A Welcome Discovery

     I have recently blogged about the distress I felt upon discovering that I had misplaced the red and black beans I had saved from last year, in order to plant them again this year.  In the blog, I don’t think I mentioned that something else that was misplaced were the peas that I had saved.

    The peas were actually more of a loss than the red and black beans which I had only planted one time.  Those peas were something I have planted for decades, carefully sorting the peas after I had harvested them, saving only those peas from the most bountiful pods to plant the following year.  Losing them was a heavy loss for me.

    Peas are always the first thing I plant in the garden every spring.  They are tough and don’t mind the cold.  This year I was in a dilemma, because I had lost last year’s peas.  It was time to plant them, and I didn’t know what to do.  

    In desperation, I finally decided just to try planting some of the left over peas I had saved from 2022 and 2023.  Certainly they were old stock and I wasn’t sure they were still vibrant,  but I thought I might as well put them in the ground, hoping without much hope, that some of them might still have enough life in them to come up.

    It has been very dry now for weeks, and so after planting the peas, I watered the area day after day, without seeing any result.  I had pretty much given up on them, and actually ordered some more peas from a seed company two days ago.  Wouldn’t you know it, yesterday I noticed that some of those old peas had sprouted and were poking up through the ground.

    I was so happy.   After growing, and saving that pea strain for so many years, they begin evolve, adapting to the soil and weather conditions in my garden, so I really wanted to keep those peas, and fortunately, now it looks like I didn’t lose that strain forever.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Fiddleheads

     One of the sights I enjoy seeing as our Spring develops are the ferns.  I have loved ferns since finding fern fossils as a youngster.  I was blown over realizing that the rock I held in my hand had once been a plant that grew 250 million years ago.  Knowing that has always made ferns seem so primal and ancient.  Their existence and survival over all that time continues to fascinate me.

    I love the way ferns develop.  The stem comes up supporting a “fiddlehead” a spherical shape at the top of the stem  made up of leaves.  The fiddlehead slowly unwinds into the fronds of the fern.  The shape of the fiddlehead also reminds me of Art Nouveau works that mimic nature.  

    Because our end of the Robson Valley is part of the Interior Temperate Rain Forest, we have lots of ferns that grow around us.

You can take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Root-Picking

     When we bought our place in the Robson Valley, back in the late 1970’s, we felt fairly financially insecure.  We had saved about one third of the asking price for our house, but at the time, I was unemployed, having quit my teaching job.  I was getting an unemployment cheque every month from the government, but that didn’t cover all of our expenses:  a mortgage, money for renovating the house, and of course, living expenses.

    As we were buying the house, I mentioned to John Peterson, the real estate broker, about feeling rather insecure in buying a house while being unemployed, but of course, he told me not to worry.   He said his family were always looking for workers for various things, and they would call me up when they needed to hire help.

    John did keep me in mind and provided some odd job work for me several times.  Once I had to dig up his sewer line to find a blockage, and another time, he called me to help Bill, his father, dig out his Caterpillar tractor that had gotten bogged down in deep mud on his undeveloped property out in the unsettled Raush Valley.

        Our real estate agent gave me a call with another job offer, again for his father Bill, out at Raush Valley.  This time Bill  was seeking root-pickers. 

        When an area is logged, stumped, and worked over with a Cat, to clear and pile the big debris, there remained a lot of sticks and roots on the ground that also needed to be removed.  This was usually done manually by stooping over, picking up the sticks and roots, then putting them on a pile, to be later burned.  I had never heard of root-picking, but it seemed easy enough.

        I was pleased to have another opportunity to earn some extra money, even though I had to get up at 7:00 on a Sunday morning so I could be out at the Raush Valley at 8:00, ready to work. 

        When I arrived out there, I was happy to discovered that the Blackwater Coop (a group of local hippie, back-to-the landers) were also being employed to root-pick.  Being newly arrived in the Robson Valley, I didn’t know any of the Coop members, Although I knew I had a lot in common with them, since I too was part of the “counter-culture”.   

        It turned out to be a long 8 hour day of stooping over picking up pieces of wooden debris, but I enjoyed working and talking with the members of the Coop, all of who were about my age and held similar values.  

        When the work ended and the Coop members had gone home, Bill Peterson moseyed over and told me I had really done a good job, “Much better than those hippies.” 

         I thanked him, but knew that was just bigoted nonsense, since everyone was out there working together, doing exactly the same thing, at exactly the same pace. 

        I was pretty worn out by the time I got home, but my wife had also been busy in the kitchen and had prepared a nice warm meal for me.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Art Nouveau

     Art Nouveau was an art movement that emerged at the turn of the last century.  It was an effort to make buildings, furniture, graphics, and other objects reflect the lines and curves that are seen in Nature.  This of course meant a lot of images of flowers.  The photo above shows a lamp that came out during the Art Nouveau period.  Its design reflects the lines and pads of a water lily.

    It is probably easy to see why I have always loved Art Nouveau objects.  The beauty of plants and flowers have always given me inspiration and joy.  As you might surmise from the lamp, water lilies were often an inspiration for Art Nouveau works. 

    Water lilies also have a special place in my life, since I had my pond dug.  The purpose of the pond was to create habitat for Nature.  Shortly after its construction, I went searching for plants local to this area to put in the pond.  After the ice melted on Horseshoe Lake in McBride, I gathered some of the large tuberous roots of water lilies that were floating on the surface, brought them home, and stuck them into the mud of my young pond.  They prospered and established themselves in my pond.

    This time of year I enjoy watching the water lily plants slowly develop under the water and begin to stretch out their stems to push their leaves (and later their yellow flowers) to the surface.  Below is a photo showing the plant reaching toward the water’s surface, with one lily pad just breaking the surface. 

   

Take a look at my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

An Encouraging Sprig of Green

     Every time we come down our driveway we are both dismayed and embarrassed at the sight of the willow trees by our house.  They now resemble large Saguaro cactus.   

    In February, we had a crew of arborist brutally cut back the willows because they had gotten so tall they imposed a danger to our house if they were blown over.  This was the second time that we had the willows cut back.  After that first cutback, they put out new sprouts that eventually grew in to huge branches that made the willows as tall as they were before they were cut back.

    This time I had them cut back to 10 ft (3m) so I could take care of them if they started to grow back to high again.    After the arborists crew left, the trees looked horrible, and I know the neighbors gasped in shock when they drove by and saw those high “stumps” that our willows had turned into.

    While I was sure the willows would start to grow back, I was eager for some reassurance.  Yesterday, I got that reassurance, when I spotted a spring of green sprouting out of the brutalized trunk.  A quick inspection of the other trees showed similar green sprigs sprouting on them.   Willows are fighters, and they don’t give up easily.

    We will be happy once they get more foliage on their tops, so they look more like palm trees, before returning to what looks like a normal willow tree that will provide a lot of shade.  I don’t much like the “Saguaro” cactus look they now have.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

The Greening of the Valley

     After our long BC winters, and once the temperatures start to warm, the trees don’t waste any time putting out their leaves.  It seems like the explosion of new leaves happened in just one day.   This period of spring with its newly erupting foliage is on of my favorites.  The light green color of those new leaves add a brilliant accent to the blues of mountain  slopes, with their pristine white snowcapped peaks.

    This morning when I first went outside to do some laps around the pond, I caught the scent of the sweet perfume of the Cottonwood trees; it was wonderful.  When I got back to the house, I saw a Rufus Hummingbird busily slurping up the nectar I had put in the hummingbird feeder.

    Last night I was awaken by a lone mosquito in my bedroom, but this first variety of mosquitoes are easily swatted, so that too was good.

    I recently watched a PBS program on Henry David Thoreau and was struck by him writing that he would often spend the whole day doing nothing, just sitting outside watching.  What a wonderful thought, but sadly for me, this time of year is filled with too many things that have to be done.   Hopefully today I can get my rototiller started so I can till the garden for planting.  I will just have to enjoy the glorious day, in swatches, in between things.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Where, Where, Where? Panic Sets In

    Yesterday I wrote about how it is nearing time for me to plant the garden.  Before I do, I will have to rototill it, but the time for planting, is getting close.  I as it approaches, I have begun to panic.

    Last year, as a bit of an experiment, for the first time I planted red beans and black beans.  Both crops surprised me; they grew well.   As I took the beans I had harvested out of their pods, I set some aside for eating and some to save for seeds that I could use for planting this year.   I also put some more of the beans in envelopes to return to our library’s seed bank, where I had gotten the beans last year.

    Now, why the panic?  Well I did eat the ones saved for that purpose, but when I checked the container where I keep my garden seeds, I was distress to find no black beans or red beans.  What happened to them?  I haven’t a clue.  I have searched every possibility I could think of, but came up empty handed.   I can’t imagine that they were thrown out, so they must be around here somewhere.

    A couple of days ago, I had an idea.  Maybe the beans I gave back to the library’s seed bank are still there, and I could just use those to plant in my garden, but alas, when I went to the library and checked the seed bank, the beans I had contributed, were gone.  I guess they will be growing in someone else’s  garden.  That leaves me sitting here wondering,  “Where could the beans I saved be?”

    I suspect once I have finished planting and filled up the garden with other vegetables, I will find my  missing beans.  That seems to be the way things always work. 

    It is all so discouraging after all the work I did drying, de-podding, sorting, and saving some of those beans for seed in this year’s garden.   For a year I held on to one of those common  gardener’s dreams about harvesting a bigger crop this year.

    Oh well, it is what it is.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca