Great Summer Days

Greetings.
July was gloomy I was not happy.  August is turning out much better. Its gotten hot.  My tomatoes are doing great.  There is a aphid problem with some of my plants but nothing is dead yet.  At long last a beach day was had and it was good.

These days I have the tyranny of the produce.   I am growing more than I can realistically eat.  The other day I harvested some greens from the garden only to find more of a similar green sitting in one of my planter boxes.  Damn one more thing to eat.  There has been some concern for my mental health as I found my self willingly eating kale.  This out of normal behavior has since been rationalized as a reflection on my desire not to buy leafy greens as long as my garden can produce them for me.

Work is also going well.  You have to enjoy a job where an afternoon can be spent learning how to make your job easier.  Its not easy being inside with the bright sun and I have to admit that as long as I have my projects under control I am leaving the office quickly.  To be fair if when there is a bigger work load I stay in a little longer but high summer and a slow work flow will drive me outside.

Presenting this week in Gardening

Greetings Bloggies.

Having given it some though I have decided that yes I will use this forum to tell any one who cares about how great my life in Vancouver is.
Today and yesterday I walked home from work.  Last weeks rushed rides to work left my knee feeling funny and the Seattle trip and late running
Sunday evening left me tired.  So riding has not been happening this week.
Thankfully I am only about an hour and twenty minutes from home and that is taking my time.  So it was a lovey evening and my time was taken.

On this walk I past an orchid that stank of trash or crap, I could not tell for sure, I could tell the flies loved it. I took a detour today,
it might have been a short cut but for taking the wrong path through McSpaddon park.  This turned out to have a surprise in it.
Hiding away next to the tennis court is a Community garden.  I thing I may have seen it before but thought that it was some how attached to a school.
Today I walked right by it and saw that it was green and full of future and present food.

Curiosity lead me to slip through the gate and have a closer look.  Some are over grown some are well tended some are weeded but need details
 managed like climbing things for peas.  The place is pleasant.  As it turns out my garden Annex has slightly more then double the area of the
 plots in that garden.  That garden also suffers from being overly Clayey and needed a boost in organics to improve texture.

Naturally I said hello to the one person tending to a plot.  This plot had some Swiss chard, radishes, of which a rather large bright red one was extracted.
A conversation about gardening was had with the young woman who was weeding that plot.  I explained my plan for my mini greenhouse, I was carrying 4 bamboo sticks.
I shared a home grown radish I had picked yesterday.  We both benifited from gardening advice from a later arrivel at the plot.  Tips on tomatoes were shared.

Eventually I did leave the garden but not before leaving with a new plant.  Some member of the mint family I am not positive on its ID.  I know a handful of mint family things
it is not but no certainy of what it is.  I made it home.  Changed out of work cloths put rice and the left over chicken in the rice maker and turned it on.  That proved to be a
highly successful method.  THe rice got cooked just fine and the chicken came out hot but not dry from having steamed with the rice.

The automatic dinner heating gave me time to build the salvaged green house.  Today a fellow who sublet an office within the office my company occupies was moving out.  He was switching
to a home based business so he could spend more time with his little one.  Thanks to his cleaning I found a large role of clear plastic in a recycling bin.  Yesterday I had used some
plastic bags go shelter a pair of struggling tomato plants and a pepper plant.  These were uggly and rather adhoc creations.  The plasitc presented a better fix.

So the mint like thing was planted in an empty slot left by a cucumber that was not sprouting. An A frame was cobbled together using bamboo and string.  The plastic was stuck in place with
tape aquired last year after a friend left the job.  It took lots of tape and I had just enough plastic. Its more than a little ugly, but I have easier access to the
plants thanks to the flip up end.

I also have to report that my Kale is growing well as are the potatoes, one of the tomatoe plants has more then one generation of flowers on it and several are getting close to blooming.  

The Garden Annex

The start of the Annex.  The two stakes
mark tomato plants from my landlord.

Greetings Bloggies.

When last we spoke I was unloading my self of a couple tones of iron and plastics. I do not regret that choice.  Somedays I think I wish I could have a car to move one thing once.  Those days are few enough in between for me to know that I am not really needing it.

Today I am going to tell you all about my accidental garden.  When last we met the garden I was offered a small corner of the plot across the alley. I accepted that offer and later that weekend tilled that plot with a hand trowel.  That is not the smart way to garden.  It was enough for me to plant the first generation of veggie seedlings some of my own and some from my sister.   I could nearly have kept things there save for the ticking biological time bomb that was the tomatoes.

Some fool thought it was a good
idea to sell me a spade.

Mr. Socks, him cat.

I was given 4 tiny pucks of dirt with tomato seeds planted in them.  I had no trouble sprouting them in the Hobbit hole but thriving beyond that did not happen here. So I did what any sane person would do.  Transplant the sad skinny things and take them to my office with its south facing windows.  That was the recipe for growth.  Within days they had grown more then they had in the three weeks they had spent in my house.  The tomatoes were quickly running out of soil too much longer in the office and a hot day would have killed them. The tiny toothpick sized things were now 30 to 50 cm tall and out of room to grow.  So I did another perfectly sane thing, I bought a spade.

The tomatoes forced my hand.  There was not enough space in the corner plot to fit them and I lacked potting soil and pots to give them the chance they needed on the patio.  Hence the spade.  On a Saturday after noon I went and got a tool.  I then dug out the whole garden.  At this time nothing had been planted and the untilled earth was getting hard.  So my logic was even if I don't plant it my self at least it will be ready.  I finished that day with 4 raised beds.  Then next day I went to my office and repatriated some very thirsty tomatoes.

The plot as of today.

 

Radishes

I should have known I would not stop there, and I did not.  The final bed is still not yet planted. Three of the beds are planted with seed purchased by the gardens official tenants and soon I will need a hose. 

I have been making do with a bucket that spent the last 6 months siting on the side of the street next to where I used to park my car.  This will do until the cucumbers and zucchini come online. 

A wake for Serenity.

Greetings Bloggies.

I did something big this week. I became car free.  It was a long time in the making andit was the natural thing to do.  I had owned a 1999 Subaru Legacy for four years.  In April of 2007 I had cash from my North West Territories gig and was needing mobility in a bad way.  I was splitting my time between Nakusp and the Okanagan and the north. The car was needed to get me around and back to the airport.  In those days I was effectively homeless but had lots of places I visited.   I named it Serenitybecause well that was also the year I fell in love with Firefly.

I was never a car person. I came to driving late, not getting my license till I was 26.  A car is a black box fossil fuels go in momentum and green house gasses come out.  I was bad at taking care of it.  My values never placed putting money in to its up keep a priority.  Though a few things played out against it.  In October 2008 I got laid off and repairs slipped in my priority list as I clamped down on spending.  I also never took the time to find a shop.  I was absent minded about simple things like checking the oil.  Three times I drove into things costing me money to fix the bumper.  The third time cost me my signal light which I never fixed, I taped it up and it still worked, but I figured why fix it I will ding it again any way. Countless times I completely over revved when shifting and made burnt car parts smell.

In the country I loved driving that car.  Between the springs of 2008 and 2009 I made many trips over the mountains from Nakusp to Nelson and Castlegar. I enjoyed those drives, the zigs and the zags.  Put me in traffic and I my attitude goes down hill quickly.  After I moved to Burnaby to attend BCIT I used Serenity a lot less.   Once a week became the normal mode.  Then Twice a month.  Burnaby was big enough and I was far enough from things to make using make some sense.   Last august after using Serenity to drive a way from the worst job EVER, I moved in to the Hobbit hole in East van.  This move saw a major drop in usage.

Moving in to the Hobbit hole lead to a spike in driving as repeated trips to IKEA were need to make the hole livable.  That period passed and usage dropped to once a month or less.  I still live in the Hobbit hole and am planning to stay there for some time.  I know of more neighborhoods where I can find a pedestrian lifestyle and I have no desire to change that.  In some ways this is a return to my families roots as most of us have been dutch city dwellers.

After the moving in phase I knew getting ride of Serenity was a goal.  I knew from my time in Burnaby that I did not drive much in the city.  I also knew that my location was better then I had in Burnaby, I am closer to the trains and right out on two major bus routes. At first, I thought about selling it online, but got distracted by work or looking for work.  I also held the belief that once I had a steady income I would fix it up.  Time when on and I realized thats not my game.  Its sad to say but the truth is my car declined in condition because I could not be bothered.  Perhaps I would have used it more over the winter if I had not left my snow triers in the Kooteneys but thats speculation.  More recently I made a half hearted effort to sell it.  I did not want to pass a lemon on to honest people.

I reached a compromise this week.  I donated it to a Kidney charity.  It got transported from here for free.  They will make an effort to sell it and I get a tax receipt which will help me out with my plans for this year.  I was a little saddened to see the thing go.  4 years is a while.  It played a huge role in my personal life in the Kooteneys, with many a good and a few bad memories attached.  It was something I proud of at first.  It was a grown up thing to have gotten, but I stopped being proud of it as my neglect added up.  The last few times I drove it the exhaust system was getting really loud and I felt ashamed to be in it.

Gardening or How to meet your Neighbors

Greetings Bloggies.

And Sow it begins.

So it came to pass that on Wednesday evening I was at loose ends.  Work had left me tired and a little stressed.  The job is good, I am learning every day.  Deadlines, technology and using my brain all day do add up. So as it has become some what routine, I watched the previous nights Colbert Report and made some dinner. I need to veg out a bit.    After dinner I watched an other 20 minutes of tv before asking well now what.  Not feeling too energetic I chose a walk over a bike ride. I did not make it very far.

Five meters past the back gate is about as far as I made it.  I spotted a neighbor I had not seen tending the never tended garden plot in the back yard of the house opposite mine.  Not being shy I said hi.   She was cute.  

Dar She Grows. 

Honestly I had nothing better to do nor could I think of a better thing to do.  I took off my good jacket got my hands dirty pulling weeds.  Notes were compared in the smallness and remoteness of the towns we came from.  I believe my neighbor was from Fort Saint something.

An apparent side effect of country living is the chance to learn a thing or two about dirt.  Though I never had the slightest interest in tending the soil when I lived in the country.  It happened that I had at least a half informed notion of what was food and what was foe.

The plot thickens

The I don't know what I want feeling went away.  My hands got dirty, small talk was had.  The garden cleaned up.  It went from a over grown patch that I did not even know was a garden to a blank slate ready to make food and pretty flowers.  That simple act of doing reset my brain.

Open the pod bay doors HAL 

In my mind Gardening is slowly becoming foods little brother.  Though I had always cooked in some capacity I did not approach it as obsessively till I had lost control of it for some time.  The lose  of control came from camp life.

Out there, in places remote enough for the notion of "The Outside World" meaning, you are fed.  They cook for you in exchange for a very long days and what was to me dull work. Returning to civilization drove me to express the creativity I was denied out there.

Long garden is long. 

The same places where I was fed are also places where the ground is white more of the year then it is bare.  Places where the soil is an after thought if there is any.  Now back in a place where there is green I want to add more too it.  It also happens that you can grow food which makes the whole thing double-plus-good.

So this may come a bit late for mother's day but the thanks has go out there.  I have to thank my mother for teaching me the basics of cooking and gardening.  Cooking was a more deliberate act of teaching.  The knowledge of gardening was haphazard.  I learned about gardening because if it was between May and September/ October, if I wanted to talk to her I had to come to her and that place was the gardens.  Weather you want or not you learned to tell some plants a part, how to transplant thing and how to weed things.

The BBQ might become a planter. 

 It has come to pass that the arts of making and growing food are slowly enriching my social life.   I have said more to my land lady since I have planted my peas then I have since last summer.  Of coarse the friends that hate me for my facebook food posts will hate me even more once I start posting the dinners with the home grown greens but thats their troubles.        

What I learned from Bread.

Greetings Bloggies.

So when last I wrote I was stuck on the loose of the past narrative in my life.  Well life does not stop.  I find there are difficulties with my new job that keep me thinking.  Some work nights I don't sleep as well as I should.  I know for sure that I am not doing my work as fast or as well as I could.  Which is why I am going to write about bread.

In the spring of 2009 I was in the depths of my being laid off state.  I had not made serious progress in getting a job and was only starting the process that would take me to BCIT.  During that time in a move based on the desire of safety I was staying in the old log cabin at my folks place.  Due to the limitations of that dwelling, its lacking both internet, TV and running water, I spent time in the folks dwelling, where I would make some use of the kitchen.

At this time many days were unproductive and I strongly lacked motivation.  So I sought a way to create a feeling of having done something.  There was also a element of recovery to this, I could not cook in the camp I had spent the previous years working at so I getting back into that game was part of my return to the world.  So bread became a challenge for my self.

My early loafs were inconsistent, hard, dense and took me hours to make.  Now bread still takes hours to make there is no way around that.  In the early days I would read the recipes to the letter and measure with care.  Due care and attention and guild lines still resulted in breads that lost all their charm the moment they cooled to room temperature.  I was missing something.

A no knead bread, during the Soviet Potluck at BCIT.
In Nisgia'a D, The potluck Organizes you. 

Fast forward to easter weekend.  A point in time somewhere near the two year mark in my bread journey.  Over those two years I have made bread off and on depending on weather, employment and the state of my mind.  Progress was made, first I mastered a batter bread that needed know kneading, then i moved on to french bread.  So back to the weekend.

Sunday evening I figure I want to make bread.  I start a dough.  Realizing it was late and I did not want to stay up late enough to let it rise properly I retool it to become a yeast based pancake.  In the morning I make and eat said pancakes.  They were all right, and I was faced with a large bowl full of yeasty batter.  I had made enough for a loaf so It was a lot of batter.  I do the only thing that made sense, feed it more flour and worry about what to do with it later.

Later becomes late.  I had a short notice dinner with a friend and college.  Strange to see a friendship/business contact grow and know this is how grownup things happen.  Three beers and at even more hours later I come home to find a monster in the bowl.  Through luck a cool house and lots of flour the dough did not over ferment and develop a yeasty flavor.  Without a recipe without a plan I turned that sticky mass into bread.

The bread from Easter weekend, Made with no plan.
  

This worked and worked out well for one reason, practice.  After two years my fingers know what a good dough feels like, I know how to micro adjust the moisture by just wetting my hands under the tap.  Those and many more little methods turned a creation that did not know what it wanted to be into a good loaf.  It is in light of this accumulated know how that lets me know my current imperfect performance at work will end and in the future I will be good at it.  Like with bread things that were hard ant took a lot of thought will become easy and I will be able to through ingredients together in a rush and make them work.

A flat bread. 

The end of a narrative.

Greetings.

As I finished writing the last post I realized something.  I have reached the end of a narrative.  This blog started as a way of killing time and creating some level of connection with the outside world.  Discovery NWT, Rabbit lake Sask and Minto YT are all places remote enough to give the phrase "outside world" meaning.  I was not in the field long before I realized it was not for me.  I held on because I needed money and at discovery, the operation was more relaxed then at some the other sites.

Depending on when and how you divide up the time I was in a state of unhappy employment or unemployment for at least 3 years.  This blog has helped me vent.  For now my work is interesting but not mind breaking.  This begs the question, what is this blog for now.  I have no short term plans to go any place remote, my life does not suck.  Do you 5 readers really want to be blasted with stories of how good life is in Vancouver, because without the north controlling my life thats what this might come to.

Just to show my life is not all rainbow scented unicorn farts, I went to my favorite chocolate shop only to discover I had no means of giving them money on my person.  So I had to ride my bike back along False creek without gourmet chocolate.