Watching My Babies Grow

December 7, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

Recently hatched mantids–can you see them both?

All winter I kept an eye on the eggs.

Now the preying mantids have all hatched, and I can’t help but watch them grow and develop.

They don’t tend to wander far, so it’s easy to keep tabs on them. Sometimes it takes a few minutes of staring before I see one, but then they start popping out at me until I’ve counted dozens of them.

I’m happy to report that they appear to be doing well. I’m sure that some are looking fat and sassy because they’ve eaten their brothers and sisters, but that’s the way it goes in the mantid world. Live by the raptorial front legs, die by the raptorial front legs.

This one is a bit older and easier to see.

Sometimes I wonder at myself, that I can watch this year after year, and still be excited as each new egg case hatches. I hope I never lose that wonder and joy.

A Christmassy Dinner

November 30, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Once a year, I make broad bean burgers. They’re a mission to make, because you have to shell them, cook them, then peel of the skins, then turn them into burgers. So once a year is enough.

As I mixed up the bright green burger mix, I thought about what I was going to serve with the burgers.

Well…

It’s the start of the holiday season…

A red and green meal was in order—green burgers with ketchup, peas, and strawberries!

Not exactly a Northern Hemisphere holiday meal, but perfect here.

Thanksgiving

November 25, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Timed to coincide with the last of the autumn harvest, Thanksgiving is traditionally a celebration of the foods that store through winter—pumpkins, apples, potatoes, corn.

Which is why we don’t really celebrate it here. Not in the traditional culinary sense, at least. Apples and potatoes are wrinkled and old by November. The pumpkins are all gone.

But there is much to be thankful for at the beginning of summer, and our Thanksgiving Day meal reflects this—pasta full of spinach, artichokes, and peas; a fresh green salad; and strawberries for dessert. Indeed, every day is a harvest celebration at our house. Every day, I am thankful for the sun, rain, and soil. I am thankful for our ability to produce much of our own food. I am thankful for my children, who understand and appreciate the amount of work that goes into every bite they eat—who thank the cook and the gardener every day.

I am thankful for the partner with whom I share the daily tasks that provide food for our table. I am thankful for the neighbours who help keep animals and plants alive when we go on vacation.

Yes, I’m sometimes a grumpy farmer—there’s never enough rain, the pests are terrible, the neighbour’s weed-killer has wafted across the fence line again…there’s always something to complain about.

But however much I grumble as I’m pulling weeds or dragging irrigation hoses around, dinner is always a time of Thanksgiving.

Small Celebration

November 19, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Well, I finally made it. Made it to the day I can look at the vegetable garden and not be overwhelmed with jobs to do.

Everything is planted (except successive plantings of things like carrots, etc.), and most everything is mulched. The tomatoes are tied up and pruned, and the potatoes are mounded. Today, I managed to get all but a few small areas weeded, too.

I walked through the garden this afternoon to survey my work, and managed to get all the way through without feeling the need to pull a weed.

To celebrate, I’ve decided to spend the rest of the day pretending that there aren’t a thousand other jobs waiting for me in other areas of the yard. I’ll tackle those tomorrow.

Berries Bought with Blood

November 18, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Gooseberries are one of my favourite fruits for jam—high in pectin, a beautiful colour, and wonderfully tart.

I just wish the plants weren’t so vindictive…

I watch the fruits swell with a mix of excitement and trepidation. There will be lots of fruit soon, but the price of picking it will be scratched and bloody hands.

I should probably prune the plants, so there’s more space to get in there and pick. But pruning brings its own blood price, and one of the things I like most about gooseberries is that they pretty much take care of themselves. They do well in dry conditions, and they compete well with the weeds. That they give us fruit without the fuss of pruning is a huge bonus.

All in all, I suppose I can’t complain about the trade-off. A little blood for a harvest of delicious fruit is a good deal.

Vigilance

November 17, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Will we wake up to this tomorrow?

I watched the weather forecast closely this week. The week after plant out, when all the frost tender vegetables are newly planted, is when it usually happens.

A day of cold southerly rain, bringing much-needed moisture. The rain is good, and the low daytime temperatures won’t damage the plants.

But somehow, those rain clouds always blow away as the sun sets. The wind dies, and the air grows still as the temperature plummets.

The weather forecasts rarely predict these frosts, but I’ve learned to look out for them.

Today, as the clouds broke just in time for a spectacular rainbow before sunset, I knew the garden would be in trouble before dawn.

I pulled out all the frost cloth I own, and as the light faded, covered as many tender plants as I could. At this point, I can’t possibly cover them all, but I can strategically save those I would be most sorry to lose, and those that are most sensitive to frost.

Before dawn I will be in the garden again checking for frost. If I’m lucky, there will be none. If I’m unlucky, I’ll spend the early hours hosing down the plants I couldn’t cover in the hopes of saving them.

The strategy works…mostly. But just one frost at this time of year can change the landscape in the garden and the food choices we have through the next twelve months. It pays to be vigilant.

Strawberry Secrets

November 16, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Shhh!!

Don’t tell my family.

I ate the first strawberry of the season!

It was delicious!

I’m usually quite generous with my garden produce—everyone gets a fair share of the goodies. But when it comes to the first strawberry of the year, I turn selfish.

I always get the first strawberry.

I get it, because I plant, and weed, and water, and weed again. Because in two weeks, I’ll be spending an hour a day just picking berries, then countless hours processing them into jam and other yummy treats for everyone to enjoy.

It’s my sweet reward for a year of work.

The secret will out in a day or two. When I come in with three berries, and give one to everyone else in the family, saving none for myself, they’ll know. They’ll know I ate the first one already.

But by then it won’t matter. I will have gotten the first one.

Here we go again…

October 16, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

It’s a sight to strike fear in my heart.

October 16^th and the temperature hit 30°C (86°F) and humidity is 33%.

Thirty degrees is supposed to be a height –of-summer oddity. It’s the day you drop everything and head to the beach, because there are only a handful of days this warm in a summer.

Except that it’s the middle of spring.

And this happened last year.

And the year before.

And it heralds a third year of drought for us.

A third year of deciding which plants will be watered (and survive), and which ones will not (and probably die).

It will be a third year of expensive hay that has to be brought in for the goats, because the grass will brown off in November.

A third year in which the vegetable seedlings grow too fast too early, then struggle to set fruit in the dry heat.

Just thinking about it makes me grim.

But I suppose it also means a summer of incredible hot days at the beach. A summer in which I don’t need a wetsuit to enjoy the ocean. A summer of ice cream and swimming.

I enjoy these things. I really do. It’s a good thing they come along with drought. If I go to the beach, I can ignore the shrivelling garden at home…sort of.

Spring Roller Coaster

October 10, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

rollercoaster_expedition_geforce_holiday_park_germany

Photo: Boris23; Wikimedia, public domain

The kids are back at school today after two weeks of school holidays. It’s the last term of the school year, and the start of what I always think of as a roller coaster ride.

For the past two weeks we’ve been slowly climbing the first hill. I could hear the tik-tik-tik of the chain winching us up, to perch at the top of the slope. Today we begin the descent to the end of the year. It will start slowly—I’ll be lulled into thinking I have plenty of time to do the gardening, get all the nagging spring DIY done, think about Christmas gifts, plan summer’s vacations. But before I know it, we’ll be hurtling along toward the end of the year, much faster than I anticipated. The garden will take longer that I’d hoped. The end-of-the-year school activities will start piling up. I’ll put off worrying about Christmas gifts until I’m frantic about it. Three DIY projects will balloon into ten. Late frost will keep me scrambling to protect plants. Livestock will get sick and require extra care. School will end much sooner than I’d like it to.

Time will compress. A month will be over in a week. A week will last a day. A day will be over in a blink of the eye.

Before I know it, we’ll be heading into the week before Christmas, and my Spring to-do list will be every bit as long as it is today.

I’ve learned to accept this state. I’ve almost learned to enjoy the frenetic insanity of the combination of the end of the school year, holidays, and spring gardening all at once.

But every year I sit here at the top of the roller coaster wondering if I really should have gotten on in the first place.

Repeating Myself

October 2, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Three quarters of the way through the second year of daily blogging, I begin to feel that I’m repeating myself. Yesterday I took a couple of photos of the beautiful asparagus coming up in the garden, and was all set to blog about it. But when I looked at the photo, I realised I blogged about asparagus last year. I did the same with artichokes last week.

Which is, of course, one of the joys of gardening. There is a rhythm to it. Its seasonality is guaranteed. Spring always follows winter, and spring brings asparagus and artichokes, lettuce and spinach, daffodils and tulips. Spring will eventually mature into summer, with eggplant, peppers, and zucchini. Summer will fade to autumn pumpkins and the last ears of sweet corn. And winter will bring cabbages and broccoli, and an excuse to stay indoors and bake cookies.

There is uncertainty, of course—there are hail storms, drought, and pests—but the fundamental rhythm is the same from year to year.

There is comfort in that. Though it means I may repeat myself from time to time on the blog, it is something I can count on. Life changes from day to day—the kids grow up, jobs change, we may move half way across the world—nothing is certain. But I always know where I stand in the seasons—always changing, but always predictable.