Weeds and how we grow’em

It’s starting to be crunch time on the farm.  That’s not completely true… it feels like crunch time on the farm for most of the season.  But this is a different crunch time.  If things don’t get seeded or transplanted today (or really, yesterday or last week or who knows when in the past, but really, SERIOUSLY, before tomorrow), they’re not going to have enough daylight hours to ripen all the way to… well… ripe.  So it’s crunch time.  Jer’s been working like mad, while also trying to have a day off here and there, albeit mostly unsuccessfully.

Deadly nightshade – not my picture, because this one has flowered and is going to seed!

I’ve been looking at pictures of where we were at last year, and while we’re still behind, we’re less behind.  What we aren’t less behind on is the weeds.  We’ve tried really hard to stay on top of the weeds this year, especially before they go to seed.  Last year we had a few weeds totally take off, and they became an absolute bane in the greenhouse – there was one nightshade that was especially vigorous.  So this year, we’re on the watch for it, and I don’t think we’ve let any flower yet, much less go to seed.  So that’s good.

Smartweed – also not my picture

Jer’s got a new weed on his radar, and he’s teaching me about it, but I keep thinking smartweed (or knotweed) is the plant he’s talking about, but it’s not, so I need a little more practice.  I had a goal of getting half of my dahlias weeded last week, so that they could maybe, FINALLY, start to flower, and that got done.  I am so ready to start making bouquets that aren’t lily-centric!  I love the lilies, but I’m ready for more choice!

Dahlias, coming out of the weeds!

Last pink unscented lily

Market table

New market sign

Miss P had her 5-month-iversary this week.  We celebrated by going to the market, but also by visiting with the folks whose house she was born at.  We’re all just so darn grateful for her and her smiles, her gurgles and her snuggles.  She’s a gooder.

Feelings and how we express them

Little Miss P has a very large head, which I blame wholly on Jeremy.  She also has a very loud voice, but I don’t think Jer can take the credit (or blame) for that one.  That may have more to do with me.  When the little one has something to say, but feels the need not to just say it (with the coos and sighs and giggles that are her language), but to shout it, scream it, exclaim it with a multitude of exclamation marks, we say that she’s expressing her feelings.

Miss P’s new friend

Not feelings of pain or joy or hunger – there are other more recognizable noises she makes for those feelings – but the whole abundance of other human feelings, be they physical (my nose is itchy and I don’t know how to fix it!!!!), emotional (I have a new friend who I can’t get enough of!!!!), or otherwise (FEELINGS!!!!!).  It’s totally acceptable for a 4 month-old to have loud, indescribable feelings.  It’s totally acceptable for a 4 month-old to have most things, really.  Sometimes I wish I was a 4 month-old and I could just shout and yell and exclaim sounds as loudly as possible in order to express myself and my feelings, because there sure are a lot of them right now.

 

Flying at the beach

Some of those other feelings…

Reflections

Happy feelings

4 months!

With our friend Golds…

June was the month of visitors on the farm.  We had a clan of my family descend for a night, which was lovely.  We had friends from Vancouver, who are moving back to the East Coast, come for 3 or 4 nights.  We had my parents come for almost a week.  And then we had the Wittys, comprised of Witty himself, young Mr. Atlas, and Golds, the friend who spans the ages and the kilometers.

You see, Golds and I met 9 years ago, in Bolivia, at the end of a 10-day meditation retreat.  You can read about her take on it here.  I had a different experience meditating than she did, and while I didn’t speak with anyone, with my words or my eyes for 10 days, I certainly spent time staring around the room, making up stories about the likely non-native Bolivians, Chileans and Argentines.  I grouped the travellers into partnerships, gave them home continents and narratives about what brought them to this small town in Bolivia, the only land-locked country in South America, and to a 10-day silent meditation retreat.  I was wrong on all counts (4 of the 7 were from Australia!  I was the only American, defined here as “from the continent[s] of America).  But even though Golds was from Australia, when we got to talking we found out that this may not be our first meeting.  Our first meeting may have truly been 20 years prior, on the playground of our elementary school.  She had come to Calgary

Stampede times…

during the 1988 winter Olympics, and we’d gone to elementary school together.  Our chance encounter in Bolivia, followed by 3 weeks of Stampede-laden debauchery in Calgary created a lifelong friendship.  Our month together here, as new mamas with happy, smiling, loud and feeling babes in tow, cemented that friendship and I sure do hope that it takes less than 9 years for us to see each other again.

Circa 2008

So those are some of my feelings… feelings of gratitude for having these delightful and joyful people in my life, feelings of incredible love when I see Miss P flapping her arms in delight when she is in the presence of her buddy Mr. Atlas, squeaky feelings when I see Golds dog-paddle at the beach on her last night here because the tidal flats go on forever and she doesn’t want to (rightfully so!) scrape herself on the sharp barnacles, but also feelings of sadness because these friends have just left us to continue their year-round jaunt.

Sleepy girl

Sleepy boy

Other feelings have to, obviously, do with my daughter and the relationships she has and the relationships she’s changed.  The relationship between my mother and myself, the relationship between Jer and I, and her relationships to all of these people I love so dearly.  Those are big feelings.  Those are shouting really loud feelings.

 

Chairlift up

Man in the snow

First throw

This one hits its mark!

And then there’s these other feelings.  You see, our neighbours and closest friends on the island, are moving.  Not far – Google Maps tells me it’s 5 km and a 7 minute drive away – but far enough to not be drop-by neighbours… This family is a huge part of our Denman Island community.  They feed and water our chickens and garden when we’re away.  We share groceries, meals, and tea and cookies at least once a week.  I was so excited to know that Miss P was going to grow up next door to their lovely daughter, who would teach our girl to tromp through the woods, bounce on the trampoline and pick the best strawberries.  I have a deep respect for the choices this family has made and the people that they are and I’m supremely bummed that they’re moving.  I’m doing my best not to be like Miss P and shout and scream these feelings, because this is really not about me my feelings (I’m not the one moving, after all), but sometimes I wish that my girl and I could just switch places for a moment so I could shout and yell and get a bunch of these feelings out (and maybe cry a fair bit too), and then I’d feel better.  For now, I’m “holding it together”, trying to help them as best I can, and maybe by this weekend, when their house is no longer “theirs” in the legal sense of the word (it’ll be theirs for a LONG time, and not just to me… in describing our house, I still use the previous owners’ names, 6 years later), I’ll have my first little (or big) fit of feelings, and start to move on from them.

Not a farmy post at all.  One day I’ll give you a real farm update.  This month has just been about so much more than the farm…

Friends at the beach

How things change…

I used to be a daily journaler.  I would write almost every night before I went to bed.  Nothing was off-limits.  Daily events, feelings, ideas, stories, poetry… I wrote in French and in English.  I wrote meditations and quotes.  I wrote a lot.  It was my way of processing what was happening in my world, and was incredibly important to me.  I wrote for almost 20 years, and have a box of journals full of these writings.  Then, when Jer and I moved in together, I kinda stopped writing.  I didn’t need to write things down to process them, because I had this partner who would do it with me.  So I stopped.  Sometimes I miss it, but not often because our lives are so full.  But what I did miss was the routine, and the remembering.  I missed being able to go back and read about where I was at and when, especially the fun bits.

And then, almost 5 years ago, one of our aunts bought us this lovely little 5 year journal.  It was a delightful gift, and it’s been 4 and a half years that we’ve been writing in it, almost daily.  We write about funny things (like when Jeremy makes the bedroom smell really bad), serious things (like when wildlife comes and eats our chickens), daily happenings (like parties and beach swims and visits from friends), but mostly we write about farmy things.  When things are planted, when they’re harvested, when certain flowers start to bloom.  We write about the weather and the first and last frost.  What this means is that when people talk about how far behind or ahead we are, I can either agree or disagree, and I actually have data to back it up… 4 years of data, which isn’t much, but it’s something!  So I can tell you that we were eating lots of strawberries this time last year and we were cutting our first lilies.  Lilies this year are weeks away, and our first strawberries are just starting to pink up.  In other words?  We’re totally 2 or 3 weeks behind the past few year.  Drat.

Other news?  June is the month of visitors!  A lovely friend that I met 9 years ago at a Vipassana meditation in Bolivia is here for a month with her husband and 8-month old son, as part of their jaunt around the world.  It’s been super fun to catch up, go for swims and spend time on the farm together.  It’s also lovely to spend so much time with another babe… I’m sure Patryn agrees!

 

Spring came late

Spring took a long time coming in these parts this year.  We’ve been spoiled the past couple of springs with bees and blooms in March and salad in May.  This year we’ve been less spoiled, which was kind of nice because it allowed Jer to feel less guilty for being in the house and not on the farm… but everything changed this week.  For those of you who live on the west coast, you know the weather I’m talking about.  Hot, hot sun.  Lots of it.  Enough to dry out the wet section of the garden, almost overnight.  Jer kicked up dust on the tractor when we went through and tilled it… Dust!  Who knew it was even possible!  Enough to fry the plants that hadn’t been properly hardened off in a matter of hours.  Enough to make the oceans and lakes… bearable?  I say that, although I’m not actually certain.  I tried to go swimming in the ocean last week, but Patryn was having none of it.  Jer got in.  Then we caught colds and the thought of cold water was oh so unpleasant.  But today.  Today we’re going to the beach.  It’s happening.  With potato salad and cold beer and pork chops.

Sleep and the lack thereof

Once upon a time, about 5 years ago actually, sleep deprivation was all about a mink eating our chickens in the middle of the night.  To be honest, eating isn’t a fair representation of what was happening, as the mink in question (and pretty much every other mink) mostly drain their prey’s blood and then move on to the next prey.  This way, they can massacre a whole flock pretty fast.  Now, I digress… 5 years ago, we weren’t sleeping because our chickens were being massacred.  Now, our chickens are still being massacred, but mostly because we’re not sleeping enough to remember to close them up at night religiously, and a raccoon has figured out where there’s food.

And why, you ask, are we not sleeping?

Well, because of her.  See, last year we grew more than vegetables (and flowers.  We grow a lot of flowers these days).  Last year, we grew a human.  She decided to start hanging out on the outside of my body on February 15th, and since then, we sleep less than we did before.  More some nights, less right now because she has a cold and snorfles when she breathes, and then the snorfles don’t get her enough air, and then she cries, and then we don’t sleep.  It’s pretty hard to sleep through some of the snorfles too.  So we don’t sleep.  I’m learning to cope on less sleep, but the coping sure is pretty meager sometimes.  I certainly don’t feel very intelligent, and I struggle regularly with finding words.  Like always.  Words are tricky monsters.

So we grew a human.  Now, we’re back to growing vegetables and flowers, and I’m still growing a human.  The vegetables and flowers were taking a bit of a back seat, which was okay because the spring was horrid (as was the winter and the fall… remember October when it rained every single day?), but now it’s hot, and the vegetables and the flowers need to become more of a priority, but that’s hard without the sleep.

Anyways, I hope that I’ll be back to hanging out on the blog more now that I’m not growing a human inside my body and not starting (and finishing!) my Masters every moment of spare time I had.  I also, of course, am hoping for some sleep.

The garden at the beginning of April

April 1st – First day with dirty fingernails

I think I’ve come to accept that the kitchen, in spring, will always be used to start seeds…

Seeds are growing