Month: February 2018

Day 10: There were a few gaps in my planting plan that needed filling, so I’ve ordered the remaining items, mostly seeds, from William Dam Seeds and will pick them up this week. I’ll refurbish my long abandoned asparagus patch, waiting the requisite three years from root planting before I can harvest. But the thought of not planting glorious flowers, as a rupturus break from the last fifty-one non-floriferous years, was just too much for me. I’ve also never grown many annuals before, which will be a great start for new spots that have been scrub or grass prior. They can hold ground nicely from weed until it can all be turned in again at season’s end, to plant the longer term residents in 2019. One of the most delightful flower beds I saw while in England, was an unusual and striking “Medieval Mix” of annuals. I bought two packages while there to add to the excess I just ordered.

As a child, I remember dog eared seed catalogues lying about our winter home, and a few of those fond familiar names have risen in my life again. They were institutions, because I was a child and they were in print, and we never saw where the catalogues descended from.  When I moved my urban life from Toronto to Hamilton at just under fifty, the psychological transition was seamless. Both international populations, both hip, and aside from the very peculiar Hamilton conservatism in left-leaning voters, and the unpleasant macho attributes of the physicality of the city, I still felt at home. But it was a real shock to me after some months, to realize that I was now surrounded by some of the vast greenhouses and fields full of roses, seed houses, tree and flower farms of my childhood memories, and by many more that were new to me. I drive to them. I meet the hard working people behind the catalogues. And William Dam Seeds is one of those. It still is a marvel to me to be able to pull my trunk up to the bare root twiggy roses at Hortico I’ve just had someone take a shovel to, in the field right in front of me, full of other twiggy stunted cold roses. Or to speak to a head rose buyer, who used to advise the same for the Shaw of Iran, then walk aisle upon aisle at Connon Nurseries, amidst landscapers choosing trolleys full of single species, for a public park, or a client’s new garden.  Humber Nurseries we used to stop at nearly every trip north as a youth to the farm from Toronto. I will still drive the hour each way there to choose just the perfect coloured Iris, where I can touch the bloom, smell its fragrance, or ask some staff brave enough to say “I don’t really know,” if they don’t really know. That RARELY happens elsewhere, I can assure  you.

There are gaps. Toronto’s beloved Cruickshank’s on Mt. Pleasant Avenue, closed in 2001, and they are still missed. I cannot find from anyone else, prepared bulbs to force into Christmas bloom indoors. I cannot find the beautiful forcing vases either, though I’ve managed to persuade a few oddly made Pilsner glasses into the job. And I have my own hate list, for those nurseries that have staff that don’t know their plants, don’t tell the truth over the phone and cause an entire lost day for me, and nursery buyers that won’t buy anything they haven’t always bought on mass. O.K. the prime suspect is Terra. Their jewellery section is larger than their plant knowledge. Even their pots are ugly.  And they are just up the road. And down the road. And across the road. I see red.

On the subject of red, I have ordered. It will be a busy summer. Blues near the barn, reds and yellows in the farm yard, and new fruit trees beyond it.

And the lovely mushin no shin (無心の心) inducing lavender to line the roadway.

Day 9: The opportunity to play in the muck with no adult apologies is one of the most beautiful reasons to garden. Another is the opportunity to experiment with the wild, wonderful and superlative. Today was spud order day. Red, blue, white and gold, I’ll have them all if I can keep the Colorado Potato Beetle at bay.

Since I really don’t know a great potato from an average one yet, I ordered from Canada’s prime organic spud expert – all the way from Alberta. You know, the province of the “NDP” Bitumen Queen? Well, Albertans can’t all be as out of date as she is. I’ve had my eyes (ha) on Eagle Creek Seed Potatoes (https://www.seedpotatoes.ca/). Finally, I’ll get to trial some of the best and strangest there is to grow, to see what’s best for me. Amarosa (above), for red chips. French fingerling frites – voila!

German Butterball for all occasions but one: the sad and lonely rice day.

Russian Blue in honour of my beloved, dark visioned Isaac Babel.

I’ll potentially have the first steaming on plates for my daughter’s early July birthday. The last, could remain stored until a year from now. I may need to buy shares in the butter industry.

Days 7 and 8: Part of the freedom of research, is being able to keep ALL possibilities nurtured with equal stagnation. Though they are notoriously difficult to germinate and grow from seed, with courage, decisiveness, and two years of mulling behind me, by the kitchen sink in Hamilton, I have just over-seeded 450 lavender. Three days in the fridge first, then into moistened seeding mix placed in a warm spot under lights for months. Don’t let me down, YouTube.

If successful at rearing any of it to outdoor transplant date, in addition to defining the upcoming “Paradise Garden” segments, it will serve as companion to a new 1/2 mile low cedar double hedge made of indigenous transplants, that will run up the roadway from front gate to farm yard. Lavender benefit from but don’t require deadheading: this fact has eliminated other long considered options.

You can see that gentrification will take time.

The laneway should eventually feel somewhat like this, alas without being level.

The lavender I’ll run along the inside of the evergreens, the road will be re-gravelled with local limestone.

And though I flirted for some time with visions of rose edging or hydrangea, both compatible with alkaline soil,

the requirement of pruning would intrude on the pleasures at Styx Crossing. Lavender maintenance won’t be a matter of blossom survival and my aim is to demonstrate that less can be more. I must have a productive life beyond the gardening hours.

Along with the very lax timing to start vegetable seeds under lights, until spring planting really, I am now “at ease”.  In the meantime, other plans evolve. My next major outlay could be a modest greenhouse, and I may not even need it this year.

The Ides of March approach.

Day 6: It is mild today, but I don’t think by any stretch could Canadians call this spring. Yet fruit and rose nurseries are selling out lightning fast. One day my computer click for a coveted cherry lands in my “shopping cart”, by the next I must wait until 2019 for another shot at it. For a full forty-eight hours, I was bereft of all prunus cerasus, then discovered Whiffletree Farm and Nursery (.ca), half way up the road in Elora.  I’ve immersed myself in the sharp deadlined education about VVA1s, Krymsk 86s, Lovell or Myrobalans vs. St. Julian or B118s. All roots. Is this a foreign language to you? It means everything to the tree choice and its likelihood of drought or winter survival, its height and production, it’s ability to come to grips with rocky soil, or being espaliered. Here below is my first stab at a cloister fruit garden plan, for my thirty-three distinctly European fruits on order. This plan gelled as I took my family turn to keep hospital vigil over my 100 year old mother-in-law recovering from pneumonia in the dark hours. There is no place flat on this land: gradients may defeat the dream, and labour conservation will determine choices for path and quadrant materials. But I am aiming for an elaboration on the ancient Islamic (Achaemenid, Persian) and French models approaching a traditional Paradise Garden.

The devil is in the details still to come.

Thyme will surround planting holes. It may not remain this sparse. It will look pathetic and rough for years. I know it will look its best well past my lifetime, perhaps in a hundred years.

But I hope it will provide a brief paradise, for someone.

Happy Family Day

Day 5: Yes, I needed one pear tree. No, it didn’t stop at that. I have become fascinated with the history, symbolism, various root stocks, and nomenclature of the beasts. The French adore their pears, the English their apples and ciders, the Japanese have their own fruit, and old Ontario farm yards are unearthing surprisingly neglected histories surrounding the interrupted arduous journey of Canadian apples. Thankfully, I am not the only one smitten with stories of pippins (“pip of a fruit”) and their stories are written about in all kinds of places, but most importantly in the actions of dedicated breeders who are at last salvaging these nearly lost heritage plants. This spring, I will have planted pears, apples, cherries, plums, quince, plumcots, grapes for the table & pies, and grapes fermented for my goblet.

Thirty-three fruits, to succor my heart and tongue.

In the bitterest of early winter, after my father died, with all the emotional tumult of a death in an already torn apart family, one death crashing into another, one of my first defiant and angry acts of rampage against the victory of death, was to take as much limb death out of the orchard as I possibly could. There was death everywhere, both in my family, and all over the farm.  In the freezing December cold up a ladder with a hack saw in hand, tears streaming down my cheeks, loud rage hitting the skies and sorrow flushed over my cheeks, perched in the place that meant most to my father, I wrote this poem in honour of my dear brilliant unhappy cousin Glen Allen, who has since killed himself.

Another Glen

I am taking death out of the yard

it sounds like birds in the trees

I heard a falcon once

playing like

Glen Gould

or at least

out of his own centre

like another Glen

 

I heard my daughter studying

the descant of Latin

her test the day

she was dead tired

a long gone language

brought straight to her

from her entire mouth and family

and by not naming living geniuses

– history gone by the wayside

 

you can’t imagine

she was feeling

that her 17th candle burned like this

droning that memory it had the exuberance

to charm something

off you and Caesar alike

 

And you can’t imagine what it feels like

to be Bach on the pretty keys

to pretend this lopping procedure is schooled

still on a Baroque tinkling

worship, its devolution of dénouement

of the same intricacy as the poem

that follows the poem

I wrote months before

just after the death of my father

just after he sang Broadway musicals from his oxygen mask

his death bed and before my will

had changed

come alive knowing he had failed

to call for the nurse on time, failed

with dynamic

to utter a thing

To careen for a year

over the anger this man spread

 

you can imagine Christmas morning

opening a heart attack

you can imagine we all went along

continued all openings and containment

his direction

all wrappings the point of unnaming

any  thing he did

 

the thing we did

was to leave our reference to the hospital staff

business announced over P.A.

non information but

Dr. So and So to Intensive Care

running carts past the lone blood limb

institutional hum

leaving burial under officious dismissal

standing ignorant at a visitor lounge threshold

as an entire filial relationship

can be institutionalized

encapsulated

in an evening gesture

 

all of us not knowing

what the man who could face down a three year old

had on his silent tongue had

to keep from

the man who could scream to dawn air

Latin reaming classics

over a dead tongue of prey

 

I sing a lullaby from a limb

and hope to get sleep

like a genius

hope that the practice

of centurions

will give me flight

over dead keys

Day 4: Mingling with the deepest reds I could find, which I posted earlier, these visions of sunlight will adorn and drape overhead between upright posts, as the old cedar hedge comes down. My dad was not a flower guy at all, so I begin at the beginning.

Roald Dahl: Strong tea fragrance, 4ft., repeat bloom.

Teasing Georgia Climbing: Strong tea fragrance, repeat bloom.

The Pilgrim Climbing: Strong blend of tea, rose and myrrh fragrance. Repeat blooms.

Graham Thomas Climbing: voted the world’s favourite rose, strong tea fragrance with hints of violets, repeat blooms.

Alister Stella Gray Climbing: delicious tea scent, yolk-yellow buds, repeat blooms.

And one Bourbon for Napolean’s Josephine, to be planted outside the yard near the barn. Souvenir de la Malmaison, climbing up to 20ft. with repeat strongly scented blooms.

 

 

DAY 3: Optimism is essential when gardening.  THIS is what my babies will look like when delivered. Just need some mycorrhizal fungi (whoo whoo!) to plant them with. Gardeners are strange. My dad used to load compost in the back of the car whenever we went on family road trips.

THIS will be the ugliness of planting weather, if it’s not also raining.

THIS, however, is what my Munstead Wood 3ft shrub will look like when mature, and smelling like heaven (apologies to Sally Cooper).

 “Strong Old Rose fragrance with fruity notes of blackberry, blueberry and damson.” Vase worthy. What more does anyone need? Thank you David Austin, from the bottom of my heart.

I promised you yellow roses, but they will have to wait until tomorrow. I ordered fruit trees today and, would you believe it? It’s February, and many were sold out already.  As I said, gardeners are strange.