grow, my pretties!

coco helped me to plant some seeds yesterday, albiet a tad (more than a tad!) late in the season! we soaked some jiffy pellets and planted cucumber seeds, peas and cosmos - all things that i think will sprout easily and reliably for preschooler-pleasing effect. cole placed all of the name flags and planted all of the peas by himself! the tray is sitting by our window now, bathing in indirect light during the day and waiting for the first signs of life to appear.

spring has sprung!

two weeks ago, we hoped in vain for a little sign of spring. the barest whiff of spring air one day got me thinking "garden shop" and, after daycare, cole and steve and i took a trip to the garden shop. 

from holdom skytrain station the garden shop on lougheed is a mere 5 minute walk, if you are without impediments - things like a drenching rain and wind storm, a stroller, a rain shield, a toddler, inescapable and constant snack demands, thrown soothers, a lone semi-functional umbrella for three people and a downtrodden attitude. if you are suffering it feels like a half hour slog through some kind of fortitude-measuring wasteland. a smarter person might have abandoned the plan at the first sign of rain and toddler grumping, but i held out hope that the fun parts would outweigh the challenges. not so! also i'd promised cole we would go and that kid has a memory like an elephant! suffice to say that day was not the most enjoyable. 

but lo and behold, on the most recent monday afternoon the sun was shining and we tried again. the heavens smiled upon us and we had a wonderful time. there was (inexplicably) an old VW beetle out front of the garden shop for cole to practice his driving (we went to science world and the trip involved a lot of parking and fiddling with dirty dashboard components). inside we found 'butternuts' the cat, the somewhat surly resident ginger stray. cole got two pats in before getting hissed at, at which point he discovered the mason bee houses to thrill his wee fingers. we selected herbs and seeds, coco spotted the rosemary for me (he's a natural gardener, i think!), he ran laps around the aisles and spied on tanks of baby koi. cole adopted a toy bird for one of the pots at home and i managed to select only one flat of plants to carry back on the train. it was a grand time indeed.

 

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farewell, summer. hellllllllooo fall!

hello fall! suddenly it seems to be that time of year again. i'm craving meatloaf (made the best ever with this recipe on monday) and longing for fresh pencils. it might be just the calendar talking, or it could be all of the apples, or the crisp mornings, the start of the rain or it could be the sweaters.  i've still got flip-flops on, but that's currently only because of my bandaged toe...

we went out to pick up some late raspberries today and stopped for a fun visit with our friends lindsay, james and mason.  apparently i didn't get my camera out for the actual playing, but between the amazing fort, exciting toys and a tea party, he was talking about all the fun the whole ride home! that hat might have been a bit of overkill - it's not actually cold, of course - but coco likes it and tells me he looks "like an old hoot owl" in it.

we stumbled across port moody recently!  until now, i'd only ever been there by mistake when i was lost out in coquitlam (or is that port coquitlam - i can't keep them straight!) but we went on purpose last week to a toy store out there to pick up cole's new balance bike. what a little shopping area it was in - a glorious thrifty foods and an exciting impromptu nature walk along the shore nearby made for a great day, and it's only about 20 minutes up the road from us.  cole is fond of gathering cumbersome moist sticks and saying "you wanna hold this?"  of course, he doesn't really take no for an answer.  today, at the berry farm, i tried to leave a large rock behind and he kept me honest, saying  "you forgot your rock!" and delivering it back to me.  

we headed back out to port moody yesterday, fractured/sprained/broken toe and all. next to the toy store was an optometrists office, specializing in kids exams. last week i had booked one for each of us.  they were great with cole - he had quite a good time apparently!  cole has better than expected vision for his age but i need stronger glasses...  no boardwalk walking this time - we hobbled to starbucks instead to get coffee and hot chocolate.  cole brought his doctor's office lolly and a bath mitten full of buttons.  

we popped out to the garden shop last week to buy new plants to freshen our pots.  i had a hanging basket that had looked rather unpleasant for quite a while and i got impulsive and ripped out things like the zucchini that never sprouted a single veggie.  cole was a big fan of the halloween decorations they were putting out, petting lily and butternuts the cats that roam the place and he was remarkably patient while i hemmed, hawed, hemmed some more and ultimately didn't get a basket full of spring bulbs.  i was feeling rather indecisive and hungry at that point and (uncharacteristically!) decided to think that through first...  by the way - note that price tag on that pumpkin...  who pays $37 for a pumpkin, no matter how martha it is?

grow, my pretties...

this year we're trying to grow veggies! just a few - five tomato plants (to hedge bets), a zucchini, a couple of cucumbers, some peas and beans, a pot of kung pao peppers and some large pots of herbs. i shuffled around a few of the landscaped shrubs that were in the raised beds surrounding half our patio so i could get a bit of space to grow in, without resorting to yet more flower pots.

cole loves hanging out in the garden, despite the cool and rainy weather we've been having. he loves to dig and water - what and where are not really important to him!

the herbs i'm feeling confident about, but my last experience with growing veggies didn't leave me with the feeling of victory. or a full tummy of vegetables, for that matter! a good many years ago jamie and i had a community garden plot in richmond, down by the river in the first year it was made. the soil was mostly clay and it was a hot, hot summer. we did half veggies and half flowers. by about half-way through the summer my flowers were taking off but the veggies never amounted to much. i don't think we got a single tomato or pepper and maybe just a few peas. we ended up winning an award for our flower garden -- in a category that we were the only entrants in. and we ended up the lucky recipients of donated zucchinis, handed over by folks with more than they could manage.

we'll wait and see what turns up later in the season, but for now it looks lovely and green and promising.

like garden gnomes

i really do love to garden. right now we have only the patio garden, with a few big pots. i'm on the waiting list for a community garden space at many community gardens in our area, but for now it's just the patio. seeing as i love to garden, and have a deep yearning for trees and lushness, you'd think i might strive to keep our plants alive? we'll you'd be right about the striving part, but sadly mistaken about the living part! i have one green thumb (the planting one) and one wilty thumb... our tree and plants from earlier this spring didn't like the psycho hot weather any more than we did, and i think our watering chain of command broke down sometime in august... (that would be me asking jamie and cole to water the plants and lots of times not).

so, i bought some fresh greenery yesterday on a whim (i was alone and driving and hey, let's go to the garden shop, self!). cole helped me, which was a lot of fun, a lot of mess, and some help. ;-) but fun! he likes to sweep and dig and transfer soil from one pot to another - we just need to work on what is swept into whose shoe and which soil should be taken to where... seriously though, a great afternoon.

we even planted some crocus and mini daffodil bulbs so we have something to get excited about in the springtime! now all i have to do is take down the dead tree to the garbage room incognito (too bad i dumped our old gorilla masks in the goodwill bin yesterday) and then wait for rain so i can wash the balcony off discretely...

randomly, since they kind of go with the topic of mud and gardening - here are a few shots of cole from our trip on friday to queen elizabeth park and the bloedel conservatory (which i always garble and call the bird observatory).

we loved looking at the birds and fish inside, but i think cole was even more impressed with the loose soil outside. he dug and dug, brought me handfuls and got entirely grimey.

and i was going to crop the dude and stroller out of this photo, but it's too funny. his whole family was motioning wildly for him to get out of the way of the camera, which i had perched on the wall and on self timer mode, but he didn't even notice... and yet i'm still fake smiling and giving him the "get a f'in clue and out of my photo" look... cole is dropping a handful of dirt onto the ground and trying to escape. too perfect.

cole and his green thumbs

for some reason i kept forgetting to download our recent photos. we've got a good few weeks of pictures that need showing for the various grandmas and other curious folk... starting with: cole's love of balcony gardening! stuff is really growing on around here - oh man, that's horrible but i can't make myself untype it:

three weeks ago, before everything was planted:
about two and a half weeks ago:yesterday:

he loves to touch the leaves and to help water them (which is good because i usually kill all my plants by forgetting to water them). he really enjoys swatting at the smallest japanese maple - it's a bitty little thing and i'm not sure how much of cole's love it can stand! ;-)

i didn't go too crazy for the gardening this year - although i of course bought more than i had planned on when overwhelmed by choices at the store. everything was so green! and fragrant! and full of potential! and of course i'd love to grow a tomato (i didn't get one) and i probably have room for an enormous blackcurrant bush (i didn't get that either because i don't)... i stuck to a passionflower, the tiny maple (named victoria) and a nice taller but still smallish maple (named winston). i always name my maples after british leaders - i'm not sure why, but started and we've managed to either leave planted elsewhere or dehydrate our way through charles, charles II, oliver cromwell and prince harry. also filled a few large pots with herbs - they're all smooshed together and smelling lovely. cole likes to rummage around the pots and he always comes out smelling like mint - got a few kinds of that too (english and kentucky) so i can make some mojitos with freshly plucked mint this summer.

Happy Spring!

Jamie and I went for a drive today way out to the country (Langley) and stopped by the Cedar Rim garden shop. They have a really great selection of plants year-round, and they've started to get lots of spring flowers in now.

I made up this planter for our balcony. I am thankful every year for Aunt Patti's great advice about having to really stuff the planters for good effect (hers are always beautiful!). My new blue pot managed to fit in:

1 lysimachia "goldilocks"
3 lobelia "laguna sky blue"
2 bacopa "giant snowflake"
1 4" heuchera "dolce key lime"
1 fuscia "gartenmeister"
1 fuscia "wilma versalot"
2 supertunia "mini bright pink"
1 Siberian iris "pristine blue"
1 giant unlabeled fern

Can't wait to watch it grow! When we moved from our last place I was so tired of moving stuff at the end that I left several large terracotta planters on the patio, as well as the Zen garden I'd planted in the built-in garden area. I brought a few things with us though, including two Japanese maples in pots -Charles II and Prince Harry (he has red leaves). I name my maples after figures in English history you see... I had to leave Oliver Cromwell because I'd already planted him into the Zen garden... He and Charles II didn't get along so well anyway... I also have a heavenly bamboo, a myrtle and a pot of ivy.

I will add some more lovely green things soon - I can't stay away from the garden shops this time of year. All things considered, I really restrained myself on this outing!