Gardening in the Off-Season
Success with winter gardening!
Until this past year, the only winter gardening I’d done was inadvertent, like a few years back when I left a chard plant to wither with the first frost and, much to my surprise, spring warmth brought a fresh flourishing of young leaves.
Hoping it wasn’t just luck that first time, I decided last summer to plant some cold-tolerant veggies to see if they would over-winter and produce an early spring harvest. The verdict? Not surprisingly since they’re all in the notoriously hardy brassica family, the broccoli, cabbage, and kale withstood cold temperatures and frost the best. Starting them a few weeks earlier in summer would mean bigger plants going into the winter when growth all but ceases and, therefore, bigger plants at the time of spring flowering.
Maybe steaming it in the microwave wasn't the most dignified treatment of this broccoli that we waited eight months to eat, but it was delicious nonetheless.
The chard, arugula, and spinach, despite having more tender leaves, were also able to shrug off a light frost; some leaves were lost when temperatures dipped more than a couple degrees below zero. Arugula grows particularly well in cold temperatures, forming beautifully compact plants that we ate from for months before they showed any sign of bolting, which was around January. Soon we’ll be having garden-fresh salads with arugula and kale blossoms on top!
My big regret is that I’m not getting to enjoy the purple sprouting broccoli that I planted last year. Not realizing that it is a biennial plant, I thought it wasn’t producing flowers last year because of a nutritional imbalance (too much nitrogen?) and since all three plants had contracted a raging case of aphids that I didn’t want spreading around the garden, I decided to remove them. I soon learned the error in my thinking and now that I see purple broccoli sprouting in other people’s gardens, I am kicking myself for being so impatient.
Gentrification in Vancouver
My house (on right) is owned by a property development corporation and will be redeveloped in the next few years--rightly so, given the high traffic volume on Knight St. The view from the backyard is of the King Edward Village tower.
Over 180 concerned residents of the Mount Pleasant community were registered to speak at Monday night’s Vancouver City Council meeting to state their concern for the re-zoning and development of the southwest corner of Broadway and Kingsway. The developer, Rize Alliance, wants to erect a 19-story luxury condo tower (down from the 26 stories initially proposed), which residents contend is completely out of scale with surrounding properties and will ultimately signal the beginning of the end of affordability for the area. For more details on Rize and this project in particular, see the Mainlander’s article on Gentrification in Mount Pleasant.
Unfortunately, since the development proposal and opposition hearing was item six of six on Monday night’s agenda and since there were so many people signed up to speak, only one of the 180 citizen speakers was given a chance to speak before the meeting adjourned. The rest were invited back the following night to speak, if they could make it, but it must be assumed that not everyone could come back for round two. So, while City Council goes through the motions to appear sensitive to citizens’ concerns, gentrification marches on. Even if the re-zoning application is denied and Rize agrees to build a comparatively modest mixed-use development of only 5 to 10 stories, what the neighborhood will end up with will be a glut of one- and two-bedroom condos. Why no three- or four-bedroom condos? A three-bedroom may have the same floor space as two one-bedrooms, but the developer can’t double the sale price on it.
For those who do not reside in Vancouver, a one-bedroom condo priced under $500,000 is what passes for “affordable housing” here. City Council talks a lot about creating “affordable housing,” but it only ever seems to result in more market-rate condos. The character of a neighborhood can’t stay the same when all the families are forced to leave, which is the pattern in Vancouver: so-called “affordable housing” moves in and families stay as long as the kids are small, but inevitably move east when they outgrow a two-bedroom condo.
What’s taken for granted is that home ownership is achievable and desirable for all families; none of these new developments include affordable rental housing (except that many of the units do sell to wealthy international investors, who profit from renting them, further exacerbating the upward pressure on rental rates). A kind of middle ground exists between owning and renting, but non-profit co-operative housing has all but disappeared from the city’s vocabulary–this, despite the fact that units in the existing co-housing developments, built in the 70′s and early 80′s, are in high demand and co-op applicants can be waitlisted for years.
I’m not proposing that development should be altogether halted; but the rampant over-development that is driving Vancouver families to the financial brink, just before driving them out completely, is ultimately going to rob this city of its designation as one of the most livable cities in the world.
Three-Day Gardening Extravaganza
Apart from a five-minute hail storm that caught me out yesterday, the Vancouver weather has just graced me with three consecutive days in the garden. Days one and two were transplant-and-cover days. I’m using bent heavy-gauge wires to support a layer of landscaping fabric that should protect the young plants.
In The Winter Harvest Handbook, Eliot Coleman writes that keeping winter crops covered with cold frames or row covers boosts their micro-climate by one USDA zone (two, if you grow them covered in a greenhouse). Besides keeping crops warmer, cold frames protect them from drying winds and direct sun that can thaw frosted leaves too quickly and cause cell-wall damage.
On day one of the extravaganza, I transplanted young mixed lettuces, spinach, and some onions (to maybe deter a few of the buggies). On day two (yesterday), I transplanted lots of leeks and a kind of romaine lettuce called Cimmaron. I spaced them closely to quickly provide cover for the soil, as well as edible thinnings over a period of time.
On the left--interplanted cimmaron and leeks; on the right--spinach and mixed lettuces under cover.
Today, day three of my garden extravaganza, I finally got around to shoveling the last of the truckload of soil we had dumped in the driveway last spring. It went on the hugel bed!
There wasn't enough soil to cover the whole bed; I'll have to grab a few bags.
The soil layer is only superficial for now, but I’m really pleased with how the bed is coming along. I went ahead and sowed a cover crop of clover, which, if it gets covered with more soil later, will just decompose and add nitrogen to the soil. I also have a tray of lupins started under lights in the basement to plant on the hugel bed. (Lupins are said to fix nitrogen the way members of the legume family do.)
As I was shoveling soil onto the hugel bed, an older gentleman from the neighborhood stopped in the lane to appreciate my garden. He was European and had such a thick accent that I barely understood him, but he seemed immediately to understand what I was doing. He recommended adding manure, which I really ought to do throughout the garden… One more thing for the spring garden to-do list!
Ethical Oil?
I just listened to an interview on CBC Radio’s The Current and I can’t resist putting my two cents in. Host Anna Maria Tremonti was speaking with Katherine Marshall, the new spokeswoman for the Ethical Oil Institute (what appears to be nothing more than a greenwash machine for Canada’s highly controversial oil sands).
The issue is that oil extraction from the tar sands is detrimental to the environment of northern Alberta, polluting drinking water and spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at an alarming rate, not to mention the destruction inherent in any pipeline project to get the oil to refineries in the US. The same can be said for oil extraction no matter where it occurs around the globe.
Marshall’s point in calling Canada’s oil “ethical” is that, unlike Canada, most other oil-exporting countries are not liberal democracies and do not have legal rights and protections for women and children or occupational safety standards for workers. Marshall’s position, and that of the “Ethical Oil” campaign, is that when we buy oil from conflict areas like Nigeria and the Middle East we are, in effect, condoning human rights abuses around the world–therefore we should only buy Canadian oil because, clearly, human rights trump the environment.
The point that host Anna Maria Tremonti kept trying to get at and which Katherine Marshall kept adroitly dodging is that we do not buy oil just from countries but from companies, most of which are Western-owned and operate in Canada and the US as well as conflict zones around the world. So, what’s the difference when you buy Shell oil if it comes from Nigeria or from Alberta? Marshall contends that if companies are responsible for environmental destruction, low wages, and occupational hazards then it is the fault of the countries in which they operate for not having stricter legal controls. (Nevermind that most developing nations cannot enforce strict controls or tax polluters and abusers due to the straitjacket of structural adjustment reforms imposed on them by the World Bank and IMF; that’s a discussion for another time.)
In order to avoid tacitly supporting human rights abuses, Tremonti asked if Marshall and the Ethical Oil Institute think people should boycott the oil companies that work in conflict zones. No, she said, the “Ethical Oil” campaign was merely about opening people’s eyes and getting them “interested” in the issue of where our oil comes from and how it is obtained. “Interested”? What, I ask, is the point in getting people interested if not to affect some kind of change? And, if change is to be had, why not boycott those responsible? Marshall argued in the interview that it is up to the countries, not the companies, to impose tighter controls, as if oil companies are champing at the bit for a chance to live up to higher ideals of worker and consumer safety and it is government regulations that prevent them from doing better. I say it is clear that oil companies only act on environmental and worker health and safety regulations when they absolutely have to (i.e. when they operate in developed nations with higher standards). Perhaps, developed nations should be able to impose their higher standards on Western-owned companies no matter where they work.
Rant over! I couldn’t help myself; this Marshall woman was so illogical and no seems to want to state the obvious: that true leadership doesn’t just decide who or where to buy oil from, a true leader wouldn’t be afraid to tell his people that some serious belt-tightening and a drastic re-evaluation of the level of material comfort we expect out of life is necessary now and in the future.
Spring Is Just Around the Corner!
So much to say, so little time…
Firstly, there’s still no news about the potential move to Switzerland and with the economy what it is right now, we’re assuming that “No news is bad news” and resisting the urge to feel anything about it right now. Insecurity and uncertainty about the future seems to be the new norm and so we figure we’re in the same boat, but still doing better than all the millions of people losing their jobs and their homes.
Vancouver, I think, has remained somewhat isolated from the major economic downturn–perhaps due to affluence, next year’s winter Olympics… I’m not really sure, but I’m perfectly happy to stay right here in Vancouver where I have my friends, my community, my garden…my life.
We missed most of the major snow storm that hit mid-winter, but spring is shaping up to be absolutely beautiful. I saw the most intense rainbow of my life just last week. We’ve had lots of rain to bring the flowers up and lots of sun, too. Unfortunately, it seems the sun is always out on Saturdays when I’m in my yoga teacher training program all day and it always clouds over just in time for Sunday, or Family “Fun” Day as we’ve taken to calling it (although three-year-old Eleanor has taken to turning it into come-between-the-parents-andplay-one-off-the-other day).
Yes, Eleanor is three and–what do you know?–the Sunday that we had her birthday party was the only sunny Sunday in recent weeks! At least we can be thankful for that. We had seven kids an their parents over so it was really nice to be able to spread out and use the patio for part of the party. See our flickr stream (www.flickr.com/photos/twistycorn) for an idea of how messy it was! The streamers hung from the ceiling for over two weeks! Eleanor got lots of cool stuff, but her big gift was her brand new blue bicycle, which she rides everywhere now. Next weekend, we’re taking her to see Annie at the Vancouver Centre for Performing Arts. We considered making the tickets her birthday present, but thought three weeks was too long to make a three-year-old wait.
In other news, Eleanor and I, on one exceptionally beautiful spring-like day, decided to plant part of ur garden experimentally early. I’ve also got some peppers and tomatoes started indoors to get a headstart on their growing season. I saved (also experimentally, since I wasn’t sure if the whole fermenting, separating, drying process was going to work for me on my first try) seeds from some especially delicious tomatoes I purchased at the local farmer’s markt last summer. For all those out there who have never really liked tomatoes, look for one called the German Red Strawberry Tomato. I swear, it’s the best! It’s everything I ever wanted a tomato to be, and more!
Also, my German Rams (Ramirezi Cichlids) have finally produced a batch of eggs that they didn’t eat within a day and now the little fry are wiggling around wanting to grow and swim! How exciting to watch the miracle of life unfold before my eyes!
Officially In Training to Be a Yoga Teacher
It’s a small class, but the yoga teacher training program is happening… and I’m in it! Wow! What a way to start a new year!
Training to become a certified yoga teacher is something I’ve thought about doing for at least the last six months. I got really good at making excuses for why I shouldn’t do it–it’s too expensive; it’ll take too much time away from my family; I don’t have enough experience as a student of yoga to teach yoga… But, alas, with the opportunity, thanks to Stephen’s employment, to move to a Swiss resort town looming in the fast-approaching future, the time is nigh to get off my butt and make the rest of my time in Vancouver count for something. It isn’t just that teaching yoga would be a marketable skill in a place where wealthy Europeans go to relax, and therefore a good credential for me to carry into a new life there. The real focus for me isn’t even the graduation (although I will certainly be proud to possess the certification), it’s the process and the time spent getting to that day six months from now.
I need to do this to keep my mind focused on the here and now. I know from the experience of waiting to move to Vancouver, that when a major life change is in the offing and it’s just a matter of time before you take the plunge, it can be exceedingly difficult to enjoy the present, to remain engaged and interested in what’s around you. Waiting for what comes next is no way to live, so I’ve decided to focus on myself and the present moment through doing this yoga teacher training. Ultimately, I don’t even know if I want to be a yoga teacher. Maybe I’ll decide it isn’t for me. But, I do want to learn more about yoga and about myself and both will definitely be addressed by taking up this challenge.
I’m writing all this with the perspective of having exactly one session of the program already under my belt. I started this journey on Saturday with seven other individuals from all walks of life (well, there was only one guy) who I have no doubt I will get to know very, very well as we all get to know ourselves a little better in the process. Part of the training program, and one of the reasons I wanted to make the commitment to do this, focuses on “living yoga,” or living a life in balance. We were asked on Saturday to picture our lives several years from now and to think about setting some goals to put us on the right track to eventually achieve our biggest dreams. This part was difficult for me because the move to Switzerland seems to be a major leap into the unknown, like the life I can reasonable plan for ends six months from now. Setting goals or trying to picture what life will be like after the move seems a practice in futility.
If I had to set a goal for this period of my life, I would have to say that I want to learn to leap without looking, to not be fearful when making decisions. I want to be able to take action with the confidence of knowing I’ll be able to handle what life throws at me. I don’t meant to say that I intend to start acting without any consideration of the consequences of my actions, but I do know that I’ve been very indecisive in the past and it has not served me well: over-analysis leads to paralysis. Once a decision is made, I aim to be able to stick with it without wondering if it was the best, most perfectly right thing to do. A good first step might be to challenge myself to order from a restaurant menu in under ten seconds…
I’ll report back on how I fared with that challenge a little later… My point is that big goals are not met without first meeting many incremental goals which, though small, are far from insignificant; baby steps allow us to see progress for what it is–not a long way to go, but a great distance traveled: an achievement in itself. For now, I’m congratulating myself–despite nerves, reservations, and fears–on simply showing up Saturday to take part in the first of over twenty full-day sessions. I dissuade myself from nervousness about the actual teaching part, the practicums, by reminding myself that, for now, I am simply the student.
Yoga Teacher Training… To Be or Not To Be?
Well, I know I haven’t witten in a while. I’d say I’ve been busy–and not that that isn’t true–but also I’ve found other things to do in my spartan spare time… yoga, knitting, Eleanor… excuses, excuses. Well, I wrote a while ago about quitting my job to take care of Eleanor full-time. I still do that and, when I can tear myself away from my knitting for long enough, I take yoga classes at night.
Yoga, for me, has become a kind of way out of the hectic and child-centered life I currently lead. I love my life, but I have to balance the time I spend focusing on and caring for others (namely, children who scarcely can return the many favors I do them in a day) with some “me time.” Yoga, therefore, is not just an exercise in stretching myself physiclly to the limit, but a means of mentally and emotionally bringing myself back from the limit.
With all that said, I committed to doing a six-month yoga teacher training program. Ever since th demo job I had with Horizon, I’ve felt very comfortable with the public and I quickly gainined a real sense of confidence a leadership role. So, I thought I’d make a great teacher. But, there’s just one snag: I just received word that there may not be enough people signed up for the program to go on. I had planned to get back into blogging by writing about the process of becoming a yoga teacher. Here’s hoping…
Victoria Day Weekend
With me only working two 2.5-hour shifts this weekend, Stephen staying home Friday morning, and today being Victoria Day, it’s as if we’ve just had a four-day weekend!
Friday, I unfortunately had a demo at 2, but the weather was absolutely gorgeous and it was the first truly hot day of the year, so Stephen spent the morning with Eleanor and I. Normally, we would have gone to the tot gym and hung out with friends, maybe gone to the grocery store and ridden the mall pony… Instead, we thought, “It’s duck-feeding weather!” Of course, we didn’t see the Please Do Not Feed Wildlife sign until our last piece of bread had been decimated by the angry Canada goose. (Recently returned from his travels South, he wasn’t as polite as I’ve come to expect of most Canadians.)
This was at Queen Elizabeth Park. We then walked the meandering paths looking for Totoros and ended up at the top of the hill where there is a conservatory, fountains, and viewing areas. The views, I have to say, were a little disappointing, as the beaches and most of the city were obscured by trees and the North Shore mountains from so much pollen in the air.
A quick jaunt back down and we were back at our old haunt: Main and 32nd, the little dive we called home for all of three months, having been forced to move due to a pregnancy and an idiot. Didn’t know it at the time, but there existed all along this amazing Vietnamese, French Bread sandwich shop for which Stephen only recently read a review. Lately, I’ve found a new love in Vietnamese food (in part thanks to the take-out place down the street from where we now live). Then we rushed home for me to go to work…
The next day was opening day for the local Farmers’ Markets. Saturday is the East Van Market at Trout Lake, a comfortable biking distance if you avoid the Mosaic route with the killer hill. When we arrived, we had to walk our bikes a good 100 ft. down the lane to find an opening to chain them up. I love how bike-friendly this town is! Anyway, the crowd was a little intense: the line for tomatoes was 20 ft. long and it took almost 30 minutes to get Eleanor’s face painted, but at least it wasn’t raining and someone was playing gamelan music! After a tiring bike ride home, I planted the rosemary and sage in the garden and Eleanor played with the neighbor’s son in their sprinkler and kiddie pool. Also, we got to meet the brand new baby that was just born to our upstairs neighbor. Now, I want another one! Dinner that night was wild-caught salmon (the only salmon), local potatoes and a salad of fresh field greens with dried peppers and a touch too much olive oil. Hehe.
Sunday… We never have so much time together in a weekend, by the way… Sunday, I did have to work, but again, it was only a 2.5-hour shift, so we had all morning together and I got home around 5, just in time for a BBQ. First off, we went for bagels at a place with a “Don’t Kvetsch, Be Happy!” sign next to the till. Yummy, albeit not what I ordered. A long walk led us even further south and east than the old apartment–to the cemetary and Fraser St. A walk north long Fraser revealed an ethically-diverse business district where there happened to be hiding away exactly what I’d been hoping to find for some time: a large fish store with an amazing selection of fish and equipment at reasonable prices! I was so excited, I started fantasizing about my next tank set-up (moss wall, for sure). A brisk walk home left me out of breath, rushing out the door to yet another shortened demo (yay!). When I returned, Stephen was setting up the BBQ (grill, for the Americans) so that we could BBQ (cook out of doors, for the Americans). The smell of the neighborhood on the walk home from the store that evening revealed that we were taking part in a city-wide celebration of the coming dry season: the first BBQ of the year.
Today, day four of this unusually-long-weekend, was Victoria Day, an event for which I hardly noticed any fanfare, not even a great-than-average number of store closings (for a Monday). As the day progressed, my confidence that it was indeed a statutory holiday that I was getting paid for began to wane, to the point that Stephen had to ask a store clerk, presumably a Canadian for whom Victoria Day might mean something. Her response: “Um, yeah, isn’t it?” Anyway, it was raining. We appeased Eleanor’s two-year-old desire to spill juice on a restaurant floor by taking her to The Pancake Store (a.k.a. White Spot) for breakfast. When we got home, we cleaned the house from top to bottom–even the mold that grows on the underside of the toilet tank from clinging condensation. Oh, and in between rain showers, we took long walks and breathed the smell of clean flowers…
The days are already so long I put Eleanor to bed with light still clinging to the edges of her blinds, and as the weather warms up, I look forward to many more such perfect weekends.
Just when everyone thought spring was here…
I looked out the window the other day to see the biggest snowflakes I’ve ever seen in all my life! They came down hard and fast for a couple of hours. Eleanor and I walked in the snow to the Community Center where we go the tot gym two to three times a week. The snow melted so fast that when we left, it was as if the snowfall had been a mere dream. There was nothing left.
Those who know me know that I love snow. In fact, the promise of at least one good snowfall a year is part of why I wanted to live here in the first place. But, come on! By this time of year, I’m done with it. I’m basking in the sunlight that lasts past 5pm. I’m looking forward to putting away my winter coat for good. I’ve gotten over the dreariness that makes me want to kill myself or move… It’s spring time! “Oh Vancouver, I’m sorry I was so quick to judge you; I could never leave you.”
