21 to 0

We picked 21 cherry tomatoes today.

Not one of them made it home.

It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato.

~ Lewis Grizzard

Plant a row

I've got a post up about community gardening with children on my other blog.

The snack garden?

We've been hanging out in the garden. The kids eat the cherry tomatoes and the peas and beans faster than I can grow them. We've taken to calling it the snack garden. I am not convinced I will ever manage an actual meal from it unless we plan to eat it in the garden - nothing makes it home.
We water and weed and I take pictures of flowers and weed some more. The kids eat, climb the trees, chase butterflies, call to the birds, play in the fairy garden and annoy help the neighbours. And I weed some more.  Then we all go home and wish we had more cherry tomatoes and raspberries to eat.

More lavender lovelies

These wonderful little dolls

Patience...is hard

So many things in the garden are close... the peas, the beans, the tomatoes, the carrots - ok not really for the carrots but we had to pull one up to see!  Sara ate it anyway. I can see that we will need more space next year. I am not sure much of the produce will make it home. It seems to get eaten at the garden.

Our Morning Routine

For the last few days we've been getting up early, grabbing breakfast, and heading off to the garden. When we go by bike, which we have been trying to do more regularly recently, we stop off for a snack of blackberries at the bushes by the river. Then it's off to the garden to see what's new. The kids help me inspect and water and then they head off to gather raspberries or play in the fairy garden while I weed and putter. We stop for (another) snack - often a version of these and then head off home for lunch and hopefully an afternoon adventure. I must admit I like the mellowness of these mornings, the small amount of work we do together before the day gets hectic and the time we spend caring for this slightly wild and always wonderful space.

Lovely Lavender

I am so excited to have access to lavender this year. There is a patch growing in the community herb garden. I really want to make lavender perfume with the girls and lavender lemonade for everyone. I've also thought about making some of these lavender wands - but the lavender patch is only so big. I think I may start another patch next year so I can do all of this.

Visits from the Fairies

On the weekend Kevin helped the kids finish their garden signs and he and Colin built a bench from scrap wood that could live in the fairy garden.
We dropped it off on Sunday and hung the signs.

And last night the fairies must have found this magical space. Today when the kids visited their fairy garden they were surprised by a fairy ring which included a small rock table with a tiny shell bowl holding a red berry for a fairy tea. There was a lambs ear leaf blanket and a small Queen Anne's Lace flower for a pillow. There was a small wreath and lavender bouquet to decorate the fairy ring.

The kids got to work quickly, making a rope swing, gathering more wildflowers to decorate the rocks in the ring, and planning what tiny gifts they could leave for the fairies. I wonder if the fairies will return the favour.

In the eye of the beholder

I was out working in the garden on Friday evening as people were walking on the path through the garden to head to a festival a few blocks away. Most people paid little attention to the space they were walking through. One woman came in and sat at the picnic table while chatting on her phone, seeming oblivious to the gardens, birds and insects all around her. Another swiped a few raspberries from the bushes as she walked by. 

Just one group, two young women and a young man, probably all in their mid twenties walked by talking about the space. The one young woman was asking questions about the garden, how it was used and managed. She laughed that she loved it because she is a hippy at heart. The other woman was less complimentary. She said she'd like to take a weed eater to the whole thing. She thinks it looks unkempt, too wild, and it is a poor use of space.

I'll agree with her that it is wild in spots. About 1/3 or more of the space is naturalized, with wildflowers, some native trees.  Some of the plots have not been tended to this year and have been left to grow wild. Common areas such as the raspberry patches could use some trimming

The garden definitely has a funky edge to it. Many of the plots use found or free objects for their structures, out of necessity, to keep costs low and to minimize the chance expensive items will walk away. One plot has curly willow branches as stakes for tomatoes and climbing plants. One gardener made a  lovely lattice out of branches and the dried stems of sunflowers. The many plots are lined with natural stones rather than the sharp lines of edging from the the garden centre. There are volunteer sunflowers popping up at the edges of the paths, the mulch is yellow straw rather than trendy cocoa bean hulls. The signs are hand painted. The grass cutters go around wildflowers rather than over them, leaving chicory and daisies dotting the paths. Rather than looking like something from Martha Stewart, the garden looks handmade, hardworking, natural, creative, and yes, slightly wild. I love it.

But I realize that just because I love it doesn't mean everyone does. If you aren't in the garden, if you don't wander past the plots tended with care, if you don't know about the fairy garden, the resident bunny, the school plot, you might not get a feel for it. If you didn't know how much the work of the gardeners has rehabilitated the soil and created a wonderful place for city wildlife, birds, insects and native plants you might think that it might be better paved or sodded over.  If you didn't know how the garden helps people connect to their community, to the land, to the seasons, to their food, you might not see past the wildness to the value of the garden. If you don't get to see the joy on my kids' faces at picking and tasting their own tomatoes, cucumbers or raspberries and watch them explaining the concept of community gardens to their friends who have never seen a cucumber except at the grocery store, you might not understand why we love it.

As community gardeners we have a responsibility to speak up about the value of the garden and its many benefits. We also have a responsibility to the community and to the city to make our space inviting and welcoming, to be good stewards of not only the land, but the idea and image of community gardening.

We can be confident that action which is in accord with a few basic beliefs cannot be wrong and can at least testify to the values we will need to cultivate. These are the beliefs that the human race is a family that has inherited a place on the earth in common, that its members have an obligation to work toward sharing it so that none is deprived of the elementary needs for life, and that all have a responsibility to leave it undegraded for those who follow.

~ Gilbert F. White, "Stewardship of the Earth,"

Yummmmm

We ate them - all two of them. Emily had the first one as it is her plant, and the rest of us shared a tiny bite of the second. Can't wait for more.

Late Veggies

List of things we could plant now.

Six weeks in the garden

Just planted during the last week of May:

Our newly planted garden. We divided the garden into three beds, each roughly 4 feet wide with paths between them. At the top centre you can see the bean tee pee which is at the Southwest corner of the plot. Beside it in the bed is spinach and lettuce and then three tomato plants. This is the shortest bed of the garden because of the raspberry bushes.

In the centre bed we have carrots, 2 pepper plants, cucumber and zucchini and onions and garlic.

In the bed nearest in the photo we have tomatoes, wild strawberries and mint, and the herb circle. A few more herbs are tucked in around the other plants - calendula, chamomile, and nasturtium. The rhubarb is at the northeast corner of the garden. We inherited it from our friend and previous plot holder.
The north end of our plot is marked by a path and a large patch of raspberries.

The herb circle just after planting. We haven't got the garden paths marked with stones in this picture.

And six weeks later:

Here is the herb circle 6 weeks after the bulk of it was planted.

And here is the garden roughly one week ago at the 6 week mark. The wild chicory marks the beginnings of our neighbours plot

Company in the garden

This little bunny is only about 6 inches from nose to tail and hasn't quite figured out how to hide. He loves to hang out in the plot beside us which is a bit wild and full of low hanging treats. The kids were entranced to watch him the first time we saw him. I could hear him nibbling while I worked a bit last night. While there hasn't been any signs of him in our space yet, I'll happily offer up lettuce and carrots for more of his company.

More colour for the garden

The heat wave finally broke and we are getting some much needed rain. However that means helping the kids find things to do indoors. For ages I have wanted to try this project and we happened to still have some of the rocks we scavenged for the garden in the back of the van. The project was addictive. We all could have done a few more and have plans to do another round. These rocks will be added to our garden space to mark the paths.

The kids also worked on their garden signs for the fairy garden and the wildflower patch. Emily wants to make one for the blueberry bush as well.
Apparently we think the garden could use a bit more colour.

Colour in the garden today

Windchimes

The kids would love to make these.
We'll have to check the garden and the sumacs at the park to see if there are any branches we could use. A small version would be lovely in the kid's fairy garden.

The plot after a month away

Why try to explain miracles to your kids when you can just have them plant a garden.
~Robert Brault

We returned home from the extended (and somewhat unplanned) trip to the cottage not really knowing what to expect in the garden. With only a short garden visit on our one weekend in June that we were not at the cottage, we were a bit worried about the state of the plants. Thankfully all was well, if a bit weedy and dry. The rhubarb has grown by leaps and bounds, there are plenty of zucchini flowers, lots of green tomatoes, the beans and peas are trailing up the tee pee, and the herbs look great with the exception of the basil which I am hoping will bounce back.

There were lots of raspberries and some early blackberries on the canes that surround our plot and the kids quickly gave up weeding and watering chores for picking. (I think one or two of the raspberries made it home -  grin.) Colin and Sara came back however, and spotted a "gigantic" cucumber. Well two actually. And as they are the cucumber fans in the family it was quickly decided that they could do the honours and do the first official real harvesting.

In addition to the weeding and harvesting, we've been working on the structure of our little space. We've exhausted the onsite rock piles and so have made a few late evening runs to scavenge rocks from various construction sites around town so we can ring our beds and mark the paths in the hopes of stopping any further trampling.  The kids thought it was a blast to pick rocks (!?). However our favourite chore by far was the installation of our new garden sign, which was made by friends as a birthday gift for all of us. We've already had so many comments about how lovely it is.  It makes the garden seem more like our special space, and as a bonus it helps mark the division between our space and our neighbours.

Sara and I also spent a few hours there on Sunday. We planted a high bush blueberry which we picked up on clearance from a local nursery, in part to "pay it forward" and in part to pay back those past and current gardeners who planted all the raspberries. We've also planted a small wildflower pollinator patch across from our plot and need to make a sign to encourage people not to mow it. Most of our garden plot has been weeded, we've planted some more calendula and nasturtium and will replant lettuce and spinach and carrots this week (once this incredible heat settles down.) 

Since returning home last week, we have also stopped by the garden with little neighbourhood friends and treated them to a tour and a taste of fresh picked, still warm from the sun raspberries. It was heartwarming to see my kids give the tour of "their" garden and talk about our garden neighbours and the idea of a community garden. I love that they get that benefits of community gardening are about more than just the garden.

Easy being green

Plants cry their gratitude for the sun in green joy.
~Astrid Alauda

We're taking daily trips to the garden to weed, water, wander, watch, wait and wonder.

There isn't a tonne of work to do just now in our little space. After the watering and the tiny bit of weeding, we're not quite ready to go. So I've been working on one of the communal raspberry patches, trimming it back and thinning it out in hopes of being able to get more berries this summer.   The kids are less interested in pruning prickly branches and so they escape to a corner of the garden where they are building a secret fairy garden in among the sumacs.  When they tire of that they count bees, search for strawberries in the wild patch in our plot, climb the tree, twist bindweed into rope, lay on their backs in the sun or the shade and dream to the music of the birds.

I've been doing a bit of dreaming of my own. I wanted to create the garden space for them. I love the looks on their faces as they run to the garden to discover what's changed since the last visit.  I am looking forward to the days when we are harvesting "real food" and dinner, has come, at least in part, from our garden.

What I didn't count on quite so much was how much I would love it. It is immensely satisfying to putter about, picking a weed here or there, showing the kids how to snap suckers from the tomato plants and build bean teepees. I've been picturing salads made with greens from the garden, sliced tomatoes, some fresh raspberries on yogurt, little hands helping me harvest red currants and elderberry and mint for suntea. I have at least a dozen gardening books out of the library.  I've been thinking about chickens and bees and blueberry bushes and 1/2 acre lots. I've been wondering if the neighbours would notice if I moved the fence 20 feet or so west to commandeer a patch of land with some sun and a spot for a coop and a hive.  Maybe they would trade for eggs, honey and berries, and some time in our garden.