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Monday, September 29, 2008

The Late Late Show

The Van Dusen's party's almost over, but those late late blossoms, the bosomy divas and sensual concubines who've had too much wine, show off their sumptuous jewels just before the frost comes to shut it all down. (The light turns Nicole Dextras's leaf letters into stained glass.)

Japanese Maples show off their highlights.

The heritage sweet peas are still pumping out their glorious perfume.

The Stink Iris puts on a burlesque act.

Sedum proves irresistible to the 2 o'clock bees.



Dahilias and amaranth--spiky and bloody.



Hand-tinted echinacea and more of the delicate stonecrop.

I can almost deceive myself into thinking winter will not come this year, that we will enter a loop that preserves this enchanted, bejeweled time. One more day of this, and then they say the rain will begin again. A boy throws a penny into the pond and I make a wish.

Amy Young, Artist

I just wanted to give a shout out to an artist someone e-mailed me about. (Thanks David). Amy Young is doing some great stuff and I like her website. It's easy to navigate and the interface suits the content. Check out Dis.M.Body-- An answering machine made of lint.

"Your messages can be recorded into the sculpture by speaking while pressing the red button and played back by pressing the yellow button, but our voice messages are like our lint, sloughing off, on answering machines around the world. Lint, buttons and sound sampler."

This Farm Fountain that Amy Young made in Collaboration with Ken Rinaldo is the ultimate container garden, complete with ornamental fish. They have instructions on their website on how to make your own. Another cool piece, called The Digestive Table contains a vermi-composter.

Sweet Cherubim

A warm Saturday on Commercial Drive. Rose petal trails lead to flower shops.

Fallen leaves make an ephermeral carpet under vintage chairs.

Sweet Cherubim's kofta and chickpea subji's over brown rice and a mango shake provide a comforting, filling lunch.


Unique boutiques are great for puttering, playing Looky Loo and getting ideas. Unwinding on the Drive is one of may favorite things to do on weekends. I like to pop in at the library too, and search for novelty teas in the organic shops. I buy a container of green salsa, some locally made panir and a couple of pakoras to take home.

Okay--mini rant coming up here. I searched up and down The Drive for a cold glass of brewed iced tea, but no-one makes their own iced tea any more. We have this whole thing about not putting more plastic and glass into the garbage stream and the coolers in every shop are filled with heavily sugared iced teas. Make it stop!

Saturday, September 27, 2008

A Drop of Water

Today I went to an inspiring lecture on environmental art by Beth Carruthers. I loved the way she stressed that environmental art makes space for community conversations about issues.





The "Too Big to Care Band" played a version of "Old Man River". I love this woman's shirt that says "Stop the Tar Sands." This is OT, but I heard an interview with Jack Leighton as he was flying over the tar sands--you could hear the shock in his voice at how large an area it was. It was the first time I'd heard him speak in an unguarded tone--he should do this more often, as it suits him. Anyway the arts cuts by the conservatives were discussed before and after the key note address. Anyone but Harper, folks....Vote for the environment and the arts. Don't be too big to care!

Apples and Pears on the Drive

I just love the dusky bounty of these Okanagan fruits--big bins of them lit by the late afternoon sun. Plenty. Abundance. Beauty. Autumn.






Friday, September 26, 2008

Reccomended Reading for Young Gardeners

This year we are going to try to install a garden at my son's elementary school. These are some of the books I have found useful for research and teaching.

The Bumblebee Queen by April Pulley Sayer is the first book I've found on the life cycle of the bumblebee. Most books focus on honeybees, so this book is valuable in telling the facts about a native bee, and she does mention bees in Canada, which many American authors just tend to ignore!

Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots: Activities to Do in the Garden by Sharon Lovejoy is a wonderful source of inspiration for creating different kinds of children's gardens, like a snacking and sipping garden, a pizza patch, a Zuni waffle garden, and the moon garden. The illustrations are whimsical and seductive and will make you wish you had an acre or two to transform into gardens.

Are You a Bee? by Judy Allen and Tudor Humphries is an Up the Garden Path Series book which asks the reader if he or she has the qualities that bees have. It's a great way of getting students to see life from a bee's eye view. It's an especially great book for girls because the illustrations of beekeepers are all women.

Grow It, Cook It: Simple Gardening projects and delicious recipes is a new DK publication with full colour photo-layouts that will get your mouth watering for home-made treats. The recipes are all broken down visually, so even your youngest child could help pitch in with the process.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

A Sweet Saturday


It's almost fall equinox--the perfect time for a good old-fashion extraction. Not the dental kind, thank god, but the opposite--that of the sweet viscous bee-made kind. Saturday morning I headed up to the market at UBC farm and arrived before it was open. I like chatting to the people in line--we talked about raising chickens in the city. Seattlites can have chickens in their back yards, so why can't we? Once the market opened, I was thrilled to see that UBC Farm honey was for sale, so I bought a jar. It has got a beautiful rich golden hue. I can't wait to taste it!

I also bought some red beans from the Mayan gardeners. Oooh I'm a little bit crazy about their beans! This year I'm going to ask for some seeds from them. Maybe they should package and sell their seeds. Maybe we could help them do that. I checked on the prayer flags, sorted them out, untwisted them, and then I bought a big fat piece of bannock and slathered it with with butter and jam. As I drank a cup of herbal tea and chomped on my bannock I watched the volunteers pick flowers and unload tubs of just-picked produce. The Beekeeper arrived and we loaded the extractor into the back seat of the car.


(Photo above by Jean.) I had cleaned off the counter tops in the kitchen to create room for the extractor, jars, and bowls for wax. I phoned neighbors to come and give us a hand with the cranking. We open the rubber maid tubs full of honey-laden frames and prepare to rob the combs. I talked to The Beekeeper about how easy it would be just to sell the comb--it's a novelty that kids and adults love. He said you can buy rounds that fit into frames that you can pop out when they're full and then just pop a top on to sell. Cool! There's also the option of putting a chunk of comb in a jar and then filling it up with honey, which is also very pretty. Some people don't like wax in their honey--chacun son gout and all that.

The first step of the extraction process is to scrape the caps off the top of the wax. There is an electric tool that makes this go faster, which we agreed would be an asset, or just a number of scrapers, so more than one person can do this at once. The first side is easy to do because you can lay it flat on the table, but to keep the honey from running out, you have to hold the frame vertical when you do the other side--it would be helpful to have a stand to do this.


The extractor holds three frames and having nine, we did three extractions, flipping the frame once one side had been emptied. We put a spaghetti pot on a chair under the extractor, with a sieve covered in four layers of wet cheesecloth. You could use one layer of finer cheesecloth, I suppose, or a fine strainer which means you can do away with the cheesecloth all together. Once it's been strained of hive detritus, you just put it into clean jars. We used a ladle and a funnel, but it's better if you can use a pail with a spout. If we are going to have a hive in the neighbourhood, I think it's very worthwhile to invest in some of this equipment.

We tried the method of separating out the cap wax from the honey by heating the mixture until it's all melted in a double boiler. When you let the mixture cool, you the wax rises to the top. The cooked honey on the bottom can be used for baking, and has a "burnt honey" taste. Well, there was still lots of honey in the wax when I lifted it off the top--so I guess this is a process that takes more than one go to make it work. Also, I'd advise you not to use your good pots to do it--get one from the thrift shop.

The smell of warm wax and honey is comforting, but it does become cloying after a while. It wasn't until the next morning that I tasted it on toast. It's generally a medium-bodied mid-summer honey and some frames had darker honey than others. The beekeeper also told me about the hygroscopic quality of honey--on damp days it can absorb moisture and weigh more than on dry days--so you can have the same-size jar containing the same weight of honey and one may have less honey than the other. Cleaning the extractor was a bit of an adventure--lots of hot water in the bath tub and I literally used a toothbrush to clean the wax off the frame-holders.

And today I cleaned honey off the floor, the pots and pans and shelves, and socks. Honey everywhere! It was a good excuse to give the floor a good scrub and rearrange the feng shui in the kitchen. Blessed by honey, the energy flows much better there now. Tonight Pierre used the honey mixed with soya sauce to make a "jus" for our ling cod. We had rice and beans and carrots from the garden--one of my favourite meals. Happy fall equinox everyone!

Thursday, September 18, 2008

I Love my Son

Today is the day we look forward to as a family--the day when the Martha Stewart Halloween issue arrives. My son pored over it while I made pizza for dinner. He is chatty, critical, delighted, and opinionated, making comments about the ads, the costumes, and the party favors. We agree the fake cockroaches look too real. He thinks the tin man costume looks weird. I like it. The lion's cute, but the scarecrow doesn't cut it. The brownies look delicious but the squash lasagne looks disgusting, he says.

Peter's been having meetings this week, so Ullie and I have done some bonding over Martha and movies. We watched Hoot last night, about kids who defy construction workers to save Burrowing Owls. "It's just like UBC Farm," I say. They want to bulldoze it. He looks at me like I'm crazy. He wants to watch Hoot again tonight. I can suffer through the wooden acting, the heavy-handed schtick because the message in the film is a good one: a small group of concerned citizens can save members of a protected species. The shots of Florida are lovely, and some of the acting isn't too bad. There's a very good short in the added features about how you can attract wild life to your back yard. Ulske tells me we should project that on the big screen at school. My thoughts exactly.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

A Garden Heals

Sometimes mistakes don't make any sense. Other times they really do seem to happen for a reason. I had penciled in my daybook that September 16th was our 100 Mile Community Kitchen meeting at Tupper. I made a blush sangria with local white wine and fruit: overripe peaches, plums, and strawberries. I waited by the door, and no-one came. There's a couple of ill-kept patches of plants near the road that aren't a part of the new garden, but have been there for some time. I noticed a patch of flowers that had gone to seed (brown-eyed Susan's, I think), so I broke off the seed heads and put them in my bag.

I was pleased to see that people were using the new healing garden. A group of young boys were hopping from boulder to boulder in an improvised game. An older man sat reading a newspaper. Less than a year ago, that garden was a part of the street. Now it's a meeting place.

I decided to head home, but as I walked past the fence that encloses the outside woodshop, a man asked if I found any herbs in the garden where I was collecting seeds. I told him there were some wild roses and rudbeckia, but I hadn't seen any herbs. He thought there was some mint up there to make tea from. "I like to have some when I'm carving." He invited me in to see his work--beautiful masks made of satin yellow cedar. He let me touch them and explained the designs: spirit bear, eagle, and raven. He showed me a Coast Salish feat dish shaped like a seal that he was finishing for his coleague and explained why they have to be lined with skunk cabbage leaves. The oils from the wood will seep into the food and make it taste bad. Cedar oil is a deterrant against rodents, which is why the longhouses were made of cedar. Apparently people who don't grow up in an environment with cedar can be quite allergic to it.

He had a gentle voice and a calm manner. His wisdom and candor shocked me because I am so to the urbane small talk of the big city. He said that he asked the students to touch the wood of the totem pole outside the school and feel itself power. Then he explained that now that they had touched the wood, they were responsible for it. It has been vandalized in the past with fire, but maybe his lesson will make a difference. What a gift it was to meet him. I came back and looked at my e-mail. Sure enough, I had made a mistake in the date. One of the best mistakes I've ever made.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Puttering

After five days of intense grant writing, I am taking a day off to putter in the garden. Whatever you call it--frittering, puttering, pottering about--I love it! I do the seed-saving rounds on my flowers and let them dry in cake pans in the porch. I pick the scarlet runner beans that are finally arriving and growing at an alarming rate.


This one little batch of blanket flowers was the best $3 spent on a plant this year. It's blossoms have been very long-lived. Next year I'll grow some from seed. They grow wild on the prairies around my childhood home.


The one patch of nasturtiums that survived the aphids has been given new life by the Indian summer.
Harvesting carrots, watering the tomatoes, finding the rare pea pod, and pulling up dead plants: all these things are good for the soul. Happy puttering everybody!

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Fall Street Party

This week we've been having some of the best weather in Vancouver. Yesterday was the perfect day for a street party, complete with a seedball workshop, The Bee Guy, The Gong Show, dogs, babies, cabbage rolls, sangria, a recycling talk, a neighborhood band, a potter, popsicles, a bouncy castle, and a kiddie pool full of muddy water.