunate seagulls, pigeons and gophers. Methinks we’d be better off celebrating their adaptable natures that ensure their survival and take the occasional inconvenience they pose with humor if not grace.

Since the spring got predictably delayed by our stellar climate, all my seedlings have sprouted into a veritable jungle. All the tomatoes are approaching a foot tall, with lush, green and fragrant leaves.

Fragrant forest

The pepper has glossy deep green leaves, with supremely cool purple lines running up the stem.

Shiny pepper

Purple stem

The basil no longer looks so oddly lopsided – and he now has a friend.

Bushy basil

Baby basil sidekick

But the it’s the cucumber that stole the show, as if to rebel against the death of his comrade, and opened up a delicate flower in a glorious flush of yellow. I was as proud as a parent whose child takes a first step. I think I spoke baby talk to it. The other two cukes are budding, and I’m sure will soon explode into bloom of their own. I absolutely cannot believe that these short little plants that grew from tiny little seeds are actually growing and thriving.

First bloom!

(She seems to have no interest in eating it – unlike Alfie)

I’m sure the tomatoes cukes and peppers as the veterans in this garden would love nothing more than to see the light of day, so this week will be the week of hardening them off.   The most excellent guide I found was online and here is the link for your pleasure. 

Happy Gardening!