Are we there yet?
What parent on a road trip with children hasn’t heard this plaintive grumbling every few minutes?
Now, it’s become a nation-wide lament as people feel the constrictions of a health-preserving safety regime and long for a return to former freedom of movement.
But we’re not there yet.
I often feel a similar frustration over the garden. Especially at this busy time in the year, it’s never quite “there” in the sense that parts of the garden always remain minimally tended, and not how I would like them to be.
As with the virus containment situation, managing a large garden requires patience, and adopting a mindful practice of overlooking what’s not happening on the journey and choosing instead to enjoy small pleasures along the way.
During these unusual days I’m choosing to move a bit more slowly and deliberately around the garden, stopping to relish the loveliness of plants that, meticulously tended or not, have risen from the earth to bestow their gifts of colour and fragrance.
I start the day opening the bedroom curtains to bask in the spring beauty of the back garden where camellias and rhododendrons, and broad canopies of Viburnum tinus and prune plum, billow with masses of bloom.
Best of all, from the upstairs window I can’t see the messy undergrowth and patches of weeds. It’s all loveliness.
Downstairs, I open the glass door onto the patio and am greeted by the sweet fragrance from four pansy plantings in bowl-shaped containers set on plant stands. Planted in September, pansies (and violas) bloom through the fall and during mild winter weather to burst into full flowering in April.
More superb perfume awaits in the garden as three beautifully rounded rock daphne (Daphne cneorum) shrubs cover themselves in waxy pinkish-white blooms. They are a special pleasure for having been grown and nurtured from seed.
Nearby, a small bed beside the garden shed has become underlaid in white wood anemone flowers. The delicate, ferny leaves and snowy white blooms create an uplifting, light-hearted effect. Across a pathway, the base of an old tree trunk is wreathed in a double-flowered version of the same anemones.
For those who have joined the mighty force of new gardeners this challenging spring, know that many sweet, life-long pleasures will be yours over the years.
Zucchini experiment. In her email updates, Linda Gilkeson (lindagilkeson.ca), a popular local gardening author and teacher, sometimes mentions picking zucchini in May from an early indoor seeding. I decided to try it this year.
I seeded two small pots on March 8, moved the plants into 12-cm wide pots later in the month, and transplanted into the garden just after mid-April. The plants remain perky and robust, with nests of little buds ready to open into bloom as the plants become well rooted and the weather warms. If all goes well, I’ll be feasting on young zucchini this month.
Onions forever. Ingrid has written from Brentwood Bay with a planting project ideal for children and adults.
“When I buy bundles of green onions for cooking and salads, I cut off about five cm of the white root end and plant the little rooted stubs in flower pots on the balcony. They grow into nice, fresh green onions that keep growing back.
“They are watered and fertilized, and tended summer and winter. The small plantings are very useful, always fresh, and very economical.”
Edible garden donations wanted. Victoria’s Food Eco District (FED) is organizing an emergency response to COVID-19 by installing 500 fruit and vegetable gardens at homes of residents facing unemployment and food shortages. This program will run for the next five months and the FED is looking for donations of plants or seeds for edible gardens. Free pickup is available. If you can help contact Jill at jill@synergyenterprises.ca. See getfed.ca/myfedfarm.
Garden event
Spring Plant Sale. The Victoria Compost Education Centre is holding a sale of organically grown heirloom tomato, vegetable, fruiting plants, herbs and companion flowers on Saturday, May 9, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the CEC demonstration site, 1216 North Park Street — with a smaller number of local growers and special COVID-19 protocols in place. compost.bc.ca.
