Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Organic Market Garden Update

Here we are at mid june and things have greened up beautifully since the last garden post. I 'm enjoying the walk each day through the vibrant dappled greens along the path to the berry garden. I'll be putting out the Organic Market Garden sign at the roadside this week. The Salmon River B&B & Restaurant of St Martins has become a regular customer, going thru an ever increasing amount of mixed salad greens and herbs every few days. I mix together several types of mesclun  and oak leaf lettuce, baby beet and arugula leaves, and some baby spinach. The owners tell me that the customers are loving their new healthier menu.
       So far I also have ready swiss chard, a wee bit of broccoli, onion tops, chives, cilantro, sage, tarragon and chervil. The usual villans have shown up with their destructive appetites: brassica and arugula loving flea beetles, slugs and snails.
    Bottomless ice cream buckets with a mesh top are just the best thing for wind and chewing bug protection, and pushed down into the soil, they also foil the cutworms.                  These cauliflower plants are now big and strong enough to withstand the flea beetles so they can lose their buckets  to the tender squash and cucumber transplants. I use a pile of sheer curtains I found at the Re-store as row covers for the arugula and turnip, otherwise there would be nothing left. The hoop houses described in an earlier post have had a succession of crops since  housing the baby chard back in march. The radishes have come and gone, now the hoop beds are sheltering a second planting of arugula and some tender beans.
     Scarlet runner beans are finding their way up the poles. Their blossoms make such a bright splash of color in the midsummer garden, and how the hummingbirds love them. I put the beans through my bean frencher and sell them that way, all thinly sliced and ready to steam gently and enjoy.
      Some of the potatoes planted under mulch are beginning to blossom. I so look forward to the first dinner with new baby potatoes, there's nothing like it!
     Giant Tess, the swamp lady is at her usual haunt by the pond...lazy sod never does anything useful, but demands an all over haircut every few days, Such a high maintenance creature she is.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Finally Canadian

I've been a landed immigrant in Canada since I was a child in 1957, crossing the Atlantic from Britain on the rolling and pitching SS Newfoundland. Its been a wonderful adventure in a terrific country, but I never went for actual citizenship I guess because I'm a procrastinator with an aversion to paperwork. After 9-11 there was suddenly a requirement for a $50. plastic card to identify all the dastardly immigrants which I found quite insulting after all my tax paying years. Renewable at $50. or more every 5 years. So I got the card because I had to, and then we had occasion to cross the border into Maine, wherupon the opportunistic american border guards fleeced me for $6.00 because I had a british passport. No explanation given for such discrimination. When I asked the Canadian side about it the man was completely unaware of the fee.
So with a stupid $6.00 rather arbitrary toll cutting into my fun at Mardens Discount Everything in Calais, ME, I decided that's it, the last $6.00 the buggers will get from me. So I paid my $200. to the Canadian government (It's the principle of the thing) and a year of aggravating paperwork later, Im waiting for my swearing in ceremony that was promised in may, and I see in the newspaper to my dismay, a photo of the said ceremony attended the day before by a large group of colorfully clad happy immigrant/new citizens fresh off the boat so to speak. "Wait a minute ! I've been here since 1957! How could you not invite me to the party??" Paperwork screwup, I got lost in the mail somehow. So the nice people at citizenship & immigration scheduled my own private swearing in ceremony yesterday. I am now a fully fledged Canadian Citizen. Take that america!