Planter d'quoi.

Hey allô, toi.

Ça fait douze fois que j'y pense. Ça fait millemillions de jours que je n'ai pas écrit ici. Plusieurs semaines de tergiversations plus tard, c'est là que je commence ce projet de vous partager, Ô Millions de Fans Invétérés de ce blogue, petits et grands, depuis longtemps ou pas pantoute, mon "nouveau" paradis.

Je mets "nouveau" entre guillemets, parce que ça a fait un an le 5 mai que j'y habite avec mon Viking. Le Viking, il s'appelle comme ça parce qu'il a une barbe, genre, de Viking. Et en plus il est valeureux, ça compte. Mais il n'a pas de drakkar. Normal, allô, on habite dans les terres. 

Retour aux moutons (or lack thereof). Mon expérience de jardinage dans toute ma vie se résumait à aller à n'importe quel hardware store de la place où j'habitais, pogner quelques géraniums, deux ou trois bégonias, pétunias, et des petits trucs qui me semblaient sortir de l'ordinaire. Genre ma plante (dont je ne me souviens plus du nom) tout droit sortie de la Flore Laurentienne du Frère Marie-Victorin qui produisit, cet été-là, une fleur magnifique, une seule. Mais je l'aimais d'amour. Deux ou trois essais de noyaux d'avocats, de pieds de laitue, de pépins quelconques garrochés dans la plate-bande "pour faire du compost", qui résultèrent en magnifiques verdoyantes. Eh bien oui, c'était le stade expérimental, un balbutiement de "euh...attends... je trippe".

Fast forward au jour où ma première date avec le Viking finit comme ceci ( vous êtes libres de faire les voix que vous voulez, on ne vous en tiendra pas rigueur. Juste pas une voix trop nasillarde pour moi please.):

Le Viking: "Viens-tu canner des tomates chez-moi dimanche prochain?"

Moi: "Quoi?"

Little Person Living Inside My Head: "OK. Il vient de t'inviter chez-lui. Il habite à la campagne. Il a sûrement un Econoline brun avec du shag dedans pis une relation fuckée avec son hibou empaillé qui s'appelle Finntroll! Alarme! ALARME!"

Moi: "Quoi? T'as des tomates? J'ai jamais canné! J'y connais rien!"

Thus, le début de quelque chose de vraiment magique. Je vous épargne l'histoire d'amour, ça tanne le monde. Needless to say, Finntroll, finalement, c'est pas un hibou empaillé. C'est un band finlandais. Et la relation du Viking avec Finntroll est parfaitement musicale et saine. Et pas quotidienne. Ça rassure, quand même, non?

Donc là, au primtemps 2017, on a fait nos premiers semis. Ses jardins, au nombre de deux, contenaient déjà des pommes de terre, des oignons et des tomates, assez de tout ça pour durer une année. Sans blague. dans la chambre froide dans la cave. Semis prometteurs, qui nous ont donné des citrouilles, des zucchinis gros comme mon mollet (d'ailleurs on les appelait des mollets, pas des zucchinis), de la bette à carde avec laquelle on pouvait s'abriller, des carottes gigantesques qui faisaient de l'attitude, du basilic  à ne plus savoir quoi en faire (alors, forcément, des batchs des pesto), et j'en passe évidemment. On va mettre ça sur le dos de l'amour avec lequel on a fait ces jardins, ainsi que du fumier de vache de la ferme de mon beau beau-papa (BBP) et de ma belle belle-maman (BBM). Moi je suis la BBDA ( belle bru d'amour). 

Nous voici là, ce printemps. Trois jardins, dont un buton de quatre plants de citrouilles (là, ce soir, après inspection, possible qu'un seul plant survive). L'an dernier, on avait mis les citrouilles avec les plants de patates, mais on a appris après les avoir plantées là qu'on ne met pas ces deux-là dans le même jardin: ça court, des citrouilles!) Le tour des jardins vite fait:

Dans le Jardin de l'Est: un rang d'oignons espagnols, deux rangs d'oignons rouges (pour le confit maison, quand même), un rang de poireaux, un rang de poivrons, deux rangs de basilic, un rang de carottes, et deux butons de trois plants de zucchinis. 

Dans le Jardin de l'Ouest: trois rangs de patates, deux rangs de navets, deux rangs d'épinards, deux talles d'asperges, et environ une douzaine de haricots verts et une douzaine de haricots jaunes, en alternance. 

Cette année, on a aussi investi pour un pommier, deux poiriers et un abricotier. Un deuxième bébé pommier s'en vient cette fin de semaine, question de polliniser le premier.

Ce nouveau post est le début, je l'espère, de la documentation de nos jardins et des merveilles qui poussent un peu partout dans la cour immense. Des lupins, des roses, des coeurs saignants, les fines herbes, des fleurs sauvages, les fougères, la platebande secrète du fond de la cour, les roses trémières, les pivoines et les petites créatures qui habitent tout ça. Et de mon nouveau tracteur à gazon qui s'appelle Salomène. Y'a un cupholder pis toutte.

Attachez vos calottes, les amours. Je trippe, moi là. Semaine prochaine: le Bestiaire! Moultes affections, avec affection.

Mlle Caro xxooxx

Live Things.

As promised, Legion of Unwavering Fans, here's my balcony (in July). Right now, it looks nothing like that. Enjoy:

 In the evening. Very cozy.

Delicious yellow tomatoes...

My herb garden, with (bottom to top): lemon thyme, chives, miniature purple basil, rosemary and more lemon thyme.

The little flowers that could: they saved my not-so-hot flower boxes this year. They're still alive and kicking right now....and they're the only ones left. I am definitely getting more next year.

The small, yellow flowers you see on the right were very nice at the greenhouse when we got them. They are edible: I tried them once in a salad but wasn't overly impressed. They were supposed to stand about one foot and a half tall: I was looking forward to having a bit of a wall of flowers to give us some intimacy on the balcony. However, the wind flattened and bent them and they kind of hung there all summer, half broken and sad.

The ensemble, not yet grown in. The other hanging plant on the right is basil. Notice this is your first partial view of The Man, enjoying his morning coffee in his jammies.

When in Doubt, Post on Thy Blog.

Campanula Lactiflora

There are many things in life which really impress me. I am, I must admit, easily impressed.

For example, everything which stirs passion in people really impresses me. You could be having dinner with me and casually state that your love of staplers has moved you to purchase, collect and organise them in order of make, model, size and colour, and I would be completely flabbergasted. Honestly, I'd be curious as to why you haven't taken to, say, collectible cars or hockey jerseys, but I'd impressed all the same. Casually having a sip of that fine wine I would have bought, I confess I would also reconsider our friendship or ever inviting you over for dinner again. I'm just saying, there are such things as sociopaths and limits. Just kidding. I don't mean to judge you, or anything.

Cool collections? Let me illustrate.A friend of mine collects iron rests. I think that is what they are called. Way back when, they used to have those on the ironing board to rest their irons on to avoid burning the board. Now we have those fancy schmancy irons which, in addition to being electric, have the useful feature which allows you to stand them up and you don't have to hold them or anything. Back to my friend's iron rests. They are magnificent! That is a collection I have the utmost respect for, because as useless as they are nowadays (unless you still use vintage iron irons just like in the olden days), they are really beautiful, add some serious curio factor to your home (because you have them lined up on a shelf or on small nails on a wall in an esthetically pleasing way), and they are an interesting conversation piece. Case in point: I've just written a whole paragraph on them and it's not even my collection. Kudos to my friend for providing me with this material to work with!

Another thing which impresses me to no end is nature. I am impressed by its raw power, and by the way mankind thinks it masters it and then gets it in the face (such as the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico). I am taken aback by its fortitude and fragility. But on a more down to earth note, I have always wanted a backyard of my own I could lose myself in, just to be a little more in touch with nature. I think I have explained before that our backyard is shared with the other 24 units where we live, so there is no privacy, really, and decisions regarding said backyard must be voted upon by the co-owners. Luckily, I have friends who have really nice backyards, where I periodically escape.

The Man and I were at our friends' place yesterday afternoon, and they have the most beautiful yard I have ever seen. It's huge! It's got woods in the back, and a garden (which I got to water, with a huge smile on my face the whole time), and little glass lanterns hanging from a tree in the middle which also supports two hammocks. It has a dining table and a picnic table a little further. It has potted plants, hanging flowers, and lots of grass. The flowers in the gardens could be little fairy houses, and there are little fairy houses set among the flowers. They are, in fact, bird houses, but the birds have all these trees to live in and don't tend to live in houses on the ground among the flowers, especially not when there are a bunch of cats roaming around. Fairies, on the other hand, love little houses among the flowers. Or so the Pixies told me. Anyway. I was in heaven yesterday. I laid in the cool grass after a copious lunch, looked up at the leaves stirring above in the trees, walked barefoot in the moss, making a mental inventory of all the things growing, and took deep breaths with my eyes closed. It was quite literally magical.

I felt alive. And it was very, very good.

Growing Things.

I’ve never really purchased tools, they were always kind of acquired through different mergers and acquisitions. After we merged our apartments, The Man and I, almost ten years ago, we realized we had lots of everything. We have two hammers, and many screwdrivers of all sizes. The Man owns several micro-screwdrivers for computer geeks. Okay, not just for computer geeks. I’ve fixed a few sunglasses with them. My screwdriver, however, was the kind where all the bits are conveniently stored in the handle – efficient. We somehow found a one and a half foot-long screwdriver in our toolbox, and still don’t know where that came from. We had two dressers, identical, funnily enough, and two pails, and…you get the point.

Since we’ve moved into our really nice condo, I’ve proudly dug my very own flowerbed which, I must admit, is really cool. I was scared. The farthest I had ever been in growing things were the flower boxes I wasted money on when we rented our apartment years ago. The balcony was way too windy for lupins and the only thing I could grow in there were geraniums. Tough little fellas, albeit sticky.

In my 20 by 4 foot flower garden, I have tulips and astilbes, and a bunch of other flowers which I vaguely know the names of in French. The other flowerbeds in the common yard are tended to by a company we pay with our condo fees. But not my garden. It’s all mine. I weed it, water it, and no one is responsible for the way it looks but me. I’m kind of proud of that even when, like today, the weeds are taking over.

So today, besides buying a nice basil plant, I purchased a tool. I think it’s called a border cutter. It will enable me to cut the grass around my garden ever so slightly, which I will do at a 45-degree angle inwards, so that everything looks neat and well taken care of. I will weed, and turn the soil over, add a little bit of top soil, and see what I can separate and what I can add.

I love my little private space, and am looking forward to this week’s nice weather.