Got the Richters 2004 seed catalogue a few weeks ago in December, which was even earlier than last year; have since been sweetening the winter bitter by planning future gardens...
{The CBC predicts an Extreme windchill of minus 41 for tonight. Yellowknife, by comparison, is predicted to have a windchill of minus 38 tomorrow. Brr!!!}
Might try roses again this year; have been browsing through Hortico's site, and using the EveryRose & HelpMeFind Roses sites to help make my decisions. I am quite taken by the Brother Cadfael rose, partially because it is pretty and partially because I find its namesake so entertaining.
At my family reunion last year, some of us visited the Mohawk Chapel; and during a walk around its grounds & on the nature trail nearby, I scrounged up a few seeds as souvenirs. They're currently overwintering in the fridge, and I hope to germinate them when I get the Nursery* set up.
The Nursery has been an interesting experiment. I didn't expect to have a problem with plants growing too well, but they did; so they got crowded because the Nursery was too small, and then they lost much of their vigour. Duh. I should have realized how unhealthy an environment that would be; a greenhouse needs good air circulation, or disease will breed...
Canadian Tire has a "greenhouse" for sale that might do the trick... seems sufficiently large & sturdy... and relatively inexpensive. The question is... will it withstand the onslaught of three curious cats?
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* Nursery. *snort* I realize that, what with all my infantilizing of kittykats, this anthropomorphizing of plants must make it seem as if I'm the only one who can't hear my biological clock banging away... But I come by it honestly. My own mum, who is surely beyond such an imperative by now, calls her plants her babies; and she refers to a plant which needs repotting as "needing a new pair of shoes" {should hope that's due to empty nest syndrome, not some previous life as a craps hustler}.
Crossing off the days on the calendar at work, I notice that Saturday was a New Moon.
In some philosophies of farming, you can now sow new plantings and they will thrive as the moon waxes; that's sympathetic magic at work.
Mind you, it would have helped my garden more if I'd finished planted immediately after all danger of frost had passed.
Having dilly~dallied & shilly~shallied willy~nilly, I'm still teasing out the garden a month later.
I have barrels upon pots upon boxes of seedlings; I still have seeds that I'm trying to germinate.
The neighbors already have full~blown flower gardens, having bought pre~grown plants jump~started at the nursery.
It's as if their gardens have popped out of the earth fully developed like Athena from Zeus' thigh (or, from Zeus' forehead, depending on who you ask)*.
Never thought I would suffer from garden envy.
{to plants:} C'mon, guys, get stuck in! Go, go, go!
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*Personally, I prefer thigh; forehead always makes me think of Athena as bursting out like some horribly over~ripe pimple. I'm sure the other gods would have nicknamed her Zit and ribbed her mercilessly about that. But all behind her back, of course. In hushed tones. Out of earshot. Having looked around very carefully first.
No, I heard myself say, the garden store down the street doesn't have the kind of dirt I want.
No, not the black topsoil (with organic sheep's manure added), not the special blend for hanging pots & containers (with peat moss & vermiculite added), not the kind for growing roses (Ph balanced, pre-fertilized with rooting compound, & augmented with slow-release crevette~based compost), and not the kind for growing African Violets (unknown composition, available at the Dollar Store).
No, I just want the kind that's dehydrated and vacuum~packed so as to fit more dirt per cubic inch, thus saving me the hassle of buying two at a time, and providing me with more bang for my bag.
The kind of dirt you'd find at either Wal-Mart or Ikea.
Only, at Ikea, it would be called Smuts.
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Contrary to the expression, dirt is not cheap. The cost of dirt is up from last year, and the several bags I've purchased have shown an unpredictable weekly variance in price, much like gas at the pumps. I'm beginning to suspect the price of soil is linked to the fortunes of real estate market.
...which brings me to the odd thought: Where does that dirt come from?
Do they strip~mine it from somewhere? Is it a by~product of the construction & mining industries? Do we cart it in from other, less fortunate countries whose unscrupulous governments are selling the dirt out from under their citizen's collective feet?
Somewhere, is there a nascent dawn a~blushing over vast fields where the air is heavy with the musky scent of moist sweet earth, as humongous oak~barrel~brown compost piles steam off the dew to a transient golden haze, organic matter breaking down into dirt at their thermogenetic cores?
Bulwer~Lytton, eat your heart out.
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Dirt farmer, according to the dictionary definition, means a farmer who earns his living by farming his own land especially without the help of hired hands or tenants.
During the 1930's Dust Bowl catastrophe, the term dirt farmer was given a wry edge, as some joked that dirt was their major crop.
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Imagine, if vast fields of compost heaps were possible (straw~capped & sacking~secured, of course, to prevent bits of matter from blowing off like chaff). Dirt farming, in a literal sense, could be a marvelous 21st century vocation. While others would use dirt to grow plant matter, the Dirt Farmer would use plant matter to grow good, fresh, nutritious, wholesome dirt.
It would bring a new meaning to having a brown thumb.
And, if the price of dirt is any indication, it might be quite a profitable cottage industry.
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My mum always said that she wasn't gifted with a green thumb, but that she learned everything she knows by trial and error; and that she's made enough mistakes to get by.
In addition to making her own soap, knitting her own woolens, putting up her own preserves, and composting before it was fasionable, my mum also mixes up her own dirt.
She starts with soil from the backyard, and sterilizes it by cooking it on the stove (and let me tell you, burnt dirt smells sharp).
After it has cooled, she fortifies it with a proportion of nutrient~rich newborn dirt from the heart of the compost pile.
Because roots need space, peat moss is included to decrease the density of the mix so the dirt does not compact; peat moss also gives the added benefit of retaining moisture. Vermiculite is added to further lighten the weight.
My Mum has very happy plants.
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Did people of my Mum's generation complain when dirt became commodified, in the same way that people nowadays complain about the commodification of water?
In both cases, I suppose what you're paying for is the labour & materials involved in making it hostile~bacteria~free, and amenable to one's mineral needs.
But, compared to water, dirt is relatively much easier to create from "scratch". And it's easy to mix your own special blends. The hard part is finding room for the composter. And suffering the smell of scorched earth...
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My needs are satisfied, for the time being, by generic cheap dirt.
But if I ever have the room for a composter... I'll be brewing my own dirt the way vintners brew wines.
Ah... chateau la terre '03 ... do I detect the aroma of banana peels, carrot scrapings and coffee grounds? And the fragile note of egg shells? ...yeeeees ...a very good blend, a memorable year.
As a child, as a teenager, as a young adult, I have often said, I will never:
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Doing something you said you would never do can be a liberating experience, and an indication of maturity & open~mindedness; or it can be an exercise in self~denial, and an indication of submissiveness & weak personal boundaries.
I suppose it's a matter of self-knowledge and perspective.
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My list included things like, own a spice rack ~ surely, a red flag that I had sold out of the apartment-dwelling nomadic counterculture and bought into the house-owning sedentary bourgeoisie...
...um ...that is what a spice rack signifies, isn't it? No matter how fine it is.
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I have also said, I will never have a garden full of inedible plants. Plants must be edible or otherwise functional, or else they are useless frippery & a waste of effort.
So. Last weekend: I'm scrounging through the seed racks that have been depleted by gardeners more prompt about their spring planting than I. Dearth of choice necessitated a change of expectations.
And somehow ~ I don't know how it happened ~ in the space of five minutes, I was transformed from being a person who would never plant anything as kitschy as a night~blooming garden to being a person who was excited about the prospect of having a night~blooming garden for the first time.
I'm even going so far as to shuffle around plants already planted and seeds already sown in order to accomodate the new garden order. Plants and seeds generally don't like being asked to give up their seat; so it's a bit of a risk to take for something that, up until last week, I said I would never do.
Part of it can be attributed to a gift I was given ~ a mixed package of seeds, now planted by my front door. Most of the seeds were unfamiliar to me, so I researched them. Some were edible, some were medicinal; and one, I discovered, belonged to a family of plants called Night~Scented Stocks.
What's the point of cultivating flowers that bloom at night? I thought. Why have a garden that you'll sleep through the better part of?
And this percolated through my grey matter until last week, when I was standing in front of the ravaged rack of seeds, searching for gardening ideas.
In our temperate zone (5B) no~one can guarantee that summers will be hot; so it is still inexplicable to me how my mind seized upon and justified a night garden as a lovely place to spend those summer evenings when it's too uncomfortable to stay in the house and too pleasant not to lounge outside.
Frankly, I mystify me. And that's probably the way it's going to stay.
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If, later this summer, you pass by my place in the evening, you might discern the scents of: Moonflower; Four O'Clock; Evening Primrose; & Night Scented Stocks.
~~~
Postscript: Incidentally, I also once said I will never blog...
Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it whispering, "grow ~~ grow!"
~~~ The Talmud
Oh, yes, I have to water my plants, and make sure they get enough light to eat, and otherwise nourish them occasionally; and maybe I might have give some extra thought and attention to a plant that isn't thriving.
But the oomph for growing is not energy that comes from me. And yet it feels like I've accomplished something by "growing" them ~~ when in fact, a} they grow themselves, and b} the real accomplishment is that so far I've prevented myself from accidentally killing them.
I get so ridiculously excited when I see a sprout, be it either one that has sproinged out of the earth in less than week or one that has taken forfreakin'ever to germinate. I'll call my boyfriend over and point in amazement at a two-inch seedling that miraculously appeared that evening in a pot which that very morning had been empty, or draw his attention to the tiny fleck of bourgeoning green which was the sole vital spark to emerge from a sowing I'd given up on. And I'll say, "look! They're growing!" And he'll say, "yes. They do that. That's what they do."
I'm in awe of that oomph, especially when I think of the amount of oomph I have to expend to live my life. I get so fatigued so easily; I'd love to know where these little seeds get their oomph from.
I've a notion that if I nuture the germination of enough seeds, then perhaps somehow I'll be able to comprehend how they do it, and do it myself. I'll recapture my lost youth and restore my vital energy; my wrinkles will be smoothed away and my skin imbued with a newborn softness; my every inbreath will draw on the zephyrs of spring and every outbreath will be a divine sigh into the nostrils of carbon-dioxide consuming greenery.
But the most likely scenario is that I'll just end up with with a lot of herbs and veggies. Seedlings grow into plants, and I am already scrambling to find room for them all. Some are getting too tall for their shelves; and some are getting too big for their pots, a state which my mum describes as "needing a new pair of shoes." But it's not past the last frost date yet, so I can't just shove 'em outside.
Perhaps it is time to investigate how cold frames & hot beds work.
They tell us that plants are not like man immortal, but are perishable ~~ soul~less. I think that is something that we know exactly nothing about.
~~~ John Muir (1838-1914), Journal, Autumn 1867
Gardeners should be known as java-slinging, joe-swilling coffee-drinkers they are, not as the earth-mother herbal-tea-drinkers that popular myth would have you believe.
If you have a sublimated desire to, you should excuse the expression, buy the farm, then this may be the strike strip to the safety match of your id:
"Self-Sufficiency in Style" has got everything: scandal, intrigue, love, death, money, veterinarians, the SAS & HRH, family values, gardening, husbandry, and sex involving a raddle & crayon.
~ { & } ~ { & } ~ { & } ~
I'd been putting off linking to "Self-Sufficiency in Style" until I could also post pics of how my own nursery is coming along (very well, thank-you for asking).
Inspiration to go just ahead and post it came when (quite serendipituously) I ran across an urban gardening blog which had quoted from it... which makes this a bandwagon, so jump on board and get your Garden Hoe T-Shirt & Undies here.
Got my first seed catalogue of the year last week. :)
I was mightily surprised that Richters sent me this year's (free!) catalogue, considering they also sent me (free!) catalogues for '01 & '02 yet to date I have never bought so much as a dried rhizome from them. Nevertheless, every time it has come to me in the January mail, I've been extraordinarily pleased to have received it.
There's something fundamentally uplifting about getting a seed catalogue in the dead and dark of winter. I'm on the mailing list for several seed companies, and none of them mail out their catalogues this early; so I suspect Richter's does this quite intentionally.
And quite wisely, too. I spent a very happy evening suggled up on the sofa, post-it-noting pages and tallying the costs of impossibly long lists, gardening in my mind's eye.
The lease on this apartment turns over this July first; I still haven't made up my mind as to whether I'll stay or not and consequently, I'm conflicted (or v.v.). I used to move from address to address just to enjoy a new neighborhood; but the timetable for leases and landlords doesn't mesh well with the timetable for gardening.
I want to order slew of seeds and a passel of plants -- but not if I'm going to have to move them all come summer. And the viability of seeds generally decreases the longer planting is delayed; so I'm reluctant to commit to the possibility of ordering now and planting next year...
Any ideas for wild-rooted nomadic transportable gardens?
