moving on mondays

Tim Tamashiro began tonight's Tonic show with talk of a dragonfly flying and this song, 

Steve Allee Trio - Dragonfly

Last week was miserable. I've been trying all day to say it's behind me, but really it's not, ...the weight of it is still here. Acupuncture for breakfast, grief counselling for lunch, a visit to the greenhouse for rejuvenation, ...totally exhausting.

I feel like I have a split personality - one completely consumed in grief, the other caught up in the season of gardening. Before gardening it was needlefelting, before that just fog... ..after Finn.
From not giving much thought to my new garden to finding myself more in-tune than ever is a little confusing, but I'm going with it - whatever it give me..., minute to minute, hour to hour, day to week to who knows. I'll never predict anything..

I'm going to ride this gardening wave. In my own garden I've never been more organised. Our new garden, our forever garden, has Excel worksheets with lists of all the new additions, and will include all that will be moved from Pearl, or added by friends. This time there's going to be a record from the start - better than this blog. 

(This blog would work better for what I wanted it to if a) I finished my thoughts and b) I tagged things properly so I could search it. I'm trying to be better at this.)

my pencil notes remain,
Excel worksheets are just an addition

There have been so many changes already, huge changes but hardly noticeable.. that's what happens when you take away boring. 

Damn I shouldn't say that. I've had serious heartache over the cutting down of the ash tree. Maybe it was my bad week. Maybe it's just my messed up emotions and attachment to everything. I just feel really bad for cutting down a (doomed but otherwise) healthy tree. My promise is to make up for is with a incredible edible annuals. And maybe blueberries.

I've also been planning other gardens, for other people. That along with being BMN in the social media world have allowed me to sort of step outside myself, outside the grief, and just be the gardener, think about the plants and be creative. It's what I've always done best, enjoyed the most..., I get to play with photography, share a little gardening knowledge, laugh a lot with Cathy. Who wouldn't want to do that? 

All of it together keeps me distracted in all the right ways. My garden plans are changing in my head all the time, new things come up, ideas..., more meaning to it all. Every step of this grief finds its way into my plans, creating a map within my garden that will grow and change along the way. 

Plants are arriving... I've ordered some specifics, some for names, some for colour, some to replace things we've had. On our dining room table is a little 'Beauty of Moscow' Lilac which will live near the house in place of one of these boring shrubs. It arrived today along with plugs and bulbs - phlox, asters, virginia bluebells...

The shack is full of plants, I have the kitchen table covered, an upright hot-house in the living room, seedlings growing, morning glories tendriling. The ash is gone, so is the cedar by the front door, stumps soon to be ground out. Shrubs will be adopted, soon it will be my blank slate, ready for our garden.

back at it...

It didn't take long for me, once I smelled the soil and spotted the plug trays, to want to get to planting..., and the day it was set up us die-hards were there at the planting table. It's the only part of the greenhouse season I can't miss out on - the first in years being last year at this time, when my mother was in hospice. I feel disjointed if I don't plant.
I don't mind the cold temperatures of January and February because they usually come with bright sunny days, and crystal clear starry nights. March and April are often dreary, dirty, damp, cold, and generally miserable. To spend those two months surrounded by warm soil under a blue sky roof - who could complain?

The last thing I expected to do this year was be back at work. I knew I would plant, and "hang around".... but, commitment wasn't something I was entertaining. It turns out I just don't know how to sit still, no matter what is holding me down.

Euphorbia graminea ~ Diamond Frost

Grief - of this kind especially, is defeating. There isn't a day, a moment, a conversation, a thought, that passes without Finn heavily on my mind. As much as it weighs on me I've come to conclude it also gives me strength. In a strange sense, I've never felt more empowered. I'm all too aware that worse could happen, the tension in my gut won't let that go - but, there aren't too many lower lows than what I've experienced in the past year.

I'm still standing.

The clarity that comes with the energy of being in the greenhouse again has helped in so many ways. My focus on our new garden is pretty clear; I even know how we're going to solve the new-garden-no-vegetable-bed problem so that once outdoor planting weather finally arrives I'll have some place to get my seeds dirty. (stay tuned)

I've already decided to focus on the trees, learning about our new trees, pruning and disease concerns of our new trees, adding birdhouse and feeders to the yard, dividing/moving/transplanting favourite perennials from Pearl, moving/transplanting favourites from around the new garden beds, and the addition of rose bushes.

The rose bushes I add this year will fill our yard with my mother's favourite childhood scent thanks to the wind sweeping across the Port Arthur Ridge to and from Lake Superior. By autumn I hope the yard will display some sort of transformation from bland to beautiful, useful, prosperous, and fruitful.

My father's scientific mind, my mother's artful eye, and my precious son's energy are a part of everything I do now. They'll grow in ways their bodies couldn't, and my only hope is that what comes of it makes a positive impact on the small parts of this earth I can help.

Dear Garden Diary

Morning Glory
at Bill Martin's Nurseryland

I adopted one these established morning glory plants (the one I photographed in fact) not knowing what I'd do with it.. but I couldn't resist. I brought one to my mother's last year and tried to train it along her balcony. It didn't like it there; the wind there was too strong - but I have to give the little vine credit, it tried. 

I gave Laura my favourite blue delphiniums yesterday after admitting (finally) to myself that we simply

don't have the space for them in our garden. Perhaps my clematis will now have enough room to ..you know, grow. I thought the blue of the morning glories will make up for the lack of blue delphiniums. I planted them inside the vegetable bed to ramble along the fence.

I'd like to waddle on down to the greenhouse now - there are things I need: bird netting to train the peas on, more string, sunflower seeds ...[I will not have sunflower envy this year gazing down and across at Laura's garden.), ..and of course, more flowers.

I could be helping - making cuttings, maybe even planting a bit..., but my back oh my back is so incredibly sore. I've gone from sitting in a hospital room around the clock to trying to catch up on garden work, and making up for household neglect.., not to mention nesting syndrome is in full bloom. I want to do everything, but my watermelon belly says no.

my watermelon baby
23.5 weeks

The greenhouse smells great, especially the vegetable and herb greenhouse. We've already adopted Grape and Early Girl tomato plants, still needing a Roma and maybe another. I'm trying so hard to keep the garden at a manageable level this year, and only plant what we will use (so we're not giving away boxes of tomatoes on our front step every second day). They'll all live in the small vegetable bed beside the porch - a hot bed, and most protected space in the yard. I'm expecting a glorious crop. 

Thanks to the addition of a towering herb planter, most of this year's herb garden is already under-way,  leaving a little more space in the bed. Other than oodles of basil I don't think we need any more herbs. Some lavender varieties are waiting to be added here and there - for the bees.

garlic chives, osteopermum, Munstead Lavender
and me
in the small vegetable bed

Our asparagus is coming up. They're the first to rise in the large vegetable bed. I'm so excited to eat them. I haven't quite settled on a plan for this year's large vegetable bed, and I'm beginning to assume it's just going to come together as I plant. Two rows of peas are now in, beans to follow, carrots and beets too. We need kale and cucumbers, and some space reserved for a zucchini mound. The cucumbers I plan to train skyward again - that worked well last year as a small space saver. This will be my first year with this garden without interruption. I'll be too far along with this pregnancy to travel to Australia this year, and though my heart is broken over that I'm happy to have the time to dedicate to the garden. Hopefully I can keep it under control.

happy pansies
at Bill Martin's Nurseryland

greenhouse bee

a bee in the greenhouse
20 June 2012

flutterby flutterby

Monarch
Danaus plexippus

Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) & a Monarch

In the vegetable greenhouse, on the strawberry plants

4 June 2012

hot yoga

Seeking shade at the back under the shade cloth. 

Greenhouse work is kind like doing hot yoga all day.

cleaning

begonia blooms
in my pocket

through the roof

 Bill Martin's 

Thunder Bay

23 April 2012

greenhouse panoramas

Bill Martin's

Thunder Bay

at the office

greenhouse panos

tricky camera tricks

some day I'll get it right

greenhouse work
NO WORK ALL PLAY

askew tags drive me wild

Osteospermum
Lemon Symphony
after I watered 

superbells and superbugs

at Bill Martin's Nurseryland

greenhousing

how I started my day
under cloudy Thunder Bay skies

I don’t think it has quite sunk in yet, that I’m back in a greenhouse planting things in pots. It’s hard to explain how ridiculously happy I am about this. There is no better air to breathe, oh and to have my hands dirty all day, do things - watching things grow. Yeah, this is my gig.

There is a pair of rain boots in the gift shop that I covet. Matching gloves. Susan always understood my fashion sense - er, greenhouse fashion sense (except the orange pants!)..., and soon my new greenhouse will too. I've had to order my sizes in each - now I can't wait for real water days instead of rain days.

Yesterday I was asked if I thought planting was boring; 

the asker thinking it was quite so. 

He went on to say there was too much time to think –

 which is, I think, why I like it so much. 

I like the time it gives me, 

...though I couldn’t tell you what I thought about today, 

other than lines and the order of things.

I thought about Caroline

I thought about lemons

lines

calibrachoa, million bells

waiting

calibrachoa
on the planting table

at Bill Martin's Nurseryland

planting season has begun

Dear Garden Diary,

I've been Mrs. M for nearly two weeks, and in one week I'll be back standing under the open roof of a greenhouse. These are some pretty good weeks.

With my mother feeling fairly well, a little relief has set in - a chance to catch my breath before the next spin, I feel a positive energy these days that I haven't had for a while. The cabin fever has been unbearable.
We took Claire for a walk through the waterfront on the first evening of day light savings; refreshing and muddy, but it got me even more excited about the coming months. Last year I was still in too much pain to enjoy any of this - I've missed it.

So, with visions of plant tags dancing in my head, I can't help but start to think about what our backyard will bring this year. Claire and I enjoyed Sunday morning on the back balcony, nearly hot with spring sun.

Our little micro climate section of our kitchen garden is already clear of snow with green parsley poking through, next to lavender and rosemary - both of which seem to have sprung back. Amazing. John Davis is embarrassingly out of control and I'm so glad. I need to tidy him up a little before photos, but I can say that he's got more healthy cane than I've ever seen. grin

Sweet Woodruff and the Hardy Geraniums are appearing along the west fence. I can see it own't be long for the rest. Though the area gets mostly afternoon shade because of the Tamarack and the fence, it does get nice warm morning sun, and protected protected from most wind it has it's own climate.

Gromit Wensleydale observed the kitchen garden this morning and has approved the planting of peas and radishes. Maybe even some lettuce. He is ready to snack. (dogs snacking in the garden will be frowned upon this season) I pulled out the seeds and tags from last year, added them to this year's already growing stack and already know that we are running along that yellow bring road to another garden bursting at the seams. Not that I mind too much. R's enthusiasm is great, and after he dug up that whole new bed for our vegetables we're both ready to play with possibilities.

The anticipation for greenhouse season is busting in me. Bring it on!