Community Garden Mentor Bed

​We’ve been members of the downtown urban Garden Society since last year. We really enjoy going over and puttering in our allotment. It seems like every year there are some garden beds where there’s nothing happening for what ever reason. We got permission a couple of days ago to take over and renovate one of those garden beds. We’ve had an amazing amount of rain in the last few days so it seemed like the perfect time to get some of those weeds that would otherwise be baked into the soil. 

There are some volunteer plants, including Icelandic, Poppy, Johnny jump ups, and red aurach. I saved what I could while I was digging over the plot. It was a good thing that I did dig it over because there was a tree in it. Seems like gardeners have been cutting it off, but not digging it up. The poplar trees are really successful here, and if you don’t get on them when they’re little, it’s almost impossible to get rid of them.

After a couple of hours, I had dug it over, weeded it, top dressed it with compost and was ready to plant. 

People had to put leftover seeds in the shed. We used up somebody’s onion set, three or four different kinds of potatoes, carrots, lettuce, two or three different kinds of beets, mesculin mix, and some Swiss Chard. 

Pruning!

​This past winter was absolutely frigid. Even long, well established shrubs, and perennials had a hard time.

This American lilac with a beautiful blushing pinkish purple flower had been at the house as long as we owned it and probably long before. This past winter was a hard one for it as you can see from the amount that we pruned out that was dead. 

Hidden Lakes Walk

​The dog has been so good this weekend so I took her for a long walk around the hidden lakes trails. So hard! 

Now Scapa and I are relaxing on the couch. 

Longest day quilt retreat

​before my concussion 10 years ago, I was a pretty avid quilter. After my concussion, most of my energies were focussed on work because work pays the bills. Great thing about your brain is that it is plastic, and things that you want you will often achieve overtime and with effort. So one of the things I started doing two years ago is getting back into quilting. It turned out I had quite a number of quilt tops in my stash that needed to be quilted. This past weekend I have spent some time doing just that with support from the team at Bears Paw quilts here in Whitehorse.

Before quilting  

After quilting  

The piece pictured it’s actually really interesting story. The patchwork is a piece that I pulled out of a free bin at Gold, Rush Pawn  this past February. The backside is a printed panel that I got at Granville ferry, wooden spool the year before last in February. And the batting is a woollen one from Carstairs custom woollen Mills in Alberta. I wanted to use these pieces together as an experiment to see what I need to do to be able to use those woollen quilt bats from Alberta. I want to support Canadian! The key is lots of extra spray glue, and basting . I hand basted about every 10 to 12 inches. Then I also quilted it slightly differently than I would with a cotton batting, I worked from the edges, one end to the other. I think it was a success.  

Whitehorse Walks

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On our Way

​To ease the journey back to Whitehorse, we booked into the Fairmont in the airport in Vancouver. I’m so glad we did. It really made the whole extended journey much more relaxing. I think Scapa agrees.

Gardens and Landscapes

​Our garden is looking lovely. We put in a whole winter and spring ephemerals garden under the shade of our two large trees. We did a little bit of weeding and planting in other parts of the garden as well.

And this morning on my walk, I much admired the green, green grass. And so did the cows.

Garden centre dog

​Today was the Champlain garden club annual plant sale. We left the dog home to make sure we’d have plenty of room in the car for all the plants. She was not happy about that.

Cat and Squirrel

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Harvest Moon Trail, round Hill to Annapolis Royal

​this morning I was up with the birds, so I thought it would be a good day to do a longer walk. Chris dropped me off in round Hill at the wharf Road where I departed last Friday for Bridgetown. This time I walked the opposite direction back towards Annapolis Royal.

It was a beautiful day for a walk. Light breeze sunshine, not too hot. The dogs had a blast.

Annapolis Valley Farm Markets

​One of the really cool things about living in the Annapolis Valley are all the farm markets. Some operate right through the winter time with local apples and other winter vegetables available but spring is when they really start to shine. I think it’s indicative of the kinds of folks who choose to live here that many of the farm markets in the springtime have vegetable starts and strawberry roots and to my joy, asparagus crowns! I said to Christopher when we were driving through the valley yesterday afternoon if the farm market we stopped at had asparagus crowns I was having some. Well, they did! I’ve always wanted an asparagus bed. I love asparagus and it’s an amazing perennial vegetable.

Of course, one of the things about perennial, vegetable beds, or any perennial bed, is there’s a lot of preparation before you can plant the plants.

We already had the raised bed, last year it had Dalias in it and this year we were considering using it as a nursery bed. But before we can plant the asparagus crowns, we need to do some prep work. We’re digging it over getting rid of the bindweed 🤯😱🤬 and then we’re going to prepare the soil for the asparagus with some extra sand and wood Ash to give it drainage and sweeten the soil. Make it less acid basically - pun intended! 

Kwanzan Japanese Cherry

​It’s four years old now and looking lovely! It’s the pink flowering tree in the background. 

Cape Blomidon

​we are staying in Wolfville to enjoy this end of the Annapolis Valley. Here’s Cape Blomidon from our little suite. 

Harvest Moon Trail - Round Hill to Bridgetown

​Chris dropped me off this morning and I walked to Bridgetown.