back home in the garden

Some of you will know that R is cycling from Montreal to our house in the Gaspé. The trip is approx 800 k. Now, as I write, he has less than 100 k to go. He's been doing valiantly, because it's far and he's cycling into a headwind that gusts up to 35k according to the weather app--and his windburn. He also had a problem with a tire on the first day. He hasn't been able to replace it since bike repair shops are either out of stock or closed when he's cycling by. So he's cycling with a patched tire. Fingers crossed that it holds. I won't write about his trip here, because it's his story which he will tell himself when he gets back.  

I've been at home working, having a private writer's retreat, doing whatever suits me. If I want eggs and toast for supper, but I had them last night, that's fine, I can. I am still getting out for walks but at erratic times.  

It's also that time of year in the garden. I have basil ready to harvest which means making pesto. I saw bushes heavy with gooseberries yesterday when I was out walking and I'm wondering about getting some gooseberries at the market to make jam. 

In the garden the tomatoes are only starting to pop fruit. The onions are twice as high as they were last year at this time. I have lots of hot peppers, a couple of different varieties. 

For now, I long to get to back to writing...  

Here's the pic R sent this morning. Sainte Flavie, Quebec. 

living near the tracks / hamilton, ontario

First of all, I'm in the garden. Do you grow cherry tomatoes? Do you know what I mean when I say you have to practically stand on your head to spy the tiny ripe tomatoes under the leaves? They are red! It shouldn't be so hard.

And the green beans. Even with my head under the leaves, I can still feel the beans more than see them – and the leaves give me a rash even through long sleeves. But I still grow the plants because I get plentiful and delicious beans, and I was given the seeds a few years back by a fellow who told me they were from his mother who brought them from Italy a few decades ago. So itch be damned. I grow them and do my best to pick them. 

And even then, after being sure I've felt through and rifled and lifted every last itchy leaf, I'm leaving the garden, and what do I see but another clutch of beans I missed. Which makes me doubt and I have to look again.

But I'm not writing about my garden, except to say that it's doing well this year. I'm writing about where it is, next to the VIA Rail embankment and how, when I work in the garden, I hear the trains go by.  

And this is what I found out about trains a few years ago when I was visiting family in Ontario. I asked my father to give me the addresses of the places where I'd lived as a baby and a toddler--before I knew where I lived. 

At the house on Elm Street I scribbled a note to leave on the door to tell the people who lived there now that I had once lived in the upstairs flat. Why would it matter to them? I don't know, it was just something I wanted to do. 

I have vague memories of my mother telling me that the upstairs neighbour at the time complained about the noise of my shoes as I ran around the flat. I'm not sure why I was wearing shoes inside. Even now, I wonder when I see friends who walk around their places with shoes on. I have no desire to enclose my feet if I don't have to. But maybe it's a European thing. ???

In 2017, I opened the screen door in order to leave my note on the closed front door, and was walking back to the car when a man with a shaved head and pumped muscles burst out to ask what the fuck I was doing at his door. I tried to explain. He wasn't interested, he didn't believe me, he scoffed at my note.  

We decided to leave him to his bad mood and walked away, when what I noticed at the head of the street were railroad tracks. That's the photo up top. 

I also visited the apartment where I lived when I was a student at McMaster. It, too, was very close to railroad tracks. I remember I could hear the trains. The building had once been a mansion that had been chopped into apartments. We lived on the top floor in what used to be the attic. The windows were very small, the ceilings not as high as in the apartments lower down. But I loved the large balconies that had been added to the back of the building. We had a Sally Ann sofa and coffee table on ours. The balcony was larger than any single room inside the apartment. In warm weather I sat out there in the rain and read. Everyone else was outside on their balconies too. A folk musician of modest renown lived below us and he had lots of cool friends visiting. Often I wasn't reading. I was eavesdropping.

There were no train tracks near where I lived in Toronto, but for many years I lived in apartments along St. Clair – St. Clair and Oakwood, St. Clair and Arlington, St. Clair and Bathurst, St. Clair and Avenue Rd, St. Clair and Humewood.  (I moved a lot.) I can tell you this: the St. Clair streetcar is shorter than a train but there are more streetcars per hour than there are trains, and by the end of the day, the quantity of trainlike noise might be the same, though it doesn't seem to have been a noise I minded. 

Now for almost 20 years I live in Pointe St. Charles in Montreal.We moved into our house in November, and were sleeping with the windows closed. Yet every night when I was reading in bed, I noticed that one of the closet doors rattled at 11:15 promptly. I mentioned it to my neighbour at the time who was Mi'kmaw. He told me not to worry about ghosts because he had smudged the house. I wasn't thinking of ghosts, though there were a few reasons why there would be restless spirits in this house. The 11:15 rattle continued. It was only late next spring when we were sleeping with our windows open that I finally heard the long freight train that passed at 11:05. It took ten minutes for the reverberations to hit our house.

When I saw the railroad tracks so close to the first house I lived in as an infant in Hamilton, I realized that this is a sound I've been hearing for so long that it comforts me. And when I work in my garden, there is greenery and growth and bees and soil and fresh air and the birds in the trees (and the rustling of the groundhogs and the squirrels), and every now and then a freight or a passenger train goes by on the tracks above the community garden. And it is good.

urban garden jungle / montreal

My garden looks like a thriving paradise of plants.


It's actually a battle armed with hairy creepers, stinging tentacles, sneaky rhizomes.



Every year I think I’ve given the plants enough space and every year they fight for more.

What do I see here? There will be tomatoes. Or... there might be. Because there are also racoons, squirrels and groundhogs--who also like tomatoes.

There are no crash-car movie scenes. It’s not intergalactic warfare.



But believe me, there’s fierce conniving, choking and strangulation snaking in the shadows.

Here especially.



The beans grasping for territory, the tomato determined to hold its own.

And I'm not even mentioning the squirrels, groundhogs, racoons, skunks, earwigs with their pincers, gooseberry maggots inside the black currants, the slugs and other bibittes. 

In short, I'm loving another summer of gardening in my plot at the Jardin Communautaire la Pointe-Verte.

inner-city bees, eggs, gardens

I could have zoomed on the beehive but the graffiti belongs to the environs. Note that 'zoom' in this instance is a photo editing term. Before that, you 'zoomed' with the camera lens. Before cameras, 'zoom' was a sound word, the noise of something moving fast. Once upon a time, it was a sewing term. However did it become a social media app?

I won't say exactly where the hive is situated because the bees like their privacy.

Me, too, I kept my distance. But of course, it's in the Pointe.

R is trying to engage this cool inner-city chicken in chat, but she's not interested. His hair is pandemic long but no match for a red rooster comb. 

The chickens belong to an egg-laying initiative at the Batiment-7 in the Pointe. Also to educate kids--and maybe even some adults--as to where food comes from.

This is one happy, well-fed chicken.

The many people who belong to Montreal's community gardens were not allowed access to their plots until... mid-May, I think. They are now open with sanitary protocols.

I've been able to harvest rhubarb once, tomatoes are in flower, leaf lettuce, arugula, carrots, onions coming along, pole beans trying to climb farther, garlic scapes cut.

The basil seedlings survived marauding insects and one heatwave. So far at least.

The chamomile is posing against the black currants that I'm looking forward to. Black currants aren't readily available in Montreal, even at the market--and expensive when they are. I love black currant jam.

This wealth of growth is set in urban Montreal.


The last picture is called Find the Chicken.

ps Chicken pics were taken about a month ago. (R's hair is longer now.) We stopped to see the birds today but there are only two hens left. One hen and a rooster gone. Apparently two foxes had visited. The open area where the chickens used to roam has now been enclosed with chicken wire. So... there are inner-city foxes too.

writing gesture and body language

Since last winter I've been revising short fiction set in other countries. Increasingly, especially when working on a story set in the 80s or 90s, I wondered if I was writing historical fiction. No ATM machines. Having to wait for news from home by asking at the American Express Office if a letter had arrived. (A letter as in handwritten pages in an envelope with stamps in the corner.) Sitting in the December sunshine in a park because it was warmer than the unheated room we were renting. Being able to travel on $20/day. Not having to stand in line to get into... well, just about anywhere if you travelled off-season.

In these past... how long has it been? Two months? I'm starting to wonder if I'm writing FANTASY fiction. People drove or got on planes to arrive in a place where the climate and customs and language were different? And then they might share a hotel room with a stranger. I don't mean sex. Just, hey, are you looking for a room, so am I. Wanna share? Not to mention racy little details like touching a person to get their attention. Sharing food. Lending a sweater. Tickling a child that isn't yours and blowing a raspberry on her stomach. All that spit! What a world of potentially germ-infested interactions!  

What is going to happen to our whole lexicon of (germ-infested) interpersonal body language and gesture? From now on, is it all going to be about distance, masks, gloves and face shields? How do you do tone of voice through a mask?  

While pondering that...

The tulips are from our very small backyard where I coaxed some tulips to bloom. I would have liked to leave them outside, enjoying the sun and refrigerated temps of the past couple of weeks. But after the squirrels bit a few heads off, I decided it was a nicer end to come indoors and get blowsy in a vase than to be chomped at the neck. Nicer for me at least. 

I have not yet been able to get into our community garden. (Soon, but not yet.) This is what I can see from the street. Purple marks my rhubarb. I have a couple of black currant bushes and can see my winter garlic too.

   

garden / june 25 / montreal

Not sure if these are yellow or green beans. I put them inside circular supports this year since the woman where I bought my seedlings said I should.

Rhubarb has already been harvested and eaten. Waiting for next crop...

growing beets, basil, tomatoes / improv gardening

                                                                                     

I love my community garden! I go there and feel like I'm in the most concentrated green spot in the city. There are approximately fifty plots and everyone is growing, growing, growing plants. Green beans, onions, zucchini, fennel, rhubarb, lettuce, tomatoes, raspberries, dill, hot peppers, flowers. My favourite plots have clever two-tiered structures with vines climbing up the sides, squash hanging down through the top slats, delicate greens in the shade beneath.  I will try this yet.


I was working in my plot today and another gardener asked why I was heaping damp, mucky soil around my beet roots. I have no reason. I'm not following advice I've been given or read.


But I feel that if *I* were a beet bulb starting to push out of the ground into the hot sun, I would like someone to slap cool mud around me. I guess what I'm hoping, too, is that the beets will keep growing.

Yeah, yeah, I've been known to hug trees too...

This here is all basil except for the tomatoes hanging over the top of their trellis. I planted them close together because basil is supposed to keep tomato hornworm away. Seems to have worked.

I had a good year with both basil and tomatoes and will buddy them up again.


Back in May I actually worried I wasn't going to have enough basil so I planted another little pot. I need to start making pesto.

little awakenings

Slowly/lentement growth is unfurling in Montreal. The ash tree outside my window is bursting with fat furry buds.

A neighbour's plant snaked its way under her fence and our patio stones to find a sunny spot against R's artisanal parging.









In the garden the garlic cloves I planted last fall have sprouted. Yay!

And of course, rhubarb!

One of the reasons we decided to move to this neigbhourhood was the trees. It was August when we were looking for a place and the rest of the city was dry and hot. Even the grass and the trees on the mountain were yellowing. We came to the Pointe that was *so* green there was moss on the trees. I've since witnessed that the only time there isn't moss is during the cold-freeze of winter. So this is another sign of spring...

jam and pesto and lying under the trees

Summer is not a bloggy time. Good weather pulls me away from the computer. I do still work but I don't have that extra impetus to spend extra-curricular time here.

So news is short.

This is the first summer that, instead saying I would make black currant jam, I actually did. I bought a small basket of fruit--it's not easy to find black currants in Quebec--and was surprised that I got as many jars as I did from it. Now I'm thinking of making cherry jam? Plum jam? A friend has been talking to me about apricot jam and if I could find apricots grown locally, I'd love to try that.

I had good luck with growing basil this year and hauled home a bucket's worth of plants to make pesto. I spent a happy afternoon plucking and washing leaves, then buzzing them in the food processor with olive oil and walnuts.














After the busyness in the kitchen, I go for a long walk or cycle. I like to lie under the trees early evening when the sun's low in the sky and hits the leaves from the side. They're a brighter green. Get under a tree and you'll see.

garden July 2017

We had a long cool wet spring in Montreal and my garden had a late start. My friend in Copenhagen tells me he has squash coming out his ears. My squash are the size of my head. I mean the leaves. No gourds yet.

Lettuce and snow peas had a rough start because they were razed by groundhogs. Lettuce has now recovered. I collected a handful of snow peas today. Why are they called snow peas? In French they're called pois mange-tout. Eat-everything peas.

Tomatoes and basil are doing well, though I'll be making pesto before I eat tomato salad.

Beans and Lebanese cukes coming along.

I sowed carrots three times, three weeks apart, and only a dozen came up. Ditto beets. Another gardener said that ants were making off with the seeds. Is that possible? I don't know but I felt desperate. I read online that lavender keeps ants away, so I planted lavender. The lavender is doing well, but ants are as busy as ever around it.

I read that ants don't like cinnamon and sprinkled my whole garden with cinnamon. For a few days, before it rained, I had a garden as red as a PEI beach. And aromatic. I don't know what my Bangladeshi neighbour thought.

I never saw an exodus of ants, the carrots and beets I seeded again didn't show, and the ants are back having a party around the lavender.




My prize plant so far has been rhubarb. I've made rhubarb compote (or jam as some call it), have rhubarb in the freezer, and have given some to friends.

I don't recall what species of hot pepper I got, so I don't know what colour these will finally be. They've been green, then purple, now orange. 

The reason why I'm able to have a garden in the city is that I have a plot in a community garden--Jardin Communautaire la Pointe-Verte--and it's one of the pleasures of gardening to be planting or weeding or watering with another sunhatt-ed or sari-d gardener a couple of plots over doing the same. We're all making stuff grow.

dear earthworm

Dear Earthworm,

I hope you've noticed that I've grown more civilized in the years (now beginning the fourth!) that I've been gardening. I no longer shriek when I accidentally touch you. That was uncouth, I know, but it's a deeply entrenched behavioural response. Note that I don't say it's instinctive. I've seen young children play with worms -- even try to eat them.

If I ever loved you as a child, at some point I decided you were reprehensible. Because you're not like me with bones, hair, and thicker skin packaging? I don't know. (I'm not even going to mention Freud.)

I can't blame my parents because they were a-okay with worms. The more earthworms, the better, since they aerate the soil. Dead earthworms and earthworm poop make great fertilizer. I grew up in an earthworm-positive home.

Yesterday was the first time this spring that I was able to start work in the garden, seeding radishes and beets. Did you see, I planted garlic last fall? The pink string is to remind myself where I've planted seeds because I need visual aids so I don't step all over the place.

When I had my hands in the soil and and suddenly there you were, I flinched -- okay -- but I didn't shriek. I wasn't expecting you, that was all. Though I do know that's where you live, and I want you stay there because I like you aerating the soil and hope you contribute lots of poop.

I looked at you respectfully. You sort of flinched too. You'd been disturbed. You were cold, and I understood that a boneless, thin-skinned, hairless creature would feel the cold more than I would. I didn't want a bird to get you, so I nudged you back into some loose soil again.

Gloves on, yeah, because I still have that deeply entrenched behavioural response. But I'm working on it. There is room in my garden for both us.

We'll have a good summer gardening, right?
Sincerely,
Rapunzel (aka Alice)

leap of faith / planning a garden when there's snow on the ground

At the beginning of the winter a friend, who moved to Canada from a warmer climate, called with some alarm the first day it snowed. Sure, she knew about snow. But this kept coming down and coming down, and she was watching the garden she'd planted freeze. How could her plants survive?
I explained that, except for perennials, they wouldn't. She would have to plant a new garden next spring. She thought that was ridiculous. I agree. But there it is.

A couple of weeks ago, when it was -25C and the city hadn't cleaned the sidewalks yet and going for a walk meant floundering and slipping through snow, I decided what to plant in my garden this year. Ordering packets of seeds even though there's still snow on the ground, feels like an existential, yet necessary exercise.  

Understand what I'm saying here: I'm not even a very good gardener. I do it for the idea--and the taste of what I do manage to harvest. I believe, too, in eating what's grown locally.

I don't even live all that far north in Canada, but most of the vegetables and fruit I buy from November until the first harvest the following summer is imported. Fruit has often been picked unripe so it can be shipped thousands of kilometres to get here. How can you compare asparagus from Peru versus asparagus cut less than an hour's drive away?

Last September I took pics at the Jean-Talon market. What a wealth!

When I was growing up, we ate buttered bread with sliced radishes on top. It made for a crisp, peppery sandwich.

At the market, some stalls had a cauldron of boiling water and a bowl of melted butter for cobs on the go. 

My father-in-law once told me that Shepherd's Pie was invented in Quebec. Not true, I know, but his rationale was that in Quebec we had beef, corn, and potatoes. Shepherd's Pie was the dish that resulted. He had no explanation for why it also had an English name. He called it Pâté Chinois which translates as Chinese Pie. I think that has to do with the dish being layered. Instead of meat, veg, and starch being served in distinct piles on the plate, it's mixed. For a rural mindset, that means it's exotic. I base that linguistic deduction on experiences in my own family where food that was tossed or layered or mixed was considered to be weird.

I never saw ground cherries before moving to Quebec. Here, they're popular. You can buy them in a regular grocery store. They taste like a mixture of tomato, mango, and...? They taste almost too tropical to grow in Canada.







Cauliflower comes with a flower in its name, but this was the first time I ever saw it sold in bouquets.

In my garden, I'll be planting lettuce, green beans, arugula, tomatoes, snow peas, parsley. I keep it simple. With luck my rhubarb fared well this past winter and will be there again once the snow has melted.