Showing posts with label gardens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gardens. Show all posts
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Our Community Veggie Bowl Over-Floweth!
It's the season of harvest on Vancouver Island, and with our abundant gardens, there's loads to share. It's hard to leave a friend's house without having to take a zucchini!
Even local businesses will have a box of squashes - and the ever-prolific zucchinis - outside their door, with a "Free to a good home" sign on it.
At Pacific Gardens, we all share in the bounty - lettuces, cucumbers, zucchinis, squash, berries of all kinds - with beets and tomatoes soon to come.
One of our young Mums, Tanis, recently sent this message out to us all. I just love it, because it so beautifully illustrates what our community is like.
"Hello Neighbours,
I've left my giant steel salad bowl on the dining room table and labelled it the "Community Veggie Bowl" to share with everyone. Most of the veggies are coming out of the Community Garden. I have to thank all the fine folks who are working hard in the community garden who continue to work hard up for everyone to share, and most especially thank Carla for her patience and understanding that I am indeed a half-assed gardener.....hahaha, ;)
Carla is my garden hero who waters all the plants to make sure they grow big and strong so we can harvest our veggies for all to share. I barely water my own garden, so thank you Carla, you make those squashes grow big!!!
Please check the big bowl for goodies from the garden, I try to share the surplus every few days, and if you have any surplus to share from your garden (are we tired of zucchini and cucumbers yet? teeheehee!) please add it to the bowl to share! :)
Has anyone tried the mystery squash yet? have we decided what it is? or is it some funky hybrid? There are many more growing so I hope they're edible! :)
Thanks all, it's a huge pleasure spending time in the garden, sharing growing tips, laughing, and inspiring one another with seeds and dreams of next years harvest. I feel so fortunate!
Best wishes
Tanis"
Verily, our community veggie bowl over-floweth at Pacific Gardens!
Kathryn
Friday, August 2, 2013
Adventures in Recycling at Pacific Gardens
When I first arrived at Pacific Gardens, I thought I knew everything there was to know about recycling. I was wrong.
I soon learned from our indefatigable recycling team, Mia and Gloria, that there is an art as well as a science to recycling, about which you never stop learning.
It's not enough that you separate your recyclables, crush your cardboard boxes, wash out your soy and dairy containers, and rinse your refundables.
You have to put the right item in the right box, and figuring that out can sometimes be a puzzle, even for the most dedicated.
For example, last week we had the mystery of the fertilizer bags. Someone had put the bags in the bin for soft plastics, but had not emptied them out.
I was delegated to send out an e-mail to try and discover the culprit. This caused great consternation amongst the garden group, as we don't use chemical fertilizers - ever.
Who could have been using that stuff on our gardens? Well, it turned out that the bags had been full of ordinary garden dirt and mulch, so no worries as to the contents, at least.
Then Roz e-mailed me. She had put them in the garbage first, but then Mia, who hates putting anything in the garbage if there's any chance it can be recycled, rescued them and put them in the recycling.
The mystery was solved. I told Roz I would give her the golden garbage bag award for rightly putting the bags where they belonged!
Kathryn
I soon learned from our indefatigable recycling team, Mia and Gloria, that there is an art as well as a science to recycling, about which you never stop learning.
It's not enough that you separate your recyclables, crush your cardboard boxes, wash out your soy and dairy containers, and rinse your refundables.
You have to put the right item in the right box, and figuring that out can sometimes be a puzzle, even for the most dedicated.
For example, last week we had the mystery of the fertilizer bags. Someone had put the bags in the bin for soft plastics, but had not emptied them out.
I was delegated to send out an e-mail to try and discover the culprit. This caused great consternation amongst the garden group, as we don't use chemical fertilizers - ever.
Who could have been using that stuff on our gardens? Well, it turned out that the bags had been full of ordinary garden dirt and mulch, so no worries as to the contents, at least.
Then Roz e-mailed me. She had put them in the garbage first, but then Mia, who hates putting anything in the garbage if there's any chance it can be recycled, rescued them and put them in the recycling.
The mystery was solved. I told Roz I would give her the golden garbage bag award for rightly putting the bags where they belonged!
Kathryn
Sunday, June 2, 2013
A Beautiful Life
Today I was going to write about the way of the circle, but it has been such a lovely day here at Pacific Gardens that I wanted to celebrate its perfection.
It's been raining off and on for the last few weeks, and yes, I know on Vancouver Island's wet coast, that is to be expected, but not in May, and not for the whole month!
But now it's June, and today was absolutely exquisite. Clear skies, with a balmy breeze wafting the scents of flowers and trees through the air and carrying the sounds of the children playing in our gardens to my patio.
For the first time this year, I hung my laundry on my umbrella clothes dryer, and the warm wind whirled the clothes around like flying flags so that they were dry in less than an hour, smelling of spring.
My neighbour Susana has been away on a special two-week holiday to celebrate her 60th birthday (there's going to be a big birthday bash for her this Wednesday), so she hasn't been able to tend her garden.
The flowers don't seem to mind the neglect. In fact, they're thriving, growing in profusion, purple, yellow, white and orange, dancing in the breeze while my wind chimes sing all day.
I look out into the gardens and see our spring fashion parade of sun-hats, some floppy, some splendiferous, others bedecked with bandanas or a blossom made of felt, each as unique and quirky as the owner who wears them.
I find balls and badminton rackets and skipping ropes lost in the fast-growing grass, and in the distance I hear Kaj, ear-protectors firmly clamped on, tackling marauding plants with a weed-whacker.
After dinner I'll join the walking group on an hour-long jaunt around the neighbourhood, and we'll talk about cabbages and kings and whether pigs have wings - and maybe politics.
It's on days like this that I feel I have the most beautiful life ever, and like the speaker at the Sunday service I went to today, am determined to be a radical optimist, full of joy and hope for this flawed but wonderful world we live in.
Kathryn
It's been raining off and on for the last few weeks, and yes, I know on Vancouver Island's wet coast, that is to be expected, but not in May, and not for the whole month!
But now it's June, and today was absolutely exquisite. Clear skies, with a balmy breeze wafting the scents of flowers and trees through the air and carrying the sounds of the children playing in our gardens to my patio.
For the first time this year, I hung my laundry on my umbrella clothes dryer, and the warm wind whirled the clothes around like flying flags so that they were dry in less than an hour, smelling of spring.
My neighbour Susana has been away on a special two-week holiday to celebrate her 60th birthday (there's going to be a big birthday bash for her this Wednesday), so she hasn't been able to tend her garden.
The flowers don't seem to mind the neglect. In fact, they're thriving, growing in profusion, purple, yellow, white and orange, dancing in the breeze while my wind chimes sing all day.
I look out into the gardens and see our spring fashion parade of sun-hats, some floppy, some splendiferous, others bedecked with bandanas or a blossom made of felt, each as unique and quirky as the owner who wears them.
I find balls and badminton rackets and skipping ropes lost in the fast-growing grass, and in the distance I hear Kaj, ear-protectors firmly clamped on, tackling marauding plants with a weed-whacker.
After dinner I'll join the walking group on an hour-long jaunt around the neighbourhood, and we'll talk about cabbages and kings and whether pigs have wings - and maybe politics.
It's on days like this that I feel I have the most beautiful life ever, and like the speaker at the Sunday service I went to today, am determined to be a radical optimist, full of joy and hope for this flawed but wonderful world we live in.
Kathryn
Sunday, July 29, 2012
The midnight gardener
We have several dedicated gardeners here at Pacific Gardens (alas, I am not one of them). The weather we've had this growing season, with heavy rain in June, followed by days and days of sunshine, has meant they've been incredibly busy planting, weeding and cultivating.
One of them is my neighbour, Chad, whose giant Romaine lettuce is the feature of a video on our Facebook site. During the spring and summer months I'll often see him pushing a wheelbarrow full of woodchips for our compost, wrestling with a hose, or in serious discussion with his partner, Susana, as to what they should plant where. As chair of our Garden Committee, he is keen to develop what we call a food forest, where we will grow as much of our own food as possible.
He also works very long hours in the garden, so much so that I refer to him as the midnight gardener. One night late during the first summer I lived here I heard the sound of someone moving around outside. I turned on my patio light and flung open my patio door to see who the intruder could be, only to hear Chad say, "It's okay, Kathryn - I'm just working in the garden."
Although I'm not a gardener - yet - I'm very grateful for the dedication and hard work of people like Chad, Susana, Kari, Richard, Kendrick, Clare, Sharon, Mykl, Kara, Doris and Kaj, Mia, Rosalind, Tara, Matt (and there may be others I have not mentioned) who spend so much of their time tending the gardens here.
Who knows - maybe some day I will don my wellies and join the crew!
Kathryn
One of them is my neighbour, Chad, whose giant Romaine lettuce is the feature of a video on our Facebook site. During the spring and summer months I'll often see him pushing a wheelbarrow full of woodchips for our compost, wrestling with a hose, or in serious discussion with his partner, Susana, as to what they should plant where. As chair of our Garden Committee, he is keen to develop what we call a food forest, where we will grow as much of our own food as possible.
He also works very long hours in the garden, so much so that I refer to him as the midnight gardener. One night late during the first summer I lived here I heard the sound of someone moving around outside. I turned on my patio light and flung open my patio door to see who the intruder could be, only to hear Chad say, "It's okay, Kathryn - I'm just working in the garden."
Although I'm not a gardener - yet - I'm very grateful for the dedication and hard work of people like Chad, Susana, Kari, Richard, Kendrick, Clare, Sharon, Mykl, Kara, Doris and Kaj, Mia, Rosalind, Tara, Matt (and there may be others I have not mentioned) who spend so much of their time tending the gardens here.
Who knows - maybe some day I will don my wellies and join the crew!
Kathryn
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