Signs of spring

We have been getting quite matter-of-fact about the carpet of snowdrops and winter aconite covering all the perennial beds. When I look out at the garden from the covered verandah I see a beautiful mosaic of yellow and white and green.

Today I noticed a slightly different shade of yellow - less lemony, more like mango. Sure enough, there was the first patch of crocus. What is it about spring flowers that makes them so good at lifting the heart? Is it just that they come at the time of year we most need a little lift, or is it their pluckiness as they ignore temperatures that still come close to freezing at night and bloom anyway?

The hellebores have been blooming, too, but it's been hard to get a picture since they like to grow in shade and it has been so gloomy and rainy lately. But the sun came out for a while this morning, and so here is one of the flashier Mucky Boots hellebores.

There is so much coming to life in the garden that some days it feels like I'm standing on a subterranean lava flow of spring energy. The honeyberries are leafing out, and there are the prettiest pink buds on the blueberry bushes. The bare branches of the red-twigged dogwoods are almost luminescently red, and the twigs of other shrubs are glowing yellow. And by the pond is a sad, spindly, punky little tree, a volunteer that nobody planted, nobody loves, nobody even notices. But right now it is claiming its own moment of beauty as it leafs out in tender green leaves. It's as if everything living thing, loved or not, feels the promise of spring.

Farm animals

No, these are not our goats. They belong to a neighbour on our regular walking route. Whenever they hear us coming (which is easy, since their dogs start barking, and then Frankie starts barking, and if you're within a 2 km radius you can hear us coming) they poke their heads out the door to have a look at what's causing all the excitement.

We thought about having goats ourselves, primarily for their milk. We had visions of yogurt and goat cheese. Imagine having your own source of local, organic, freshly made goat's cheese to enjoy whenever you like. But then we started reading about goats, and we learned they're quite a bit of work.

First of all, you need two, because they need company. You probably want female goats, if it's the milk you're interested in. Besides, male goats can be smelly and hard to handle. Since goats need to be bred every year to produce milk, you need to arrange for a visit from an amorous male goat, and you need to be prepared for kids. Goats usually produce one or two kids, which means you could end up with four of them. And, according to one source we read, if you want the mothers' milk for yourself, you should never let the kids suckle.

Hmm... You now have between two and four kids that need bottle feeding a few times each day from the time they're born until they are weaned a few months later. Plus, you're milking the mothers twice a day for that milk you're so interested in. Then you have to either find homes for the kids, or, especially in the case of female kids, keep them yourself, which means more potential offspring in the future. Have you ever heard of exponential growth?

On top of that, we had to consider where to keep them (we'd have to build a new shed, big enough for two) and what to feed them (we have only a bit of grazing land, which means buying feed, which changes the whole cost-benefit-analysis). It was at this point we decided maybe goats weren't for us - at least for now.

But a pig...now that's an idea.

Rainy day

Another rainy day. With so much experience, I'm starting to be familiar with the different degrees of rain. There's the drizzle that's so light and fine you can persuade yourself it doesn't really count. Then there's the official sort of rain that requires a ball cap to keep your head dry. And there's the kind of rain we had today: rain that calls for boots to tuck your pants into so the hems don't turn into a muddy mess, and a hood to keep the water from running down the back of your neck.

All this rain is making me impatient. There's lots to do outside, but much of it has to be deferred because it's bad for the soil to work it when it's so wet. And other jobs change from pleasantly dirty to a miserable I'm-carrying-around-so-much-mud-on-my-clothes-I-can't-walk kind of dirty. There are still lots of renovations to do inside the house, but with spring so close we can taste it, neither of us feels like embarking on another big indoor project.

So I puttered in the green house today. I spritzed the leek and onion seedlings. I installed my new max/min thermometer. I made another batch of soil block mix and started more seedlings. I amused myself by slicing up empty yogurt containers into markers to label my trays with. I fussed with the arrangement of the heating mats, and stacked empty trays three ways. I may not have been very productive, but I was content to putter away in the warm, humid air, listening to the sound of the rain hitting the plastic of the green house and being reminded that when we camped when I was growing up, rainy days in the canvas tent playing games and reading books were my favourite sort of days.

Kim came to join me a little while later, and decided that since the shelves she had put up for me were already full with seedlings, she needed to build some more. Here she is in the workshop, building brackets. She could have gone out and bought some metal ones, but we're getting pretty good at making do with what we have, when we can.

Eating the harvest

Harvest? In February? Actually, most of the harvest took place months ago, but I seem to be having trouble eating it.

I recognized I had a problem in June, when the fennel was ready to eat. There were 24 beautiful bulbs, just waiting to be julienned into salads, or steamed under fish in parchment, or braised in broth in a saute pan. But did I eat them? No - I just admired them, regularly. Every day I would stand by the raised bed and admire the fern-like fronds, and imagine how good they would taste when I finally decided to eat them. That went on so long that by the time I brought myself to pull one out of the soil it was past its prime. So there I was, having saved my fennel only to end up with two dozen woody bulbs.

I had the same problem with my canned harvest. I made great pickled beets, but I only opened the first jar recently. And I worked hard to can as many tomatoes as the greenhouse could produce. They're all still there except the one I finally used last week. And when the vast quantities of strawberries kept rolling in I chastised Kim for eating them fresh, insisting we needed to save them in the freezer. And they're still there, for the most part - in the freezer.

What gives? you may be asking. I'm asking myself the same question, and I think there are a few reasons I'm hesitating to enjoy the food we grew.

Reason #1 is that I am saving the harvest for a special occasion. I'm not entirely sure what that occasion might be. Maybe the thought of fresh-from-the-garden produce is so wonderful I figure it shouldn't be for everyday. Which pretty much defeats the purpose of giving up our jobs and moving to a farm. I think I need to get over this.

Reason #2 is pride. Those 24 bulbs of fennel looked gorgeous, and I felt a real sense of achievement that I, the city girl who had never had a vegetable garden before, grew them. Surely they deserved to be admired a while more before being eaten.

Reason #3 is a bit weirder. The third reason I feel a need to save the harvest instead of eating it is a fear of - um - armageddon.

You may have noticed that, what with concerns over meteorites hitting the house and middle-of-the-night flood evacuations, I have a bit of a problem with disaster scenarios. But really, it's not that big a deal, and beyond making sure we have a reasonable earthquake kit (which all Vancouver Islanders should have) I don't think fear of disaster affects my day-to-day life.

But when we moved here to try to grow our own food, we also moved into the sphere of people around the world striving for self-sufficiency. And some of those are people preparing for one kind of armageddon or another: peak oil, climate crises, a day of judgement. When I'm googling "homesteading" or "self-sufficiency" I try to bypass sites with numerous biblical quotes, or instructions about handling small arms. But I think somehow I have been infected, a little, by the fears behind them.

I can see how this might happen. There's a lot of overlap between self-sufficiency and survivalism. What do people who want cheaper organic vegetables and people who fear the collapse of the rule of law have in common? They grow their own food. What links frugal folks trying to be thrifty with certain religious groups preparing for crises? Food stockpiles - you know, buying things in quantity when they go on sale, or preserving as much of the harvest as you can. And whether you're trying to reduce your carbon footprint or you're afraid of having no electricity because society as we know it has collapsed, you might choose to have solar power. Different motivations with the same outcome.

So, I think part of my reluctance to break into the freezer or the pantry for the harvest I preserved last summer and fall might be a semi-subconscious sense that I should be saving the food for harder times.

This year I am determined that this not affect my decisions about eating the harvest - at least not unconsciously. I am determined that every bulb of fennel I plant get eaten and enjoyed, preferably at its prime. We will eat warm, juicy raspberries for breakfast, and if last year's harvest was any indication, there will still be lots leftover for the the freezer. When the greenhouse is full to bursting with tomatoes we'll slice some into salads, dry some for the pantry and make the rest into tomato sauce which we'll enjoy during the months until the next harvest.

The next harvest: what lovely words.

Working hard

Kim and I spent about 4 hours working in the garden today, in a grey, drizzling rain, getting thoroughly chilled but accomplishing enough to make it seem worthwhile. Our focus was the two raised beds in the greenhouse, where we grew tomatoes and basil last year. They are the only greenhouse beds we have, and we fill them to the brim, but that causes a problem every year because we can't rotate the tomatoes anywhere else - and not rotating tomatoes to other beds is just asking for trouble. What do you do if you can't move the tomatoes? Move the soil instead!

So today we shovelled 2/3 of the soil from the beds, carting the dirt to the front of the house where it will help convert some barren wasteland to productive perennial beds. Then we shovelled in new soil from the load we had delivered last summer, and topped it all with lovely black, rich compost. This year's tomatoes will think they're in heaven.

It was hard work. Heavy shovel loads seem twice as heavy when you're in cramped quarters, trying to twist from bed to barrow and back again. And I'm quite stubborn when it comes to pushing on to get a job done, even when sore joints and muscles tell me that's not the best idea. So it's done, which is great, but I have a feeling I'll be hobbling around for a day or two... We're going to have to think about a longer-term solution, because I really don't want to have to do this every year.

I tried to take before-and-after pictures, but the battery in the camera needed recharging. Instead, a picture of a woman and her tractor, having fun in the dirt.

Rhubarb

Rhubarb is popping out of the ground all over. There are about two dozen clumps in the blueberry bed, some mixed in with the hostas near the house, and still more in the other perennial beds. There is no shortage of rhubarb here at Mucky Boots.

It can be disconcerting to see it when it first edges a shoulder out of the soil, because red is not what anyone is used to seeing this time of year. But once the momentary startle is over, it is very nice to greet the first fruit-like food of the year.

Dirt

I had a lovely morning yesterday - I spent a few hours in the garden, in a light drizzle, cleaning up the forest-like beds at the front of the house. There are a number of big gorgeous rhododendrons and Japanese maples, some azaleas, some evergreens, and a few odds and sods like holly bushes and a sumac tree. All enveloped by lush ferns, vinca vines and assorted nameless shrubby things, in raised stone beds with paths wandering through. It's quite a lovely part of our property, but with everything else going on last year it got completely neglected.

It's looking much better now, after three days of work. The stone paths have been reclaimed from a couple of winters of falling evergreen needles and one long summer of weed proliferation. Last year's dead lily-like objects have been cleaned out. The dead fern fronds have been cut back. And all of a sudden there is more to see. Instead of an indistinct mass of green stuff, now there are individual shrubs looking magnificent even in their early spring nakedness. With the dead undergrowth cleared away we can see the green shoots of the many bulbs that have been planted in the beds. And the tidied paths look so inviting as they wind away through the beds. Everything seems to have more room to be.

It all involved a lot of dirt and mess. Dried, messy stuff I cleaned out and carted away. Dirty, soggy stuff I raked and swept off the paths. Rich, dark compost I carted in and spread. I really like getting dirty when I work. In fact, the dirtier the better. Maybe it's just a reaction against the years of my life when I had to dress up and stay clean. Or maybe being dirty is a visible marker of productivity - or at least effort. Whatever it is, I like it when Kim comes outside and exclaims over how dirty I am and wonders how I got dirt in my ear and on my chin and how I am ever going to get those pants clean.

On a popular CBC radio phone-in show recently, a gardening expert gently chided a caller for saying "dirt" when he meant "soil." I like "dirt," myself.

Old friend

We have seen the return of an old friend this week. These lovely yellow flowers are very low to the ground - only a couple of inches high - and lost out only to the snowdrops in the "early to bloom" category. Last year we called them the lion flowers, because their bright heads surrounded by a ruff of green leaves reminded us of lions, for some reason. They felt like friends, even though we'd just met - they were just so darn cheerful, at a time when we felt scarred by our traumatic move and the hard, long, snowy winter.

Well, they're back, and we're glad! Though we started to feel like bad friends, being so happy at their return but not having a clue what they were. So I went looking today through every plant book we own, trying to make an identification. I even had to hunt through boxes of books still unpacked after the move, but it was worth it. We now have a name: eranthis, commonly known as winter aconite. Welcome back, little friends!

And we're off!

Today was the kick-off to the 2010 growing season - yay! According to the seed packets and the gardening books and the almanac and the moon cycles, today was a good day to start onion seeds. What you see here is the fruit of an hour's work this morning: 24 pots of yellow Copra onions, 12 pots of red Redwing onions and 12 pots of Ambition shallots. That may not sound like very much, but there are 4 seeds in each pot. Which means 96, 48 and 48 beautiful onions and shallots if all goes perfectly (which it is pretty much guaranteed not to do...).

Eliot Coleman is the God of Growers, the Guru of Gardeners. He is a commercial farmer in Maine who grows vegetables organically, all year round. Yes, all year round. In Maine. He has written a few books and appeared in a few films (including our neighbour Nick's "Island on the Edge") and when people who are trying to grow their own food hear his name they have to resist the urge to genuflect.

Anyway, Eliot Coleman and his partner Barbara Damrosch, who wrote "The Garden Primer" (which is filed under B for Bible on my bookshelf) have been my teachers in this gardening venture. So when he says it's more efficient to plant onions in 4's rather than singly, I pay attention. Onions would normally get planted every 4 inches, with rows about a foot apart. Eliot recommends planting 4 seeds together, 12 inches apart. Apparently the growing onions will gently push each other out of the way and end up looking like a lovely onion bouquet, with no adverse effect on size or quality. Efficiency isn't so critical for me, since my garden is quite modest, but I kind of like this idea - it seems companionable, and friendly. It feels like I'm providing for the social needs of my seedlings.

It was fun getting my hands dirty as I prepared the soil mix (peat moss, lime, perlite, greensand, bloodmeal, colloidal phosphate, soil and compost - recipe courtesy of Mr. Eliot) in a big wheelbarrow and filled the 48 pots. It was fun being reminded how small some seeds can be, and how hard precision can be when your hands are dirty. It was fun hauling out the heating mats to go under the trays, to keep them warm in the greenhouse. It was just plain fun, from start to finish. And I wasn't the only one feeling all was right with the world. Nick our neighbour was out and about this morning, too, and we shared a chat over the fence about the seeds he had started and the seeds I had started, about fruit tree pruning and the mink he caught in a trap (he was aiming for rats, but minks can be more dangerous for his chickens and ducks) and how wonderful it was to be starting the growing season. Two like-minded friends grinning from ear to ear. We are farmers!

Finally, the bathroom

Boy, this is a blog I have been waiting to write: I am very happy to announce we have finally finished our first bathroom renovation - at least I think we are. There may be one or two details to wrap up, but it's finished enough I would be happy to have house guests use it.

Just to give you a context for our glee, I want to remind you what the bathroom used to look like. You can see some of it in the photo on top: the lovely blue "marble" laminate countertop, the oak medicine cabinet and towel rails, the fancy colonial shades on the light fixture. The concrete floor. What you can't see is the iron stains in the sink and the toilet, due to too many years on well water without a water softener and filtration system. Or the fact that the toilet wouldn't flush without intervention. Or the grungy, mildewy grout around the sink. Or the mineral deposits on the faucet and taps. This was not a nice bathroom.

But look at it now! (You can click on the second photo to see a larger version.) Marvel at its beauty, its function and form. Admire the low-flush toilet (which we got on sale) and the two women who figured out how to install it themselves. Ogle the slate floor, and the countertop and backsplash we made for about $30 worth of plywood, metal trim and leftover tile. Gasp in astonishment at the lovely mirror (which we already had) and light fixture (which we got cheap at Rona), and at the smoothness of the drywall repairs around them. Most of all, just look at that faucet and sink. They cost more than everything else in the room put together, including the floor, but that's the nice thing about doing all the work ourselves: we can afford to splurge a bit on things we really like.

I have already written about the nine million trips to Rona as we sorted out the countertop. Well, there were a bunch more trips over plumbing. The water supply lines that came with the faucet weren't long enough so we had to get new ones (Trip #1) but they gave us the wrong ones so we had to go back (Trip #2). Then the new sink's drain didn't come down as far as the old sink's drain so we had to get some PVC piping (Trip #3) but once that was in we realized the new drain was farther forward, too, which meant more piping and a new elbow were needed (Trip #4). And then, of course, when we turned on the water there was a leak coming from the drainpipe, and we had to take it all apart again to figure it out and fix it. Compared to the sink, installing the toilet was a breeze. And then right at the end when we were putting the drawers back in the vanity we realized the slate tiles we had installed on the front face of the countertop were just that much too long, and one of the drawers wouldn't close. Argh! But we just used a Dremel tool to file the tile down and voila - the drawer closes!

The only scary part? We still have two bathrooms to go... And Kim bought towel rails for one of them today.

Birth of a guitar

We may have been poking along with the bathroom (and no, we're still not done...) but that's not to say we've been wasting our time. At least Kim hasn't. She has been working hard on her first guitar-making project and Ta Da! Here it is!

She bought the parts from a guitar maker which in itself was a challenge, since there are about a zillion parts, all of which must be carefully chosen to be compatible with each other and produce the sound she was looking for. Want a discussion about the difference in tone between a maple neck and a mahogany neck? Just ask Kim! Once the parts arrived, it was up to Kim to assemble them. This is an electric guitar, which means pickups, which means wiring and soldering. Did Kim let the fact she had never soldered before and knew nothing about wiring stand in her way? Of course not! My honey is fearless about learning new things. So she read some books, checked out some videos on YouTube, consulted with the folks at Circuit City and went to it.

There were a few pitfalls along the way. Naturally she had chosen the most complicated type of pick-up available - namely, something called a P-rail, which, according to Kim, means a humbucking, P-90 and single coil all in one pick-up. Consequently, the wiring diagrams looked like spaghetti gone crazy. During her first soldering attempt she "cooked the capacitors" and had to buy new ones and try again. (Do I understand what that means? No, only that I heard some colourful language I'd never heard before.) At one point she was very regretful she had only been born with two hands, and that she hadn't thought to give this guitar making a try when she was younger and didn't need 3X reading glasses to put the minuscule connections in focus. But did she let those frustrations get her down? No! Not Kim! She persevered, and this weekend she finished it.

But questions remained. Would she electrocute herself when she plugged it in? Would she blow her amp, or all the circuits in the fuse box? Would the thing even make a sound? Alone in her room she wrestled with these questions. All I knew, upstairs in the kitchen, was that I heard a few strummed chords coming through an amp and then the joyous, jubilant voice of my darling: "It works! It works! I can't believe it works!"

Yes, it works. All three pickups work, beautifully. It not only works, it sounds great. Its music has filled the house this weekend, punctuated by exclamations of "It really works! I didn't think it would work!"

And last night in bed, after good-nights had been said and we were drifting off, the last words I heard were a sleepy "I still can't believe it works..."

The first snowdrops!

High water

It has been raining again...a lot. What a winter. And the Cowichan River is back to its high levels. This picture was taken at the bridge crossing we take to get to Duncan. You can see the road just on the other side of the river.

I think this has been more on my mind than I thought. Last night on top of the rain we had a big wind storm, and the power went out about 2 a.m. It woke us up, because all our smoke detectors chirrup when that happens. Then about half an hour later the river, which we could hear through our open bedroom window, suddenly seemed a lot louder - enough that we each did a "Are you awake? What is that noise?" And then shortly after that (sometime before 3) we started to hear what sounded like announcements being made through loudpeakers coming from the road.

Panic! I leaped out of bed, went charging downstairs for a flashlight and a raincoat, and ran to the road where car lights were shining and a small crowd of people seemed to be gathering. Had the river broken its banks? Were we being asked to evacuate?

It turned out one of our neighbours had seen and heard someone outside their house in the dark and had called the police, who had spotted someone in the forest and were calling them out on their loudspeakers. (Whoever it was didn't oblige.) Not a flooding river, but excitement all the same. Kim and I went around and made sure all our doors and windows were locked and went back to bed, but it was a while before we got back to sleep.

I have had a few conversations with Elly, our next-door neighbour, about feelings of safety out here in the country. It's something she thinks about because Nick is often gone for work, and she's in their house alone without a dog with supersonic hearing and an intimidating bark like Frankie. I haven't felt afraid of other humans - it's bears I worry about - although if our property were more secluded or remote I might worry. I suppose an event like last night might make one feel more concerned, but paradoxically I felt reassured somehow. How amazing that we can see or hear something suspicious, call the RCMP and they actually come to check it out. And that the neighbours come out in their pyjamas to make sure everything's okay. That's kind of cool.

Poking along in the bathroom

Our bathroom renovation hasn't been the site of miracles, like the garden is, but it has been the source of slow and steady progress. You may be wondering why the heck we haven't finished the darn thing yet, and I admit we have been taking our time. Some days it just seems more important to go to town for a matinee, or to spend the day playing the guitar (Kim) or working in the garden (Miriam). That's one of the wonderful things about our new life - we set the schedule.

Since we're the ones setting the schedule, it means we can change our minds along the way about what we want to do with this bathroom of ours. Kim, especially, is good at creative thinking. So if she says "What would happen if we tiled the backsplash this way instead?" we have time to mull it over, make some modifications and go get supplies. That wouldn't be possible if we'd hired someone else to do the job.

So where are we? Well, you already know we removed the stained, malfunctioning toilet, took off the ugly old countertop and sink, and installed a new plywood countertop in preparation for tiling. We also took away the old medicine cabinet and light fixture, which left huge holes in the walls. We mulled over different possibilities for a few days, all of which were designed to avoid the work of patching the holes, but we finally decided to do it right, and out came the drywalling supplies. Kim's great at drywall, and Mir's great at the friggin' and jiggin', so between us we made awesome, tight-fitting patches, including around the box for the light fixture, and then Kim worked her magic with the drywall compound to create a seamless, practically perfect wall. Voila! Then we painted, and now you'd never know there had been holes in the wall at all.

Once that was done, we went back to the countertop. Yesterday we installed the tile, which involved some tricky cutting around the opening for the sink. And we made a trip to the dump. For some reason we both sort of like going to the dump. We get to take Ruby Agnes the truck out for a spin, with Frankie sitting between us on the bench seat. We get the satisfaction of making our front yard look more like a front yard again, instead of a junk pile. The folks at the dump are always really friendly. And we get to stop at Tim's when we're done for a celebratory cup of coffee. How's that for a perfect afternoon?

Miracles at Mucky Boots

When Kim and I moved to the farm there were some things I expected and some things that took me completely by surprise. I expected to work hard, and to find that work satisfying. I expected to learn a lot and eat good food, and I have. But what I didn't expect, what took me completely by surprise, was how I have been affected by being in closer contact with nature.

I started having conversations with individual trees almost as soon as we got here, like the plucky, spindly little pieris japonica by the pond that got bent double with a heavy snow load and sideswiped by delivery trucks and come spring still managed to pop out new leaves with the best of them. I know there's a biological explanation for why snowdrops push their way through the frozen crust of last winter's snow at a time of year any other sensible plant would still be hunkered down, but to me it seems like a sign of an interesting personality. And I found it very hard to plant a few tiny seeds and then harvest bushels of food a few months later, with no other inputs except dirt, water and sunshine, without thinking at least in passing about the existence of some beautiful greater plan.

When I started to look, and allowed myself to feel, it seemed that everywhere I looked there was something to see that felt like a blessing. The beech tree by the greenhouse that glowed orange on a rainy day. The ugly-duckling stick of an asian pear tree that burst into the most gorgeous frilly white blossoms. The constantly changing display of tulips that went on and on and made me think someone was coming into the garden at night to switch them up and lead us on. The path along the backside of the pond so soft underfoot with inches of moss it was impossible not to lie down to see how it feels. The magic of an orderly row of pea shoots poking their heads through the soil.

Yesterday it stopped raining enough for me to spend a few hours outside in some late-winter clean-up of the perennial beds. At one point I laid down the rake, took a deep breath of the cool, moist air, looked around at the mist hanging in the trees that surrounded me like my own personal support crew, and was once again filled with joy and awe and peace. That's my Miracle at Mucky Boots Farm.

Our first year in photos

Our first year at Mucky Boots Farm

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Making do

The greens in my vegetable garden are officially dead. For a while I thought some of them might revive after the cold snap we had in December, but I have learned that a slimy brown mess pretty much means the end. We still have a few carrots, beets and rutabagas buried under straw, but nothing that meets the fresh and green criteria. And so last week, I bought a box of salad mix from the grocery store - the first since April last year. It felt horrible, buying that box.


What to do, what to do? And then it struck me: sprouts! So out came the sprouter and now, three days later, two batches - one of pea sprouts and one of a spicy mix that will be great on sandwiches. It will be another day or two until they're ready, but when they are we'll get the homegrown, fresh from the garden (the garden in this case being the kitchen counter) goodness we've been missing. That's more than making do - sprouts are great all on their own.


We've also been making do when it comes to our current bathroom renovation. After finishing the floor in the family room (which, incidentally, meant we could move bookshelves into place so I could unpack the twenty or so boxes of books I haven't seen for about 16 months - heaven!) we turned our attention to the downstairs bathroom, spurred on by a possible visit later this month from my dad. After all, this is the guest bathroom.



The old bathroom, like much in the house when we bought it, was just plain ugly. Concrete floor, stained toilet and sink, rusty medicine cabinet, and a light fixture and towel rails that came straight from the wood-means-rustic-which-means-attractive school of design. We got the toilet out (no, Dad, we're not going to plant flowers in it) and tiled the floor with the same slate tile that runs down the hallway. Then we disconnected the sink and wrestled the old blue fake marble (does real marble even come in blue?) laminate countertop out the door and into the go-to-the-dump pile that keeps getting bigger. Then we had to decide what to put it its place. Granite would be nice, but we wanted to do this as inexpensively as possible. Our next thought was a ready-made nicer looking laminate countertop from Rona that we would cut to size. But it just wasn't a fitting enough backdrop for the gorgeous sink we snagged. No good. Back to Rona. Next idea: use the same slate as we'd used on the floor. But when we laid it out, just to see, it looked like the floor, only on the countertop. No good. Back to Rona. We came home with some smaller porcelain tile made to look like slate. Too dark. No good. Back to Rona. We knew we wanted a smaller tile, but everything we saw that we liked was really expensive. How expensive? Enough that the price we thought was for the entire box was actually for each individual tile. No good. Back to Rona to return the tile - we are now on a first-name basis with 90% of the employees of the Duncan store.

Then Kim had her brilliant idea. We have lots of leftover slate tile, and a wicked wet saw for cutting it, so why not do just that and make our own smaller tiles? That's making do. That's a new countertop for just the cost of the plywood, since all the other materials are leftovers. Of course before we get too tickled with ourselves we actually have to complete the project...

Country dark

Nighttime is different out here. Our trip to Toronto reminded us how bright the night is in the city, with streetlights and billboards and marquees. That was part of the attraction, when we lived there - there was always company, always activity, always the bright lights of the city.

When we moved to Victoria we were surprised by how dark the nights on the Saanich Peninsula were, and we even lived in a little neighbourhood with streetlights. But there seemed to be about half the number we were used to, and their light was a soft, muted yellow. And the quiet at night was new - on the odd occasion when Frankie had to go out in the middle of the night it was so quiet our neighbour's soft snoring floated to me through his open bedroom window.

Well, nights at Mucky Boots are even quieter, and even darker. It's so dark (that sounds like the start of a bad joke) the gate becomes a challenge late at night: it's easy to find and open with car headlights shining on it, but when you can't see your feet, getting back to the car without falling over a rock is something worth celebrating. And then once we're through the gate and parked, if the moon is hiding, finding our way from the car over the lawn, up the stairs and to the front door becomes a feeling-with-our-feet, balancing-with-our-arms kind of dance, which turns into a comedy if along the way we drop our keys.

With the days so short, and dark coming so early we have to be aware of where we are come 5:00 or so. One afternoon Kim was so caught up with sorting and organizing in the workshop dusk came and went without her noticing, and when she'd had enough she couldn't make it back to the house it was so dark. Thanks goodness for walkie-talkies.

Santa got a few hints and we found two flashlights each in our stockings this year. My favourite is a hands-free version, on a stretchy band that fits around my head. It's great for reading in bed, although if I get up to pee with it on, the wavering light as I move across the room makes me feel like I'm in a remake of the Blair Witch Project.

On the other hand, when the moon is full and the skies are clear, the moonlight can be so bright there are shadows (oh - that's what a moon shadow is!). There is a big window and a skylight by our bed, and seeing the moonlight streaming in one or the other on such nights is worth waking up and fumbling for glasses in order to see better. And that doesn't even take into account the stars - oh, the stars, zillions of them.

It's hard to take a picture of the dark, so here's a photo of Frankie meeting the no-electric-heat challenge. Our goal was to make it through the winter on the heat generated by our wood stove alone, without turning on any baseboard heaters (except in the music room, where regulated heat is important for Kim's guitars). We were doing so well until we started renovations in the family room, and had to disconnect the stove in order to tile underneath it. And then we left for a week, and couldn't count on the cats to stoke the stove while we were gone. I figure none of that really counts as a failure - more like a sabbatical. We're back on track now.

Happy New Year!

Remember the post about appreciating the winter-visible bones of the garden? Here are more bones: a curly hazel, to be exact. How gorgeous is this? With all those crazy corkscrew curls I can see why they call it a "witch" hazel, although I'd rather think of it as pre-Raphaelite.

Kim and I returned from our Christmas trip to Toronto happy to be back home, back where it's quiet and green and calm. The family room floor was waiting for us, so we spent the last three days installing the floor and painting and installing the baseboard. Given Kim's bad knees it was me who did most of the installing of the floor, which was sort of fun although it left me feeling like I'd had an 8-hour session with a Thigh Master machine.

Snow!

It snowed yesterday, as promised by the weather forecasters. It started about 2:00, and by the time I was driving home from a tutoring session, the roads were lightly snow covered. More snow through the evening and overnight, so we woke this morning to that lovely brightened light coming in through the bedroom windows that tells you there's lots of snow before you even look.

Snow is different this year than last. For one thing, there's a lot less of it - as least so far. Last winter the record breaking cold and snowfalls made our weekend trips here something of an adventure: driving over the Malahat at 5:00 a.m. in a blinding snowstorm (sorry, Mom), dealing with burst pipes in the pump house twice (the first time due to ignorance, the second to stupidity), being snowed in and unable to return to Victoria and having to borrow a can opener from the neighbours so we could eat a can of beans warmed on the wood stove, waiting anxiously to see if our road would be plowed, and making friends with Bruce the backhoe guy. It's different this year - other than getting William the cat to the vet this afternoon, we have no place other than home where we need to be, the power has stayed on, water is flowing through the pipes as it should, and we have our own can opener.

Three wonderful things from this morning: animal tracks in the snow (raccoon and rabbit, we think), Frankie forgetting his 9-year old doggy dignity and reverting to berserk puppyhood as he played in all the white stuff, and watching two red-headed woodpeckers chase each other around and around a snow-covered tree, creating the Mucky Boots version of a barber's pole.

Planning the garden

The first 2010 seed catalogue arrived today. Wowie! Many pages to pore over, and lots of planning to do.

Now I know that some of you reading this won't have much of an idea about what goes into planning a vegetable garden, so I'm going to explain as much as I know so far. Please believe me: I'm not making any of this up.

The first thing is to make a list of what you might like to grow. This list, I have learned, should more or less correspond to what you might like to eat. I learned this the hard way, when I didn't acknowledge the fact that I really don't like kale only after I had a bed full of it ready to harvest. When you make the list of what to grow, it's important to recognize that your space is probably limited, and you won't have room for everything. So, as well as thinking of what you might like to eat, think of things that are hard to get in the grocery store (like purple potatoes), or are expensive to buy (like basil). Some things, like onions, are dead cheap to buy, but the homegrown ones are so much better you should go ahead and plant some anyway. Also, especially for new gardeners like me, it's probably a good idea to stick to things that are easier to grow.

The next thing is to look at the space you have and see what you can fit in. This is more complicated than you think, because some crops (like garlic) will be harvested by July, leaving an empty bed ready for something else. You may be able to get three different crops from a single bed: early radishes and green onions, followed by beans, followed by Swiss Chard or (yuck) kale to harvest through the winter. This is especially true if you are starting seeds in soil blocks and then transplanting them when they are partly grown. So you need more than a plan with a space for each bed - you need a plan that takes into account time, too.

Which leads to the issue of crop rotations. It's important not to plant the same crop in the same bed two years running, because it gives pests and diseases a better chance to make a permanent home there. Also, some crops use lots of the nutrients in the soil, so you shouldn't plan two such crops in a row. So you can't really plan a garden for a year - you should really plan it at least 3 years ahead, to make sure you've accounted for all the crop rotations you'll need to do.

If you've followed all that, you'll have a plan for what vegetables are going to be planted in what beds when, for the next few years. The next thing is to choose the varieties - that's where the seed catalogues come in. For example, suppose you're thinking of carrots. There are lots of options, depending on what you want. Early carrots or late carrots? Carrots you plan to eat right away or store for future use? Orange carrots, red carrots, purple carrots or yellow carrots? Long, skinny carrots or short, fat carrots? Do you need a variety that is resistant to any particular disease or pest that is common in your area? Do you want a hybrid (often bred for resistance) or an open-pollinated variety (which means you can collect the seeds for planting the following year)? Although the choices will seem endless (especially if, like me, you are cross-referencing 3 or 4 different catalogues) you should probably stick to 2 varieties - more is just plain silly.

When all this is done you'll have a plan for your garden, and a list of what seeds to order. The last ingredient is a calendar of planting dates. After all, it would be a shame to realize in June that your peas should have been planted in April.

Your calendar of planting dates needs to take into account a few things. First, know the planting zone in which you are located. Gardening in Victoria is very different from gardening in Thunder Bay. Second, read the information given in the seed catalogues or any reference books you have, in order to get a rough idea of which weeks or months you should be planting in. Third, think about whether you want all your beans, for example, ready at the same time - say, if you wanted to pickle them. If so, plant them all at once. If not, be sure to stagger the planting across several weeks. Cross-reference that with all your other information and you'll have a good idea of what to plant when.

If you're really keen you can also consult a calendar to see when the moon is waxing and when it is waning. According to biodynamic farming principles, it's better to plant vegetables in which the desirable part is below the ground (like potatoes or radishes) when the moon is waning, and vegetables whose upper part you want to eat (like salad greens or peas) when the moon is waxing. (This is the time when I need to remind you I'm not making any of this up...)

Call me obsessive, call me anally-retentive. But I have a week-by-week calendar for what gets planted when that takes me from late January (when onions and leeks get started in the greenhouse) to mid-September when the last radishes and lettuce for eating through the winter are planted. I am a planner, and I am proud!

Our night visitor

We had a visitor last night at Mucky Boots. We're not entirely sure what it was, but all signs point to a bear. Now this shouldn't really surprise us, and maybe it's a sign of how quiet our lives have become, but this visit is the biggest excitement we've had in days!

Kim spotted the first evidence this morning when she went out to the workshop, and it wasn't hard to spot: a demolished compost heap. Our pile of finished compost was completely torn apart, the cement blocks around our in-progress compost pile were tossed hither and thither, and our wheelbarrow was tipped over and had a broken wheel. Kim called me out on the walkie-talkie and by the time I had bundled up and made my way to the workshop, she had scouted the perimeter and discovered two places where it looked like something big and heavy had made its way over the fence, lots of big footprints in the frost (pretty indistinct, but more circular than oblong), and a large area in the orchard where the frosty grass had all been melted and squashed flat - perhaps the place where the bear stopped to nap after its exertions at the compost pile?

Our neighbour Nick calmed us down a little. He said bears will occasionally pass through, and it's only worth worrying about if they hang around or come back. So for the next few days Kim will be extra careful coming back to the house from the workshop after dark, and we'll keep a closer eye on the pets when they're outside.

The cold weather is holding. It has been about 5 below at night for the last week or so, and warming up only to about freezing during the day. (Yes, call us wimps, but this is really unusual!) The salad greens in the garden are frozen solid, and even the tough ones like the mizuna, arugula and mache probably won't recover. It's a good learning experience for next year: the winter greens really need the protection of the greenhouse, not just cold frames and row covers. I'm not as sad about the demise of my winter garden as I thought I might be. This time of year my thoughts turn more to hot, homemade soup and roasted root vegetables, and salads strike me as awfully cold and damp.

The skim of crystals on the pond has frozen to an official layer of ice, which has interfered with Frankie, Petunia and William using it as a handy source of drinking water. Frankie has discovered how to pounce on the ice with stiff front legs in order to break it for a nice cold drink, but the cats are going to have to depend on their doggy brother while the pond remains frozen.

Puffy vests

My wardrobe has changed since we moved to the farm. Instead of choosing between fancy work clothes and regular clothes, now I choose between dirty work clothes and regular clothes. One of the staples of both work and regular wardrobes is the "puffy vest", so named by my friend Linda who is the queen of puffy vests.

My first acquisition was the light blue one you see here. I got it last fall when Kim and I were coming up on weekends to try to stay on top of the work in the garden. It is used exclusively in the garden because it is filthy - beautifully, gloriously filthy. It gets hosed down every once in a while, but even at its cleanest it's a dirty mess. But dirty or not, I quickly became sold on the fact it kept me warm without overheating, it left my arms free to work, and most of all that it kept my neck free of drafts. So I had to get another one, one that would stay (mostly) clean.

That led to my second vest, the navy blue one. It's different from the first one not only because it's clean, it's also smaller. It feels like a snuggly hug when I wear it, which is its greatest charm. but that means when it's really cold I can't layer a fleece underneath, which led to Puffy Vest #3, a larger version of #2.

At that point I admitted to a thing for puffy vests, and shamelessly bought #4, the fancy purple checked one, for formal occasions. Victorian gentlemen wore fancy embroidered vests when they wanted to make a statement, but when I'm going out and want to look spiffy, I choose Puffy Vest #4.

I am happy to have my puffy vests these days, because it has been really cold - below freezing! This morning we woke up to crispy, frosty everything. The water in the birdbath is frozen, and we're starting to wonder whether the pond might be good for skating...

Time, sleep and solitude

I've been thinking today about time, and sleep, and solitude, and friends. We had a busy weekend, starting with the Cowichan Consort concert on Friday night - this is the local choir and orchestra that Kim and I are part of, directed by a school colleague of ours named Duncan. We think Duncan is wonderful, and it has been fun for us to be part of a musical group together. The orchestra performed Mendelssohn's Hebrides overture and Ravel's Bolero (complete with trombone solo by Kim!) and then the choir joined them for Vaughan Williams's Dona Nobis Pacem, a dark and beautiful anti-war piece that was commissioned in the days leading up to World War II. Friends came from Victoria, Sooke and Duncan, which made us feel really special. We went for coffee and dessert afterwards, and it occurred to me halfway through my chocolate hazelnut torte that I couldn't remember the last time I went out with friends after something. In the past, by the time a concert or movie was finished it was already past my bedtime, which meant a rush home to cram in enough hours of sleep to keep me going the next day.

Life is different now, and so is my relationship to sleep. I didn't realize until a few months into our new life how nice going to bed is now, and, in contrast, how anxious I used to be about getting enough sleep. Before, a late night would mean a couple of bad days until I could recoup the lost hours, but now it just means the joy of an evening with good friends and the extra pleasure of a nap the next afternoon. I don't have to be afraid of being tired anymore.

The next day was our friend Linda's birthday, and we went into Victoria for a surprise party. Another wonderful event (and another late night!). This time, halfway through my piece of chocolate mousse cake, as I basked in the warmth of the evening with friends and listened to Kim talk and laugh as only she can, my realization was about how much time Kim and I are spending just the two of us, alone and together, and how different that is from the hectic rush and press of kids and colleagues and meetings of our previous life. Our work environment was noisy and busy and joyful and stressful, and moments of quiet or solitude didn't happen very often. Now they happen all the time, and even though it was really, really wonderful to have the time with friends we did this weekend, it was also nice to return to the peace of Mucky Boots.

When we quit our jobs, I worried a bit about Kim and I having too much time together, but it's interesting how things have worked themselves out. I get up an hour or so before Kim in the morning, and that hour is nice quiet time for me and a book (and Petunia who has memorized my routine and knows exactly when a lap is likely to be available). Throughout the day our activities bring us together and take us apart in a nice kind of flow. Sometimes Kim comes looking for me because she needs an extra pair of hands in the workshop, or we make time for a walk together. We always come together for supper, and usually spend at least part of the evening in each other's company. Somehow we seem to have found a pretty good balance - or it has found us.

The sun's out!

Flooding

This is the bridge over the Cowichan River we have to cross to get to Duncan. Two weeks ago the water was turbulent and white-capped, but in the last week it has become something else: deep and fast and dangerous. Traffic over it is quite slow, as drivers stop to have a look at the flooding (and maybe have second thoughts about crossing).

It has been raining quite heavily today, and more flood warnings have been posted. But, according to the forecast, we might actually see the sun tomorrow afternoon. The ground is so saturated it's amazing that it can absorb any more water. We have paths on our property that are a few inches deep in water, but it's not flooding - it's just the earth saying "Enough already!"

Community

When we moved to Duncan, one of the first places we got to know was the Island Savings Centre, named after the Vancouver Island credit union. The centre is a complex of buildings including a swimming pool, a hockey arena, fitness facilities, the public library, a 700 seat theatre, a cafe and lots of meeting space. It's where the local hockey team practices and has Saturday night games that draw crowds in the hundreds. The students from the high school across the street come for swimming classes during the school day, and when school is done they come back to hang out in the library or on the benches in the foyer. People of all ages come for skating or swimming lessons, fitness or dance classes, and inexpensive classes on topics from drawing and languages to gardening and travel. It's the place where families evacuated during the recent flood were housed, and where people volunteered to help. It's where our public health nurses maintained organization and good cheer during day after day of line-ups for flu shots. It's even the site of the world's largest hockey stick (205 feet long, 61,000 pounds).

I knew it was a special place when I went to my first drawing class and was directed to what could have been called just the second floor, but was instead named the "Human Potential Floor." I'm there two or three times a week, to tutor Math students or to pick up a new batch of library books. And every time I walk into the foyer I'm struck by the number of people hanging out, or stopping to chat, or buying tickets to a show at the theatre, or registering for a class, or directing people through a flu shot line-up, or setting up a Christmas craft fair. It makes me feel like I'm part of a community, which I guess is what a community centre is supposed to do.

[Thanks to the World Records Academy for the photo, which I shamelessly copied.]

Update from the Ark

It's still raining. It has been raining without a significant break for days and days and days, and we're getting tired of it. We keep looking out the window and then wondering whether it usually rains this much and we've just forgotten, or if this is actually an unusual event. The latter, according to the weather office. So far this month we have had 266 mm of rain, which is more than twice the normal amount.

It's getting to be a problem. The Cowichan River, which is near enough to hear from the verandah, is starting to sound like Niagara Falls, and lately when we drive over it on our way into Duncan it is a white-capped, seething mass of dirty water. Yesterday we saw that the Koksilah River had overcome its banks and flooded a farmer's fields about a 10 minute drive from where we live. Last night on the way to a tutoring session I had to drive through about 6 inches of water on a flooded street. And then today we heard that a state of emergency has been declared in Duncan, 400 homes evacuated with some streets a metre under water, and sand-bagging begun.

We're fine where we are - even though the Cowichan River is just a couple of properties away, there is a big enough elevation difference that we're not in any danger. Our pond is at its maximum volume, but the culvert is still handling the overflow just fine. We have had some problems with leaking skylights over the verandah, but clearing out some of the moss and debris on the roof above them seems to have done the trick. Once again, we're lucky, lucky people with much to be grateful for.

First Frost

We had our first hard frost last night. I could tell it was a cold night - I went to Victoria and when I came home about 11, the gate was coated in rime that melted in my hand. This morning everything is crispy and cold, and shrubs like the rhodos and butterfly bushes look like they're in shock. It will be interesting to see how the vegetables still in the garden will fare once they start to warm up.

With fall come bonfires, including one that caused a little excitement last night. We spent the afternoon cleaning the gutters. It was very cold and wet work, and when we were done we were glad to spend some time by the fire warming up. It was dusk, and I was getting ready to head into town when we heard (and felt) an enormous whump and and saw a bloom of light in the window. Please don't laugh (it's going to be hard) but my first thought was that the house had been struck by a meteorite. (Where did that come from? I thought I had a handle on all my disaster-related anxieties...) We rushed upstairs to look outside, and discovered that it was, in fact, our neighbours two lots over who had apparently used an explosively huge quantity of gasoline to start an enormous bonfire of the debris they had been clearing from their lot. When our pulses slowed and we were able to think more clearly, there was still cause for concern - it was a huge fire, and the ones in charge of it seemed to be a large group of partying young people. So we called the fire department who came out and got things under control.

The siding phase of our workshop project sputtered to an end this week. That was a hard job - the panels were awkward to position because they were so heavy and not very stiff, and it rained every single day. Oh, and the rented nailer stopped working when we had three panels to go. But it got fixed, and we got the final panels up, although neither of us is really happy with the last side we did. The next job is to attach fascia and gutters, but we have a few days' wait until the gutter order arrives, which gives us some time to catch up on the fall garden cleanup. Then we'll need to put cedar shakes on the gable ends and trim around the doors and windows, and in the spring we'll paint. What a job. But even though it's been a bit nasty, we saved a lot of money doing it ourselves, and there's a nice feeling of satisfaction that comes from persevering through the hard parts.

Beech tree

How gorgeous is this tree? Especially on what would otherwise be just another gloomy, rainy day...

Workshop project

This may not look like much, but for us it is a good day's work. For the last few days we have been siding our 24 by 24 workshop: first wrapping the whole building in sheathing paper, then nailing on flashing above doors and windows, and finally installing 4 by 8 sheets of a manufactured, fungicided, primed wood panelling made to look like board and batten. [Thanks, Jean and Jim, for the inspiration and advice!]

We started on the back, because it only had two windows to cut around and if we really screwed up, nobody would really see it. There was a somewhat grumpy learning curve, mostly to do with how to manoeuvre the heavy panels into position and keep them there while Kim nailed them in with the extra powerful construction-grade pneumatic nailer.

Today we got the next side done, the one in the picture. What I want you to notice is the door and, more impressively, the circular cutout for the light fixture above it, and the rectangular cutout for the electrical conduit coming out of the ground. We got the circular cutout in exactly the right position ON THE FIRST GO. Yay team! The very next panel along was the one that had to fit around the pipe, which unfortunately was not strictly vertical. That took some tricky measuring, the creation of a cardboard template and three tries at the shaping of the cutout. All in the pouring rain, with water dripping off the edge of the roof right down our necks. But we did it! Although it used up all our supply of patience with ourselves, each other and the weather, and so we had to retreat to the fireside with tea for the rest of the afternoon.

Kim and I make a good team for projects like this. She is best at jobs that require serious power tools (like the table saw and the nailer we're using for this project), gumption and heights. My speciality is fiddly tasks requiring lots of patience and (as our friend Jim calls it) "friggin' and jiggin'. I am also excellent with the jigsaw and good at reading instructions when things go wrong. My honey brings laughter and play to our work, and an infallible sense of when we really need to take a break, and I bring a good head for planning and thinking a few steps ahead.

It's hard work, but so satisfying. Sometimes when we stop for a cup of tea from the thermos, we look at each other, brush the sawdust from our clothes, shake the rain from our hats and are amazed at how lucky we are.

Fall lessons

Between the cooler weather and the regular rain, the garden is looking very different than it did a couple of months ago. I have been stressing about the amount of cleanup that needs to happen this time of year - when 90% of the plants in the garden are perennials, there's an awful lot of chopping down to do. And the regular rain has caused the weeds that were dormant through the hot, dry summer to spring to life again. So everything feels disordered and messy.

I knew this adventure would have lessons to teach me about living with imperfection, but I feel like I'm in the middle of a remedial intensive. I keep remembering sister Kim's words this summer about enjoying all the life cycles of the plants in the garden, without rushing to clean things up at the first sign of decay, and as a result I've set myself some homework: to look hard for the beauty in what feels to me like an increasingly barren, weedy mess. And here is what I've found.

The loss of so many leaves has opened up views and vistas that are more cluttered in the spring and summer. We can see all the way up the steep rise to the back of our property now, which gives me a sense of being snuggled into the back of a hill I didn't have before. And what used to be a solid wall of vegetation on the far side of the pond now gives us peekaboo glimpses of the farm from the verandah. There's something about a long view that draws you in.

The other thing that opens up with the fall of the leaves is the architectural underpinning of the garden. We don't have much of that, given that so many of the plants are perennials. But that means the few garden anchors have even more of a dramatic impact. A few months ago the ornamental cherry that overlooks the pond simply merged with the surrounding vegetation, but now it's impossible not to look at it, it's so beautiful.

And even in the midst of many things dying, there is an occasional surprise. A blowzy, orange oriental poppy has decided, improbably, to bloom. And my favourite hydrangea, even as its leaves start to turn colour, has put forth a last few small, unexpected blossoms.

Am I ready to graduate from this make-up course on seeing the beauty in imperfection? Oh, I expect I've still got some work to do. But I'm feeling more content with the season, and the garden, and the lessons still to be learned.