June 13, 2011
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Deep Thoughts

Non –> Stop –> Starting –>

The starting never stops.

This has been our mantra from the moment we plunged our shovels into the earth and began the arduous process of digging up the bumpy, grassy backyard. Each new session in the garden feels more like a step towards another beginning than a real step forward.

  • First raised bed built: The beginning of our salad greens garden.
  • Second bed built: Followed by several starts and stops as I pull out things I’ve planted to reposition them elsewhere.
  • Plant the lavender I overwintered in the greenhouse: Dig them back up and move them into the big long bed as I re-envision the third raised bed as a sweet pepper domain.
  • Dig up a bed of 10 year old irises from the Street Garden and watch as they suffer through being moved at the wrong time of year. I know what to do to bring them back for next year, but for now they are a gaggle of sad looking plants.

Starting over again in a brand new space is reteaching me old lessons all over again. Sure there are some new lessons in dealing with the challenges of this particular space, but they aren’t exactly lessons in how to garden — this is not my first time out. I have learned a thing or two in the years that I’ve been doing this.

No, what I am learning now has more to do with the emotional life of a new gardener. I am remembering all over again the frustrations, joys, and the little ego trips. I am recalling in vivid detail what it is like when everything is exactly the same size.

EVERYTHING IS EXACTLY THE SAME SIZE.

I don’t have a budget for the garden. My budget is not: We have x number of dollars to make this garden. How can we make our vision happen within those parameter? It is more like: Can I pay the bills AND purchase this plant or these materials? This means that I have to limit what I can accomplish on a weekly basis. It also means that I have to buy teeny, tiny, immature perennials. Annuals are easy. Most of mine were started from seed or will be direct sown in the coming days and weeks. The big plants will put on size within the next month and should be filling out space soon enough. I know this in theory and in practice, but my impatience is killing me.

The bigger problem is with the perennials. They take time to come into their own. Small perennials can take a year, sometimes five years before they hit their stride. Most of mine are at about the same size as the tomato transplants and I know from experience that some of them aren’t going to get much bigger before the growing season is through. Good garden design takes three dimensional space into consideration. My garden has no height and my plants lack lushness. All of the action is happening underneath the soil where the plants are hard at work setting in roots and getting themselves established in their new home. Above ground they are like a sea of same-sized dots. Each demands the same visual attention. The current effect is a garden that is both wild and trippy like a bowl of Fruit Loops, but also flat and boring like an oatmeal soup. Too much sameness.

You keep asking me to post more updates, but my ego won’t allow it. My impatience screams at me to wait until the tomatoes have filled out their stakes, the climbing rose has gained some height, and those big empty spaces have grown in just a little bit more. Then, and only then can I reveal the progress we have made. Although by then my ego will be unhappy with the placement of this and that and I will find more excuses to withhold. It will never be right. It might be good enough sometime next year. It will be even better in five years.

Let’s wait until then.

My rational, intellectual and experienced mind knows that this is the reality of starting a new garden on a shoestring. One has to wait. It will happen, but it takes time. You can’t make plants grow, and even when they do it doesn’t always turn out as you had hoped and so you move things around in a quest for a better combination or a new idea realized.

As a garden writer I have strived to be honest about my experiences and to show things as they are without the obsessive fluffing and fakery you find in most mainstream publications. And yet here I am: on the one hand finding a continuous stream of joy and pleasure in the daily changes and discoveries I am making in my new space, all the while holding onto a strong desire to hide it, and hide out in it. I love my new garden, but I am paralyzed by the thought of putting it out into the world for unfair judgment.

I will post my next garden update in five years or possibly later this week, depending on when I am able to get past this stupid slump. But not before then.

p.s. Apologies for the terrible cellphone photo. Davin erased the drawing from our chalkboard wall before I could take a proper photo.

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May 18, 2011
15 Comments
Deep Thoughts Journal

Release the Kraken

I came upon this gorgeous Passiflora trifasciata on my first day in Thailand and was completely floored by it. I had no idea that such a gem existed. The leaves look like big bird feet!

Passiflora is known primarily for its gorgeous flowers and deliciously exotic fruit. The leaves have a nice shape, but I find them to be a bit boring overall. I had never seen one before this that is clearly all about the foliage. When given a choice, I tend to favour foliage over flowers. Flowers come and go, but interesting foliage holds your interest almost indefinitely, depending on the plant (and your climate). Being short on space, I prefer to keep plants that give me something to look at for longer periods of time. Ugly, ragged stages of plant development don’t hide well when there is no behind-the-scenes area in which to hide them.

Of course, being a plantoholic through and through, I want one. Immediately. I figure if I can tolerate the inconvenience required to overwinter a very large passionfruit vine with pretty flowers but boring leaves in the hallway outside the door of a cramped apartment for three years running, then surely I can keep this one now that I’ve got more space.

And yet another door is opened. Over the weekend I was chatting with a fellow gardener and thrifting friend about how you can find interest in certain collectibles, but you stay away from buying even one because you don’t want to open the floodgates to a new obsession. It’s okay to admire that jug, bowl, or plant from a distance with a certain amount of interested detachment, but inviting one into your home and life is a dangerous first step towards an appearance on the show Hoarders.

Having more space and an evolving mindset has unleashed the Kraken inside of me, so-to-speak. There are so many plants that I am either going back to with a renewed passion, or am allowing myself to try for the first time ever. Friends, these are interesting, albeit dangerous times.

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April 27, 2011
5 Comments
Deep Thoughts Places

Ditch Lotus

Here in Canada, I’ve made a special five hour trip by train just to see lotus in bloom at the Montreal Botanical Garden, where they have a fantastic collection. In Thailand, lotus flowers and plants are so commonplace, you very nearly become unaffected by them.

They even grow in ditches off the side of the highway. When I travel, these are the sorts of observations I like to make. These are the places I want to see. These are the experiences that make me squeal with delight and the fondest memories that come back again and again decades after the fact. This is what I want to photograph and write stories about.

What is growing in the ditches, lots, and brown spaces? I genuinely want to know. One of the most frustrating aspects of being on a media tour in Thailand was the inability to stop the bus and get off to explore in the way that I would were I in control of my trip. Alas, many of these fantastic sights had to be enjoyed at a passing glance through the window of a fast moving tourist coach while on the way to another banal tourist attraction that I didn’t care to see, had no interest in writing about, and would come to resent for all of the time it took away from the possibility of seeing something real and truly inspiring.

Give me time to spend gleefully exploring your country’s ditches, dusty roadsides, and messy, tangled lots. Visits to ostentatious, over-the-top gardens and demonstrations of opulence are wasted on me. I will choose a tour of your city’s urban brown fields or the backroads well out in the middle of nowhere over five star luxury accommodations any day. No contest.
Read more…

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January 3, 2011
11 Comments
Deep Thoughts Spring

Not My New Year

I’ve flailed about here all morning, trying on a variety of topics for the first post of 2011. I’m feeling intimidated like this is the first post I have ever written, or worse yet, the first post ever written In the History of the World!

I think they call this being melodramatic.

My original plan was to write a follow up to my reflections post by looking forward and listing some of my plans for 2011. It’s not that I don’t have them, it’s just that I’m not inspired to write them out. You see, I’ve never been able to get behind January as the start to a new year.

Throughout my school years and for at least a decade more, it was because I was in the habit of preparing for new beginnings in the fall, at the start of a new curriculum. I’d also say it has something to do with this climate and the fact that I’m a gardener. I’ve lived in Southern Ontario my entire life and can say with authority that not much changes through the months of December and February. With some fluctuation from year to year, it is generally cold and frozen. Sometimes there is snow. Sometimes the snow thaws and then it freezes up again. There is a slight ebb and flow to the winter season; however, rebirth and renewal are not words I would attribute to this time of year.

How am I supposed to be moved to start fresh, create something new, and enact great change when all I want to do is hibernate a little longer? It’s all so forced.

On New Year’s Day I sat on the couch with my phone randomly scrolling through hundreds of saccharine New Year’s cheer and what felt like over-enthusiastic promises for the year ahead. I was happy to have had the time off to decompress from work, but I didn’t feel like getting on any of these fluffed out floats and joining the parade. When I said as much on Twitter, I received several replies from people who were feeling the same as me. Eryn’s reply especially was a reminder that as gardeners a new beginning comes at the start of the growing season when the first new sprouts emerge from the soil and we can sink our hands into fresh earth again.

January is when seed catalogues start showing up in our mailboxes. It’s when we begin to sink into making plans and dreaming up the gardens we will grow. It’s when we start to collect seeds, and begin to sow the long season plants like tomatillos and eggplants under lights. In my part of the world, January is the start of a process that will build in excitement and anticipation as it leads up to something big. But make no mistake, it is not the main event itself.

So far, the most important resolution I’ve made this year is to make a bigger deal of spring when it comes. By the time it rolls around I am often already so lost in it, or have already been writing and speaking about it for so long that I never think to just stop and take a moment to revel in it. That’s what these sorts of traditions are about, in part. They’re about taking pause and grabbing hold of the energy that comes at the start of a new beginning. It’s about respecting the harshness of winter and celebrating that we’ve made it through to see another spring.

That’s what I’m going to do this year. I’m gonna have my parade when the Vernal Equinox rolls around. I’m gonna stop and make a big stink out of it like I never have before. Until then I’m going to take my time emerging from the winter slumber and not pressure myself to feel change and excitement that I simply do not feel right now. Sorry New Year’s revellers. I’ll see you in the spring.

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December 31, 2010
9 Comments
Deep Thoughts

Reflecting on 2010

Year Start

I spent the first week of 2010 out right, visiting friends on an organic food farm in the Soufriere area of St. Lucia. Our friend David lived there at the time, growing food for the ultra luxurious Jade Mountain Resort.

The property, called Emerald House, was an old chocolate plantation at one time. A small section of cacao trees remain, many of which have vanilla vines (a second crop) growing up the trunks. Unfortunately, it wasn’t vanilla season, but the cacao pods were fantastic and it was exciting to see so many familiar tropical houseplants growing like ground cover underneath the trees.

To be honest, after weeks of walking hot roads in Barbados and hiking up and down brutal mountain hills in Dominica, we spent most of our time in St. Lucia loafing around (I hardly took any photos), but we did help with some of the farm harvest.

The most memorable was cutting red and pink ginger flowers (Alpinia purpurata) for floral arrangements. Ginger plants are very tall and they were colonized by two types of ants: one with a bite that stung, and one with a bite that stung like HELLFIRE. Walking among the tall plants and harvesting flower stems without being bit was a challenge. I go bit once, but fortunately it was from the lesser ant. Our friend John was bit on the inner thigh by one of the nasty ants, the consequence of which was momentary concern about the future of his reproductive organs!

Year End

Unfortunately, I am not ending 2010, nor beginning 2011 in a warm and sunny place. It is cold and snowy here. We picked the wrong year to stay home. However, I do have a new garden to plan this winter, a south-facing, unheated porch that functions as a cold greenhouse (although some plants froze. But that is another story, for another day), and a basement (hooray!) where I have been able to set up a 4 foot wide, D.I.Y grow light unit that houses the plants that can’t fit into my sunny office window. I currently have 2 shelves filled, and a third will function as my new seed starting station in the coming months.

In my former home, the plants were cramped into a ramshackle unit that I cobbled together using whatever I could fit into a tiny corner of my office. Needless to say, this new system is a whole lot better.

Most Surreal Experience of 2010: It’s a toss-up between being profiled in Oprah magazine and gardening chit-chat via email with Bryan Adams. “Cuts Like a Knife” came on the radio the other day while I was in a cafe and my head kind of exploded for a minute. The song used to prompt memories of trips to the beach as a kid or taping videos on our first VCR via shows like Video Hits and Good Rockin’ Tonite. Now it makes me think of courgettes.

Favourite Post of the Year: The Requirement to Garden. I am proudest of this one. I also like: On Daffodils, Whimsy Must Live, Stealing Plants? You Suck, and What Makes a Good Gardener?.

Favourite Plant of the Year: Choosing a favourite is always difficult, especially when I see so many new plants every year. My favourite plant is usually the one in front of me in any given moment. That said, for purely sentimental reasons, I have to choose my very first Japanese Maple.

Spade lotus sculpture at Merlin’s Hollow

Favourite Garden Visited: I visited a lot of gorgeous gardens last year. It was a very good year in that respect. Unfortunately, the only one I posted about was Brian Bixley’s garden, Lilac Tree Farm. In 2011 I resolve to post more photos of the beautiful Edens I am fortunate enough to visit!

Favourite Picture Posted in 2010: Bromeliads in the Valley of Desolation. I took it in late December 2009, but it took forever to get the film processed and scanned. I still have film from October 2009 that hasn’t been developed! It’s not the best photo I have taken in the past year, but it is my favourite because it reminds me of hiking through the most amazing landscape I have ever experienced. I hope to see it again someday.

Photo by Gayla Trail All Rights Reserved

More Highlights of 2010:

The hardest gardening-related thing I did in 2010 was disassembling my Roof Garden. I took it apart by myself, mostly in the dark (and the cold), and all in a matter of hours. That was all the time I had to do it in. The whole experience sucked ass. For over a decade it was my personal sanctuary and a place of so much learning. Goodbye old friend.

The coming year brings a new gardening space and what has already turned into an epic battle with the Legion of tomcats. They are shitting AND SPRAYING!

What are your reflections for 2010?

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