Heavy Rain

What a difference a deluge makes. The river by the end of the summer is a weary, nonchalant thing. It meanders, it pokes along, doesn't seem to take an interest in anything. Birds come and fish, tourists take pictures, fish jump and the water continues to trickle over dam much like a leaky faucet. It's uninterested and, for the most part, it's uninteresting. The dam stands solidly, dark and bored.

Then we get a heavy rain, usually it's the remnants of some post hurricane or tropical storm. That perks the dam up. All of a sudden, it's got more water than it can handle. I can hear the water thunder over it in a continuous and rhythmic drone. Under the dull roar and splashes, the rhythmic drone sounds like heartbeat. And all the dam was made to do, hold the water back, is pushed to its limit. While the water will not be held back, the dam stand firm. The river expands and a new edge is made. The pristine clear water, tinted only by the sky's reflection turns a frothy red as the river bed churns.

After two or three days, the water is spent and the creek goes back to its placid self. The dam lets a trickle of water over its edge. It has done its job, the houses and the road nearby were safe from flood water.

Before And After Hurricane Danny.

Results of the Potato Project

Last spring, I decided to try to grow potatoes in a different way than usual. I called it the potato project. That's a picture of the total harvest. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, well I only need one word: Dismal.

I ended up putting on three tires, covering up the plants just so the tips, about 4 - 5 inches showed. Everything looked great. Then a week or so ago, I noticed one of the plants just wilted and died. Ominous. So I took it out and while I was all mucky anyway, decided to dig around in the dirt and see if I could feel any potatoes. I dug two tires deep, nary a tater; nada, zilch, zero, none. I started thinking this wasn't going to work out as well as hoped. A couple of days later, another plant just withered and died. OK, there's something going on. I figured I might as well pull up the plants and gather whatever potatoes there were.

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The measly amount of potatoes I found were in the bottom tire only and they were all red potatoes. Nothing in the other two. Soooo the theory needs a little work or I did something wrong. I'm guessing I did something wrong. I did plant late and I did over crowd. Maybe that had something to do with it. I think I'd like to try again because the plants were safe from the dreaded potato bug. I'm thinking may-be I'll just use two tires stacked to start and see if they'll do better. On the upside, the potatoes did taste great.

Chicks and Cukes, Mighty Cute

The chickens come in pretty handy when I have an over-abundance of cucumbers. There are only so many cucumber sandwiches, salads and sides you can serve your family before you hear rumblings of a revolt, "Cucumbers AGAIN!?!" "Why did you grow so many?" Point in fact, cucumbers are pretty finicky, some years I might get three out of the whole crop so I have a tendency to over-plant. Then I have seasons like this one where over-planting is a really bad idea because every plant and its brother flourishes and I get lots and lots and lots of cukes. So I serve them when I can and I pickle what I can then I stare at the remaining lot, overflowing in a five gallon pail. I have discovered that cucumbers are a nutritious treat for chickens. Oddly enough, my rabbits won't eat them, but the chickens love 'em. So I am getting rid of the extras and being entertained at the same time. Trust chickens to turn feeding time into dinner-theatre.

Here's three hens sharing nicely, each taking a turn to peck.

And here's Timbits [formerly known as the chicken Tiny Tim) deciding that sharing is NOT for the birds while two hens, in hot pursuit, try to convince her otherwise. Yes, that's a cucumber Timbit is carrying.

Mandellas enjoying the middles of the cukes and leaving the rinds for the chickens.

Pickles

The days are shorter and the nights are longer and both are much cooler. The green of the garden has been splashed with orange, red and yellow as the pumpkins, tomatoes and sunflowers show off their bounty. The beans and cucumbers are just about done and I have way too many. Sure signs of both a great growing season and pickling time. Whoot. Love my pickles.

I never pickled a thing before I moved here. I had to learn in self-defence or get run-over by over-ripe cucumbers moldering on the floor. With the help of a friend who not only makes pickles but jams as well, my first forays was pretty much successful ~ nobody died of botulism and things tasted like they were supposed to.

I doubt if pickling would have been as easy or accomplished if I hadn't a mentor who didn't mind me calling every 10 minutes to ask questions like "Does the brown sugar have to be packed down when I measure? Do I rinse the salt off after draining? How much water should I put in the canner?" In short I was clueless and she was very patient.

Aside from making bread and butter pickles and an awesome mustard relish, both recipes provided by the above mentioned pal, I have discovered you can pickle beans and carrots. There is one recipe I found that uses green beans, garlic and basil. Every time we are invited to a pot-luck I am asked to bring a jar of "those beans". The dilled yellow beans are pretty good and the cinnamon carrots bring an unexpected dash of colour and flavour to otherwise rather plain meals. This year I'm trying something new, dill pickles. As with all my other pickles, I'll try them first and if I don't die of food poisoning or pickle over/under flavourness, I'll serve them to others.

Pop Ups

Ah, the joys of making my own compost. The process isn't all that 'joyful', throw veggie scraps, weeds, etc. into a homemade composter and shovel it around now and then. Same process with chicken/rabbit manure. Neither, might I add, is a pleasant experience.

The end result, of course, is well worth it. Beautiful compost, rich and earthy smelling and free. Can't beat free. Now that I'm using my own exclusively, I'm getting what I call 'pop ups'. Plants that pop up in places where they have no business being. I discovered the first pop ups last year, they were all tomatoes. This year, more plants have gotten into the act. I still have the occasional tomato plant showing up but now there's the odd cucumber plant, a sunflower or two and the like.

This spring I had the idea to plant cosmos on either side of our driveway. I don't do much by the way of ornamental gardening and I would like to start doing a bit more and I thought this would be an easy way to start. Probably will be the only ornamental garden I'll do unless someone invents a day with 30 hours in it. Of course, when I put the plants in, I used my own compost. And so the most charming of the pop ups happened. A corn stalk grew right next to the cosmos. It even has a corncob. I think the effect is really cool and it does portray the essence of the DaM farm: Looks weird but it works.

Munch, Munch, Munch

One of my favorite chores is feeding the rabbits their daily fresh greens. When they see me coming with my bucket, everybody perks up with interest and excitement, ears get a little straighter, noses get twitchier, eyes brighten up and the heat of the day falls away from the rabbits as they anticipate their cool, moisture laden supper. I dump the greens in and see the scramble. Invariably some over-eager bunny is directly where I dump the food and gets covered in vegetation and has to munch her way out. Often two rabbits will 'share' a leaf or twig. Well, not exactly share, one will be eating it and another will decide that it looks mighty tasty and will start nibbling on it. The first rabbit will start chewing faster and the second will determinedly hang on to his end. In about 30 seconds the drama is over and both move on to other greener pastures.

There's a lot less waste in the garden because of the rabbits. They eat beet and carrot tops as well as any thinnings from those two crops. After the snow peas and beans are spent, they eat the plant. I dry the cornstalks for them after harvesting the corn. They also like sunflower, strawberry and nasturtium leaves, dill, basil, parsley, celery tops, lettuce, cilantro, parsley, mint, chard and raspberry canes. From the lawn, they'll devour dandelion, plantain and clover. And when the end result of their meal shows up, I dump it either in the worm bin or compost box and it will make its way back to the garden where the whole process will start again. Nice little 'circle of life' routine going on there.

Tomatoes and Teepees

I was out tying up the tomato plants the other day. What I want to do is get the lower branches that tend to lay on the ground up a bit so the tomatoes don't become bug infested and rot. There's a lot of bugs in my garden that wouldn't dream of climbing a tomato plant in search of food but will happily dig around in a tomato conveniently on the ground. That works well in the big scheme of things, I suppose. The tomatoes growing high are safe yet if one falls, the bugs will make short work of it. While I certainly appreciate the intricate nature of co-operation in the garden, I don't particularly want to lose part of my tomato crop to the ground bugs.

It's a tricky business, tying up the branches. First of all, they're on the ground because they are tomato laden. So the branches are heavy and they are also resistant to change. They've grown down for a while and don't see any need to reverse direction. So when I lift up a branch I do it carefully, slowly and gingerly because the last thing I want to hear is a snap-crack as the branch breaks because I lifted it a little too much. I'd rather lose tomatoes to the bugs and rot than to my own carelessness. Secondly, I don't want to tie them up too high so that it's almost impossible to get to the tomatoes on the higher, inner branches. It's much easier to harvest when I can actually see what I'm trying to pick.

In the quiet of the garden with just the rustle of leaves and the occasional chirp of a confused cricket, I get to thinking. Or may-be Nature's quiet whisper of wisdom and experience wends its way to me in the garden. Without distractions of daily life and the easy comfort of the garden's quiet growing, perhaps Nature's voice can be felt if not heard. It's easy to see how the tomato plant and teepee depend of each other. There is a co-operation going on without dialogue or intent, it's just there. The teepees themselves aren't very steady, I'm barely able to push them into the hard packed ground more than a couple of inches. The tomatoes are firmly anchored in the earth and give the teepees stability and strength. The teepees support the tomato plants giving them balance as well as supporting the branches weighted with tomatoes. I see this kind of co-operation in nature constantly and it's nice to know I have a small part in bringing it to my garden. Oh so I hope. Tomorrow the remnants of Hurricane Bill will come through and I'll see if I have learnt the art of real co-operation Nature has down pat.