And then, gardening...
Birds were one thing (we have now officially identified Blue Jays, Cardinals, Juncos, and a half dozen more), now we’re moving on to gardens. While we imagine those created during the time of Marie Antoinette, the reality will be somewhat more restrained.
Flowers of course, although right now we’re waiting to see what the previous owners already have planted. Then on to the raised beds, which will be finished once I get a dry day to do the work, and track down the guy who is going to dump a load of topsoil on us to fill them.
I think topsoil is what we want? Or composted manure? I honestly have no idea. I am about to build a nice big compost bin, so at least I’m planning ahead. (I fully expect that there are at least a dozen web sites giving competing suggestions about what I should put into that compost bin…)
We’ll plant herbs of course, and vegetables of various types, and maybe some berries or other things. The questions are endless: which plants, which varieties; what conditions do they need to thrive, and what sort of daily maintenance are we committing ourselves to?
I have only the sketchiest idea.
And, ultimately, when can we actually stick the plants or seeds into the ground? The snows of April 1st showed us that we don’t yet entirely understand the weather patterns around here. And the handful of glorious warm days have turned back into wet, drizzly, almost but not quite Vancouver weather.
The last thing that I want to do is plant a garden full of stuff that then dies on us.
Or, and I’m accepting that this is also possible, are we actually too late to have good gardens? I’m lost.
Summer approaches, and we hear about two things consistently: it will be hot, and there will be mosquitoes. It sounds as if at least some of what we hope to grow will need shade for part of the day, that we’ll be watering things.
But how much shade, and how much water?
And then there’s wildlife. Now that Beatrice the Cat has passed away we’re back to adapting to having mice in the house, but what will invade the garden? We have big hares, and deer, and porcupine, and at least one chipmunk… what’s next, and what will they devour?
And then, finally, how much of our bounty can we actually preserve or store for use over the winter? Even now the choices at local supermarkets are truly dismal. In winter they are even worse.
I can remember mason jars full of different vegetables on my family shelves when I was a kid, but that was decades ago - do people even do that any longer? Or have big freezers replaced that sort of food storage?
The problem in all of this is one that is entirely modern and current: the starting point for advice is always the Internet, but there’s almost no way to know how much of what you read applies to your local environment, or even your own tastes and time constraints. So much is aimed at urban gardeners with little planters of their decks, or at well financed, or overly energetic, hard-core homesteaders that would put my grandparents, who homesteaded in northern Saskatchewan while living in a sod shed that they built themselves, to shame.
I will admit that if push comes to shove, I’ll always take a tractor over a horse.
The thing is that you don’t just plant a garden. You make a thousand choices, maybe ten thousand, all inter-related, all depending so much on the exact place and date and season, and all of which assume a level of knowledge and skills that we don’t yet have.
So yes, I’m overwhelmed.
