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...

Weather in our neck of the woods

A few days ago Grammarphile left me a comment asking about the weather up here.

In short, yes, we get to wear shorts, but only shortly. ;)

It is currently about 11 degrees celsius outside and given the cloud cover, today's high is likely not going to reach above about 22 C, at around 6pm or so.

Last night when I rode my bike home from the greenhouse, it was cool enough that my jeans and jean jacket were comfortable but I could have done just fine with just the jeans and my T-shirt.

A few weeks ago for about 4 or 5 days, we had temperatures in the high 20s which felt sweltering compared to the usual refreshingly cool temperatures the rest of the summer.

Incidentally, the sun will set over Northern Town for the first time in four days, although only for a few minutes! With some increase in the amount of dimness and darkness at night, the temperatures will continue to drop further and further each night so that my morning walk to work is likely to continue involving a light jacket. (We had our first snowfall in the third week of September last year so summer is rather short. Fall celebrations start happening in August!)

So that was the (relative) short of it. Here's the long of it:

For comparison, here are the annual temperatures in Windsor, Ontario where I grew up:

A May Post

No time this morning for a story so here are two photos I took in the middle of May.

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.

Summer Ruminations -A word from ManNorth

I have often said that the North is a fine place to live but I wouldn’t want to work there, for when one works the mind is focused on work and little else. Seldom do we ever take time to step back from our personal grindstone and, according to Keats, “look into the fair and open face of Heaven”. In the cities far to the south I have met people who have never left their place of birth, who find no need to step outside their safety zones, who have built for themselves a wall so high that even if they had the inclination to do so, could not climb over; who look but do not see. Many people look, but few ever see; there is a subtle difference here. For seeing is akin to experiencing, and when you experience something, you understand it more fully and completely. If one spends all of life in a city, then the full extent of one’s experience is limited to that city. In a city, any city, one sees houses with televisions and central heating, grocery stores and hospitals, cars and trains. There is nothing at all wrong with that, of course, other than the fact that one’s experiences will be extremely limited. One’s worldview, one’s belief system will be skewed. But then believing is seeing.
People in Winnipeg believe that they live in the coldest city in Canada; this claim has been supported by the news networks too, hence the nickname “Winterpeg”. Yet all it would take is for one to do a little research before they see that this isn’t true. (For those who don’t have the time for this, Yellowknife is the city with the coldest winters, with an average nighttime temperature during December, January and February of -29.9 degrees Celsius. It is also the coldest city with a mean annual temperature of -5.4 degrees Celsius. Winnipeg, in fact has the sunniest winters and a mean annual temperature of +2.6.) But, even if this myth were true, the full extent of most people’s outdoor experience is standing at the bus stop for 20 minutes while rushing from one heated building to another.
It saddens me to see how urbanized we have become, and Canada is one of the most urbanized nations in the world. In our pursuit of happiness, our quest for the good life, we have left something behind, some essential part of us, our ability to see. And to fill this gap we have surrounded ourselves with icons of our own creation.
But, lest the reader think that I am being overly critical of the urban dweller, allow me to really stick my neck out and say that no more is this lack of seeing apparent than in the north. Case in point, years ago while I was preparing to leave on a six month winter expedition along the west coast of Hudson Bay, a young teacher stopped me in Churchill, Manitoba, offering me her insight and expertise. I listened kindly for a moment to her words of wisdom, but when I had asked about her experience outdoors, she said rather emphatically, “Well I live here!” Yes, I thought, you live here, in this house with a television, central heating, a grocery store and a hospital next door. You have a train to bring in supplies and daily jet service should you need it. You have all the amenities of the south. You also have a mortgage, 3 children to raise, car payments and utilities and in order to pay for all this you work. I have witnessed this same scenario unfold numerous times during my travels in the north, the most recent of which was just the other day. A colleague of mine was talking about the weather and summed up by saying to me, “You haven’t lived here long enough to know the weather like I do. I live here. I know.” While it is true that he has lived here longer than I have, what he failed to see is that weather is a global phenomenon, that the weather in Northern Town is not unique, that I am older than him and therefore I have seen more “weather” than he has. He could not see this. He lives in a house with a television, central heating, a grocery store and a hospital next door. He has two monster trucks and a dog, a hefty mortgage and bills to pay. In order to afford this he has to work. His house may be located in the north but he is really living in the south, with all the accoutrements of modern life.
The north of course is changing, has changed. It is no longer the Old North of my youth where a man could truly disappear for a year or more. The advent of modern transportation and telecommunications has shrunk the north. These days one wouldn’t think of traveling on the land without a GPS and Satellite phone. The north of today is filled with big screen televisions and satellite dishes, cell phones and the World Wide Web, cultural centres with weight rooms, swimming pools and saunas, hockey rinks and racket ball courts. In the stores you can find cans of pop and bags of chips as well as the latest fashions, and teens can walk the streets with their hats on backwards and iPods in their ears oblivious to the sounds of Nature. Just like in the cities.
We humans are cultural animals and we bring our culture with us where ever we go. This give and take of cultural diffusion is the common thread that binds us all together. But, I wonder how few will ever step back; leave their modern influences, their cultural idolatry, cut the umbilical cord of society’s infrastructure, and if only for a moment, wander free and unfettered. How can we ever see the true immensity of the natural world, or be humbled by that sweet solitude when we know in the back of our minds that society is just a phone call away?This weekend my wife and I are going canoeing, not far but far enough, to some distant hills across the lake. We will find ourselves “some pleasant lair of wavy grass” and just sit for a while and look out over the delta. I wonder what we will see.

© ManNorth, Summer, 2000

Yes, yes, we're alright!

Whew!

I can't believe that I've not posted since April.

No, I take that back. I know full well that I've not.

I've felt guilty.

I've missed you all.

I've missed sharing stories with you.

I've been busy.

I've finally been all of the first three and a little bit of the last all at once and so here we are,

kicking off year two off this blog.

I've many stories to share from the past TWO months (good grief, and apologies all around) so my thanks to those of you who have ventured back here to check up on me.

I've also discovered that I had a whack (A whack, I tell you!) of "sent" emails that never got sent and darned if I can't figure out why they won't send and how to send more. This isn't with gmail of course, but an apparent problem with my computer/email account that I paid/pay for.

Keep sending email as I can read 'em -I just can't reply as of yet.

ManNorth has been itching to post on the blog for a while and he's gone and written a post, complete with a photo illustration so momentarily, I'll put up his article.

(Hurray, two posts in one day!)

I'll leave you with this tidbit that might keep you guessing. Kudos to those of you who guess correctly.

Last month ManNorth and I saw FOUR of these fly past our apartment balcony. We heard their loud calls (hint, hint) long before they flew past and so we dashed out onto the balcony in our robes as they went by. (ManNorth of course, pointed out that this is the first time since we moved here that I've thrown caution to the wind and ventured out without being, ahem, properly attired. And it was worth it:

photo copyright TPWD

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/species/

I just wish we'd had time to grab our camera!