(Very) amateur gardening and foraging

I have many friends who are amazing – and often professional – gardeners and foragers. I am not one of them. But at the end of a long (and fairly frustrating) week of desk work, it felt lovely on this hot, Friday evening to take a walk around my property. 

Before I get back to work for a couple more hours, I would like to share my photos with you.

Embryonic zukes. I'm hoping for a deluge
(this is the first year a zucchini plant has lived to maturity in my garden).

My first few raspberries!

Kale and other greens.

My main garden area is a chaotic, haphazard mess with treacherous
footing. It hardly feels like it interrupts the woods at all and I love it!

Flowers planted – or soon to be planted – in my scattered
hugelkultur beds and my "septic meadow".

The black walnut tree (a gift from my folks) that I planted the first year I owned this land.
It's doing well, but I think I'm going to move it next spring as it is fairly close to my
well and I don't want any juglone in my water supply...

Old dump (one of several).

Sweet little oaklings are shooting up in the sunshine
available since so many big trees uprooted this winter. 

I marked the spot where I found some chanterelles with a flag of green tape.

Indian Pipes – a chanterelle companion/marker.

One small chanterelle, with requisite slug.

Weird little standing stone beauty spot.

I wonder if there are chanterelles hidden under those downed trees?

Salinger leads the way onward.

I only have three acres, but I am endlessly amazed by the variety
of the terrain. The brook that forms the boundary line at the
back of The Crooked Wood is surrounded by a grassy wetland.
The footing here is treacherous and always puts me in mind
of the Marshes of Morva in Lloyd Alexander's Prydain. Someday,
when I have time, I plan to build some corduroy paths through
this area so I can explore it without losing my boots.

The most open skies in The Crooked Wood.
With signature crookedness, of course.

Crooked fallen tree beauty spot.

Crackerjacks, I think these are called. The berries taste like wintergreen;
I don't like wintergreen. At all. They are very cheerful-looking though. 

In my earlier post about gardening this year, I pondered whether I would have the budget to invest in some nut trees, and shortly after I wrote that post, some friends announced that they had some leftovers from a big order they had placed that they were selling at excellent prices.

I bought six – two hazelnuts, two heartnuts, one Persian Walnut and one Ultra-Northern Pecan. I thought I lost three of them in the late frost that hit in June – all of the leaves on the Walnut and one of the heartnuts turned black and shrivelled up and the pecan tree was just a stick.

Amazingly, they bounced back and all six are currently alive and well.

The Persian Walnut, thriving. 

The Ultra-Northern Pecan. Just a stick for the longest time,
the leaves on this tree still seem small and tentative, almost
as if they are saying "Is it okay to come out yet?" It's 36 degrees
with the humidex, baby, and it's not going to get any warmer
(At least, I hope not).

When I was digging the holes to plant the nut trees – all six of them in one day after a winter of desk work, which was a bit of trial by fire – I described the process as "piling in with a pickaxe to uncover rocks – and air". Quite literally, the was very often NO SOIL in the places where I hoped to put my trees. So, I cleared out the rocks and had to bring buckets of soil and compost to make the holes habitable.

Here is a picture of one of the many trees that uprooted on my land this winter,
illustrating that trees living with their roots in rocks and air are
very likely to tip over if the wind blows hard enough. 

Looking up the hill at the cabin. 

Approaching the back door. In time, this chaotic
tangle of dead wood will be transformed into a garden.
In time. Probably lots and lots of time.

Thanks for coming along with me on this little tour. If you garden or forage, I wish you a bountiful summer! 

Scent memory – hot conifers

It's been really warm on the south shore of Nova Scotia for the past week or so. Mid-to-high twenties with humidex warnings – something we are not used to at all.

I drove home late this evening after playing some songs at a show in Mahone Bay. I got out at the top of my driveway to pick up the stupid flyers that someone throws there every Wednesday and I was hit with the smell of The Crooked Wood at the end of a hot day. Hot pine and spruce trees, hot fir and hemlock.

That smell never fails to take me to a very specific place and time: 1981, the Sierra Nevada mountains, California.

I was ten years old and my dad was driving me and my sister from Toronto to San Diego and back again. Why? Partly because my dad loves car trips and partly to see some cousins and my dad's grandmother (aka, my great-grandmother, "California Nana" as we called her).

We met up with one of my dad's first cousins with his wife and kids in King's Canyon National Park and spent a few days camping there. Talk about hot conifers! Ninety-some-odd degrees Fahrenheit and sunny during the days in the midst of a forest of giant sequoia and redwood trees. I don't think I'd ever smelled that smell before. Growing up in Toronto, there simply weren't enough trees and while summer trips to Harbourville, Nova Scotia had provided lots of exposure to evergreen trees, they weren't ever hot – they seemed almost perpetually fogged in, their scent easily drowned out by the smell of the salt, sea air.

I think it's safe to say that I fell in love with the smell of hot evergreen trees during those few days in King's Canyon National Park. I never smell them now without feeling something about how it felt to be 10 years old. I was on the cusp of so much change, but I wasn't changed yet. I felt I was exactly who I was, and who I had so far felt myself to be in life. That smell is locked deep in my psyche, somewhere innocent and fun-loving, a place that houses a deep sense of peace and love and selfhood.

I hope everyone has a smell like that – whether it's grandma's cookies or the smell of baseball gloves or rain on dry pavement – something that takes them back to a time that felt essential and clear, that grants a window, or better still, a door back to that state of being, to a state of grace.