City garden clean up

J and I planted our lovely balcony garden in the summer and it looked beautiful and produced a few tomatoes, a handful of strawberries and a handful of green beans and some herbs. And then things got a bit nuts at our house. And then fall happened. And our poor garden got neglected. I take full blame for it looking like this:

 

Last week I’d had enough of looking and dead, dreary plants, so I got myself a big bag and some shears and went to work. It took less than 15 minutes to get the deck looking like this:

I left anything that still had signs of life, cut back the perennials (we’ll see if they’re perennials on our deck) and pulled up most of the annuals.

And I discovered something else. A tiny little bit of green pushing up out of this pot.

Sometime in the fall, J found a bulb somewhere and carried it around with her for days. She wanted to plant it, so we stuck it in a pot that had once contained beans. I didn’t expect the poor thing to do much. It had lost its “shell” (I don’t know what you call the outside part – skin?), it was bruised and it had a couple of little nicks in it. I figured we’d plant it, we’d both forget about it and in the spring we’d plant more beans or something. Apparently that little bulb had other plans and it was far more resilient than I thought it wass. J asked me today what colour the flowers will be, but we have no idea what is or if it will even get to the point where it can bloom.

Decks in bloom

When we lived in the Blue House, we had a super large deck - it was awesome. The deck was off the kitchen and we used it all the time. We were super spoiled at the Blue House; we had three eating areas in good weather: the kitchen, the dining room, and the deck.

I loved it. Okay fine, I loved the whole Blue House.

But the deck. The first summer we were in the house, I knew I had to do something with it but I had no idea where to start. My friend Chandra gave me an early birthday gift of plants and planting materials and we spent a very pleasant day making the deck look beautiful.

The deck became a central part of our life that summer. It was home to a big table with an umbrella, a bunch of solar powered lights (there was no power on the deck), an awesome park bench and our bbq. We played board games out there. We ate our meals out there.

We often had friends over for meals and of course we ate out there. We had birthday cake for breakfast out there.

We had parties out there, lots of deck parties. We had birthday parties out there, more than once.

We had an upstairs neighbour and a downstairs neighbour in the Blue House and they both had their own small-space gardens. Water our respective gardens became part of our evening rituals. After the sun had set, the crows had flown home to Burnabye and I had taken down the ugly sheets on the kitchen windows (I finally made and hung the curtains before the second summer) and opened the windows and doors in the house to cool it off, I'd head to the deck to water my plants.

Around the same time K and R would both be out doing theirs. We liked our neighbours and we saw them often and this became a time, just before bed, for the three of us to exchange pleasantries and stories. By that second summer, K was preparing to move out and R and I were on tenterhooks because we didn't know when/if the house was going to be sold and we'd be looking for another place to live. The second summer I pretty much only had volunteers and herbs. I didn't want to leave much behind if we did end up leaving. And the deck had started to rot. K probably would have replaced it for us, but she no longer owned the house and the new landlords were...difficult.

Moving into a condo was a huge adjustment for us. We downsized tremendously. Our outside space shrunk. We lived in close proximity to a whole bunch of people, not just our beloved neighbours K and R. Oh and we had a brand new baby.

But I still wished for a garden and a green space and some plants. And this year, I finally figured it out. It's not as spacious as the Blue House. There's no grass. I can barely fit a kitchen chair out there, so it's not exactly a comfortable place to eat or read or do much of anything. But it's ours. And it's pretty.

And J is so excited about it...and that makes it 100% worth it! Oh, and I'm excited to what the plants will produce...looks like lots of strawberries and herbs, a few tomatoes and some beans...which is way more than we've ever had before!

The first harvest

39. Grow herbs on the deck

One of our requirements when we moved into this place was that we needed to have some outside space. I didn't care if that was a balcony, a deck, a patio, a roof; I just needed to be able to open a door in my home and be outside and have space to have a few plants. Between here and the Blue House, we lived in the Pink Palace disaster zone and there was no outside space and I hated it.

We've lived here for four years now. FOUR YEARS. And for most of those four years some sad empty pots and a few dead plants lived on our little balcony. And then a stroller took over pretty much all of the space. And then we had some storage issues and the stuff from our storage room ended up on the deck.

And then I had enough. I wanted a garden. But we didn't have a yard so the deck would have to do.

Partway through the clearing up process (I forgot to take a real before shot)

We were cleaning things up and putting things away and I discovered some gross stuff on the carpet (yes, there was ugly green carpet on our deck) and I as I was trying to figure out how to get it off, I realized the carpet wasn't stuck down. Up it came and off to the home store we went to invest in some floating deck tiles. I LOVE THEM! Why didn't I do this four years ago?

I went crazy with the plants and had to get more planters. And then I bought too many planters and so, for this year at least, some of them have to live in the storage room, but next year, they will all be out there full of plants.

J helped me plant everything - I didn't manage to get any pictures as we were both covered in muck. She had just come back from my mom and dad's where she had helped them plant some things in the garden and she didn't quite grasp that she couldn't make the same mucky mess on the deck that she could in the garden. We had a great time planting and now she's excited to water them before bed every night and check the strawberries for ripe fruit.

Tonight we made our first strawberry harvest:

J is pretty stylish these days - those glasses are bug glasses and the lens open up...

Isn't it cute? J said it was super yummy. We're now on strawberry watch as there are a number more on both plants that are just a few sunshine-filled hours away from being edible.

With the nice weather the last few days, we've really noticed everything taking off. Some of the flower baskets have totally filled out, the tomato plant is almost as tall as J, the beans are looking more like beans everyday, the basil is visible from inside the house. It's awesome! J is so excited about our garden. Now she just laments the lack of an easily accessible yard space. One day kid, one day!

Oh yeah, and I get to cross one off the 101 list because we have basil, rosemary, parsley, chives and oregano out there. We've used some of the basil, chives and oregano so far. I love having fresh herbs. One day when we have a real garden I will have ten times the number of basil plants though...we love basil in this house!

More Cherry Blossoms

Well, we went out on our walk today and there were even more beautiful blossoms to be seen.


J isn't too excited to look today, but she did get a bonnet!

Spring has sprung

Spring is here...Baby J and I went for a wander today and checked out the sunshine and beautiful flowers. It's amazing how much easier it is to get our of bed when the weather is nice!! I've actually been getting up before J some mornings!

Baby J checking out the pretty flowers (gotta get this kid a sun hat!)

cherry blossoms

cherry blossoms

Pretty Flowers

I got to bring the pretty flowers home from an event that we had on Wednesday night.

They started out as the centrepiece on the food table.


When I got them home, they were WAY TOO BIG for my vase, so they got separated into four vases.


I don't think I've ever had this many flowers in my house before. Alex came home and asked if we were starting a florist ;)

Gardening!

It's that time of year. I can't wait to plant some flowers, but first our deck needed some care and attention. I think it was feeling rather neglected. There were plants growing between the boards and leaves everywhere


a random nutella jar (deposited by our friendly squirrels last garbage day)


and lots of weeds, all making our favourite summer sitting place not so nice.


I discovered the parsley and oregano survived the winter, but the basil and cilantro did not...


there were three fuchsias hiding behind weeds


and my favourite pink flowers are coming back (too bad I don't know what they're called.


Now the weather just needs to stay nice for a few more weeks and then I can plant new stuff!!

Blooming Friday!

Wooohoooo...spring is here...look at all the pretty things blooming on campus and it's a beautiful day too. And I saw baby Jack. So I'm happy...and apparently snap happy...but it's spring...so here are some pretty flowers.

Early Rising

It's Saturday.

I don't have to go to work today.

I don't have to be anywhere until 7:00 tonight, but at 7:15, I was wide awake.

And now, pathetically early for a Saturday morning, I'm sitting at the computer...

I know the "experts" say you should get up and go to bed at close to the same time every day, including weekends, but I'd like to sleep in a little bit - even an hour would be nice.

But it is so nice out this morning, so I took the new toy out to the deck for some fresh air. It needed it; it hasn't had any fresh air for a few days.

The sun was shining so nicely and the tree with the mega wasp nest no longer has a mega wasp nest in it. Just pretty white blossoms.


I didn't stay long though. It is a beautiful day and nice and warm, but the deck that's been subjected to insane amounts of rain and snow this winter is still extremely slippery and I'm not entirely steady yet, so I thought it would be best for me and my camera if I took my klutzy self back inside.

But not before taking a picture of the "smoke"


and the pretty purple flowers on the weeds that will soon be removed from my planters.


Now I'm just waiting for Alex to get up so we can go for a walk and enjoy the sun before the rain (inevitably) comes back.