It's hard work licking out the bowl

But he sure had fun doing it.

Why do I have a greenhouse?

I've been thinking a lot about my greenhouse lately, for three reasons.

Reason #1: The plastic covering has accumulated so much algae Kim has started writing love notes in it with her finger.

Reason #2: It's seed starting time.

Reason #3: It will soon be tomato time.

Here's what I've been thinking...

Algae: this came off the outside pretty easily with a floor mop (the squeegee sponge kind) and hot water with a bit of dish soap and a bit of bleach. (That's the "After" shot above.) But the inside still needs doing, and this will be a real pain because of the framing of the walls and the shelves. It will mean lots of stooping over and under things, and lots of individual areas of plastic to wash. I'm procrastinating on this. Plus, I know the plastic will only be good for so long, and it's already five years old. When I was on a ladder scrubbing the roof I noticed there are areas where it has deteriorated enough that it's beginning to crack and split. Which means eventually it will need to be disassembled and replaced. Hmmm.



Seed starting: it occurred to me this spring that I start my seeds in about the coldest place I possibly can. I know greenhouses are supposed to be toasty but mine isn't especially warm, probably because it's in a location that doesn't get much sun this time of year. Which means I not only have to use heat mats, I have to use grow lights. (I know, I know, you're wondering why someone would put a greenhouse in a shady spot. All I can say is (A) our property has lots of trees, (B) it's sunnier through the summer, and (C) I didn't put it there.) Between my greenhouse and Kim's brooder lights for chicks, our spring hydro bill takes a beating. And if I have to use grow lights and heat lamps anyway, why am I not just starting the seeds in the house where at least it's a bit warmer and I don't have to haul water?

Tomatoes: All I have ever grown in the greenhouse (other than some wimpy basil and a single pepper) are tomatoes. Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes. It works pretty well - the plants are protected from rain, they get lots of heat through the summer, and with windows on two sides and a fan in the door I get enough ventilation to avoid blight and other problems. There's just one big issue, though - crop rotation. According to everything I have read tomatoes should be rotated like other crops, to avoid diseases. But in a greenhouse where nothing but tomatoes are grown, that means replacing the soil in the raised beds every year. (Okay, hands up, who wants to volunteer for that job? Anyone?) I've begun to think that I should put the tomatoes into rotation in the vegetable garden, with a plastic roof to keep the rain off, like I have seen some of my neighbours do.

All of which makes me wonder why do I have a greenhouse at all?

This one's for Ann

If you haven't met Ann at Shim Farm yet, take yourself over for a visit. She lives on a  beautiful rural property in Quebec, has a wicked sense of humour, and is the most expert knitter I (virtually) know. Just have a look at her Saga sweater, for a start.

Ann's beautiful sweaters were what prompted me to pick up my knitting needles after a long hiatus. I was never an expert knitter, but a long time ago I did manage a couple of Lopi sweaters knit in the round, and I seem to remember spending one long winter in my university days knitting mittens as a fund raiser for a disarmament group.

But mostly my needles have been buried away in a cardboard box in the storage room. Until I met Ann, that is.

So last summer I dug out my needles and learned to cable knit, and at Ann's recommendation I ordered a bunch of Lopi wool direct from the manufacturer in Iceland. (Man, what a deal!) But I couldn't get started on a sweater: I couldn't find the perfect pattern, and I worried about it turning out the wrong size. But again, at Ann's urging, I got off my butt and got started. (Are you getting the idea this sweater wouldn't have seen the light of day without Ann? You're correct!)

The pattern is the Iounn cardigan by Ragga Eiricksdottir with a major tweak: I liked the pattern, but my heart belonged to this little sweater and so I adapted the pattern to incorporate this design. That was one of the things I learned with this project. Another was how to use short rows for shaping: the cardigan has short rows through the upper back which makes the neck come up higher in the back, which I like, and it also has short rows at the elbows to give a little more fullness there so they don't get worn out.

But the biggest thing I learned was how to use a steek to knit in the round (which is easier than back and forth). Once it's done you do the scariest thing imaginable: you cut it open to make a cardigan. (That's why they call it a stEEEEK!) It was nerve racking but it worked. And then the hard part was figuring out how to finish the front edges. The pattern was a little vague in that regard, and to complicate things further I knew I wanted buttons but I had never done a button band before. But thanks to the all the kind people who post how-to videos on You Tube, I managed to sort out something I'm pretty happy with.

Of course I've finished it just in time for the weather to be too warm to wear it...

Thanks, Ann!

Good morning. Good night.

Good morning.

Good night.

Someone's having fun with the clean up

Welcome spring

Today the CBC was telling us that Canadians all across the country would be greeting the arrival of spring with rotten weather. According to a climatologist with Environment Canada, "If we sent out search parties for spring, we would not find hide nor hair of it. Everyone is in misery, and everyone has a cross to bear." The article went on to say that "every region would be either windy, rainy, wet, snowy, drifty, blowy or there will be a big snow dump to clean up."

Well hello to you, too, Spring.

We got the windy part. Yesterday was wet, with a drenching steady downpour, but the sun came out this morning and then this afternoon it started to blow. Man, did it blow. We don't often get enough wind in our little protected river valley to move the trees, but they were dancing today. At one point I looked out the window to see a shower of twigs and branches blowing down from the sky - a shower that went on, and on, and on.

When it was over our property was covered with tree debris. Little branches...



...big branches...



...and lots and lots o' branches.

It will be a lovely afternoon's work raking all that crap up. But it beats shovelling snow.

United Nations in the garden

Winter aconite, rhubarb, snowdrops and a fawn lily 

The most splendiferous perennial bed this time of the year is the circular bed in the middle of the lawn, which houses a crab apple tree and a lovely mishmash of other plants. This time of year it is a carpet of snowdrops and aconite, fawn lilies and crocus, and the shoots and sprouts of rhubarb and daisies, yarrow and yellow loosestrife, poppies, primrose, tulips and columbines. As the growing season progresses there's even more variety, but that's what's visible right now. A veritable United Nations of all sorts of plants growing higgledy-piggledy in the bed, all mixed up and happy to be so. Everybody has room to grow and interesting neighbours to talk to. A community of plants more beautiful in its whole than in its parts.

Snowdrops, rhubarb, crocus, and an early tulip

A poppy, some tired snowdrops and a columbine

Fawn lilies in front of sprouting daisies

Crocus and primroses

A little reminder

Two years ago, near the end of an April filled with worry and weeds and battles with sore joints and perfectionism, I wrote myself a letter to be read every April 1 thereafter.

It was a good letter, with good advice. (I am a wise woman, if only I would listen to myself...) The only problem is that April 1 is too late to be reminded about how not to work myself into a state over the garden. So, in the interests of positive mental health, physical well being and balance in the garden, here is The Letter a few weeks early.

Dearest Miriam,

It's your self here, with a few words of wisdom and advice for the month ahead. April may be a month of cherry blossoms, sunshine and gentle spring showers - in some other universe, maybe, not yours. Honey, you need to hike up your pants and lace up your boots because the month ahead is going to test you.

The weeds in your garden will outnumber the flowers by two or three orders of magnitude. Don't worry. This is normal. It was the same last year and it will be the same next year. When you look at the whole garden it will seem overwhelming, but please remember that every time you get started on the weeding it goes much faster than you expected, and you end up thinking "That wasn't so bad..." If you're really desperate, you can remember the year you were so keen on the weeding you mistook baby poppies for dandelions and pulled them all out. That would be a good excuse for taking it easy.

The grass will grow 3-4 inches every night while you are sleeping, but it will keep raining so you won't be able to mow it. Don't worry. This is happening to everyone. Instead of fretting, think of the romance of lush green pastures and remember that as soon as the hot weather hits the grass will go back to sleep.

Your muscles will hurt. Don't worry. This is a normal by-product of a lazy winter. You will get stronger every day - just remember to take breaks and change tasks every so often so you use a different set of muscles. And please, please, pay attention to that little voice inside your head that whispers "Maybe you've done enough for today..."

There will probably be lots of jobs that just don't get done. For example, how does anyone in this climate find three consecutive rain-free days to apply dormant spray to fruit trees before they leaf out? Don't worry. This is normal. So maybe you didn't get to the pruning early enough, and maybe that ramshackle raised bed didn't get rebuilt before you had to fill it with onion seedlings. The onions will still grow, and the beautiful old apple trees will produce fruit like they have been doing for many years.

If you are still feeling overwhelmed, please make yourself a cup of tea and remember April only has 30 days.

May will be much better, and it has 31.

With much love-

Mir

XOXO

Lentil salad

I have been making this salad for at least twenty years, so I guess I like it. I have made it so much I don't need to look at a recipe any more, but when I opened the book this morning the dog-eared, balsamic-vinegar-splattered page (I am a messy cook) spoke volumes about how often I have made this salad. It's substantial and flavourful, healthy as anything, and the best part is it easily lasts in the fridge for a week, so you can make a really big batch and enjoy it all week long.

It comes from Still Life With Menu, by Mollie Katzen of Moosewood fame. I have a good selection of Moosewood cookbooks and Mollie's cookbooks, and this is hands-down my favourite, especially for its salads: Jewelled Rice Salad, Cabbage Salad with Peanuts, Levantine Carrot Salad, to mention a few. And there are other recipes, too, for red pepper soup, banana and cheese empanandas, and the best scone recipe I have ever tried.

The book is out of print now, but Mollie has kindly provided the recipe on her website. So go there right now, get the recipe and make this salad. Right now. You won't regret it.

You're welcome.

Spring

Sometimes all you need to do is go outside in the rain, stand surrounded by your friends the trees, breathe in deeply, register the smell of damp earth, and feel comforted that spring is almost here.

But in case that's not enough, here are a few photos to help you along the path away from winter-induced insanity to hope-filled spring.

The cost of a holiday

Sure, we had fun on our recent trip to New Orleans, but Frankie and Petunia didn't enjoy the experience too much.

Petunia, for whom the phrase scaredy-cat was invented, spent the entire week hiding in the house. Both neighbourhood families who came in to check on things spent a lot of time scouring the house for her, but no way was she coming out. It's a good thing food was disappearing from her bowl with extreme regularity (there's nothing wrong with Petunia in the appetite department) or our good neighbours might have thought Petunia was a figment of our imagination.

Don't feel too bad for her, though. She got her own when we came back. I think we opened the door for her "let-me-in, no, let-me-out" dance about 57 times within our first hour home.

And Frankie. Poor Frankie. Poor sensitive, dear, sweet Frankie. You can feel sorry for him. We knew our going away was going to be rough on him, so we did our very best to find a good place for him to be. Friends are pretty much out of the question, since Frankie can't be left at home alone. We have good friends, but that's a lot to ask. And we didn't want to leave him in a cage in a kennel on a cold cement floor.

So we called around, and talked to a lot of people, and finally decided on a local kennel run by a couple who were willing to bring him into their home with a few other senior and special needs dogs, rather than have him with the general doggy population. We brought Frankie for a visit, checked them out, and decided it was the best of our choices.

He was safe, and well cared for, but really stressed. How do we know? When we picked him up he had his stressed out Cujo buggy dog eyes, and had licked one of his front paws raw. We know those symptoms well, from the days when we were first confronted with his separation anxiety.

It breaks our hearts. If only there was some way to be sure our pets know we will be coming home.

Now, after a few days of his regular routine, Frankie's eyes are his own again, and we have our sweet boy back. But his healing paw is driving him nuts, and he won't leave it alone. We tried a sock, we tried a velcro-fastened bootie. But Frankie is a dog who made a hobby of escaping from crates and closed rooms. Do you think a bootie would stand in his way?

So today we resorted to The Cone. Frankie is being a good sport about it, but he's having a hard time adjusting to his changed dimensions. Kim had to carry him up the stairs because when he looked down as he tried to climb up the cone would catch on the edge of the treads. Our champion athlete who could catch any ball thrown keeps bumping into walls and cupboards. And he keeps looking at us with those beautiful sweet eyes, and we know he's thinking "It's bad enough you left me, now you have to subject me to this indignity?"

That's the cost of our holiday: psychological trauma inflicted on our beloved pets.

It's making us think twice - no, forty-seven times - about our next holiday.

Nawlins, y'all

The Pontalba Building at the edge of Jackson Square

Did you miss me? Last week Kim and I took a trip to seek out a little sunshine, some history, and lots of good music. Where did we go? New Orleans, of course, and we had a really, really good time. 

The band Yes Ma'am on Royal Street

There was music everywhere. Royal Street, behind our hotel, was closed off to cars during the day and became a pedestrian mall with a different band busking on every corner. We heard all kinds of music, from rock 'n roll to classical violin, but mostly there were bands with a 1920s-and-30s swing-vagabond-gypsy flair, with washboards and string basses and banjos, all of which suited us just fine. Fabulous musicians, all performing for tips and CD sales. Speaking of CDs, we came home with ten...

The Froggies on Frenchman Street

The Smoking Time Jazz Club on Royal Street

We could have done nothing but wander the streets listening to the buskers and come home feeling like we'd had a real musical treat. But we also went to a number of clubs, including historic Preservation Hall...

...the Spotted Cat...

Showarama Hot Trio

... and the club called dba, where there seems to be a swing dance party in permanent session. I got swept into the dancing by a very nice young fellow who just couldn't sit still and needed a partner. Kim found this funny. I found it horrifying, but once I relaxed I actually had fun. The club was dark and it was impossible to take photos, but I think this one captures a bit of the feeling of being surrounded by a packed room full of people of all ages and sizes, furiously swing dancing and lindy-hopping.

It was a lot of fun to watch, and I am just grateful (given I was sitting six inches from the dance floor) to have escaped with all my teeth and no broken nose.

One of the things we learned about New Orleans is that nobody seems to know what gluten-free means. The world will really be a different place when the Cafe du Monde serves gluten-free beignets. They don't, currently, but I didn't let that stop me. I didn't let the prospect of a sugar-induced diabetic coma stop me, either.

Yes, I ate them, and yes, I lived to tell the tale.

Another thing we learned about New Orleans is that the people are genuinely, unbelievably friendly. Not fake humour-the-tourists friendly, but real make-eye-contact-and-smile-and-"How y'all doin' ladies?" friendly. Not just hotel employees, but regular people on the street, too. We thought Canadians were friendly, but we've got nothing on the people of New Orleans.

We chose New Orleans for our holiday as much for the history and architecture as for the music. The French Quarter reminds me of a sort of Caribbean version of Paris, which I guess it is. Maybe it's because both sets of my grandparents lived in pink houses, but I have a soft spot in my heart for the colourful Creole architecture.

Some buildings, like the Napoleon House across the street from our hotel, date to the late 18th century.

It's now a bar and restaurant, with a lovely courtyard. We ended up there for an emergency cappuccino one afternoon near the end of our trip. It's called the Napoleon House because there was a plot to spring Napoleon from his prison on St. Helena and bring him to New Orleans, where he would be installed as an honoured guest in this house. That never happened, of course, but there's more than enough atmosphere in the place to make you think it did.

We spent a couple of afternoons in cemeteries: St. Louis #1 in the Treme neighbourhood, and the Lafayette Cemetery in the Garden District, and thanks to a helpful tour guide we learned a lot about how to deal with a dead body in a location where the water table is just a few feet below ground, that ground being more of a soil sponge than actual terra firma. Above ground tombs are the answer, and the construction of them (brick covered with plaster) reminded me a lot of how an outdoor oven is built. It turns out the similarity is not accidental: with internal temperatures reaching 350 degrees during the summer months, human remains and wooden coffins deteriorate in short order. Which is a good thing, since it probably won't be too long before another body needs interring in the family crypt. When that happens the door is opened, the small pile of remaining remains is gathered up and put in the "basement" of the tomb, and the new body and coffin slid in. I don't at all mean this in a disrespectful way, but it made me think of hot composting. What an efficient and practical way of dealing with what is left of us when we die.

(And speaking of Treme, we are real fans of the HBO series, and how thrilled were we, in the Cafe Rose Nicaud on Frenchman Street, to discover that we were having breakfast right next to one of its stars? Woo hoo!)

Many tombs themselves are returning to the earth, as the families that owned and cared for them die out or scatter. The tour we joined was led by a volunteer from Save Our Cemeteries, a local group working to restore and preserve the tombs in the city's historic cemeteries. It may not have been as colourful as the vampire and voodoo tours we passed, but we felt good knowing the money we had paid for tickets would be going to a good cause.

A funeral took place the afternoon we spent in the Lafayette Cemetery in the Garden District. It was a good reminder for us that many of the tombs are still in use by local families. These fellows were waiting a little ways away waiting for the service to end and the family to leave, so they could reseal the door of the tomb.

While we were in the Garden District we wandered the streets looking at beautiful houses...

...ancient live oak trees with gravity-defying canopies...

...and the local animal population.

It doesn't seem right to write about a visit to New Orleans and not talk about Katrina. There is an exhibit at the Presbytere on Jackson Square focusing on how Louisiana has dealt with hurricanes, that taught us a little bit. Mostly what it taught me was how little I know, and how much I want to know more. There was no way I was going to be a disaster tourist and get on a bus to tour the hardest hit areas of the city, but I really wanted to learn more about how a community of people can surmount catastrophe and betrayal and abandonment in order to rebuild a unique and special culture. Just before we left I found the book 1 Dead in Attic by Chris Rose, who was a Pulitzer prize finalist for his post-Katrina columns in the Times-Picayune  - the writings that have been gathered together in this book. The short essays are full of humour and despair and stories of real people; frustration and hope and anger and irony and celebration. It has been a long time since a book has affected me this much, and I really recommend it.

And now it's lovely to be home, where the snowdrops have hit their maturity, and where the first crocuses are starting to bloom. I'm a home-body: it's wonderful to have an occasional adventure, but it's even nicer to come home.