Garden Update

Gardening is expensive. The Dude (Mostly the Dude) spent $300 in June on plants and mulch and grass seed. And that's on top of how much we spent in May to get it all started. I've capped my husband off of buying anymore backyard related items. I admire his exuberance, but would enjoy more dollars in our bank account. That said, the garden's looking pretty darn good, minus the suffering grass.

The tomatoes have finally started to grow, though I can't say much about the peppers. Nary a pepper to be seen, and the zucchini seems to have issues. They grow and then stop and then rot. I have to look into this. Last year they were effortlessly easy.

Most people who see the garden or hear about our efforts then ask about how long we're planning to stay. Well, a few years probably. We've replaced the lighting fixtures in the living room and kitchen because they were shoddy, icky and ugly. Of course when we moved in, we went to the trouble of painting the place. We tore up the crappy stairwell carpet and put down vinyl flooring. Even if you don't own, you can still make your place a home.


For the first time in a long time, I just want to stay in one place and nest. 


On a completely different note, I've been exhausted lately. I'm going to have a nap.

Backyard Oasis

Today was a rainy hot mess in the Big Smoke. Union Station was flooded out, likely with sewage from the sounds of things, and commuters were stranded, stuck waiting forever in the dreary weather for a bus to come save them. Meanwhile, I stayed indoors and didn't have to water my garden.

And this was a small bummer because I've grown to really enjoy gardening. It's very zen. I take pride in my plants. I've killed so many and now finally my brown thumb seems to have subsided. Here are some pictures I took yesterday of my growing lovelies.

The rose bush has bloomed!

More blossoms have sprouted.

The zucchini plant has flowered as well, and gotten larger.

My tomato plant is doing very well.
I keep pruning it to move it upwards.

The pepper plant is growing, albeit slowly. 

My green beans are faring well.
Well, no beans yet, of course, but we're on the way.

My strawberry plant is really large now, and growing numerous berries. 

Like so!

The lilies in the back are getting huge!

My onions have finally started growing, once I removed the soil around them. D'oh!

Is it strange I fantasize about packing up, leaving town and buying a farm? I love growing food. It adds such a charming rhythm to my day. I don't think I could go back to not having a back yard. 

Urban Farming, Modern Life

The garden, she's growing! Growing! I posted a wee while ago about the garden and photographed the work we did planting it. Here be the update, yo.

The flowers are growing nicely!

The tomato plant is sprouting up. 

The bell pepper plant is growing taller and more robust.

The beans have sprouted!
We're going to lace them up the metal.

The initial leaves on this zucchini plant died and these larger ones grew instead.

The strawberry plants are now growing 17 strawberries.

Flowers have blossomed!

The Dude gave me a rosebush.
You can't see in this photo, but buds have formed.

We're pretty much in love with this garden. I spend the most amount of time on it, being the one who's home the most. It's relaxing, the plucking out of weeds, watering, and eventually harvesting. We planted garlic last spring that didn't grow and didn't die. It did develop tiny bulbs, which in my ignorance I never separated. So I gentled wrenched them away from each other and dispersed them around the soil and so maybe we'll also have home-grown garlic.

Speaking of gardens, two of our friends just moved into this lovely house on the east end, a stone's throw from McPal and his fiance, and their backyard was recently landscaped, something the McPal house is planning on as well. There's something magical about a private outdoor space in the city. You take it for granted in the burbs or in smaller municipalities, but in Toronto, it's rather rare and special. Now the six of us, in three households, have backyards for gardening, barbecues and general glee. Though of course we're not going to be doing any landscaping. This is, after all, a rental.

We all had a barbecue together at the new house. Two dogs were playing, meat was grilling, beer was being consumed and homemade cream soda was being concocted. Some of us are in our 30s already, and others are approaching it quickly (Me. ME!) and it was sort of wild to speculate that we were all adults, moving forward. Though in my mind I was also gently noticing some key differences. I'm a renter, not a home owner. A cat(s) owner, not a dog owner. A west-ender, not an east-ender. And funnily, three of the four all work at the same company. It was a strange sensation of feeling sort of out of the loop. Not sad or negative in any way, just a tickling in my mind, noticing these details.

We've been spending less and less time with our friends. This is mostly due to the Dude. His work schedule is crazy. He works 60 hours many weeks. Overnight trips are not infrequent. Weekend work happens. The money is nice, though sometimes those long nights are just par for the course on photo shoots and don't actually translate into more cash, only less energy. He'll come home exhausted, occasionally cranky, unwilling or unable to consider a social life. Sometimes I'll have one without him, other times I've missed him and I'll take his lethargic couch hugging over more time apart spent with others.

I'd say we're weathering some challenges. It's not the first time. After he graduated, the Dude took awhile to find steady work and that was also hard. He and I are communicating and doing our best, handling crankiness, trying to carve out room for each other, managing our obligations and still trying to have a social life. We're figuring it out and I think it's making us a stronger couple. I have one week left of vacation. I wish he was off too.

Gardenin'

The Dude and I got a head start on the gardening this year, opting to begin two weeks ahead of schedule because of the crazy weather. There was some freak snow in April, but I think we're safe. Or are we? No, I think we're good. Crazy climate change.

Anyhoo, last year we were very ambitious. This year we're taking it down a few notches. Our peppers never really flourished last year and we're sure it's because we had too many in the soil, alongside other vegetables. This year? One. One bell pepper plant. One tomato plant.

Red bell pepper

Tomato plant

The pumpkin and zucchini did battle last year for dominance over the yard and the zucchini won. So this year, one zucchini plant. No lettuce, no carrots. And we've planted the green beans somewhere intelligent this time, so they'll have the right sort of space to grow.

Zucchini 

We also planted some flowers, some for the shade, some for the sun, plus some herbs. Last year they were  put way in the back of the yard, but this year, they're nicely situated in the front.

Basil, rosemary and thyme

Perennials for the sun...

And perennials for the shade.
There's some crazy lilies in the back there, planted by who knows who.

Last year we planted some strawberries and this year they're flush and happy. So we'll see what happens with that.

I love this time of year. Growing food is really rewarding. It'd take something really important or special to get me to give up having a yard.

Garden Fun

The mail has gotten quite fun these days. In my office a small pile of wedding paraphernalia is growing: candy buffet apothecary jars, mini chalkboard easels for table numbers, and distressed wooden tags for seating cards, which arrived today. Also Front Door Organics delivered produce and so the house is full of fresh fruit and veg. Good mail days are one of life's delightful little pleasures.

In garden news, I've been harvesting zucchini and it's been magical. I love going out to the garden and plucking my food. And the pumpkin plant I was bemoaning sprouted a female flower I promptly pollinated and now a charming lil' punkin is growing on a vine that is taking over more and more of my backyard each passing day. I prune where I can, but can't bring myself to remove sections that promise to sprout more female flowers.

The tomatoes are plentiful, though still green. I'm going to have an abundance, which means I need to whet my appetite for toasted tomato sammiches. I've been harvesting my carrots and green beans, and the lettuce has gone to a better place. The only thing not growing are the bell peppers. The plants are growing and flowering, but no baby peppers yet. The onions are also perplexing.

As far as the flowers go, lilies have bloomed and in the unfair fashion of nature they're already on their way out. Beauty is so fleeting. But my sweetpeas, which I had given up for lost due to what turned out to be a less than ideal planting location, have starting climbing the fence and are beginning to flower. So I'm not feeling like a total failure. Not exactly a green thumb, but for a novice I'm very pleased with my first-time gardening results.

Now for some gardening pictures, and just for kicks I took them with a funky phone ap called Retro Phone. Well, not the first one, but the others I did.

Here is my garden with the pumpkin plant claiming

the entire yard for its own.

Here is a Polaroid shot of my first pumpkin!

And my tomatoes! Still green but lookin' fine.

One of the zucchini growing into a fine specimen of yumminess.

Taken with Fudge Can.

My sweetpeas blooming against all odds.

Fun close-up of a tomato with the Orange Box setting.

My carrots growing in a big bunch.

My onions doing... something.

Hopefully growing the way they're supposed to.

Garden update

Okay, so the Dude uploaded the pictures! And I took some more today, so here is the chronicles of our gardening venture. I'm really quite pleased, as nothing has died, which is wont to happen when I try to make things grow.

Here are my pumpkin and zucchini plants from, oh, a week or more ago.

And here they are today!

Here is the blossom growing from the zucchini plant.

And in the centre there, the pumpkins are starting to blossom.

Here's the tomato plant from earlier a couple weeks out from planting.

And here it is today. It's really sprouting along.
No tomatoes budding yet, but the plant is really looking pretty happy.

This was the garden before, with the carrots, onions, lettuce, peppers,
green beans and strawberries.

Here's the pepper plants today. I wish they were a little bigger, but they are growing.

The green beans were planted from seed
and they've really jumped out of the ground.


The lettuce is getting big.


And strawberries have started to grow!

Overall, rock on! The carrots and onions have also been thriving, but since all the goodies are underground, their progress will be better recorded once they're harvested.

The one thing that's dead is the grass. Oh, we re-seeded the dead part near the garden, but underneath lush green overgrowth was... dead grass. Go figure. So there's a green patch surrounded by a golden carpet of death. I've been watering it, but it needs more.

Funny, eh? The food is thriving. But the grass? Grass that does nothing? Dead as yesterday's news.

Little bit of this, bit of that...

I got somewhere in the neighbourhood of three to four hours of sleep last night. I have never been able to maintain a normal sleep schedule, with the exception of when I worked as a chamber maid in the summers between college years. But even then when I had to wake up at 6:00, I still couldn't sleep till 11:30 or 12:00, and I need eight hours to feel like a human being. I'm an inherent night owl.

I've fallen into a bit of a routine these past few weeks. Now that a garden needs my attention and the days are so beautiful that not stepping out into the sunshine is criminal, I spend a portion of my afternoons in the garden, watering, weeding, admiring the new growth. I took some pictures of the progress over half a week ago, but never got them off the camera and now they're outdated. Which is great because that means things are growing.

I tend to do dishes before my work shift is over, usually when I reheating some lunch. After work, I do some flexibility exercises in the office while listening to music. Bea likes to join me and curls around my legs and crawls into my lap while I'm stretching out my legs.

What a calm state of affairs this is.

There's certain things with the wedding that are yet to be handled, but I'm still ahead of schedule. I usually channel my insomnia into wedding planning, which is likely why I'm so on track. There's a boatload to do with this sort of event, but even more or less solo I seem to find time for it all due to my nocturnal proclivities.

Guest list
Venue
Dress/Shoes/Accessories
Tux/Shoes
Groomsmen wear
Bridesmaid dresses
Music
Flowers
Cake
Booking officiant
Ceremony planning
Rings
Out of town hotel blocking
Licence
Invitations
Seating chart/place settings
Favours
Centrepieces
Transportation
Booking hotel room
Trial hair and makeup
Booking hair appointments

If there actually was a way to have this all done in advance, I'd have the wedding done already. It's not like I'm this way in all areas of my life, though. There are certain things I like to leave to the last minute, like getting up in the morning. When I was a child, I used to run to the bus with my knapsack open, one shoe on, carrying the other, with my coat in the crook of my elbow, trying to stuff my lunch into my bag. Making a specatacle of myself was worth sleeping in till the last possible second. Wedding planning doesn't really fall under the same category, however. Five months to go until it's a memory.

In other related wedding news, McPal and his boyfriend are no longer boyfriends, but... (drum roll) fiances! How exciting! They'll be getting married in a little over a year, possibly two. They were both going to propose to each other in Paris while they were on vacation, but they got robbed and thus thwarted in London, preventing them from seeing Paris. And in the midst of the ransacked flat, they each revealed their intentions for Paris, and McPal proposed. Romantic!

I love love.

Flower Power

The Dude and I are gardening. Of course one of the reasons we moved down here is for the yard. A yard in this city is a major premium. You're lucky to get a balcony or a deck, never mind a damn yard with grass and such. So a few days ago we spent our day off getting our hands dirty.

The previous tenants had a dog, albeit a nice dog, that destroyed the grass with her many trips outside. So there was a massive brown patch in the back. There was also a strip of weeds lining the fence and wild violets everywhere. The grass had started growing uncontrollably from the rain and it's been too wet to cut. We had so much work ahead of us.

We went out for our supplies using Zipcar and were nine minutes late returning it and were charged an extra $35. We picked up a shovel, spade (Which I've already broken), shears, grass seed, top soil and all sorts of plants. We're going to grow us some dang veggies. We tried the potted garden route on our old deck last year and it went okay, but I was a little disappointed with how small the plants were, and we didn't have enough room for more than a few things.

So we went to Fiesta Gardens and bought onions, lettuce, carrots, green beans, tomatoes, red and yellow peppers, strawberries, garlic, zucchini and pumpkin, plus herbs. I also got some sweet pea flowers for the old weed-ridden fence.

It was hell to get it all together. While digging out the flower bed I found all sorts of bulbs, presumably from a garden that once was, long ago suffocated by weeds. There were piles of roots and growth to sort through and throw away. I couldn't discern what was what, so everything went in the compost so I could start from scratch.

The Dude got to work weeding out the wild violets and digging up what would become our vegetable garden. There were old wooden slabs piled in the back of the yard and he used them to block off the soil. There was a bricked off area we chose as our herb garden.

It was so difficult. For some reason we didn't eat before doing this. We didn't eat all day, in fact. The Dude held up a lot better than I did. Eventually I ran out of steam and was merely out there for moral support in the misty gloom while the Dude finished planting the flowers and more of the herbs.

The next day there was even more to do. The Dude was off while I was working, so he was out there again, shearing the grass, planting the rest of the produce and cleaning away all the dead weeds and grass littered all over the yard.

And there's more to go. But! Here is the current state of affairs:

You can see the patches where we had to plant new grass.
The compost bin is crammed full with more to come.

Here's a close-up of the garden.
The herbs are in the corner.
The pumpkin and zucchini are to the left.

Here are the carrots, onions, green beans, lettuce, and peppers.
Straddling the two sections are the strawberries.

Brown Thumb

There's something satisfying about spending an entire Sunday afternoon in bed doing nothing but drinking coffee while watching movies and eating scones. Even more so when it's hot as ass outside and the air conditioning is doing it's thang.

I don't spend a lot of time outdoors. I appreciate the outside world, but I'm an indoors kind of person. I like being cozy with a book on the couch, for example. Or sleeping in late snuggled up in my cozy bed. Or watching movies. Even the activity I like best is indoors: yoga, belly dance. When I was a kid my mom would take me on conservation walks and I'd give up midway through, plop on the ground and sulk because I hated being outdoors for the sake of being outdoors and walking for the sake of walking. Actually, any walking bothered me. I liked to sit. It's a wonder I was never a fat child.

Wasn't big on gardening either, or at least the gardening my mother did. My mom was a real pro with flowers. She made them grow with ease, even despite my presence among her plants. I have the brown touch. I really wanted a vegetable garden. Mom's flowers did nothing for me. I wanted something that had actual results, not just something you did your best to keep alive as long as possible. I think it's related to my disinterest in aimless walking. Screw the journey. I want a destination. I'm at point A, where is point B?

I think it's part of my planner personality. Growing vegetables is a plan to eat fresh veggies later. Growing flowers is a not a plan at all. It's more zen or something, like the shorter version of cultivating a bonsai tree. It's getting the nicest possible plant for no practical reason. Granted, I do all kinds of things for no practical reason, just not anything that might be good for me: like long aimless walks and gardening.

But the Dude and I did decide vegetable gardening might be fun. And we're at the point where we can eat the fruits of our labour.

Our red pepper plants.

Our tomato plants. We've already gotten a number of tomatoes off of these bad boys,
though right now things are looking slim and the plants are looking rough.

These are the Dude's herbs.

And some more herbs, plus some sort of vine thing he wanted.

Not bad for a first attempt. I've enjoyed this a lot more than trying to keep my African violets alive. Man, what a bummer it was when they bit the dust on me. It's such a sense of failure. At least when food plants wilt on you, you don't have to watch something beautiful die.