My Delightfully Contained Garden

I don't have much experience in growing things, except that things grown in Virginia's red clay-soil never fared well, even with the soil composted and such. Up here, our landlord's garden used to extend nearly up to the back porch, and he and his wife would sell the fresh, organic produce from their driveway; now it's just a tiny patch in the back with weary soil that hasn't gotten rotated or fed in years. My husband and his mom planted veggies in 2008, before I first came to Canada, and the tomatoes, potatoes, onions, peppers, and zucchini did fabulously, but everything else either failed to grow or produced maybe one pitiful fruit.

So this year, I decided to try my own hand at gardening, but I was too lazy to turn up the untended plot in the back yard and get the soil treated and fed. So my MIL, Elisa, had the great idea to reclaim plastic containers and create a bucket garden! We punched holes in the bottoms, and I went to the farmers market and bought soil and lovely little plants.

I have two tomato plants, a cherry tomato climber, English cucumber, Spanish white onions, banana pepper, strawberry, lavender, Greek oregano, lemon balm, peppermint, and garlic.

I'll get snap peas if I can find a decent plant around here!

My banana pepper plant the other day. This baby pepper is now twice that length!

I like that my bucket garden is close to the house's side door, so I can pick up my watering can and tend to my plants without having to go far. We'll see how well they do!

Springing Toward Summertime

As the title says, it's springing toward summertime. It was around 30*C today, low humidity, and absolutely gorgeous. My MIL and I walked everywhere, yard sale hunting and then to the farmer's market so I could buy soil and more herb and veggie plants. The market was crowded with people doing the same thing! It's the big planting weekend here, and it's also Victoria Day weekend, so things are quite busy.

After dinner, we bought one-dollar slushies at Mac's and walked to Oak Bank Park, one of our favourite places to go.

The evening sun brought out brighter greens in the grass and warm gold out of the air. This golden air was full and sweet and calm, echoing with robinsong. Weeping willows and maples with leaves bigger than my hand bent over the runoff streams on the side of the road as we approached the park. Geese with their babies let me slowly approach to take photos; the females lying down with the fuzzy goslings, and the ganders standing guard over them.

The pond itself was glimmering in places as though it reflected a galaxy. Geese honked occasionally on the tiny islands formed at the centre of the pond. Turtles were swarming the water near the deck, perhaps hoping for some bread crumbs. Bright blue dragonflies whizzed by, red-winged blackbirds sang in the bulrushes, and pairs of mallard ducks calmly glided along the more shallow water. I was totally blissed out, like I am whenever I'm in nature.

We didn't see the wood ducks or the swan that Trevor and I saw last time we visited the pond:

But I'm sure we'll see them again. After all, it's going to be a long golden summer.

Spring in Ontario

Pictures I've taken ranging from our back yard to Kensington Market and Front Street. The very last photo I took on my husband's phone with Instagram. There are so many of these gorgeous pink trees around here of varying species. One thing on my bucket list is to one day own property where I can have loads of flowering trees!