Speed Trials

The weather may be up and down, but summer is upon us, and it feels so good. I’ve only been up to the cottage once, but the swim was heavenly, and the company even better.

Life at home has been super good too. Maybe that’s why there’s been no posting in a while. No drama. Though I will say that I’m still hankering for a camera of my own. I find that Angelo always deletes the photos I like best, and publishes the ones I don’t. I took matters into my own hands today and took the camera with me before he could get to culling out what he thinks is disposable. Here are some fave pictures from recent times:

Things are just so good. Everyone’s happy, we’re outside all the time, there’s tons of events all around the city, and my man is looking so damn good these days, all I can think about is the next time I’ll feast my eyes on him… Sigh. I’m such a lucky girl.

In the constant debate between nature and nurture, where does ones ability to garden kick in? Is it tied to that gene that also allows you to arrange a vase of flowers, or present a meal in an interesting way on the dinner plate? Or is it something you grunt out after reading countless entries in gardening forums and pamphlets handed out at farmers’ markets? How do you even know where or how or why to start a garden if there’s no one around to show you?

If there is a gardening gene, then I hope it skips a generation. My mother is a self-proclaimed black thumb. She’s not interested in gardening, she’s not keen on worms or dirt, and she would much rather cruise the stalls of the Byward Market than toil in her own back yard. But, my grandmother was an avid gardener, both at her home in the city and at her cottage (where she lived for almost half the year). Hers were big production gardens, though. Huge cucumber and tomato plants lined the growing areas and I remember as a child being too overwhelmed by these towering plants to go anywhere near the garden. (also, growing up I wasn’t much for vegetables, so the garden had little appeal, as it was seen as the guilty protagonist to those yucky things that ended up on my plate.) My grandmother’s was a no-nonsense garden: she had mouthes to feed, and this was the most viable way to do it. But grow things she did, and she was a force to be reckoned with. I remember the rows upon rows of tomatoes along the windowsills at the cottage, all in various stages of ripeness. I remember playing with my cousins to see who could leave the best thumb prints in the really ripe ones (what little brats we were).

Now it’s my turn; I have a home, a backyard, and a plot of dirt, and there’s really no excuse not to have a garden. (Not to mention a man who has a community garden plot, and comes from a family of intense gardeners).

So we made up a list of what we wanted: Tomatoes and basil ranked at the top. I wanted to try to grow some hot peppers, and sunflowers, but Ange would only concede to the former. But after that, we didn’t really know what we wanted. Cucumbers, carrots, lettuce, onions, all the standard fare… Sure, why not? Gourds and zukes and other “fancy” grade veggies… yeah, those too!

Yesterday we went down to the Parkdale Market with Angelo’s parents, and his mom (I love this woman) took control. Years of planting, I suppose, because she knew not only exactly what we needed, but exactly what we WANTED too. “Yeah, grab six of those, two dozen of these, you’ll split this container with your brother, oh you want that? That’ll turn out nicely along the shed…” and in less time than it took Angelo and me to pick out which herbs we wanted, she had our entire garden at home and at the community site planned and bought. I couldn’t believe it. She made it look so easy.


We brought everything home, got a few tips from Angelo’s folks, but we waited till crepuscule to plant. Angelo and I looked at each other, looked at the row of plants waiting to be inserted into the ground, looked at our garden, and then back to each other. What do we do now? We talked it out a little, and then just give’er. Angelo started with the tomatoes, and I mapped out the herb garden. Herb gardens are so gratifying because they smell so damn good. Thai Basil and Savory are my personal favourites of our herb garden, and we also threw in the two cherry tomato plants we bought, so they could grow up the side of the shed.

People talk about the calming effects of gardening, and I only believed it to be true if you were a seasoned veteran, or if you had that inborn knack for gardening. But it does apply to the layman too, because it was just so fun to dig into the dirt, to place everything just so, to bond with the plants we’ll be nursing for the next two months.

The whole thing didn’t take very long, and just as we were planting the last of the lettuce, the rain started to fall, big fat summer rain drops, and we had to dash inside to avoid getting drenched. We looked out at our handy work, the plants radiating green the way they do when it rains, and I felt a twang of pride for what i had just done. My first garden.