(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! 

Slug Challenge Kick-off 2018

The first seeds have been planted. This means that my yearly challenge has been issued to the slugs who are the de facto overlords of The Crooked Wood.

I think this is year two (?) for my flat-topped hugelkultur bed. 

I bought a bigger bottle of Abundance liquid fertilizer at Seedy Saturday this year, but last year's empty is still in my garden. I think this photo demonstrates how picturesque it can be to be messy and a total chaos muppet.

I hear slugs hate sand, so I gave this bed of bok choy and other greens a good sprinkling...

Salinger enjoys gardening. And, of course, he is quite good about staying off the planting beds –
at least when anyone is watching. Now, if only I could help him acquire a taste for hunting slugs – but ugh.

Some of the open-sourced seeds I got from the lovely folks at Seedy Saturday this year
(held in Dayspring at the Municipal Activity and Recreation Complex, aka the MARC, back in February).

The garlic I planted in the fall is several inches above the ground, so that's encouraging. I am planning to build many more hugelkultur beds in the next couple of weeks – some for veggies, some for flowers and herbs, some located along my driveway and others on the land that was cleared around the new cabin. 

I am also harbouring some nut tree fantasies. I haven't decided yet if those are in my budget for this year, but I expect you know the saying: "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."

Construction: Week 2

This process is getting smoother as it goes along. It took me almost a whole week before I managed a report on Week 1 and here is the Week 2 update after just a couple of days. 

On Monday, last week, my amazing friend and another amazing friend of ours came to spread several tons of Class C and Class A gravel to extend the pad around the foundation. We had to hustle because the crew was coming to build the form at 2pm. So, hustle we did and we got 'er done in time. 

The pad at the beginning of the form's construction.

The form had to be meticulously measured to make sure it was a rectangle and not a parallelogram. I was proud to see that our measurements were very close to the pros'. As the form was built, it had to be leveled, too. A couple of our corners were a few inches lower than the others, but it was nothing that a little crushed rock couldn't fix.

No fair! They had a rock "slinger" and filled the form with gravel in a fraction of the time that it took us to spread gravel for the pad!

Three-inch thick and 2-foot wide foam insulation was placed around the edges on the inside of the form. The centre was then filled with gravel up to the edges of the insulation.

On Tuesday, the plumber came to install the under-slab plumbing. It was an unbelievably hot day for late September in Nova Scotia. Actually, it was an unusually hot day for Nova Scotia – period. To reduce the risk of my plumber passing out from heat exhaustion, I pitched in to help dig channels in the gravel to place the pipes and then helped fill in around them. Even sharing the work, we had to take several breaks for water and popsicles.

It's a small job – one 3-piece bathroom and a kitchen sink, but it's still a lot of pipes...

Once the under-slab plumbing was done and inspected, the slab contractors had to come back to do the next steps.

Stakes and pieces of 2x4 bolster the sides of the form, so it won't fall apart when the concrete is poured.

Insulation is fitted over top of the gravel and pipes.

Rebar and wire mesh are added to reinforce the concrete.

Surprise! The plumber needed a wooden box to put around the shower drain to keep it free of concrete and allow him some wiggle room to place the drain correctly under the shower pan. I had no idea this would be necessary, but fortunately, my builder was able to build the box on short notice and the slab contractors cut the angle to fit the slope of the insulation.

To recap, the following steps were completed during Week 2:

1. Excavation
2. Construction of the form
3. Under-slab plumbing
4. Under-slab plumbing inspection
5. Insulation and wire mesh

I felt much more steady during Week 2 than I did during Week 1. Working with friends the first week gave me the safety to meltdown and be supported in my doubts and fears. Now that things have moved into the hands of strangers, I'm rising to the to occasion and pulling myself together a bit more. It helps that I feel like I am developing a better handle on this process. Learning what to expect and what I can do to help facilitate things is helping me maintain a more positive and relaxed attitude.

It helps that the contractors working with me (and their crews) have been stellar, fitting this project into their schedules with virtually no delays. It feels like a complicated process to weave all of these inter-dependent tasks, but so far, it's been almost seamless, and that is helping to build my confidence. 

I'm optimistic about Week 3. If things continue in the same vein, the slab should be poured by the end of this week! (knock wood)

Construction: Week 1

Mumma, for why all these changes?

Well, after months of planning, designing, stressing, worrying and lining up contractors and estimates and quotes, the ball finally started rolling last week. 

I had found a contractor to pour the slab for my foundation, but I couldn't find anyone who was available to do the excavation. It feels like the entire south shore of Nova Scotia is madly building, trying to get things done before the snow flies and contractors are busy, busy, busy! I feel lucky to have found the great bunch of contractors who've agreed to work on this project, but I struck out trying to find a excavation contractor who was available, affordable and with whom I felt comfortable. And without the excavation work, nothing could move forward.

Luckily for me, my friend of the amazing chainsaw skills has myriad other skills and offered to do the excavation work I needed to have done. Not that he's not extremely busy, too, but he made the time so that work at my place wouldn't be held up – a tremendous and generous gift to me.

The first task was "scrubbing off" the organic matter, dead and alive.

It was a perfect opportunity to take logs that had been cut over the past year and a half to make way for the driveway and power lines and load them on the trailer to go off to be milled into useful lumber.

One of the limbs had to be removed from old Father Maple so that the big trucks would be able to back right up to the form. He remains a stately, if somewhat less crooked, presence. 

We had to have a couple of loads of shale delivered.

And my friend brought tons of gravel in his truck and trailer, too... 

...much of which we spread by hand using shovels, rakes and buckets.

I got to drive the excavator when the right-rear wheel of the truck went over the edge of the driveway and the truck had to be assisted back onto solid ground.

The awesome slab contractor loaned us his transit level so we could check how level the pad was as we spread the gravel. 

A DEEP trench had to be dug for the well line to go out from the house. You never think how deep 4 feet is, but it's deep enough when you're trying to dig through rocky South Shore Nova Scotian soil! 

I'm not going to lie to you, I melted down more than once last week. I felt so overwhelmed. I wished that I had never had the temerity to think that I could organize having a small cabin built for myself.

Days were spent leveling ground, moving logs and getting gravel in place. Despite being worn out by the work, I did not sleep well, waking up in the middle of the night with anxious thoughts like, "What am I doing?" and "Why did I decide to do this?"

There were some shaky, miserable hours. Fortunately, a number of people close to me provided moral support and tangible help, often exactly when it was needed most.

And there were some exiting moments, too. I invested in a chain saw and used it for the first time ever! And I drove the excavator. And I worked: healthy, outdoor, physical labour.

As the work progressed, I started to feel better. Excavation was hard – it felt like we were ripping the land to pieces. Fortunately, after ripping it apart, we started to put it back together again. And for me, as that happened "Why am I doing this?" and "What am I doing?" transformed into "I am doing this."

The definiteness of that is a lot more comfortable than sitting in the unknown of doubts and second guesses.

And since I am doing this, I want to embrace the process. After several wobbly weeks, I've come to understand that if I want this house to be built wholeheartedly, by people who are kind and easy through the process, that means that I have to find kindness and ease in my heart, too.

Otherwise, there is no point.

This construction project requires Salinger to be vigilant and alert. On Friday, when all the machines had gone away for a bit, he had to have some serious naps to recover from all of the excitement.

Less Crooked, Less Wooded

At the same time that I've been stressing quite a bit about this building project, things are moving forward. 

A little over a week ago, my dear friend who is an artist with a chainsaw came over and in about two hours felled six large trees – two dead and four living – all too close for comfort to the site for the house (especially with all of the big storms that we can expect to keep threatening the Atlantic coast). 

Two spruces felled meticulously right on top of each other.

The smaller spruce was riddled with ants. All the more reason to be glad that it's no longer towering over where the cabin will be! 

The spruce that got taken down by my compost pile was a giant. It's hard to count the rings exactly because the ones in the centre are so tiny, but my guesstimate is about 120 years. *bows head*

The giant on the ground.

There is quite a comfy spot to sit in the branches of the downed tree.

From the perch pictured just above, there is an excellent view of this crooked pine. We left this tree standing as it is obviously leaning dramatically AWAY from the site for the house and is highly unlikely to fall on top of it. 

Two steps forward and one step back: my clothesline had to be dismantled temporarily, as it was attached on one end to a maple tree that was leaning sharply toward the site for the cabin, a maple tree that can be seen here lying at feet of the other end of the clothesline. Installing the clothesline was my first DIY project on this land and it has been consistently useful;
I will miss it until it can be set up again.

Salinger was surprisingly unfazed by the changes. He seemed happy to be the conquerer of the newly felled trees, including the "clothesline maple" pictured here.

There is much more sunlight now in the Crooked Wood. It feels a bit odd, but I'm sure I'll get used to it – and I'll be especially glad to be less shaded during the brief winter days...

Last week was a hard one for me.

I felt really crappy about deciding to kill those beautiful trees. I didn't expect to feel that way because I didn't feel anywhere near as bad when we felled many more trees to bring in the driveway and the power lines. Not to mention all of the firewood I've burned to keep warm throughout my life, each chunk of which came from a beautiful, living tree and to be honest, I never really even thought about it...

Perhaps my overall state of mind, my anxiety about the build, is what made me feel so guilty and sad about these trees. Or maybe I felt so bad because I knew these trees. I've lived here for two summers now and those trees have been some of my closest neighbours.

They were beautiful. They were my elders. They were here first. And I had them removed because they were in my way and because I could. They grew here for sixty, eighty, a hundred+ years and then each came down in a matter of minutes.

And although we honoured and embraced them before they were felled, and although they will live on, becoming furniture and/or hugelkultur beds and/or firewood and/or beautiful decomposing logs and brush that will nourish this land and give life to other trees, to fungi, mosses and insects, I mourn them. (Their deaths have made me look at some tricky questions around my own sense of entitlement, but I think I'll save those thoughts for another blog post).

As things stand now, "Them's history," as my Nana would have said. Fortunately, I'm recovering from feeling guilty and sad about deciding to cut them down. I'm doing this – I'm making a permanent dwelling for myself on this piece of land and there is no point feeling bad about it. Since I'm going to do it anyway, it's better to do it with love, gratitude and celebration than with self-doubt and regret.

This attitude adjustment has arrived just in the nick of time: we're breaking ground today.