Fruity goings on today

So Himself always has a project or twenty on the go.

Which I like in a man with whom I am sharing a life.

Himself also has the attention span of a Jack Russell with a big territory to mind.

Which has its benefits. But also its downsides.

By that I mean that he's very organised of course.

I just asked Himself if he minded if I described him as a Jack Russell with a big territory to mind and he said okay, eventually.

Kitty wanted to know whether it was a rabbit.

Kitty is on a canihavearabbitificleanthekitchen kick at the moment.

No.

You cannot have a rabbit, nor a Jack Russell, which is not a rabbit.

Jack Russells don't get the attention they deserve over here. Pity.

Anyways, the sun has come out, which means we have moved into the yard on a semi-permanent basis.

The first project was the canoe.

We bought the canoe and built a platform for it.

And Himself bought the necessary tools to grind the fibreglass off the canoe and redo it.

And the sun shone really brightly one weekend and we had a lovely weekend with Himself grinding the canoe (which was a bit loud) and Queenie starting to clear the vegetable patch.

Then Himself decided that the grinding tool (a palm sander) wasn't up to the job.

So he had to get A REAL GRINDER.

Which we have now.

But then he needed to get the right sandpaper.

And then it rained.

So I have a half-ground canoe and no canoeing done yet this year.

Meanwhile, Queenie read her gardening book and bought seeds and started talking about compost etc. Because Queenie has just the one project in the summer, which is the garden.

This year I am planting elephant garlic, onions, carrots, beets, potatoes, tomatoes, spinach, chives, lettuce, and herbs - rosemary, sage, basil, parsley, dill and thyme.

Things I like to eat.

No radishes this year.

I bought corn, but I don't have enough room to grow it I think.

I am also planting pole runner beans, which have red flowers that attract hummingbirds apparently, and some other grass type thingy which has big yellow flowers that attract butterflies.

This year I am not planting the dill next to the carrots.

This year I swear I am going to find marigolds. Shelley downstairs, who is a horticulturist, says it is really hard to get them. I'm sure they have seeds in Ireland.

HINT HINT.

Shelley is going to grow zucchini and squash.

And flowers.

So last weekend we went to the garden centre to get mega earth and compost and lime (having figured out that the garden is acidic).

If your radishes are rockin' and everything else is crap, your soil is acidic.

The Northern Gardener, by Jennifer Bennett (1982), page 121. Yard sale, Halifax, last summer. The best thing I have ever bought at a yard sale.

Ever.

Thank you Jennifer Bennett, whoever you are. You have saved my garden.

Anyways, we were at the garden centre, and Queenie looked at the flowers for a long time, but the world needs food, and she has totally bought into the whole 'grow things to eat not to look at' thing since she was about five, so she compromised and bought herself a fern.

A nice fiddlerhead for the dark corner by the path to the lake.

You can eat them in the spring. Very tasty they are too. They only appear in the supermarket for one week and won't it be cool to have our own.

That's all it took.

Five seconds of Queenie wondering aloud about a companion plant for the fiddlerhead.

I turned round and he had a raspberry cane. And a rhubarb plant.

Fair enough.

I like raspberries.

And I love rhubarb.

But now it's Himself's gardening project of course.

And it's all about fruit.

Last year it was all about tomatoes. Which nearly didn't happen, except for the Queen Mum flew over from Ireland to pinch the flowers off, Queenie and Himself having forgotten about that crucial part of the cycle.

Upon which we had about three hundred tomatoes in the same week.

That was Saturday.

Sunday it rained, so I brought Kitty and her friend to the shopping mall to buy sweatshirts.

When I came back, Himself had been BACK to the garden centre.

Now we had megatonnes of mega earth.

And two blueberry bushes.

And some strawberry plants.

The sun came out on Monday afternoon and because it was Himself's project we dug out the garden PROPERLY and removed an entire rockery of rocks and some bricks (so we were right about the acid) and tore into the poor garden and murdered the poor parsnips that had made it through the winter.

And last night it was still nice out, so Himself dug two big holes in the lawn and planted the blueberry bushes, beside each other so they can pollinate.

Plants having sex in the garden. How nice.

And this evening, we planted the fern and the rhubarb in the corner, and made a little box garden for the raspberry cane, and moved an old tree trunk over to that corner to add some fungal touches.

And we planted the strawberries along the wall of the house.

Himself was wondering whether the Queen Mum would know whether you have to pinch strawberry flowers or not. The people in The Northern Gardener are from the Paddy Egan school of gardening - lots of cabbage and other green stuff - so they don't talk about strawberries at all. So a text on that subject would be most welcome.

And we've turned the soil and put the earth and compost in, and limed the bad part, and put the grass barrier in, and turned it again, and again, and put the sod down on the rock wall, and built a rockery, and cut back the elephant ears, and we're ready to plant.

We ripped up the crappy pallets at the back of the house and Shelley is making a flower bed there.

Everyone in the house chipped in and bought six new garden chairs and Kitty painted the table and the dog house so they look useable again, and all the kindling for the bonfire is in the dog house staying dry and all the wood is stacked neatly against the back fence ready for an excuse to have a bonfire.

Roll on Friday though.

On Friday, Queenie has the day off work and Kitty and Himself don't.

On Friday it will be MY GARDEN again.

Saturday, we'll be back at the canoe if it's not raining.

Of course, the solar lighting project is proving extremely interesting right now.

Where will we place them for maximum nuance.

And the new design for the hammock holder is interesting.

Which needs to be built.

With two by fours.

And the bird house needs to be put up.

And the squirrel feeder.

And we need to find a spot for the wind chimes.

Like I said.

A Jack Russell with a big territory has a lot on the go.

But he gets it all done eventually.

Thankfully it's only May and it's not even warm yet.

We gotta get all this done before the washer toss season starts.

We're having a pig roast on Canada Day by the way.

If you're not doing anything.