I had such high hopes this year for my beautiful little garden. We’ve moved about a block away from the site and I thought that nothing could prevent me from caring for it each and every day – almost like it was in my back yard.

Well, “nothing” turned out to be entertaining two children, miles apart in age and activity, for the summer.

First, there was the winter kale:

I wasn’t sure what it was so I asked anyone on flickr for identification. I couldn’t see the little buggers moving so I thought it was indeed Cabbage Worms and since my kale had basically been stripped in the span on one week, out they came.

A tad too dramatic? Perhaps.
However, gardening has become quite emotional for me. The community garden and my little backyard spot are my favourite places to be. When I come home from the garden, even if the trip has been a gong show of simultaneous breast-feeding, watering, weeding and thinning with a whole lot of “Can we go NOW?” thrown in, I still feel refreshed and calm.

This doesn't even begin to explain just how much gardening affects me. It’s not enough that it is a hobby. I want to study it for the rest of my life. I want to place community gardens everywhere possible. I want people to know how special it is to grow their own tomatoes, carrots, beans… I want children to understand how much water it takes to grow food. I want society to realize how important bees are to our existence.

I want
I want
I want

I want the Wooley Aphids to stop eating my brussel sprouts!

and how about my sad artichokes!

This is The Summer of Aphids.

I wonder if I was able to get there on a daily basis, if I would still be having this problem. Who knows. Swimming lessons have taken precedent over our morning walk to the garden. Sometimes I try to go after dark but this hardly happens. I am, as they say, on a short leash. The last few times I've left the house to the garden while there was still light outside, I was called back to a screaming baby.

The end of the day spells almost constant breastfeeding. Bring on the solids!

Ah, it's all good. If we still lived across the city, I would have had to give up on this garden so I'm happy with what I have been able to do. We ate endive salad tonight. Our squash is growing well. Carrots are plentiful. We have a bell pepper or two. The yellow beans are turning... yellow. The pole beans are climbing. The strawberries were excellent.

I’m going back there tomorrow armed with a spray bottle of dish detergent and water and I hope to make those brussel sprouts too slippery for those guys.

Wish me luck!
If anyone else has any more advice on how to get rid of these aphids, please let me know. Until then, it’s the ladybugs, the yellow jackets and me.

I hang out with Eliza a lot.
Really.
In fact, the two of us are pretty much attached to each other. If she's not slurping down a breast milk sandwich or burping said sandwich all over ourselves then she's wrapped to my body and we are walking somewhere.

Notice just then?
When I mentioned burping all over ourselves? Yes, I apparently no longer have my own pronoun. It's not "myself" it is "ourself". Such has been my life for the past few months and I am confident that this will continue for a short while longer.

I don't mind.
I know the above few sentences would lead you to believe that this has been a burden but have you SEEN her ? She's gorgeous. She's fun. She's Eliza. She wraps her chubby little arms around mine and holds on tight. She slurps her hands into her mouth and looks up at me with as much of a smile as she can handle - considering the mouthful she has given herself - and then, because she's opened her mouth to smile and widened her entrance a bit further, she shoves those fists further down her throat and gags.

Too cute.
(I'm sure you are gagging right about now as well except I have a feeling that it is not due to how far your hands can reach into your mouth).

So my point is?
Gardening is slow when I have a three month old baby wrapped to the front of my body. This can be frustrating. The other day, Dickson took her in the wrap while I furiously weeded and sorted out the community plot. It was so satisfying. I kept thanking him as I pulled more and more weeds and straightened rows and made room for more plants. At one point, I was in such glee to finally get to a job I had previously only frowned at while watering upright that I actually farted.

Yes.
This was something I used to only do in bookstores when I knew I had about 6 hours to kill.

Now that the garden is in much better shape, I feel better about its progress. I can see a plan and I look a little more forward to watering it in the mornings. This year I'm planning to try forcing Belgian Endives. We have a crawl space in our new house that could be the perfect environment. I'll keep you posted.

Here's more sappy crap to take with you when you leave this blessed website.

I can't remember who sang this to me when I was a kid - my mother or my Kindergarten teacher with the hair that grew past her ass - but it fills me with such sentimental hippie calmness that I want to move to Lasqueti Island and start an organic farm. I still remember all the words and after a few years of being strapped to me in the garden, so will Eliza.

I can see the four(!) of us - my mother, Thuraya(!), Eliza and myself - stamping out our cob house while tending to our goats and chickpea fields. Sister power. Come into our garden.

Peace.

Community Garden:

1. sense of community


2. finally a space of land for me to do as I please


3. friendly neighbours that speak extremely fast French on one side and extremely fast Arabic on the other


4. some excellent gardeners to learn from and talk to about our climate


5. free tools and unlimited use

Private Garden Space (a.k.a. a backyard)

1. privacy to garden in your bikini


2. variety of space and design


3. ease to work whenever you please - such as at 6am when you look out the window and realize that a cat had tried to sleep on your seedlings and you need to do some rescue work


4. NO ONE STEALS YOUR PLANTS

Yes, the community garden is great - and I realize it's the only way for me to garden until we decide to live off potatoes, carrots and cheese in order to jump into mortgage hell. However, stealing my strawberry plants? That's cold.

My space was clearly occupied. I had done work on it. There is no excuse to think that no one was going to use the fruit. The only thing we concluded (me and the two equally insulted and sympathetic sisters on my right) was that perhaps the old owners came to claim them. That, and since I didn't buy them myself, they were never really mine in the first place.

My friend Missey came to the plot with me today, to help me face the scene of the crime once more, and we decided those strawberry plants are bad news. They're diseased, yes... that's it. They are going to release vermin all over your illegitimate, traitorous, underhanded crop... you.... you strawberry stealer, you!

Argh.

On Tuesday I had a final exam. I studied all through Easter weekend like a woman on a mission. I had calculated what I needed to achieve in order to keep my A+ and I was extremely paranoid that I would fail. Every time D mentioned anything about school or the exam, I wouldn't be able to speak unless I had gone over the different stages of economic liberalization in my head. I mention the A+ not because I want to tell you that I was doing well in the course, but to explain the annoying persona that appears when I know I am close to achieving something to be proud of - complete idiotic behaviour that is so anti-social I wonder how I ever got to the life I have now.

Fluke.

I loved my course - geopolitical economics. It’s right up my alley in terms of what to say to conspiracy theorists and how to listen to the news. I now know what caused the Asian financial crisis and I can spot a crisis of accumulation from a mile away. Capitalism, and all its "quirky inconsistencies", has been burned into my brain. Ask me about the problems of e-waste, the informal labour sector of developing countries and how to short stock.
No, don't.

However, I knew very little about any of these things before. If you had mentioned globalization to me I would have babbled about sponge like borders and the smuggling of immigrants across the border. Now, it's a scarier and more solid world than I had originally thought.

But Whatever!
Hooray for books that make you hug your kid harder and thankful that you were born in North America. Right?

Anyway - after the weekend of studying and a long all-nighter right before the exam, I decided that I would treat myself to a dig in my new garden plot. If you look at the pictures I posted a few days ago, you'll see that there is a lot of work to be done. How I over-turned the amount of area I accomplished on zero hours of sleep, I'll never know.

What I do know is that I was ecstatic. The garden had previously been divided by wooden 2x4s. By now, they are rotten chunks of wood that come apart in my hands. However, the soil is extremely healthy and there seem to be about 6 or 7 worms in every pitchfork I turn over. So I've dug as much as I could out and have a lot more to do - hopefully tomorrow.

Today we passed by a demolition sale and scored some bricks for the pathways and border. As well, I have drawn out a garden design and figured out which vegetables will go well with others. Ideally, it would be nice to have the brick ready to lay down by tomorrow so I can slowly plant on my lunch hours.

I guess I'll have to wait and see.
Ha! Will you listen to me read what I'm writing... "life" is starting to get in the way of my garden.

Franklin is upstairs having a bath with D. I swear these last couple days have been incredible. The child is possessed. I was telling my mother how D and I have decided to cut out all white, processed sugar from his (our) diet in order to help him cope more with the normal trials of being three. And then she laughed.

She laughed and told me to find his "off switch".
Yes. It's that simple, folks!

This is the advice I received from a woman who brought up 5 children in the isolated north while her husband was an over-worked doctor. My mother is tough. She has coping mechanisms that no one has ever heard of. If she landed herself a spot in Survivor the other cast mates would just surrender. She is both physically and mentally hard as nails.

Find his "off switch".
I'm laughing - on the inside.

You know what though? I asked him - of course I asked him. I will try everything once. It was my motto in my twenties and still holds strong to this day. He immediately pointed to his chest and pressed it. He was silent for about 1 and half seconds and then started singing.
Thanks.

Anyway, for more sane news...
I have a community garden plot! It isn't the community garden I was working on with a bunch of people in the downtown area. I wouldn't actually qualify for that one, as we don't live in that district. I was just working with them in order to see what it would take to set up my own. I don't think I will live here long enough to do this. Working with city hall is a different kind of frustrating than a three year old - but not that much different. There is definitely no "off switch" and they not only sing while you are trying to talk to them but they sing and put their fingers in their ears while dancing in front of a camera.

No, my garden plot is on the university campus. I was on the waiting list and they found room for me! I am so very happy. I can't believe how happy I am. I was jumping for joy. The plot is in a good location as it is out of the way on the edge of the property and due to get plenty of sun. It also has some well-established strawberry boxes. I've put up some photos on flickr. Just click on the picture above for this entry.

Now you can look forward to a ton of garden related posts that may bore the concrete socks off of you. However, if you've got a plot of your own, I welcome any advice. I've never done the community garden thing.

Last summer D, Franklin and I were lying in bed talking about... things. Franklin probably said something about wanting a train, or a car or the Golden Gate Bridge. So, as a naturally sarcastic mother, I replied that I wanted a compost and D added that he wanted an ipod.

D got his ipod for Christmas.

As you can see, I am now the happy owner of a worm composter.

Franklin has enough trains.

I love fall. I love love love love it.

It is so incredibly nice outside. Everything smells so wonderful, there are pumpkins in everyone's garden (except mine) and the trees are turning beautiful shades of yellow and orange.

Speaking of my garden, what a source of learning and frustration - oy yoy yoy.
Gardening in a major thoroughfare where extremely rambunctious children are apt to play with their balls and bikes and random people decide to plant their leftover Easter Lilies, is not easy. Every day I've come to expect another plant awaiting rescue. The other week the entire garden was mown down and baring clinging to it's roots because my soaker hose had been ripped out of position. Yesterday someone's hop ball was laying smack dab on top of my pumpkin plant.

I've lost the following (due to these urban hazards):

- one of two pumpkin plants (the other is hanging on for dear life)
- one of two sunflowers
(planted there by who the hell knows because I certainly wouldn't have put them where they are - in the shade - but I still like them)
- about four or five lima bean stalks
- a lilac bush
- countless marigolds
- an entire row of spinach
- about a foot of arugula
- one ridiculously bown and yellow Easter Lily
(when is it okay to pull that out, when it's completely brown?)

The thing is that I told everyone that they didn't have to be careful around the garden. I told the kids that they could walk in the space and look at the growing vegetables. I told the neighbours that if they had anything to plant, they were welcome to it. So, in essence, I am reaping what I sowed - well, I suppose that and a little more and a whole lot less.

argh.
My kingdom for a community garden plot.

I am not even sorry
when I pull the wrong thing
Because I love the smell of
dirt and
Cilantro
on my fingers.


I wrote out this poem on a sticky and have pasted it to my computer at work. I stare at it and think about dirty fingernails when my job gets alternately too hectic or too boring to handle.

The only problem is I don't know who wrote it.
Why I didn't write down the author, I have no idea. Perhaps there wasn't one where I saw it. I have a faint recollection that I may have read it in a forum at You Grow Girl, but I haven't seen it since.

Can anyone help me?

My "Red" bell pepper has been this way for weeks.

A friend of mine came over the other day and saw the plant. She said she had the same problem - that her peppers never grew any bigger than this.
Another friend mentioned the same thing and when she tried to eat it, it was most definitely NOT ripe.

The plant is growing fine, there's even a few more flowers that are about to bloom. Will this mean that there will be even more stunted peppers?

Can anyone help me out?

Last night wasn't anything special, at least not special in terms of what normal people do on their birthday. There were no no cocktails, parties, or candlelight dinners. However, on the weekend Franklin picked out a nalgene water bottle for me...

"It's red! Mom! And you turn the cap like this! Mom! And you drink it like this! Mom!"

... and D practically stole a wireless keyboard and mouse.

Yesterday was a normal day at work and then we all came home - where D surprised me with chocolate cupcakes lit up with candles...

... jube jubes! Mom! There's THREE jube jubes on your cupcakes! Mom! I'll help to blow out your candles! Mom! Like this! Mom!

... and we ate dinner together. Then I ran off and left a sick D with bathing and putting Franklin to bed so I could be one of three in a meeting for the Urban Harvest Initiative, which is the group trying over and over and over again to get community garden plots set up for Hillside/Quadra residents.

Everyone has either left the project or is just about tapped out. The entire process has been dragging on for years and has been exhausting for all involved. I'm lucky (and unlucky) to be relatively new to the project. My enthusiasm had me leaving the meeting with about a dozen bigwig Victoria residents to contact for support.

I'm nervous, but excited. I'm not the kind of person that just boldly strides up to incredibly influential people and ask them to support my cause. However, I think I can get over my timidness for this.

When I got home I found a drained and half asleep D who was in no way ready to watch my period costume movie of the year (I seem to only get around to having the time to choose, rent and watch a movie once a year these days), Vanity Fair.

All in all, it was a good night.
It was an ordinary day with some extra special jubes jubes, dirt and apparently detectable levels of Bisphenol A thrown in.

Many summers ago, while walking through Lifecycle's Organic Demonstration garden, aka "The Hive", I saw the most magnificent plant.

The Artichoke. It's huge; a couple feet across and about 5 feet high, gorgeous and a haven for bees. It became just one more reason why I wanted a garden of my own.
I can grow these things here!
This almost makes up for the fact that I don't live in a land where snow falls (and stays put for a few months) in the winter - although I learn here that if we were to move, it would be do-able.

(I shouldn't be surprised. Gardening is "do-able" anywhere. I saw some tomato plants growing in the window of an abandoned building the other day. I wish I had had my camera with me. It was beautiful.)

My parents used to entertain a lot and with five kids (I now believe they were/are insane). Regardless, I love them - both the parents and the vegetable. There would always be artichokes served as an appetizer. Always. It was always a big hit too - I know this because I would hide on the stairs and listen to them talk.

Mmmmmmmm. Ripping off the leaves, dipping them in the hollandaise sauce and scraping off the meat with my teeth.

Yum. Yum yum yum yum yum.

Oh, and may I just add: What may have taken me 30 or so minutes to find the exact photo I wanted among the many diversions that are flickr, took mere seconds using their new Explore option. I swear, it's right up there on my golden list with compost worms and artichoke.

Bravo flickr!

I was snubbed today. I pretty sure I was snubbed anyway. I stood there, waiting and waiting and waiting.... and I was ignored.

Snubbed.

But never mind because I discovered TWO tomatoes on my yellow cherry tomato vine. I can hardly wait.

Hardy wait.

I was so excited, I took this blurry photo of the perfect fruit. In fact, this may be a tomato that you would like, Chair. They aren't as acidic as regular tomatoes.

Actually, I have no idea why I feel the need to find you a tomato that you will enjoy. There must be some old Italian Mama inside me.

Speaking of the force-feeding Italian stereotype, I remember performing a piano duet with an Italian girl when I was young. She decided that we both had to wear baby blue to the performance because her skin looked good in baby blue. My only baby blue dress was incredibly too small for me. It was too small because her mother kept feeding me cookies whenever I went over to her house to practice (I like to blame my weight on other people). She didn't speak English, but I understood what a plate of cookies in my face meant.
Ah, the universal language of force-feeding, I mean, cookies.
Nevertheless, squeezing into that baby blue dress resulted in finishing the song at the concert without being able to feel any of my fingers. The arm pit holes were cutting off the circulation to my chubbed up arms.

We still got a trophy though. I'd scan in the picture of the two of us but it's slightly pornographic. The dress was stretched t-h-i-n and my friends weren't into the whole "bra scene" quite yet - ifyouknowwhatimean. My mother showed a lot of restraint letting me on stage wearing that dress. Of course, what coud happen at a piano recital held in a Christian Reform Elementary school gymnasium?

Why did I feel that I needed to add in the fact that I won?
Pathetic.
However, I think I may have used up all my winning karma before I hit high-school. Since then, my track record has been dismal.

This is my way of telling you I didn't get the job I interviewed for last week.

This has nothing to do with the snub. The snub is laughable and something I just wrote to start me writing tonight. Unfortunately, missing out on an extra $268.00 a month isn't as funny.

Ah well.
Onward and upward.