I must apologize for the lack of updates lately. Mostly to myself then anybody else quite frankly, as I greatly enjoy writing in the ol’ blog. But life has been hectic. Moving, job offers, taking a new job in a new town, having to get a license and a car for said job within the span of a few weeks, moving to a new city where we don’t have a place to life worked out yet.

See, I’m generally not very comfortable with uncertainty. I like the illusion of complete control over my life (I say illusion, because as we all know, it’s impossible to have complete control). But that illusion keeps me sane sometimes. So when I feel like I have very little control over the previous three weeks and the forthcoming six weeks of my life, it rattles me quite a bit.

How appropriate for this post that I’m including an image of a surprise lettuce cross-pollination that come out of the garden. This is something that I can’t always control, what pollinates what, despite all effort to the contrary. But gardening as well is quite often about the illusion of control rather then actual control.

Lack of control in the garden I’m a lot more comfortable with then seeming lack of 100% control in my life. I find an unexpected cross in the garden and I’m excited about the possibility it brings. I know that if the cross turns out to taste bad or grow poorly it’s not the end of the world.

Somehow I need to translate that into the rest of my life at times.

Who doesn’t love daisies? Almost anything with a daisy-like flower I will fall head over heels for, but the classic white shasta daisy will always have a home in my garden, wherever that garden may be (and in a few months it’ll be located somewhere in Victoria, BC).

Unlike most pretty flowers people have in their gardens, shasta daisies stink to high heaven. Have you ever taken a really good sniff of a flower? Cat pee. That’s what they smell like to me. Maybe that’s the reason that the plot I planted these in never have neighbourhood cats come and dig in it (but that’s just my theory).

Shasta daisies are a favourite plant in almost any garden because they’re extremely hardy, are very attractive to bees, hoverflies, and other pollinators, and are about as easy-care as you can get. Drop them in the ground and walk away, and they’ll continue to double in size every year. Hell, I don’t even fertilize mine.

The classic shasta makes me smile every time I see it. No matter what my mood, it could be a no good, very bad day, but when I see those big white flowers, I smile. The stink is well worth it.

… They are a comin’.

The past week and a half has been a complete whorl wind (hence the lack of updates here). A whorl wind in a good and a bad way.

I work for a small, daily community paper. Or rather, I should say worked (in a few weeks). I like my job, it’s not the dream job, but it’s a job that gave me some level of fulfilment, and my co-workers were fabulous.

On July 2nd we found out a competing paper bought us.

On July 5th we found out they were shutting us down.

On July 9th we found out they’re shutting us down as of July 16th.

That puts about 30-odd employees completely out of a job, not to mention the casual and part time staff that are now out the extra income. Not even including the 110+ carriers we employ (many of which were adults).

In a town of just under 10,000 people, that’s a big blow.

There’s no one person to blame (not even the company that bought us), but a large and long line of things that maybe could have been done, but weren’t. But it’s in the past, nothing can be done about it now.

Me, personally, I’m fine. I don’t have kids, or car payments, or a mortgage to worry about. Life will move on, and I’m positive there are bigger and better things ahead of me. In fact, things are looking hopeful with me getting a position at one of the other papers in another market that the company that bought us out operate in.

Which, of course, brings me to my next whorl wind event.

We’re moving. Me, B., and the dog are all picking up and moving on. And we’re moving on in a few months. To Victoria, in fact, a city that I’ve lived in before and quite enjoyed. Victoria is warm, it rarely snows, and it has the best gardening weather in Canada.

Nelson doesn’t hold much for any of us anymore, and it’ll be nice to be closer to family.

Of course this now means I have to orchestrate the moving of the seed bank. I’m excited with the prospects of having the seed bank in a much more highly populated area, especially one that is renowned for its gardens and gardeners. I smell good things in the future.

I did say this was a good and bad whorl wind. It’s mostly bad because I feel for my wonderful co-workers who are here in Nelson, who do have the car payments and the kids and are now out a rather good job. I also feel bad for a paper that’s been running for 109 years and is now being shut down, no longer to be a part of the history of this town (or, I guess rather, relegated completely to history).

But it’s mostly a good whorl wind. I’m excited, I’ve been itching to move for a while, and this is a good kick in the ass to do it. As I said, I feel good and wonderful things in the future. Scratch that, it’s not just a good feeling, I know there are good things lined up for the future.

These are one of my absolute, hands down, favourite potato varieties of all time to grow.

Sure, Warba isn’t the fanciest or freakiest variety of potato I’ve ever grown, they’re of small size, they’re a regular old white colour.

But they are amazing.

They are a very early variety, usually ready buy about mid-August (or sooner, if you have a longer growing season then I do), and baby potatoes can be harvested, well, now as indicated by the photo (by the way, they were delicious).

Warba was bred in Minnesota in 1927, and it is an amazing grower. These guys will give you more harvest, earlier then any other variety out there. And they seriously produce. They store really well, they’re excellent for baking and boiling. During the drought of 1936 they were the only crop of potatoes that readily produced any kind of harvest, which is a godsend in a climate like mine that frequently has water rationing and extremely hot, dry summers.

Every time somebody asks me “what kind of potatoes do you think I should grow?” I immediately tell them Warba.

It’s a maple leaf, dummy

Well, it’s Canada Day. While we’re slightly more reserved up here in the north then our American counterparts about our national day of… um… nationalism, we do appreciate our country, even if we don’t necessarily like the people running it.

But no, this is not one of those “Canada is AWESOME!” posts (because I am Canadian, so I’m much too polite to go on about it).

Rather, this morning I started posting a few Canada Day facts for the twitterverse to enjoy. Here they are, collected and collated for your viewing pleasure.

Fact: On Canada Day it is customary for all Canadians to don their beaver skin hats

Fact: On Canada day, every Canadian bows to the east, as a show of respect for our head-of-state, Queen Elizabeth II

Fact: Canada Day is not actually our country’s birthday, but rather the day we first got electricity to our country in 1979

Fact: Canada Day celebrations officially kick-off by the ritual saying of “eh” 30 times times fast

Fact: On Canada day, all public pools take out their water, and instead, fill said pools with beer

Fact: On Canada Day, Bonhomme visits every good girl and boy with a special treat of split pea soup and poutine

Fact: Canada Day kicks off, what us Canadians call, “those two months before winter starts”

Fact: On Canada day, all traffic in the country stops for one hour for the largest street hockey match in history

Fact: On Canada Day the whole country eats our national dish for supper: Kraft Dinner Mac & Cheese

Fact: Canada Day is when Ogopogo comes out of Lake Okanagan and waves to all the passersby.

Fact: On Canada Day, Canadian Tire money is accepted at ALL businesses across the country

Fact: On Canada Day all Canadians worship our demi-gods: Celine, Wayne, and Gordon by attending Mass at our local Tim Hortons

Fact: On Canada Day, instead of fireworks, we use black snakes. Fireworks are much too loud, we don’t want to wake the neighbours.

Have some Canada Day Facts? Want to follow along? The hashtag is #canadadayfacts, or go here and see the Canada Day Facts I, and others, are posting.

I am a sucker for an heirloom. I’m more of a sucker for an heirloom with a good story. But I’m at my most suckering (yes, I said it) when it’s a local heirloom with a good story.

So when I came upon the seeds at my town’s yearly Seedy Saturday I jumped on them.

Now, I am not a pea person. I actually don’t like peas. I do like snow peas on the rare occasion, but I don’t grow them every year, nor do I go out of my way to purchase them when they are in season. But the story of these suckered me in. I have more information up on the Populuxe Seed Bank’s site here.

The quick and dirty version of their history is that they were brought to the area in the 1940′s by, what the lady who sold them to me called, “Japanese immigrants”. My suspicion is, however, considering it was the 40′s, and considering there was a large Japanese Internment Camp in the area, that these were actually brought by prisoners when they were rounded up and taken from their homes.

I’m very excited about these peas, mostly because, like I said, I’m a sucker for a story, but mostly because I do like snow peas on the rare occasion, and anything you grow yourself always tastes better then something that you bought.

These peas were slow to get going. We had a tough spring, quite chilly, with weird spurts of high heat. I was positive my peas would be doomed, especially considering a few weeks ago the temperatures started going up and my peas were still just tiny. I mean, snow peas are, in theory, a cool weather crop.

But, much to my surprise, the second it got hot, these “snow” peas absolutely took off. When we started hitting the 30C mark, they (finally) started flowering these big, beautiful white blooms you see in the picture above. The plants have got to be growing at least an inch a day now. I was told when I bought them as well that these monster vines grow up to 7ft.

These peas seem insanely heat-tolerant, which isn’t too surprising since they are a local heirloom, and we have hot, hot temperatures here in the Kootenays. But, then again, the whole idea of a snow pea is that they do best in cool weather. These snow peas seem to be a contradiction in and of themselves.

Not that I’m complaining mind you, I’m very excited to see what these peas will do. If they’ll keep producing through a hot, dry summer, and if they will actually get up to that 7 ft mark.

While I know I will enjoy eating these when the pods are finally ready to be devoured, what I am most excited about is, however, spreading them around to anybody else interested in growing them. Especially because I seem to have hit the jack pot with the snow pea that is highly heat tolerant.

Last year in April I purchased two blackcurrant plants, of which I was elated about.

I love blackcurrants so much, but they are somewhat rare (relatively speaking to other berry bushes) in North America. They’re delicious: tart, with a hint of sweetness. Last year when I purchased them they were root stock, they didn’t even have any leaves yet. Over the coarse of the season however they grew quickly. I got a tiny little bit of fruit last year since they were two-year-old plants when I bought them, but what I have already harvested this year has surpassed what my two bushes produced last year. And there’s still lots left on the plants that aren’t ripe yet. The photo above illustrates about one-fifth of what is still ripening on the plant.

While my dream of making batches and batches of my own blackcurrant jam might still be a year or two away in the future, I’m more then happy to go outside and pick some every day for fresh eating until that time comes.

What I’m finding most difficult about blackcurrants, however, is the absolute lack of leeway when it comes to ripening time. The fact that I live in a hot climate doesn’t help, since blackcurrants don’t mind cooler temperatures (which is why I put them in a part-shady spot to avoid having them baking in 30C temperatures all day every day in the summer). One day a berry is still half green, and then the next day, a mere 24 hours later, it’s overripe and has cracked, spreading it’s yummy goodness that should be in my mouth, all over the ground.

Diligence is what I’ve learnt growing blackcurrants.

I am not a rose person.

There are two large, old, climbing roses that grow up against my house that I am constantly cursing and threatening to rip up (even though I never would – I respect a plant that is at least 50 years old). I have absolutely no interest in taking care of roses, or of even cutting them and bringing them in my home.

But wild roses are a different story.

I love wild roses because they seem untameable, with there legions of thorns bidding you away. I also love them because they’re simple; devoid of the big showy blooms that most most people have growing in their yards. If I had it my way I’d rip up those two climbing roses I have, and instead plant some wild roses.

Wild roses hold a special place in my heart. They’re my home-province’s official flower, and as one may expect, they grow everywhere there. In the house I grew up at we had a big old wild rose with a swath of lily of the valley that grew underneath it, right up against an old white fence. Wild roses make me think of home, and of family, and of old memories.

When I was a teenager I couldn’t wait to get out of Alberta, and move to the seemingly-so-exciting west coast of BC. I don’t regret the move, BC is nice (and a lot less colder, which is my main problem with Alberta), but what I do miss are the sights and sounds of Alberta. Big open sky, huge fields of mustard and wheat and canola. Bison and muskegs and pigeon hawks. The way Alberta seems to radiate yellow and orange and gold. The night sky that is so big, it can feel oppressive to somebody who didn’t grow up there. Northern lights of pink and green and white.

It’s funny how sometimes you don’t recognize beauty until after you’ve been away from it for so long.

Take a look to your right. Top of the column.

See that little picture? That’s a new thing I got going.

See, I take a lot of photos, and sometimes I don’t always want to jibber-jabber on about said photo (despite evidence to the contrary), so they end up not getting posted. Sometimes the photo is all there needs to be said.

In a galaxy far, far away I used to have a photoblog, and I miss that silly old photoblog.

So I’m sitting here, nursing a broken toe (broken in, quite potentially, the most stupid way ever), listening to Buddy Holly, and decided I wanted to do something about that. That something is the picture in the top right hand corner of the column over there. You can click the photo and it’ll take you to a full size of the image. It’s as simple as that. Considering it’s summer, it’ll probably be quite frequently featuring plants, but it won’t always necessarily be featuring plants.

Mostly it’s about what strikes my fancy at any given moment.

So enjoy the thing, I’m looking forward to having a sort-of-photoblog again.

I told myself I wouldn’t start going through the tomatoes on the Weekly Flora until I could see them ripening on the vine.

Then I totally went back on that promise to myself, because it was a silly thing to think I could do in the first place.

But that’s okay I forgive me.

This tomato is the first to form fruit for me this season, and thusly, will be the first eaten when it finished ripening. I am so looking forward to fresh-of-the-vine tomatoes. Soon I’ll be swimming in almost more then I can eat (since I have about 40 different plants currently growing). But for now, I have just this one, little guy, chugging along, ripening at his own rate.

I’ve never grown Tiny Tim before, but it’s always been on my “to-grow” list. I love tomatoes that are, you know, “weird”. Dwarf plants, heavily pleated fruit, bi-coloured (or tri-coloured!), white tomatoes (that one freaks people out). If it’s “weird”, I’ll have a go at it.

While ‘Tiny Tim’ might not be the weirdest one ever, it is an early dwarf variety, and it fits very nicely into a one-gallon container, letting me but my bigger tomatoes into the 5- and 10- gallon containers.

‘Tiny Tim’ is a commercial heirloom variety; it was bred for commercial purposes, but is older then 50 years (it was actually bred in 1945 by the University of New Hampshire). This year I plan to try growing it under lights during the winter. I go through serious fresh tomato withdrawal for months at a time, but I’m positive there is a tomato out there that will grow well under my fluorescent lights. I mean, it just has to work, right? RIGHT?

Lord help me I can’t eat those cardboard-tasting things the grocery store calls tomatoes that they trucked in from California.

That’s the problem with gardening – it totally makes you into a tomato snob.