The Glory of Bergamot or The Garden in Midsummer

The garden went from sluggish to overdrive with the arrival of summer rain, it was like the garden was expressing relief, lettuce is overflowing, the currants are big black and begging to become jelly, and the bergamot is a battlefield. The humming birds are crazed by so much deep red. I am humbly attempting a French style kitchen garden, so far I believe the there have been some successes and certainly some failures. I believe the mountain of chicken shit that I got from Annie might just be the snake oil the failures need to help turn things around.

About The House or the Graceful Demise of the Rural Farmhouse

I have a love of old houses that borders on dangerous, peeling paint, broken windows, sorrowful decay, all set my heart pounding with desire. The first time I saw this house I was almost speechless, and each time we drove past on our way to somewhere else, I felt a tug of longing worse than an addict in a dry spell. Six months after arriving in rural Nova Scotia, we surrendered to my passions and bought this proud and shabby 1860's house. The yard had waist high weeds and a small patch of what had once been a garden, there was no running water or electricity, but I was blind to any flaws or impossibilities. Now four years into this grand adventure, we have some creature comforts, we also have adjusted our ambitious dreams so that they may live a little closer to reality.

It took two summers to paint the outside, hours of battling the persistent black flies, scrapping, sanding and filling. The deeper I got into the project the more frightening discoveries surfaced. There is dry rot, sagging beams, rotten window and door sills, the list grows and becomes more daunting every day luckily I am rather impervious to the idea of impossible. Some would call my persistence a character flaw, others might call it gumption, I think the reality is that I just don't take to being told it can't be done.

Early Summer

The East Coast is a muggy hot mess, too hot to garden or sleep upstairs, actually too hot to sleep at all. I am already concerned about the prospect of watering the ever increasing vegetable garden. Currently we water the garden only with rain water collected in various old plastic garbage cans and buckets, not really a system but it is what I have on hand. I have decided to mulch this year, with newspapers, compost, sheep manure, and anything else I come across. Last year when water became scarce we drove the old pick-up truck down to the lake and filled any container I could find with lake water which I used for the veggies, flowers do not get water unless they appear completely desperate.

So far this year has been off to a less than satisfactory start, too much cold, too much wind, late frosts, and now heat that feels likes it is rising from hell's furnace. Seeds seem to want to grow any way except for one patch of carrots that though planted twice refuse to present themselves, either they are playing the late prom queen, they are not happy with their neighbourhood, or something thinks they delicate young shoots taste fantastic.

Of course carrots love tomatoes. I might give a few more patches of carrots a try yet this year if I can find a place to fit them in.