Tag: Garden

Ratty R.I.P.

As discussed in the spring, we have a neighbourhood garden rat feeding off the bounty of various well maintained compost piles. Don’t believe the “no meat, no pests” stuff – they are branching out into vegetarianism. Or rather we did have such a beast. Yesterday, the snap of the trap took him from us. It is a bit of a thing picking out one animal from the fairly robust mammalian world of a 43 year old suburb between two or three wild zones. I would have felt bad if a chipmunk were to be taken out as collateral damage. And I am not particularly anti-rat as they are only squirrels with bad PR. But it was in the shed too much. My shed.

Anyway, a thin coat of peanut butter all over the snappy trap was the thing. The lump did not work. You have to keep shifting the tactics. In the past rats have met their maker via a sticky trap and bucket laced with baking soda into which vinegar was then poured or, once, a hockey stick. A Mario Lemieux model as I recall. This one’s life’s path was far more humane in its conclusion. He joins a host of mousies as well as one night-jumping deer and a rather fat groundhog that almost broke an axle all waiting for me at the pearly gates where they will no doubt get me.

The Radishes Are Up

I do not particularly like radishes but I am glad they are there. They will pop out of the ground whatever the conditions well before anything else. Maybe it’s because they give you both the false senses that you are good at something and that you have a treat to look forward to…even though a radish would pretty much grow out of a concrete block and tastes like gasoline mixed with black pepper. I plant a milder variety called French Breakfast. It reminds me of the month or less that me and pals spent in Paris 21 years ago, practicing nutritional deficiency and borderline alcoholism. Maybe the seed hybridizer stayed at the same hotel with the surely staff and the meager meals and remembered when he named his radish.

My relationship to radishes reminds me of my relationship to TV. So far today I have read or heard two stories about the collapse of TV in America. Katie Couric is floundering and NBC is foundering…or maybe it’s the other way around. NBC is actually bringing back the Bionic Woman – even though it was only the second best bionic person TV show of all time. Comparatively, the Bosox are roaring ahead and TV ratings for the sport are strong as well. I appear, along with many others, to be choosing reality – as opposed to a sort of reality in news snippets, in a series or even that sort of W2 social networking where there is neither real society or work’s rewards. Baseball – the perfect passive participation activity in its association with truth, beauty and real skill – is rising up through the wasteland of quality multimedia contentlessness. One always hopes the next thing will be real and good and simple. Perhaps it will be.

Out back, there are a few struggling tomato seed sproutlings as well, near the radishes but under special plastic roofing suffering from the cold as well, needing the sort of attention no radish would demand. I have no idea if they will make it, given this colder sort of May. Probably a replanting is necessary. I hear, however, that a radish is quite good with cold olive oil. And cheese.

Garden Tasks


Hah! Denied! I defy ratty desire!

While I am lazy as the next guy, I do plan from time to do something. Yesterday I made the compost big mouse proof. We are a heavily composting neighbourhood and an exceptionally well mammaled one as well. We have mice, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits and the odd big mouse. I say big mouse because to say otherwise is to make an admission as to the reality of this situation. I though we had it in hand as there was a gap in action after the application of the 50% cake mix 50% plaster of Paris solution. But cleaning out the shed yesterday told another tale – so we have moved to chicken wire. Nothing as manly as turning 24 inches times 25 feet of chicken wire into rat-proofing. Not that the neighbourhood has them. It is simply now more proofed from them.

Today, then, I turn to the important task of contemplating planting basil, flat parsley and chives. And double digging. Got to double dig.

Seeds

I set about picking the seeds for the garden this morning. Seeds and even fruiting bushes and trees are the perfect e-commerce product. Neat, compact and modest in price. One of the nice things about some sites is the ability to spend about 50% more – three bucks instead of two – and get the small commercial producer’s size of any seeds you particularly covet. For me, that is Genovese basil to blend with olive oil for a winter’s worth of green sludge but I am also getting super-sized on the sugar snap peas. I will squeeze the peas into every spare sunny wall and trellis. Between them will be pots of the basil and even a couple of figs amongst them, ordered on-line and shipped bare rooted by courier.

Why? I plan to gorge, of course. Gorging is an under appreciated activity and, frankly, is wasted for the most part on things we later regret – hot dogs, cheezies, booze. There is nothing, however, as puritanically lustful and the gorging on sugar snap peas when they are perfectly ready to be separated from vine and joined with your obsession. Except maybe the anticipation of that moment. There may even be a day or perhaps a week, global warming willing, when there will be figs – more figs than one ought to eat. Chomped right by the plant, sliced and layered with ham, stewed with port and poured hot on vanilla ice cream.

Friday Not Going Postal Chatfest

An interesting week for we and Canada Post. One day a package that hardly registered for weight within province was taken for posting and the clerk said “eight bucks.” “Eight bucks! Forget it. Give it to her next time we visit.” On another day, two packages with identical size and identical content were taken to Canada Post, one going to Philadelphia (ten hours drive, in another country) and one to Toronto (two hours drive, in my province.) The Toronto package cost a buck more. My world has turned upside-down.

  • Via John, I learned about Yorkshire forced indoor rhubarb. There used to be a show on PBS called The Victorian Garden and there was an entire episode about forcing houses where vegetables and fruits were grown and kept through the winter. I always wanted to live on pale homegrown foods.
  • Check out footnote nine on page six of this .pdf copy of a Canadian Senate Committee Report on border security. They want to allow us to bring back up to $2,000 bucks a day from the US including hooch, booze and other sippables. This is new information to me and changes my otherwise dim view of the legislative body. Imagine the right to pop over to Alex Bay for a 2-4 of Thousand Island Pale Ale. Imagine.
  • What has the Internet really done for us? I think it is fair to say that the idle magazine reader question is a valid concern. It has been a long time since I bought thirty bucks worth of magazines to go through on a Saturday morning. In fact, I cut back all magazine buying to just Sports Illustrated. I like pictures.
  • This is as important a transitional weekend as Labour Day. By the next one of these bullet points comes into being, there will be an NCAA champion crowned and the baseball season will be in full swing. The bulbs are popping up in the garden and if there is any drying out I may stick a shovel in the ground. I need to thing about seeds and which tomato to grown. Think Stokes and Vesey’s.

Not much today. These are the times of plenty. I am doing real things in real time. I have a real time life in many ways.