Garden denizens

Using willow twigs as plant stakes is fine, but what they are really great for is for making things. Things like baskets or, in the case of my garden, birds!

One day after seeing willow baskets in the greenhouse that had been made by someone to hold their hanging plants, I began thinking about how the pliable twigs could lend themselves to other uses, such as for sculpture. I thought that I probably could create a bird for my garden by winding willow twigs together. So, I had a lovely walk through the woods one evening with a pair of pruning shears and a large bag to collect my twigs and then came home to spend a fun weekend on the couch surrounded by twigs, pliers and thread (which I used sparingly and only for the really ornery twigs that wouldn't stay in place).

What do you think? Here is bird #1(for which I was happy that it simply looked bird-like):

and bird #2 (I love her feet!):

and bird #3 (He's a bit more difficult to spot when visitors try to find all four birds.):and bird #4 (For some reason, it's this one's belly that I'm most proud of.):

I ran out of both my willow branches and my weekend after finishing the hummingbird but still intend to get some more branches for a big raven or owl to perch up on the top of the frame and maybe also have a go at creating a squirrel who could run along the edge. We'll see about that (as I created these birds more than a month ago and have yet to make more) but for now, I like the unique contribution they make to our garden. I've also been asked to do a workshop on making willow birds and may do so, but secretly, I like the idea that only my plot has them in it.

Welcome to our garden!

Naturegirl (who truly takes amazing photos) recently posted about the trials and tribulations of gardening in small spaces (i.e. a small shady backyard) and I realized that I've not shown any photos of our garden space here in the far north. With 24 hours of sunlight each day for almost two months straight, plants grow wonderfully, so long as they are watered and warm -conditions which an attentive gardener and the shelter of a greenhouse can provide.

I'll save the photos of our sad, sad looking balcony plants for our home archives and take you all on a tour of our community greenhouse where ManNorth and I were fortunate enough to have rented a small plot for our own garden this spring and summer. These plots are a hot commodity in NorthernTown and we missed getting a plot last summer by only a week after our arrival last year. Although we were on a waiting list, no spaces opened up for us until this spring.

We began working our plot at the end of May and had planted our seeds and seedlings that we had started indoors (in small flats and empty buttermilk cartons, of all things) by the beginning of June. Working the plot initially meant breaking up the somewhat frozen soil, mixing in lots of compost and watering, watering and watering again.

Here's what our plot looked like then:

The tall bushy plant on the left is actually a tomato plant we had started indoors almost a year ago. Since it started producing flowers and fruit in the winter, we figured it had earned the right to join the garden, irregardless of its tall, leggy twisted shape. The plants in the foreground to its right are some of the pepper plants that we had also planted the summer before. These had begun flowering and fruiting under our grow lights in the winter and were still producing new flowers. About halfway back and in this order from the front to the rear of the plot are the tomato, bean and cucumber plants we had started in milk cartons full of soil. The twigs poking up all over the place to stake and support all the plants are willow switches that we gathered up from piles cut and discarded by road crews, clearing the snow from roadsides all winter. (Unfortunately, the twigs were all still alive and not only put down roots, but flowered and grew leaves. To avoid a garden full solely of willow bushes next year, we've pulled out most of the twigs and have stripped the leaves from the few that remain.)

As you can see from the photo of the greenhouse below, we'd gotten a bit of a jump on all the other gardens.

This is what the greenhouse looks like now, only six or seven weeks later:

The blue barrels, which act as water reservoirs, are filled in the spring when the pipes are still frozen by a greenhouse member who is also a volunteer firefighter (as all the town firefighters are). He'd arrive with the fire truck and hose and pump water from the truck to fill all the water barrels for us. Since the pipes have thawed, garden hoses are used to fill the barrels and gardeners use small green watering cans to then move the water from the reservoirs to their gardens. This is an organic greenhouse, so all members agree to leave the Miracle Grow (TM) at home and fertilize only with organic compost or organic fertilizers. The same goes for pesticides, although I've yet to see more than the occasional spider or fly in the greenhouse so pesticides aren't at all necessary.

This scarecrow above, planted in a communal garden and next to a disfunctional fountain hidden in some rocks, is not only pointing directly at our plot (now sporting a dark brown wooden frame), it is wearing a face I sewed for it, an old purple shirt I no longer needed and my old field hat (Hey now, no comments are needed from the peanut gallery: it was hot, sunny and for my field work I was literally bending over plants in cow pastures for 14 hours a day. The hat was wonderful). The pants were already a part of the scarecrow which had been created by someone else and then sadly neglected since last year. I'd grown tired of stepping over it as it lay on a walkway in the spring, sans head, and decided that I'd spruce it up a bit.

Here's our plot as it looks now, complete with a frame that ManNorth and I built and stained.

And from another angle:
The lettuce and swiss chard are in the front (I've had to cut back the swiss chard after they began bolting and so they are slightly hidden by the lettuce) and our enthusiastically growing zucchini plants are hiding the peppers that are still flowering and fruiting behind and under them. The tomato plants have grown almost as tall as the frame.

Here are our greens close up:

(On the left is a row of parsley, basil, thyme and onions)

And from the back, here are our cucumber plants (which have yet to produce more than one 2cm long cucumber):

I planted sweet peas at the edges of the frame near the middle of the plot simply for the visual pleasure of them and for their gorgeous smell!

Above are our volunteer peas which must have grown from seed dropped from the garden in our plot the year previous. We didn't weed them out and they now tower above our beans and cucumbers. I don't think that they are snow peas but if one catches them before they get too big, the husks are also edible and somewhat sweet.

I've many garden photos and will post a few more soon, especially of some unique decorations that now populate our garden...

A belated spring post

As I've missed writing about the arrival (and departure) of spring here in Northern Town, I've some catching up to do. The next few posts will try to remedy that as well as throw in some current news now and again.

So, without further adieu, waaaaaay back in April, when the landscape looked like this photo below (taken by ManNorth on one of his regular super-hero flights to check out the changing landscape) and community members were still building quinzees

and spruce bough shelters during ice fishing excursions, we were busy preparing...

...for our garden in the community greenhouse. We purchased a few small plastic flats to start our seedlings. The beans got off to a roaring start while the lettuce, tomatoes, swiss chard and various herbs took their time. Meanwhile, the peppers that we started last summer and which had begun producing fruit finally began to ripen. We realized that we had mistaken hot pepper seeds for bell peppers eeds (we saved both from fresh peppers we'd purchased at the grocery store) but were, and are, happy to have such festive looking and tasty hot fruit.

Daylength at the end of April was noticeably longer and already longer than most days much further south. (Of course, relative to a month of no direct sunlight in the winter, this may not mean much to any of you.) The photo of the peppers and tray of seedlings was taken at 11pm and illuminated by outdoor light. This is what the sky looked like outside at the same time as the sun slowly set.

Next post(s), stories from May.

Monday Update

It's been a busy week and a half since I began my new job. There were days of meetings, a few deadlines to meet and reports to begin and finish and despite my rookie status, I think that I managed admirably and have a few compliments from my supervisor in support of this. The pace should slow down a bit for me this next week although I'll be working overtime a few hours each day to bank time so that I can devote them to completing my Prairie Project without too large a pinch on my pocketbook. There'll be more to say as I familiarize myself with my new position and many new adventures to report on as my schedule unfolds this spring and summer.

In other news, ManNorth is working on his own blog entry as I write this and we hope to have his inaugural post up by tomorrow night or Wednesday. You wouldn't believe how hard it's been to get him to finally post but he's in a fine mood to rant, er, I mean, to write. I'll let his post speak for itself and only add that it's been fun being with him as he writes and chuckles to himself now and then. Check back in soon and look for it.

Finally, and I admit, this isn't terribly newsworthy but it's better than reporting what I ate for lunch (a can of peas eaten out of the can with a spoon), the tomato plants that I started from seed last summer have decided that they'd better attempt to reproduce before they wither entirely away and I have a single ripe cherry tomato ready to harvest. We'll try to share it between ManNorth and me but there's not much to go around. Thankfully there are 7 more tiny tomatoes still green and ripening and some new blossoms just opening.

Our bell pepper plants have also finally begun to produce fruit and have stopped dropping all their blossoms. Curiously, all of the new peppers are long and thin instead of big and round, but we're not complaining as we're just glad they're producing.

In a month or so, we'll plant a flat of new vegetables and hope that they'll be ready for transplanting to our garden plot at the greenhouse in May. We're confident that with all the summer sun, we'll get a much better harvest than from our wee apartment veggies under their small grow lights.