Mid-Summer Grass

Rain coming

Rain at last!  Not just a passing thunderstorm thudding down on my poor pea plants but a gentle English rain falling all night and followed by a still, damp day.  On Sunday we'd been sitting around trying to remember when it had last rained - nobody could.  So let's hope this helps the farmers who are having to sell off stock cheaply because there is no grass to feed them.  I cut the hay on my small fields with a neighbor, with me driving the mower and the raker but not the baler - too complicated and long for me.  We got 90-100 bales which Bart reckons is about half  what he usually gets, the grass is so dry.  We sold it to a local horse farmer who uses his teams of Belgian crosses to haul wood out of his bush during the winter.

Bart bales the hay...

... but not many this year

      This weather has given me new respect for grass, not just the hoped-for ability of my poor lawn to recover (how you Brits would laugh at my brittle, sandy wasteland) but at the beauty and variety of the grasses in my vegetable plot.  

Only Chicory survives in my 'lawn'

There's the Timothy grass, planted with clover by my predecessor for his horse, with its tight head and beautiful dark rose stalks, a quiet pale grass which must have been grown for golf courses as it sets off parallel to the ground putting out secondary roots as it goes and a strange, heavily tasseled grass that may have been the precursor for maize.  The wild oats sway delicately.  There were swaths of delicate bronze grass in the field and, in the spring, my all time favorite - little blue-eyed grass, an adorable shy thing with sea-green leaves and purple flowers with yellow centers. 

Timothy grass...

... maize-like grass

and the beautiful blue-eyed grass

      My soil is a pitifully thin sandy dust, with stones, so weeding is easy.  The only things that have done well so far are beans, squash, cilantro and zucchini but I'm hoping this rain will put new heart into the garden.  I've planted cucumber, woad, dill, carrots, peanuts, fennel, cantaloupe (in the greenhouse), black-eyed susan, forget-me-nots, green, acorn and spaghetti squash, cinderella pumpkin, tomatoes - cuban, broad ripple, black krim and tom thumb, marigolds, arugula, cat nip, perennial sweet pea, spinach, sunflowers, watermelon and three different kinds of corn.  Of most of them there is no sign. 

Bee buries itself in squash flower...

so much pollen, see on leaf below flower

     

      My corn is up but no cobs showing and the peanuts are looking good but I understand that you have to beat the raccoons to them.  I've lost the marigolds to who knows what.  Last evening I was sitting in the garden ogling a seed guide for next year - yes, the bugs have gone sufficiently to let me do that for the moment - and stood up when it was too dark to read.  Timmy was frozen in hunting position on the picnic table so I followed his eye-line to a white-tailed deer eating my sweet potatoes.  I pointed out to her that I'd bought those plants, I'd planted them, admired them, watered them and didn't think she had any right to them - so go!  Without hurry she turned and leapt the fences with a grace befitting a Grand National runner.  Good thing, or I'd have set Timmy on her.

Ready for the hunt...

...so put the sweet potato down!

     I've divided up the garden - which is far too huge for me in my first year - into little plots roughly 4m square, 40 of them taking about a third of the tilled space.  The top soil is only 6 cm deep so by banking up the beds I hope to double it and, using the weeds as mulch, keep the damp in.  The walks between the beds are composed of weeds so it looks like a turtle shell with the bare plates being the beds and the lush joints the weeds.  Long learning curve.  Lots of people have box beds for their vegetables but it was too much for this spring.  Maybe I'll build some over the winter.  In the meantime compost bins must be built and negotiations with the local horse owners increased.

Lush paths!

Along with tractor mending and garden bed building, I've got another wasp nest to empty.  A neighbor says that WD-40 shot in at night gets rid of them so I'll suit up and try the ones in my barn this evening.  There's a big door at the back, near the stable, which I don't often open but,  wanting to put a few bales in there, I slid it quickly across only to find myself in a haze of wasps.  The stings really hurt for a few minutes and then itch madly for about two days - they'll have to go but I'll leave the nest since I believe that deters others?  I finally did get Jesus down from the cross at the front of the property despite his guardian wasps - he was very heavy in a glass box.  I put him in my barn, aware that if he disappeared within three days I would have some serious reconsidering to do.   However, my French-Ontario neighbor has asked for him for her driveway entrance so I was saved any theological deliberations.  I'd already given her my statues of little girls in bonnets sitting on benches, my baskets of solar powered flowers, that the previous owners had left and now I will see Jesus nailed to a tree every time I leave home.   Still, I'm glad he found a welcome.

The resorting to WD-40, rather than some lethal insecticide, was precipitated by a wasted journey to my local hardware store only to find it had closed 15 minutes earlier.  This was very annoying; it's a twenty minute drive on back roads to Combermere - which is my nearest metropolis with a hardware store, general store, laundromat and boat launch so to do any real shopping I have to drive to Barry's Bay, twenty minutes in the other direction.  I knew the hardware store in B's Bay was still open (it was 15:00hrs on a Saturday - does that strike you as a responsible hour to close a hardware store?) but I wasn't going to spend ?? on gas and another hour driving around after poison, so set off for home.  But I took a different route to visit the restored pioneer church at Rockingham, now just the deserted church, a store converted to a house and an old farm - but once a thriving community of Brits who arrived in the 19th century to carve out a new life from the bush.  

Interior of Rockingham Church

Exterior of Rockingham Church

Children's headstones, with lambs

The church is lovely, as plain as could be, with a tiny organ, lectern and pulpit - I'm so glad that hard working people saved it from decay.  So many of the one-roomed school houses, tiny churches and log barns have gone or are disappearing.  The entire, neglected history of this area after the arrival of Europeans is there to be found by scratching your nail across the surface of the land but it is so biodegradable that it will disappear in a decade if action is not taken.  My own land is criss-crossed by stone fences built as the land was cleared but they are delicate and easily destroyed, being just piles of stones rather than walls.  They represent days and of back-breaking labour, sweat in the hot sun digging stones from the fields, labour of horses pulling the flat beds across the fields, hopes of rich yields of wheat in a new land.  And people are selling them off for pretty stones in the city!  Round here people still live close to the bone and can't believe that gardeners will pay by the pound for the rocks they hate.  But these fences are as archaeologically precious as medieval plough marks in England; they are the skeleton of struggle in a land that doesn't pay to be farmed.

       We're all focused on the Olympic Games, attention turning east to follow the fortunes of young athletes agog with excitement in London.  It's great to see the old city looking so good.  I'll miss the opening ceremony as I'm going to help out a friend on Friday with her junk (ahem, antique) shop in Maynooth - rather surprisingly the gay capital of our area.  It's a lively little town about 40 minutes away and she likes painting en plein air so I look after her shop while she paddles round lakes looking for painterly scenes.  It's quite good fun with all the visiting tourists and I enjoy the little town with its farmer's market, pottery, intriguingly complete general store and excellent cafe with GOOD COFFEE.  I emphasize this as there are only two places within 150kms serving good coffee - the other being 'Rural Roots' in Bancroft.  You don't know how important sitting in a cafe with good coffee is until it disappears - savor your Starbucks!

It's all very well sitting here chatting to you but there are pressing things to do - I must check if the toad who hides from the heat in the old stump is making the most of this rain,  there are baby flycatchers to check up on in their nest under the eaves of the chapel (Go, flycatchers, Go) and I want to take a water spray to my neighbor.  She's found that spraying your marigolds with a mild mix of Tabasco and water gets rid of the bugs and I've found a hand-held pressure spray for her.  You can see that my day is filled with urgent tasks and I therefore have good reasons for not writing to you more frequently.  Not.  Sorry for my bad correspondence but I think of you often.  And miss you.  I hope the sun shines for the Olympics and that they are a great success, both to your team and ours!  Most of all my they be fair and friendly.

Toad (centre front) hiding in old stump

Take care and we'll talk again soon.

Lots of love.

(p.s. the American spelling, which still jars a little, is because it's not my computer)

Happy Canada Day! Bonne fête du Canada, tout le monde

If you're not on Canadian Soil - or Trafalgar Square, London, UK (shanghaied by the Canadians every July 1st for a madcap experience of street hockey, maple leaf tattoos and mounties with plastic horse) - you might be unaware that today is Canada Day, celebrated with pomp and circumstance in Ottawa and picnics and fireworks by the rest of us.  It's not an independence day, with the traces of bitterness, guilt, loss and triumph that these inevitably include, just a jolly day out.  Canada's only fight for independence has been against the Americans in the war of 1812-14 which is being celebrated this year by both sides.  The British/Canadian/First Nations fought off an invasion force in a series of battles in the south of Ontario (then Upper Canada), along the St Lawrence from Montreal east and deep into America.  Who won the war?  Well, the Americans claim to have done but since their avowed aim was the invasion of Canada and its absorption into the United States ('a mere matter of marching' Jefferson) and we are still free then I think we can safely say that we did.  Who lost?  That's a lot easier to say - the First Nations.  Tecumseh, the Shawnee inspirational leader and orator had joined Brock in defending Canada on the basis that the British would secure by treaty the lands to the south and east of the Great Lakes for the confederation of First Nations but by the time peace was signed in Ghent both Tecumseh and Brock were dead and the agreement conveniently forgotten.  Sorry, I got a bit carried away - but Happy Canada Day anyway!

Local river with beaver dam

      Second half of the year and headed for shorter days - who can believe it?  And I've been here nearly 6 months.  I beginning to feel at home but still have much to get to grips with, not least all the mechanical 'things'.  I've never been confident working with engines despite my father's best efforts - he insisted we learn how the internal combustion engine worked before he would teach us to drive, then we would 'know how to drive properly'.  All I now ask of a car is that it start when I turn the key and keep running until I get where I want to go - not that it look pretty, invoke awe or inspire jealousy.  In return I will take it regularly to a mechanic who nurtures it and try not to drive it badly.  A simple transaction.  However, it's impossible to avoid mechanical interaction where so much machinery is in everyday use and I'm not making a very good fist of it.  I've been naming the months after their main impression so March was 'The Month of Waiting', April 'The Glimmer of Chartreuse'.  June has defined itself most enthusiastically as 'The Month of Things Breaking Down'.  To be fair, my wheelbarrow had already soldered its broken wheel on with rust and old concrete, defying all efforts to remove it but there was absolutely no need for the tractor to recklessly explode or for the mower to presume that it no longer needed to lower the cutting deck to a point where it might be useful.  And then the car starting shuddering at increasing and unpredictable intervals and my computer packed up as the motherboard parted company with the rest of the machine (always blame the mothers, I say).  With one final, irritating, totally unnecessary, peevish action my blender ground to a halt on its first outing while I was making a particularly innocuous batch of hummus.  At least it's quiet at my house.


      I've spent the day trying to get Jesus down from the cross.  There's a crucifix at my gateway, the previous owners of the property being Franciscans, and after long consideration I've come to the conclusion that my strong Protestant upbringing cannot easily reconcile itself to a tortured body being the best way to greet people.  So I decided it was time he came down.  But I'd reckoned without the small but very determined wasps who had built a nest under his right armpit.  After much reconnoitering, some delicate balancing at the top of a ladder while under sustained attack and a final  lunge with a long pole, I succeeded in dislodging the nest but by now our fiery friends were in such a rage - who will not fight to defend their home? - that I've retreated indoors and will see if Jesus has been deserted by all his friends and is ready to descend or whether the catholic/protestant wars will continue.

a few hours later...


      Well, it's 1-0 to the wasps.  They stood by him better than his previous friends but I've go the top off the shrine before I was driven away and I hope the rain shower we've just had will persuade them they should find a drier place to rebuild.  I guess there's only about 20 wasps but they learnt fast.  I took my frustration out on the axle of the wheelbarrow and after much banging and clattering have got the axle out and am ready to fit the wheel.  No axle grease.  I hope the home improvement (DIY) stores are open Monday - it's a national holiday.  When you move countries axle grease is the sort of thing that doesn't come with you.  I remember the tins my father had of it, a golden, thick worm of grease that oozed through the centre of a wide ring you pushed down into a larger tin.  It's probably in a plastic tube now.

Friends Bev and Johan visit from steamy Toronto

      Weather wise, it's been warm and sunny here and rather dry meaning I have to water the garden more than I like - it takes about 2hours to get round all the beds and I am beginning to see the advantages of the regimented gardens I see around.  At least the straight beds allow of leakage pipes being laid in the troughs.  And it doesn't really seem to be working; the only beds that are really going for it are the corn/beans/squash - the old magic.  The wildlife seems to be keeping itself to itself although two of my dear friends came to visit me from Toronto - great to see you Bev and Johan.  The lack of wildlife might also have something to do with the hunting proclivities of one of the cats, Timmy.  Present score 2 American chaffinches, 3 chipmunks and 4 red squirrels - they all love the shelter of the stone fences but it provides excellent cover for a marauding moggie.

One less chipmunk...

... and the guilty party (the one not looking guilty)

And something is foraging on the young shoots in the garden overnight - not slugs or snails as, like earthworms, they are invasive species in Canada and haven't made their way to my isolated lot yet.  They've been brought into most suburban areas by bought plants and are invading the bush.  I did come upon one jolly fellow the other evening, bowling along the path through the bush at the back of the property.  I could swear he was humming to himself and was certainly oblivious of a curious person standing in his way taking photographs.  Eventually, when I thought he might walk into me, I had to address him, 'Evening, my friend.  Out hunting?'  With that he shot about a foot into the air and scuttled into the nearest bush.  I walked past quickly, wishing to disturb his evening stroll as little as possible, but I guess porcupines simply don't have to watch out for other path users.

Good night and, if you're one of the lucky Canadians who don't have to get up to an alarm tomorrow, sleep late and well.


xx  Talk soon


p.s.  Apologies for this being a day late but the server went down just as I was about to add the images to the blog, confirming my theory that the present mechanical breakdown conspiracy has gone digital and global.

Blackfly Days

They arrived at 13:00hrs on Friday 11^th May, the dreaded Black Fly menace that haunts the early summer of Eastern Canada.  For those of you unfamiliar with these little biting varmints, I’ll explain that the only way to be outdoors is to coat yourself in citronella, tuck your trousers into your socks, wear a bug-proof net shirt, complete with head cover and generally end up looking this:

Since the net shirt is usually black it hints at a fetish garment for a perverted bee keeper and the little devils still manage to get inside resulting in a futile attempt to squash the 5mm bug between finger and thumb while they flit, out of focus, between your glasses and your eyes.  For such tiny things they sure have big jaws.  Having spent the winter unable to go out without a ten minutes robing session with boots, hat with ear flaps, padded coat and gloves, it was a pleasure to be able to saunter out the last few weeks without a care.  But now it’s a production again – citronella round face, wrists and ankles, trousers tucked into socks, hat and net shirt with gloves pulled inside the sleeves.  This is fine if you intend to spend two hours gardening but, if you just want to get the wash in, laziness can result in a dash to the clothesline, a flapping dance to get the unfolded laundry bundled into the basket, clothes pins flying, and a sprint back to the house, all accompanied by a chant of ‘Do please go away you nasty little flies’ or something a mite spicier.

 But there are much more interesting things astir.  An extended friends and family group of seven (not that one) came to stay this weekend and, rising early, as three year olds will, small son Finn attempted to distract his father from his iphone.  ‘Black bum-bum, Daddy’.  ‘Hmm?  What d’you say?’ mumbled Kris sleepily.  ‘Daddy, black bum-bum’ and there she was, a female black bear eating the grass on the far side of the pasture, underneath the poplars.  One by one we staggered out of bed to gaze at our shiny black visitor pottering up and down for 10 minutes or so who eventually climbed the fence and disappeared.  Later we went to inspect her tarry, black scat.  Very exciting.  (We thought she was female because she looked to weigh about 100-150ibs.)  ‘It’s like Disney out here – woodpeckers hammering the trees, chipmunks leapin g over the stones and now bears wandering about in the field’, muttered Kris while taking this lovely shot.

And the hummingbirds – they’ve come!  Jenny thought she saw one Friday evening so we put out the feeder on Saturday morning and, sure enough, within a quarter of an hour there they were – at least three of them, two with the lovely red breasts and one more dowdy, busily chasing each other away from the feeder.  Hummingbirds are unusual in that the female is more decorative than the male, apparently.  Last night the bothersome racoon knocked down the bird seed feeder and drained the hummingbird feeder without damaging it.  How?  Still, I don’t want to have to wash and refill the feeders every morning so they will have to come in at night – which means I need to be up early for the poor hummingbirds.  This morning, as I was carrying the refilled feeder out, I heard what I took to be a large bee zooming up on the other side of the feeder and turned it slowly to see if I was being attacked by a hornet.  There she was – the most beautiful jewel of a hungry hummingbird drinking out of the feeder as I held it, speechless, in my hand.  After about 30 seconds, which is a considerable part of a hummingbird’s life, she spun off out of sight leaving me with my mouth open, too stunned to do anything but mutter ‘How fantastic.  How wonderful.’ for a few minutes.  How did they make it up from Mexico?  Thanks to Kris and John for the amazing photos.

Well, the winds blowing a little so there may be some lessoning of the black fly menace.  I’d better get back to the garden before the mosquitoes wake up as well.

Hope all’s well with your life and we’ll talk soon.  Bye.

New to the North

Raking leaves in March - just a bit of snow left.

In January 2012 I moved from the UK to Eastern Ontario, not all that far from Ottawa but in the highlands.  I bought a small hobby farm, around 60 acres - 50 of them bush - and hope to settle down to gardening and general maintenance.  Who knows, even a little farming.

I knew it would be different but possibly not just How Different and just How Much there would be to learn.  These things include woodstoves, all the different birds that visit my feeders, tractors with PTO's, the plants in the bush, where to buy wood, what you can plant when - and that doesn't even scrape the surface of who you should contact to find out about whatever and where to shop.  I've lived in Canada before so it's not totally new but things have changed, particularly the government!, and I've never lived quite so rurally which presents its own problems.

I've started this blog to try to keep in communication with my friends (I hope many of them will visit) as I'm finding it really difficult to write to everyone individually as frequently as I would like.  I hope this will fill in a few details between letters.

First the land - it's a little farm that, even when the first owners dug it out of the bush - probably between 1850 and 1900 - must have, pretty obviously, not been able to support a large family.  The soil is rocky and dusty and there is no natural water source on the property - though now there are two wells.  Someone worked hard to 'pick rocks' from the earth and stack them, some as big as a small car, at the edges of the field - the well know 'stone fences' of this part of the province.  On top they piled the unburnable, useless for building, stumps of the trees and these have mutated into wonderful flowing, grey sculptures.  A large field encircling the house and barn has been subdivided into hayfields and grass - I'm going to need that sit-down mower.  Immediately behind the house is a rather threatening dug garden, threatening because it is four times the size of my UK allotment and I realise it could revert to weeds the instant the Canadian summer hits its stride.

For UK readers I should explain that Canadian winters, while they are exhilarating and beautiful in their harshness, really don't know when to bugger off and stick around a bit too long.  Then it's summer and the corn is as high as your pussycat's eye and you've already lost the weed battle.  But I can't complain, Canada has welcomed me gently with a very mild winter which was late to arrive and left early - in fact it never really got into its stride with temperatures only hitting about 20 below on a few occasions.  By mid-March the snow had gone which was very hard on the ski people; the hills usually staying open until the end of April.  It was nice to have an early Spring but when Canada is not cold in the winter you know there are real problems with the environment.  Maybe it was a blip.

(Trivia alert - Ottawa is the second coldest capital city, only beaten by Ulaanbaatar.  No wonder it has the world's longest skating rink - the Rideau Canal)

Well, I'd better wrap up for today and get on with my chores - feeding the birds, lighting the stove etc. and cleaning the house as I think I have a friend, with dog, coming to stay for a few days.  The dog's very lovely but the cats aren't too impressed.  My first job is to mend the sunflower bird feeder that the squirrel has tipped over for the second day running.  This results in a feeding frenzy beneath the soft maple that houses the feeders.  Earlier in the year it was American goldfinches and chickadees but at the moment there are about 20 grackles, five mourning doves, a red-winged blackbird and his missus, 3 starlings and about 10 bluejays.  They frighten off the small birds and the downy woodpecker, who is pretty fiesty but doesn't have the weight.  The hairy won't be moved.  So I'd better get the food out for the little birds while they still have time to tank up for a cold night.  It only gets down to about freezing now but, if you only weigh an ounce (or 28gms), that's cold enough to finish you off if you're hungry.  Gotta run.  Bye for now.