After three and a half weeks away....

...my garden has this to offer:

Yes, that's a two-litre bottle next to those summer squash.

Garlic, my favourite thing to grow.

The tomatoes are plentiful this year. Now I just have to be patient and wait for them to ripen.


Found this beauty hiding among the vines.

There will be a lot of squash consumed this fall. Hooray!

In the foreground you can see ground cherry plants and their little papers littering the ground (thank-you squirrels). These are now my second-favourite thing to grow and will be in my garden every year now.

The making of a garden

The girls and I spent some time last week, yesterday and today, in partner with another family, putting in a children's garden at our church.  We broke sod on Wednesday and finished the bed on Saturday.  It was a lot of digging, discussing, chatting, chasing the kids and getting very dirty.  In other words, my favourite way to spend time.  The bed is very big, situated right beside the rain barrel and against a very sunny wall of the church.

This morning, during the main church service, all the two-to-seven year olds planted petunias, peas, onions, lettuce, spinach, sunflowers and nasturtium.  And then they watered it and played tag and dug some more and were dirty and very happy.  

I was equally happy to see how much fun they all had, how happy the parents all were that we started this project that will go on for many, many years.  I love that the children have something to call their own on the church grounds and that they can traipse through it and pick things and water things when they feel the desire.  I love that they will soon have a pumpkin patch in another area that they can harvest in the fall.  In short, I love that our church has embraced this and encourages it and that we are using the land there to grow food and foster a love of working in the dirt.

The rest of the weekend was also spent outside with our kids, most notably at a little park not far from our house, Pushman Park.  The city has put some new playground equipment in this year more suitable for Hope's age.  The kids had a blast.  It now sort of dwarfs our closest park for the fun factor.  I imagine we'll be biking over there more often now.  

Given that the rest of the week is going to be rainy, I'm glad we were able to dig and play so much the last few days.  I hope you did too!

The Cleanse: Day 3

My food for supper was brown. Brown lentils (leftovers from last night) and eggplant salad, also brown. Tasted fine but I have to diversify my colours tomorrow.

I'm feeling very tired but I always feel very tired, which is the main reason I'm doing The Cleanse; I want to have more energy. I also have a minor headache. I guess this could be the crappy stage I've heard about. I could really use a glass of wine and a cookie right now.

Instead, I'll drink my sandy-textured shake, knit and watch something I got from the library.

Don't you love the library? I could spend a good part of every day there just browsing, reading, hanging out. I love our branch. It's brand new, really bright, the librarians are great (and know me and the kids by name now, which makes it really feel like "my" library), there is a great kids' section AND an amazing DVD section. Getting DVDs from the library feels a bit like pulling a scam. All these great movies.... free! For a week! AND I can renew them if I want! How do they let me get away with that?

I love peony season. The scents, the giant blooms, the colours. And then the rain storm, the wind, the hail if you were in Ottawa yesterday. Sad, pathetic peonies. Here they were this morning after the deluge yesterday:


What's a girl to do? Liberate them and bring them inside, of course! Now the entire main floor of the house smells like peonies which is about 100 times better than it usually smells.

I am the urban gardener

I certainly don't proclaim to be a master gardener but I would say that my thumb is a distinct shade of green. This year, however, I have moved beyond my normal summer obsession and moved decidedly into the realm of Urban Gardener. What warrants that label you ask? Well, this is the view from my front door:


Pretty? Well, yes, and the fragrances from those peonies are, quite frankly, overwhelming, almost artificial. And I love all the discoveries I make as I poke around my very small patch of heaven. But that isn't what made me decide to elevate myself to the realms of all those Italian men living on Preston Street and vicinity. It was this that did it:


Yup, those are tomatoes, fully staked, growing right there in my front yard. This year, I'm using every available inch to either beautify with perennials, give Emily a patch of dirt to cultivate (and destroy, let's be honest) or grow vegetables. And this year, the vegetables are taking precedence. We have a poorly used cold storage in our basement, a soon to be depleted bank account, and a tiny yard ripe for the harvest.

If you ever walk down Preston Street in Ottawa, our little Italy, you will see tiny backyards filled with tomatoes, the odd other vegetable and herb, but mostly robust, serious, take-note tomatoes. This is no light-hearted undertaking, my friends. This is serious business for these old gents. And I've tasted the bounty when John and I lived on Corso Italia. Our gracious and very old Italian landlords handed over many tomatoes when we handed over our rent (in cash, by the by).

So, I've joined their ranks, at least in method if not in quality. And I'm proud of it. Why shouldn't we use our front yards to grow food after all? Maybe I'll start a little trend on my street, if not a string of tomato thefts.

The backyard vegetable garden has been replanted after the squirrels reaped the rewards of bean and squash seeds and I'm hoping for better luck. Stay tuned. An obsession like this is bound to warrant several more posts. Aren't you all so lucky?

I also have to say: what the h-e-double hockey sticks is going on with the size of these flowers? Check this out....


Okay, so I do have carnie hands, as John readily points out, but still, that's one mother blossom.