Category: Country Life

A Wee Garden Tour

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IMG_2575.JPGThe early morning sun shines on the vegetable garden.

We have a small vegetable garden close to the house that I often refer to as a kitchen garden. There are a number of great reasons to have a garden close to the house: ease of picking is one and the second being that we don’t need a fence to keep the deer from having a feast every night. The tall onion-like plants you see growing are the garlic that we planted last fall. They will be harvested when they start to yellow at the end of July. The tunnel is covering kale and broccoli plants.  They are hardy and don’t need the covering for warmth, but we are trying to keep the flea beetles from devastating them. Whatever we can’t grow in this garden we buy from organic growers in the area.

This garden is small by our standards because in the 1980’s we grew a few acres of vegetables in the sunlit field you see in the background of this photo. But that is a story for another time.

IMG_2612And, yes, we have flowers. Lots and lots of flowers.

Our  flower gardens grew and expanded as we landscaped and tweaked the front of the house. We now have perennial flower gardens bordering the walkway leading to the house and beyond to a cliffside deck.

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All of the shade loving plants had to go somewhere so we created another border on the shadier side of the lawn. The hostas loved the cold, rainy spring we had this year.

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We also have a pool so adding more flowers there just seemed a natural landscaping solution at the time.  Add to that pots and planters and the walled garden by the driveway and you have a whole summer’s worth of beauty…and work!

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Most days in the garden start and end at the brook: perfect for washing off muddy hands and feet. And for giving thanks.

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The Wheel is Turning, Summer Approaches

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IMG_1009.JPGRagged-Robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi)

I mark the passing of the seasons by the wildflowers blooming along our roadside and the appearance of the first Ragged-Robin is always bittersweet for me.  Ragged-Robin blooms here at the start of haying season which means the euphoria of spring and the first burst of growth  is over and our thoughts have moved to stockpiling food for the less kind months.

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When we moved here thirty-four years ago Ragged-Robin began appearing in the ditches towards the end of June which coincided with haying season at the time. But the fields are being mowed earlier and earlier now, sometimes starting as early as the beginning of June. So much for climate change deniers!

Ragged-Robin is a native to Europe and is found along roads and wet meadows there. It has become naturalized here in eastern Canada and certainly shows the potential for being quite invasive. I first noticed it growing in the ditches, but since then it has moved into all of the pastures and blooms alongside the buttercups, another invasive plant.

There is a lot of plant growth still to happen and a new season to greet, but spring with all of its promise is passing. The wheel is turning, summer approaches. At least Ragged-Robin announces the approach of the new season with flare.

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I 40 Otherwise Known as Irene

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There was something wrong. I watched as the cow in the rear slowly hobbled after the others picking her way cautiously across the uneven ground. I turned as she rejoined the herd and continued on my way.

As I crested the hill on my walk the following day and the pasture opened up in front of me, I saw my cow lying by herself under the lone tree in the pasture with the rest of the herd nowhere in sight. I was worried now and made a mental note of her appearance so that I could let the farmer know. I heard myself telling him, “You know, the brown cow with the white face. The one that looks exactly like the other brown cows with white faces.”

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That evening I flagged the farmer down on the road and began relating my sad tales of the cow with the limp. The farmer nodded his head and said he knew. “Yes, I 40.”

“ I 40,” I repeated. Of course.  If I was having trouble identifying a cow in a herd, so would a farmer who had two other herds just like this one. The ear tag solved the problem for him, but not for me. I decided she deserved a proper name and so Irene it is.

Irene’s leg has healed and she has blended back into the herd,  but I have a soft spot for her. As I walk by now with my customary, “Hi Girls,” I have added “and Irene.” We watch out for each other here in the country. That’s just the way it is.

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A Ballet School Comes to Town

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We went to a fundraiser on the weekend for L’Ecole de Ballet Classique de Sutton. It was held at vineyard not far from here with a real chateau and vines cascading down a terraced mountainside.

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The scenery aside, the real story here is that people in this small, rural town have the opportunity to have a classical ballet experience. People in cities and larger urban centres have always had access, but it is much rarer in small towns which makes it all the more special.

Anastasia from Siberia is the force behind this school. She is beautiful and has standards.  Her dancers rise to meet these standards. She is raising money for the school to perform The Nutcracker this Christmas. The community has rallied behind her and the artists and seamstresses have created professional level backdrops and costumes. It will be magic.

This got me thinking about another small town not far from here that also had the luck of having a teacher from the National Ballet of Canada come to town to give lessons. I rummaged through our old photo albums to find this picture of me circa 1960 at ballet school. Scan 2

The  lessons were held in a masonic lodge with the requisite creaky wood floors. We had our own ballet pinafores and proper ballet shoes. We learned the positions, did some barre work, and practiced routines.

I wasn’t a particularly talented ballerina but that didn’t matter. The whole experience was awesome. I loved being in the presence of my teacher with her pink tights and well worn shoes. She was the first woman I had met who wholly occupied her body. It was a world away from anything else I had known or experienced up until that point. And that is exactly why having opportunities like this are so important.

It wasn’t something I pursued after the lessons ended, but my neighbour across the road did find her calling and drove into Montreal to take lessons at the National Ballet School well into her late teens.

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As I left that evening, I couldn’t help but wonder if one of these small town girls might be a future ballerina because a ballet school came to town.