Weeding The Garlic

     Because of a soil infection in our garden, we are no longer able to grow garlic or onions.  Fortunately, we have good friends that allow us to grow garlic in a section of their garden.  This of course comes with a moral obligation; we feel obliged to keep our garlic patch looking neat and tidy.

    Last Saturday, while visiting, I took a look at our garlic and was embarrassed to see how weeds had taken over, so yesterday I spent two hours pulling weeds out of our section of their garden.  It was not a very pleasant job, since they seem to have a lot of mosquitoes around their place.  The whole time I was weeding I wore netting over my head and wore gloves, to keep the pesky insects  from getting their blood meal from me.

    Every time I have to do a lot of weeding, I think back to my childhood.  The task of weeding in our family garden often fell to me.  It was a job I hated.   Indiana summers are hot and muggy, and just spending an hour or so out weeding the garden was a miserable job.  The misery was compounded because within sight of our house was a country club swimming pool.   As I sweated pulling weeds in our garden, I could hear the kids at the country club, splashing, yelling, and having a refreshing swim.  

    Fortunately, the hatred towards gardens that I acquired during my childhood, diminished as I became an adult.

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Elk At The "Golden Hour"

     How many Sundays have I shown you photos that I took the previous evening while driving down Hinkelman Road?  Well, here is another one.  

    Every Saturday evening we drive out to visit friends who live on Hinkelman.  Once winter is over and we start getting longer days, the sun is positioned very low at the far end of the Robson Valley.  This creates the “Golden Hour”, when the low positioned sun creates some beautiful and colorful lighting on the things it illuminates.

    I took this photo shortly after 8:00 PM, as we were driving back home.  The male elk was nicely standing in the sunlight with dark shadowed trees behind him.  It was also nice that Beaver Mountain was jutting up in the background.   You can also see some of the male elk’s harem scattered around behind him. 

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Resuscitating A Hummingbird

 This is something that happened in May of 2013:

        One Saturday night, when I returned home after working on the waterline, my wife told me there was a hummingbird trapped in the greenhouse.  It was fairly dark, but I went out to check.  I figured that since it was night, the hummingbird would be roosting on one of the wires or beams of the greenhouse, but I couldn’t see it, so I assumed it must have found a way out.

        The next morning, when I went out to the greenhouse, I noticed what looked like the corpse of a hummer laying on the ground.  I picked up the ruffled little body and it moved a little, so I realized that the tiny hummingbird was still alive.  It’s eyes were closed and I didn’t have much hope that it would survive, but I took it over and held it up to the hummingbird feeder.  I thought that maybe I could get it to drink some of the sugar syrup, and that would give it some strength.

        I tried to put it on the feeder with it’s needle-like beak in the syrup, but it couldn’t even stand.  I just positioned it, lying on the feeder, with its beak in the sugar water.  It was very inanimate, it wasn’t sucking the syrup, so I tried massaging its tiny body, and blowing on it.  It did sort of respond, but still wasn’t eating.

        My wife got a syringe without a needle, and we drew up some of the syrup into it.  I closed my hand around the hummingbird to warm it, and again put the syringe and syrup to its beak.  After about a half an hour of this, I noticed that it was sucking in the syrup.  It began to move more, and its eyes opened for the first time.

        Eventually, as its strength returned, the hummer began to struggle to free itself.  I let it try to fly, but it kept nose-diving to the ground.  I checked to see if one of its wings was broken, and discovered that one of its long wing feathers was, for some reason, stuck to the rear part of its body.  I gently unhooked it, and then the hummingbird tried to fly once again, and this time it was successful.  It buzzed into the air and flew away.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

My Latest Painting: "Hosta Flower"

     After buying a very rectangular canvas (15”  x  30”) I looked around through my photos to find an image that might fit the canvas, to paint.  I came upon a colorful photo showing the leaves and flower of a Hosta plant that I really liked and surprisingly, fit the canvas shape nicely.

    I started the painting at the beginning of February, and finished it this morning.  It took me 81 hours to complete.

    As anyone who has looked through my paintings knows, I really like Hostas with their dramatically textured leaves and their delicately beautiful blooms.  

You can view my  other paintings at: davidmarchant2.ca

A Delayed, But Sweet Revenge

     The night before last I woke up about 3:00 AM.  When I tried to go back to sleep, I was continually hampered by a mosquito in my room.  Every time slumber was just about to come, I would start to hear the mosquito starting to buzz around my head.  Numerous times I swatted it away with my hand, which of course, woke me up more.  This irritating situation continued throughout the night for hours and hours.  

    I hated that mosquito.  I considered turning on the light, and swatting it with my mosquito zapping racket, but I knew if I got up, turned on the light, and started walking around the bedroom looking for it, I would just wake up more, and never go back to sleep, so I just continued snuggling up in my bed, and of course, the persistent mosquito continued to buzz around and land on my head.  Eventually, sometime before dawn, I did fall asleep for a short while.  I did not feel very rested when I awoke.

    The next day after lunch, I went up to the bedroom to take a nap, and when I got in bed, who should appear but that pesky mosquito, looking for another blood feast from me.  As it buzzed around, I slowly reached for my mosquito zapper, and after several attempts:  ZAP, I fried that mosquito, enjoying the crackling spark that it made.

    The revenge I took on that irritating mosquito was sweet indeed.  

    Last night there were several new mosquitos in the bedroom, but I was able to despatch them before I turned out the lights.

    

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Get Those Potatoes in the Ground!

     Gardeners who grow potatoes have to store them in a cool place over the winter.  The best place to do so is a cold, well-built, root cellar.   Unfortunately most of us don’t have one, so we do the best we can.  I usually store my potatoes under the house in the crawlspace.   It stays pretty cool during the winter, so it does a pretty fair job of keeping the potatoes from sprouting.

    However, once spring starts warming the outside temperatures, our crawlspace also starts to warm up and the potatoes start to throw out sprouts.   Don’t jump to conclusions now, those outrageously sprouted potatoes in the photos aren’t mine.  The photo was taken in 2013, and the potatoes belonged to a friend, let’s just call him “David”.

    Unlike me, my friend “David” is one of those fastidious gardeners, who does everything correctly in his garden.  Whenever I see his garden, I am embarrassed, thinking of my untidy, weedy, garden.  Well, in 2013, I did feel a bit superior, when I saw the potatoes he had stored in his basement.  By the time I saw them, I had already had my spuds in the ground for weeks.  I had never seen such long sprouts on potatoes.

    If I remember correctly, that year David had been spending most of his efforts foolishly trying to eliminate the dandelions from his lawn.  That is just a useless and impossible job.  Instead of putting so much of his energy to that endeavor, he should have been planting his potatoes.  

    I am not sure what happened to the potatoes in the photo.  I don’t know if he ended up planting them with those incredibly long sprouts, of whether he just gave up on those sprouted potatoes, and just bought some new seed potatoes.

    In the spring, I usually have some sprouts on my saved potatoes, but certainly, nothing as sprouted as in the photo.  I do plant them, sprouts and all, and they always produce for me.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Man Against The WIlderness

     Because we live in the interior of BC, we often hear people who don’t live in Canada say, “I could never stand living up there with those winters.”   While I admit that our winters last too long, they do offer some advantages.  One of them is that because of the snow and cold, nothing is growing outside, leaving me with a lot of free time to myself to pursue other things.

    Once Spring arrives, everything changes and everything becomes a rush.  Outside, plants grow quickly, like in a jungle.  There are so many jobs have to be done quickly, especially yard maintenance and getting things planted in the garden.  I am currently running far behind in both those endeavors.  

    I do have the greenhouse planted (although the I haven’t been able to deal with the weeds that are coming up) and I have been able to get the garden half planted.  However, I am becoming overwhelmed with the lawn.       

    We have had so many rain showers of late which are causing the grass to grow very rapidly, and at the same time, because of the grass being wet, I can’t mow it.  I think in places, I will have to cut the grass down with a lawn trimmer, then rake up the pieces, before I can use the lawn mower on it.

    Hopefully with time, I will slowly be able to get on top of things, but at present, I am sure feeling discouraged and frustrated.  

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca