GROWING CORN

          "Plants want to grow......" -Anne Wareham

1988 CFB Petawawa, Ontario

There were a lot of things to consider with a garden. Dirt. Plants. Veggies. Light. Water. My mother thought about  all of those when she considered Corn . 

 She had picked up a lot of pamphlets  about growing corn.She was so enthusiastic.........

And it  was the reason, in the end,  she gave up corn and moved onto Sweet Peas.......but that comes later.

She thought Corn would be  great to try.

But where to plant it. We had a lot of lawn. 

A lot of trees. But that did not deter  her. It was going to be Corn no matter what.

So she wandered around the property looking for a good place that screamed "Corn".....

She found a nice wide spot. Just outside the dining room window. We could watch  corn rising from the dirt , as it grew.

The grass was tough ,so she dug holes in the grass for the little corn things she got from the greenhouse. It took her ages to dig the little burrows. She planted a dozen of the seedlings.

The baby corn  were new and true and ready for action.

My mother stuffed them in their little homes in the grass.  She took dirt from the dirt pile out back and plopped a goodly amount on each  baby corn. They were watered and  we waited.

They did all right for a short while. Then they started  getting this frowsy odour.  The cat had started using the corn seedlings as its litter box. My mother sprinkled cayenne  on the dirt. That would stop the cat, she thought.

The corn  continued to grow. The cat liked to roll in the baby corn stalks and claw at them. My mother erected wire netting. 

Then the corn stalks started disappearing, one by one. 

The cat was clawing them down and chewing on them. The cayenne wasn't working. There were three stalks left. Bent and listless. The cat loved them.

My mother made a small scarecrow out of one of my old baby dolls. Attached a floating scarf around her neck that flipped in the wind. She tied it to  a twig and stuck it just outside the wire netting.

The cat thought that was great. He ripped off the doll head and the scarf with it.  Ran around like a crazy thing with his new toy.

There was only ONE corn stalk left by now. It was kinda bent. Bedraggled. The cat chewed on it when it wasn't playing with the doll's head. No corn then or ever.  And that's  when my mother started planting Sweet Peas. Fool proof. 

Photographs 2021

 

READY to PLANT

"Show me your garden and I will tell you what you are...." -Alfred Austin

The greenhouse is stuffed with flats.

Doves sit on the cherry tree and flap 

Pasque Flower is blooming late. Almost finished and ready to turn to fluff.

Porch pots are in place. Coleus, Impatiens, lobelia,  all manner of shade plants.

The patio is ready for Rhodochiton, petunias, oodles of geraniums, Verbeena, a myriad of  cosmos. On sale no less. Trailing sweet peas here and there.

"Fertilizer does no good in a heap, but a little spread around works miracles all over " -R. Sheridan

Front bed stuffed with knee hi sweet peas, cosmos, roses, and the few dahlias that survived the winter.

Dahlias for the hill. Ready to be set free.

Cucumbers. Maybe. Pumpkins most definitely.

And the hill ready and waiting.

"To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow." - Audrey Hepburn

Mend the old bench so it doesn't fall apart.

Watch the rain fall.

See the Cat Plants make their move........

Fluff up the ferns.

The Cat Plant is set. Pots are ready. One week to go. Get ready. Get set. Go........

"A garden is a delight to the eye and solace to the soul. " -Saadi

Photographs 2021

 

NO WEEDING REQUIRED.........short story

 "In search of my mother's garden, I found my own...." -Alice Walker

The first garden I ever planted was at the MQ at CFB Petawawa, in 1988. I ripped up grass, plopped some dirt on top of the worms , shoved in as many annuals as I could muster and hoped it would grow. It managed okay, till I had to weed it. And that hot summer sun  fried everything....

 We moved a lot. In Fredericton, N.B. 1994, I decided the front yard needed an overhaul. So, once again, I ripped up  grass, plopped on some dirt, Got a whole bunch of blooms and stuck them in. Lasted okay, till I had to weed it.........

 We moved a few more times, till we came to St. Albert, AB, 1996, by then I was a little more jaded. I still dug up the grass, plopped on the dirt, stuck in some plants; waited to see what would happen. Well, it snowed, May long weekend. Killed most of the annuals......But at least I didn't have to weed it.....

By the time we reached White Rock, B.C.in 2000, I was into my rock phase. paving stones, gravel, a few established beds. Some grass to dig up, existing beds made wider. By then I had  learned to get truckloads of soil. Dig. Dig. Still some weeds. But more gravel. More paving stones. 

Cranesbill

 And then we were here. 2006 In Campbell River, B.C.  The garden was tidier. No paving stones. No gravel. Lots and lots of dirt. I liked that. But too organized. So I  started ripping out things. I planted one native Cranesbill in a pot. By the benches. Now by 2019, the garden has taken on  a new look.

 That one pot of Native Cranesbill has wonderfully spread all over. Where ever I find it, I move it to another bed, another spot to be prolific.I've taken out bushes, added clematis, roses and roses and more roses....

 Sweet peas I grow in as many places as possible. I no longer dig out clods of grass, I added hanging baskets, troughs stuffed with sweet pea seeds, and the hill of dirt in the far corner, fairly marches with them. 

Years ago, when I was growing up, I remember my mother digging up clods of grass.....

 All around the house, as far as she could go. She loved to wear bright caftans, her hair piled in a beehive on top of her head, curved glasses perched on her nose. She always dressed like that to dig up grass. And rubber boots to wear.

 I can still see her in that bright orange caftan, wafting around her feet as she stood on a spade and dug up the grass.

 The grass would give a satisfying PLOP as it fell back.

 My job was to take the grass clods and throw them into the forest behind us. I liked that part. I felt like I was tossing a caber.

 She'd take a couple of bags of soil and spread it along the furrow she'd created at the side of the house, and beside the old porch. 

 Then we'd plant sweet peas in the rows of dirt. Nasturtums by the porch. Every year we planted them.

 Some years she had to re-dig the rows of dirt, after winter, and she'd be there in her caftan, and her shovel, digging away. Squishing in stakes and string for the sweet peas to grow up on.Every year, we'd plant sweet peas and naturtums. My mother would plant nasturtums in the mud by the porch, and the garter snakes loved to hide in their blooms.

 And those sweet peas would grow up  and up those stakes, higher and brighter than the year before. And she would stand there, in her caftan and marvel at it all. Marvel at the fact that her garden required no weeding......But next year, she mused, she'd have to dig out more grass and make the furrows wider to plant more seeds.......there was always next year.

 The year that she was gone, when I went to the house, and saw she had started to dig out  the troughs  at one time. But never finished. The shovel, covered with dried mud, was in the basement. So having time on my hands,I finished off the trough she  started. I didn't have any seeds ,but the row was ready. Just in case. With no weeding required.............

 "Give me odorous at sunrise,a garden of beautiful flowers, where I can walk undisturbed...." -Walt Whitman

 Photographs 2019