Green Thumb

I am not a grower. I do not have that gift.

My parents are both gifted gardeners. My grandmother has a 20 square food concrete back yard and grows he most amazing vegetables in it. Both of my father's parents have the gift. Both of my brothers have the gift. Somehow, I have been missed.

When I lived in Verdun, I tried (and failed) to keep plants to make if feel more homey. Yes, even the ones that 'No one can kill' did not have a chance under my care.

When watching my brother's cats and plants one weekend, I successfully drowned all of his seedlings, which he never made me feel bad about.

So I have been limiting my 'help' in the Vegetable garden. There are too many people banking on eating fresh tomatoes and cucumber for me to get overly involved. I can't handle the pressure.

I did find a gift for my uncanny ability to kill all things that grow in the earth. I have taken to weeding... this needs to be done often, and since killing plants is the main part of that job description, I am the best candidate by far. I am quite comfortable with this position, as I feel as though I am helping, and am not stressed about ruining our first ever vegetable garden on the farm.

So you can imagine my hesitation this weekend when dad needed help pruning the tomatoes. This raised all kinds of red flags for me. First of all, I'm thinking that the tomato plants look great... they have taken off and become a veritable jungle of greenery. They look very healthy to me. So dad explains that pruning them will allow more sun to get to the roots, and allow the plant to put it's energy into the actual fruit rather than into the non fruit bearing stems and leaves. This is logical, but still doesn't feel right so I am apprehensive. I know very well that I am in no position to start questioning the tried and true methods of the masters, so I plop myself onto the ground and start trimming away.

The first plant took the longest. I figured it would be just my luck to clip some kind of main artery and kill the damn thing. I could practically hear my father saying 'oh, you could have clipped any one but THAT one...' I checked each branch for flowers, and if I thought there was a chance in hell that the thing might develop flowers, I let it be. I wasn't going to be held responsible for the loss of ANY tomatoes. Before clipping each branch, I asked dad if it was ok.

After the first couple of plants, I started to get into a rhythm. My mind started to clear, and I started to relax. I started to breath the delicious aroma of the tomato plants, and listen to the birds calling each other. I wondered what they were saying. I heard Constentine snort, followed by the thunder of his hooves hitting the ground as he ran around in his paddock. I smiled as Batman called to him, obviously excited by the action.

And then I noticed another sound... It has been with me since I started, but I was too focused on not killing the tomatoes to notice... I was surrounded with a constant buzzing... I looked around and noticed that there were dozens of bees working away collecting pollen. My first reaction was to hightail it out of there, bees and wasps are my one and only phobia. as I was contemplating my escape route, I noticed that they did not seem to give a damn about me. They were all just going about their business, doing their jobs... So I decided to stay put. I worked for what was probably another hour, and not one bee gave me a second glance. Could gardening have cured me of my phobia? I started thinking, if I get stung, I get stung, can't hurt more than Constentine's love nibbles...

We decided to call it a morning, and when I stood up and looked at my hands, I couldn't help but chuckle. I concluded on my own that the term 'green thumb' likely came from describing someones hands after they had been prunning tomatoes all morning. both my thumbs (and the rest of my fingers) were actually green.

Farm life (incomplete)

I found the following story while cleaning out my machine. I had started writing about my first weekend at the farm, but didn't finish... I thought I would share it anyways, so enjoy!
____________________________

Farm Life

When my mother called me a few months back to tell me that she and my father were thinking of buying a farm and asking me if I wanted in, I answered yes before she could even get to the details. With 3 dogs, a rabbit and a horse I had felt somewhat out of place in my smallish yard less duplex in Verdun for quite some time.

After listening to her plan, it seemed almost too good to be true, and definitely something only my mother could come up with. She and my father want to leave a legacy for my brothers and I. The plan was to by a farm with a decent amount of land. They would use it as a summer cottage (which they were looking to buy anyways) and someone would have to live there to look after the place (me). The rent from my apartment in Verdun would cover my rent at the farm, and I would continue to pay my mortgage on the duplex. My older brother and sister in law would get to share in the joy of the farm as well along with my nephew to be, in exchange for maintaining the Verdun property and dealing with the tenants. And they have a right to some of the land when they are ready to build a house.

Following a farm search, a bidding war, and a fiasco involving the previous owners and some equipment they wanted us to buy from them but weren’t willing to negotiate on, we became farmers… and the excitement began.

The first real adventure was the weekend my horse and my brand new pony (and myself and Todd) moved up. Due to a misunderstanding between myself and the man who was transporting my lovelies, this happened a week earlier than expected. The horses were to arrive on Sunday morning at 10:00, and as of Saturday we had no fences, no shelter, and no hay. My parents, my little (17 year old) brother, Todd and myself went up Friday night and got an early start on Saturday morning. By 8:30 my father and I were at Home Depot buying lumber for the shelter, and by 9:15 we were at the fence depot buying… the fence stuff. To my relief, the fence depot was also the co-op, so I bought my grain, and wood shavings, and a 50 kilo bag of rabbit feed. We were ready to go.

We got home, had a coffee, and got ready to start. My father gave us all tasks and very specific instructions for putting up the fence. We had an area mapped out and were satisfied with our plans. The idea was to fence off an area alongside an existing out-building, saving us money on one of the side of fencing, and allowing us to build the shelter in the building so that the horses could go in and out as they pleased. As my father and mother drove off to go to an auction to look for a ride on lawnmower, Todd, Kevin and myself got to building the fences. We measured and marked off two feet on the posts, as this is how far they needed to go into the ground. According to my father, with two people banging it in with the post banger, it should go in very easily and wouldn’t take long. Todd and I place the first post and started banging. It went in about 4 inches and then stopped. We scratched our heads for a minute, and then decided we must be hitting the concrete foundation of the huge Quonset building. So we moved the post back a few feet, and tried again. Four inches in the post stopped moving. We moved the post again, this time about 20 feet away from the building, same story. Meanwhile, my brother had been digging a trench to to run the electricity. He came to tell us that he couldn’t dig the trench because he kept hitting rocks.
Great.

Eh, Blogging

OK, so I have decided to join the blog world. In fact, I could probably say that I have been blogging for years... I have always kept blog-like stories of all my not-so interesting adventures, I just haven't done it in a blog... So I'm saying good-bye to all the scrap pieces of paper and loose word documents, and will be hence-forth compiling all of my thoughts here. Goody.