A Compromised Perimeter

     I was out trying to do some weeding in the garden yesterday in between the rain showers.  Joan called to me saying that something had eaten the small forming head off of one of our cabbage plants.  I was puzzled as to who it could have been.  It was more than a mouse could do, maybe it was a rabbit.

    This mystery was solved a couple of hours later when I was sitting in the living room, and Joan informed me that there was a deer standing in our garden.  Deer standing in a garden is not a rare occurrence in the Robson Valley, they are everywhere.  However, 10 years ago, I put up a 6 foot (2 metre) fence around my garden, so until now, deer haven’t really been a problem for me.

    I went outside to scare the deer away.  When I walked into the garden it scurried over to the far side.  I tried to herd it out by way of the now open gate, but it panicked and ended up bounding over my high fence.  Its amazing how high they can jump.  I didn’t really think that was how it got into the garden so I started to investigate.

    Our clothes line wheels out over our garden, and when I built the fence, I had to leave a metre wide slot where my fence is only 4 ft (120 cm) tall, beneath the clothes line to allow the clothes to move over the fence.  When I checked that part of the fence, I could see the deer’s deep foot prints in the grass on the garden side of the fence, so I figured that it had discovered the low section and took advantage of it.

    I then spent 30 minutes constructing a barrier out of wood and fencing to block the clothes line slot and make it as high as the rest of the garden fence.  From now on, before we hang the clothes on the line, we will have to remove this barrier.

    If only life would sometimes get simpler, instead of always getting more complicated.

My paintings can be seen at:  www.davidmarchant.ca

Clematis

    Today is cold and gray, with the light rain coming down.  I am wearing a polar fleece vest, because the house is cold.  I continue to limp around because of a twisted ankle which is now a week and a half old.  Over all, things seem to be conspiring to bring me down.  I thought maybe a bit of color might help lift my spirits, so today I chose this photo of a vibrant clematis.

    Clematis is a climbing vine which puts out big extraverted and colorful flowers.  I guess the plant originated in China, then because of its beauty in the 17th century it spread to Japan.  A hundred years later European gardeners were planting it.  I was surprised to learn that it is part of the buttercup family.

    We have a fence around our garden to keep the deer out, and we have several clematis plants growing up and clinging on the fence.  Our vines are 6 feet (2 metres) tall.

View my paintings at:  www.davidmarchant.ca

Finger Nails

    While you are looking at this photo of a flower in Dave Milne’s rock garden I am going to tell you about my finger nails.  I read a long time ago that people that chewed their finger nails harbored a deep seated insecurity.  I accepted that I am basically an insecure person, because I am ashamed to admit that I have been chewing my poor nails down to the quick for over 60 years.  It was a habit that I couldn’t break.

    I remember back when I was in the 5th grade, in their frustration with my habit, my parents made me an offer.  If I would stop biting my nails, they would give me $20.  Way back then, $20 was an enormous amount of money, especially for a kid.  (In my summer job of picking tomatoes at my uncle’s greenhouse I earned 65 cents an hour.)  

    I was floored at the offer.  $20!!!  I stopped biting my nails immediately, but after about a week, I was back gnawing on my fingers, and I watched that $20 disappear from my life. 

    If the “carrot” didn’t make me quit, my parents decided that maybe the “stick” would.  My mom and dad invested in some fiery tasting concoction that they would paint on the tips of my fingernails.  But despite my burning mouth, my insecurities must have trumped my taste buds, because I kept on chewing.   I sometimes wonder if the concoction in those early days had something to do with my present day love of spicy hot food.

    Despite the fact that I have been biting my nails for a lifetime, suddenly a few months ago I quit.  I didn’t decide that I should quit, I just stopped biting my nails.  Maybe after 65 years of life I realized I had survived this long and no longer felt insecure.  I don’t really know what happened.

    I must say that I am still not used to having normal size nails.  Whenever I scratch my head, it still surprises me to have a hard kind of sharp object doing the scratching.  I also have to now continually clean under my nails, something I have never had to do before.  

    I have no explanation to why this change happened, but it is nice after all these years, not to be embarrassed whenever anyone looks closely at my hands.

Take a look at my paintings:  www.davidmarchant.ca

Purple Haze

    I'm pretty sure that when Jimi Hendrix wrote his popular song, that he didn't have vetch in mind, and I probably should apologize for sucking you in with that title, but when I looked out over Milne’s hayfield yesterday, a purple haze seemed to be covering its surface.  It was vetch.               

Vetch is a vine that is a member of the pea family and around here it has purplish flowers.

    This year has been a good one for flowering plants in the Robson Valley.  They all seem to be doing double duty, putting out an extra amount of blooms.  I am someone who is always happy to see unexpected color in nature, and the vetch made the hayfield a lot more interesting to look at than the normal sea of green.

See my paintings at:  www.davidmarchant.ca

Tomato Jungle

    The inside of my greenhouse looks like a jungle.  I only have two kinds of plants growing in my greenhouse:  tomatoes and chili’s.  They all seem to be thriving.

    The tomato plants look especially jungly.  It is a common practice to “sucker” or pinch off all the auxiliary branches of the tomato plants.  This not only keeps the plants from being so bushy, and better controlled, it also “puts the plant’s effort into making tomatoes”.  That is one theory, and it is something I used to do.  

    Then about 5 years ago, I heard a gardener on the radio say that experiments had shown that suckering really didn’t make any difference in the fruit, and that by not suckering, the plant had more leaves and would generate more sugar, for the developing tomato.  That sounded sensible to me, so that is the way I have been growing my tomatoes.  It does make quite a jungle of the plants though.

    I always grow several varieties of tomatoes, and this year I am looking forward to seeing what “Sioux”, “Cherokee Chocolate”, and “Black From Tula” tomatoes taste like.  It is gratifying to see the  small tomatoes forming on the plants, and I can’t wait for them to grow and ripen.  Nothing makes a sandwich taste better than a big slice of home grown tomato.

Take a look at my paintings at:  www.davidmarchant.ca

Cat Sandwich

    Last Wednesday I sprained my ankle, so I have been hobbling along ever since.  In order to speed my healing, Joan stacked two pillows on the couch, so I could lie there and elevate my leg.  

    I was doing that last night as I was watching some television.  Lucifer, our cat was lying above me on the back of the couch.  When I got tired of being in that position, I went over and sat in a chair.  The cat noticing that the pillows were now vacant, decided to move in and take possession.

    She walked up to the pillows, situated herself on the lower one, then worked her way in between the two soft cushions.  Once she had successfully sandwiched herself in, she lowered he head and took a nap, reveling in the snuggly comfort.

Visit my website to view my paintings:  www.davidmarchant.ca

The Baby Squirrel Adventure Continues

    Early last March, I put some covers over the gutters on my house, to prevent the leaves from filling them up.  The covers that ran along the front of my house didn’t quite make it all the way to the end of the gutter.  It left a 2 inch (5 cm) gap uncovered.  I figured that that wasn’t too much of a problem, because how many leaves were going to be blown into that little opening.  At the time, the furthest thought in my mind was baby squirrels.

    In my June 22 blog, I wrote about finding a baby squirrel climbing up the side of our house and looking inside the bathroom window.  It was a mystery to me where it had come from.  Since then I discovered that their nursery was in our roof.

    Despite the fact that I had once sealed all the holes to our roof with wire mesh, a mother squirrel had found an opening, and had decided to have her family there.  I thought I would just wait until the little ones were ready to be out in the world, then I would seal up their entrance to the roof.

    The other day, I was walking around the house and I heard a scratching noise coming from a downspout in the corner of the house.  The downspout comes down from the gutter and into a buried pipe that drains the water away.  In between the buried pipe and the down spout was a crack through which I could see some tiny paws and some eyes peeking through--one of the baby squirrels must have squeezed through the opening of the gutter guard and was having  great fun running back and forth in the covered gutter until it fell down the downspout.

    I got some tools and took the downspout apart so the baby squirrel could climb out.   It was about a foot below the opening.  The sides of the pipe must have been too slippery because after an hour he still hadn’t managed to climb out.  

    Since we were just about to go to the Dunster Ice Cream Social,  I thought I’d better try to get him out before I left.  I went out to my shop and got a thin strip of plywood, then slide it into the pipe.  Because it was wood and had a rough surface, I figured the baby squirrel would be able to use it to climb out.  It did, and as soon as it was out, it scampered across the lawn and away from the house.

    I had noticed that while the one squirrel was trapped in the drainpipe, its sibling continued having fun,  running back and forth through the gutter.  Since both baby squirrels were out of their nest in the roof, I thought I should take advantage of the situation and seal up the hole they had been using to access their home.  I screwed a board across their entrance.

    Several hours later when we returned from the ice cream social, the mother squirrel was on the spruce tree chattering, and the two baby squirrels were running around across the surface of the roof, trying to figure out how to get back into their home.  This activity continued until it got dark.

    The next morning to my dismay, I discovered the mother squirrel hanging on the side of the roof, chatting to a third baby squirrel still in the roof, trapped behind my wire mesh squirrel proof barrier.  I got a ladder and ripped the mesh away so the mother and child could reunite.  The trapped baby squirrel was soon out, but one of the original baby squirrels slipped back into the roof to take its place. 

    In frustration, I just walked away and decided to let the squirrels alone for a couple of days.  Yesterday and today, I have seen no sign of squirrel activities, and I hopefully think that maybe the whole family got fed up with all the trouble cause by that interfering human and took off to find a new home in the woods.  I hope so.  At any rate, I am not going to seal up the remaining entrance to my roof until I am more confident that they are gone.

See my paintings at:  www.davidmarchant.ca