if dragons were a thing...

there is a strange game of sorts that is played out every morning in our home. it is sorta like a staring contest... but with cats. the loser is the one who gets the most annoyed by one (or more) cats walking back and forth across their head, so they "tap out" by getting out of bed to feed the furry nuisance. what does the winner get, you ask? they get to smile and carry on sleeping.

he was up late last night finishing off an animatic, while i was getting mildly-drunk on sparkly cider and calling it an early night, so i abandoned any hope of sleeping in late, and climbed out of bed shortly after five to begin the day's duty of lavishing adulation on our furry threesome.

this was followed by the ritual that everyone (including the cats) has come to look forward to at the start of each day: the opening of the doors to this year's balcony garden project. it is—sans doute—the best one yet.

i usually try to document each year's garden, but... you know. we had skipped the usual trip to the nursery to select plants, because... you know... so we ended up purchasing plants online from Urban Seedling. this is a (new to us) nursery located among the riverside parks on Montreal's south shore, where we sometimes go to waste a few leisurely Summer hours, back before... well, you know.

enthusiasm was (understandably) almost non-existent in the middle of Spring, so we selected just the bare minimum assortment of plants, figuring we could use the leftover space for the grill. when the seedlings arrived just in time for planting outdoors, we wondered if we should have ordered a few more.

boy, were we ever wrong! you can barely walk around out there.

here you see Mama Kitty in repose below the thumbelina zinnias. she enjoys a post-breakfast nap among the plants... until it starts to get too hot, then she retreats to the barely air-conditioned living/dining room, where she will spend the rest of the day in adoration of the animator while he works. me? jealous? perish the thought!

Baby Bear was indoors taking a post-breakfast nap, after which she usually returns to the food area to make a second breakfast of any bits that were left over by the other two. is a Hobbit Cat a thing?

meanwhile, the Little One was visibly annoyed with me for disturbing her while she hunted for bugs behind a pot of herbs. good times.

the pot contains mojito mint, Thai basil, and holy basil (which smells very much like a well-ripened blue cheese). we have been using the basils in cooking, and most of the mint will end up being dried for making mid-Winter cups of herbal tea.

the terracotta pot of rosemary, thyme, and oregano will become a houseplant once the season is through. until then, we take snips of the fresh herbs to make delicious food.

it is a criminal offense to have a garden without tomatoes, so we planted a trio this year. we selected a large, medium, and small tomato to encourage a bit of variety in how we use them. the first of the (large) Cherokee purple will be ready to harvest once it turns... you know... purple.

ditto for the (small) black cherry.

the (medium) Montreal tasty are showing the first blush of red. this is a locally-developed variety that is good for slicing or canning.

there is also a Georgia flame pepper somewhere out there, but that has been overtaken by the golden scallopini squash.

there are also strawberry plants scattered throughout the space, but we have harvested very few strawberries thus far. we bought three varieties of strawberries from the pop-up outdoor garden center at our local market... the morning after a late-season frost hit the area. they were so badly damaged by the cold, that we did not expect most of them to survive. but, survive they did.

the frost came days after we planted the garden, and we were afraid that most of the plants would be destroyed. our options were to either haul multiple ten-gallon pots of soil indoors for a couple days until the cold spell passed, or to try to shelter them from the cold... without throwing both our backs out in the process. so, we came up with the brilliant idea of tenting a recycling bag over each pot to form a min-greenhouse of sorts.

it worked, and our plants were saved. then they started to grow, and grow... and GROWWWWW! now, you practically need a machete to get through there come watering time. what a difference a couple months make!

in this lush, jungle-like setting lives the star of this year's balcony garden project. do you see it there in the back corner, threatening to overtake the whole space?

this is the (near-mythical) dragon's egg cucumber. the variety is native to Croatia... which was all he needed to hear. he has already recommended this plant for his (very Croatian) parents' backyard garden next year.

this was the only plant that had taken any damage from the frost.

luckily, it quickly recovered... then it began to spread everywhere. when the cucumbers mature, you can see just how the plant got its name.

him: wow! it really looks just like a dragon egg.
me: i realize that you are an artist, so you have a colorful imagination—which i totally respect and appreciate and stuff—but it pains me to have to be the one to remind you that dragons don't exist. 
him: yeh, but that's what the eggs would look like.
me: how can you determine what the egg would look like... of a non-existent thing?
him: because they'd be shaped like that, with that light-green color. that's exactly what a dragon egg would look like.
me: yeh... if dragons were a thing.

then he muttered something about "you Science people", while shaking his head in pity at my adherence to a crazy little thing called Reality. this, ladies and gentlemen, is my life. every. single. day.

i will give him full credit for the two important things that went into making this the best balcony garden project yet. firstly, he convinced me to incorporate lots more color into the mini-landscape. you will have already seen the spray of zinnias, yellow gem marigolds, and snapdragons...

[random aside: i love zinnias. they always remind me of the flowers in my (maternal) grandmother's front yard back in the Caribbean. there is a picture somewhere of my cousin and i standing in that garden as little kids, with the flowers almost over our heads.]

there is also a pot of nasturtiums, snapdragons, orange gem marigolds, and pansies.

and a firecracker marigold, which is about three feet tall...

and produces the most beautiful, large flowers.

given our limited growing space, i tend toward wanting few (or none at all) purely decorative things. however, given the number of curious pollinators visiting our tiny garden, the flowers seem to be working their magic. plus, some of the nasturtium leaves and flowers occasionally make their way into a salad, so this flowering plant is definitely not a waste of space.

the second (and most important) change was that we covered the whole balcony in bird netting.

this one was entirely his doing. in fact, he had ordered the netting before trying to sell me on the idea. we tied the netting to a long bamboo pole which was secured over the balcony doors, and draped the netting over the whole balcony. we positioned a few bamboo poles along the railing to keep the netting elevated above our heads, and we finished by tying the netting off at multiple points along the railing to keep the edges in place

i remained wholly skeptical... until a day or two later, when i realize that we did not have to take turns waking up before sunrise to be on squirrel-watch. in fact, it has proven to be the single greatest deterrent to the scourge that is squirrels in the Summertime. the netting is too flimsy for climbing on, so the closest they can get to destroying the plants is by crawling along the railing, and reaching through the mesh.

so, yeh... it works!

naturally, i got to listen to him continuously reminding me about this one time he was right—and i was wrong—about a thing. then he ruined said victory by following it up with some highly-comical amateur plumbing... which i will save for another day.

Jultember: mental trip to happy places...

the hibiscus is blooming again, and it is so beautiful. this little potted plant rewards me with a bloom or two every now and then, and it sends me on a mental trip to happy places every single time.

i have a soft spot for these flowers as they always reminds me of being back in the Caribbean. hibiscuses easily outgrow shrub stature in that climate to become towering masses of greenery spotted with flamboyant displays of colors. wherever you may go in the tropics, there is always a hibiscus plant to be found.

stare at it long enough, and you can almost hear the sound of warm breezes rustling the fronds of the coconut trees lining the white, sandy shores. so beautiful.

Jultember: jump up and kiss me...

my people are renowned for being colorful in every way—by which i mean my Caribbean people for a change, and not any of the other random people i periodically claim as my own. such as...

• my people... with too many cats.
• my people... with an approaching-morbid fascination with sheep and yarn.
• my people... whose dying wish is to have their friends gather to drink good beer and watch some old-school cartoons, in lieu of the usual boring adult way of marking such moments. seriously... who wants to be remembered for all the depressing stuff??? where was i again?

naturally, this colorful tendency extends to the way we name all sorts of things, a fact which he finds as amusing as i find his (Croatian) people's tendency to stack the oddest selection of letters next to each other when spelling words. seriously... the language is Hrvatski. who spells anything like that??? then there is the delicious Croatian soup/stew called grah... which only ever makes me feel like i should be reaching for my bat'leth. [he will laugh and call me a nerd when he sees that last line.]

however, it must be noted that my people have the Croatian world beat when it comes to wacky names for things. hang around a Caribbean household long enough and you are bound to hear some of the craziest phrases ever uttered under the guise of the English language. for example...

• jumbee umbrella is a generic term for mushrooms... and most of the mushrooms in the Caribbena will probably kill you if consumed.
• jumbee guava is a fruit resembling a guava... and, yes, it too can kill you if consumed.
• jumbee soursop (aka, hog apple) may not kill you... but you will regret the experience all the same.

basically, if anything has the word "jumbee" in the name... run away!

then there are the tales that are told solely to discourage the youth from venturing out after dark.

• a lajabless (lah-jah-bless) is a devil woman who hangs out along empty roadways at night, waiting to beguile men traveling alone to their demise. oh... and she always wears a long dress/skirt to hide the fact that she has one human foot... and one cow foot. exactly!
• a soucouyant (soo-coo-yah) is a vampire-like creature who appears in the form of an old woman by day, but she slips out of her skin at night and becomes a ball of light that goes around sucking people's blood. the only way to defeat her is to find the empty skin (which she hides when she goes vampiring) and to douse the whole thing with salt, which—apparently—makes it impossible for her to get back into it. then she will—supposedly—die when the sun rises.

imagine seeing a firefly after hearing the old folks talk about that last one in the middle of the night... because there is some unwritten rule that such tales must only ever be told at night. ah, good times!

 still, it is not all dark creatures and toxic foods. some of the most colorful phrases are reserved for things you actually can eat.

• hard food is all of the (non-rice) starchy components of a typical Caribbean meal. it includes things like sweet potato, yams, cassava, and green bananas or plantains. furthermore, all of the hard food that is actually grown underground is collectively referred to as ground provision, because... you know... we need to make things even more complicated colorful.
• buljou (bul-jow) is a dish of salted cod fish sauteed with onions, peppers, and tomatoes. add some hard food and a bit of coconut milk during the cooking process, and you will get run-down. the name implies the fact that it is usually simmered until the coconut milk evaporates (or, runs down... according to my colorful people). makes little-to-no sense, but it is delicious!
•  shadow beni is the tastier cousin to the common cilantro. it usually shows up in other cuisines as culantro or Mexican cilantro
• buss-up-shot is a roti that is cooked in the usual manner (on a flat surface)... before being subjected to a battery of physical abuse when it comes off the heat. i tracked down a video demonstrating the sort of thing, should you ever feel the need to take out your frustration on a flatbread. [and, yes... rotis are super-common in the Caribbean islands, as there are a ton of Indian folks to be found there, including my (deceased) paternal grandfather.]

my absolute favorite colorful phrase, however, is reserved for a special little plant. it is called jump up and kiss me (Portulaca grandiflora). it is a hearty succulent that grows close to the ground in lots of hot places, and the colorful name comes from a special trick one can perform with the flowers. according to my mom—who grew up in a time and place where young ladies did not walk around wearing makeup—the girls would crush the bright-colored flowers between their fingers and apply the stain to their lips. seems it was a natural beauty product long before such things became all the rage.

so, there we were some time ago, getting ready to visit the garden center to purchase a few transplants for this year's balcony garden project. he had already talked me into planting more flowers this time around, so i found myself going on about jump up and kiss me... yet again.

it is such a simple, low maintenance plant that produces the most impressive range of brightly-colored flowers. but, more than that, it is one of the fondest memories i have of the small, rocky garden in the backyard of my (maternal) family's place. i wanted so badly to introduce him to that plant whose poetic name always makes me smile.

as we were wandering through the row after row of mini potted vegetables, there it was at the corner of shelf of transplants that were all supposed to be herbs... one lone, solitary pack of mini jump up and kiss me plants. no exaggeration... i dove for the thing like a baseball player going for home.  then we walked through every inch of the garden center, and there was not another one to be found. [the round pot on the right is thyme.]

i planted them in a shallow terracotta container with a healthy dash of sand added to the potting mix, mainly because the soil in that back garden was very sandy, and those plants were quite content to creep across that rocky surface as they soaked up the near-equatorial sunshine.

the plant works like a weather record-keeper of sorts in this climate, as the blossoms tend to bloom in abundance following a few days of intense sunlight. they were spectacular during the heatwave, but it has been cooler over the last few days... and it shows.

still, i love love LOVE the ever-changing display of colors these few plants produce. this is one of my favorites. it is a beautiful blend of a coppery-orange and a rosy-pink.

this little bug likes the bright yellow.

the lightest shades i have seen so far are in these buttery-yellows, but i have a vague recollection of having seen white flowers among my grandmother's garden.

then there are the intense purplish pinks.

i grabbed a few petals and gave it a crush, and... there it is!

i will refrain from giving it a try, because i want to spare you the sudden, overwhelming urge to jump up and kiss me. and, no... this one (probably) will not kill you for a change.

dragons can be quirky....

i woke up this morning and pulled open the curtains, only to confirm that we were at the start of yet another week of cold, grey, overcast misery. then something amazing happened, and i do not mean the cup of coffee that i actually remembered (for once) to drink before it went cold.

me: there is a big, fat bumblebee with his head shoved down the mouth of a snapdragon. i am smiling very hard. 
him: nice.

the snapdragon is one of the few flowering plants that i usually do not mind tucking into the empty nooks of a vegetable garden. zinnias and bunching sunflowers—the kind with clusters of small flower heads that can be used as cut-flowers—also share the rare distinction of being endorsed by me. in fact, there is a variety of sunflowers called "velvet queen" that ranks incredibly high on my list of favorite things. trust me... things have zero value until they land on said list.

where was i again? oh, yes... snapdragons.

not only are they pleasant to look at, these flowers are also an excellent source of pollen for the bee population, hence the early-morning visit on this waiting-to-rain kind of day. that spray of yellow dust is pollen, which means that the bumblebee probably paid this flower a visit while i was still fast asleep.

snapdragons are a common sight in Summer gardens, mainly because they are such an attractive and interesting plant. they are also super-easy to care for, and extremely low-maintenance. it is the perfect accent plant for the lazy human being.

the flowers come in almost every color, except blue... because that would make me too happy. they grow clustered in stalks and the flowers open in succession from the base the tip. this variety has rather short stalks—laugh if you must—but you can see that the flowers at the bottom of the cluster are already withering, while the ones at the top look freshly-opened.

[random aside: you see the same pattern of blooming in the gladiolas that florists try to sneak into every floral arrangement ever made. i am convinced that the tradition of the dozen roses was started by someone who was trying to convince a florist to put down the gladiola for Pete's sake.]

where was i? oh, yes... 

snapdragons earn their names from two things... their appearance and a peculiar quirk that they share. bet you never knew that dragons can be quirky.

the flowers bear a resemblance to a dragon's head. yes, i know... the dragons probably look a bit different where you live. check out that profile. it definitely looks dragon-ish.

as for the other part... when you place a finger on either side of the flower and press lightly—as though you were squeezing someone's face by their cheeks—the center of the flower pops open to reveal the mighty "mouth" of this ferocious beast. i especially like the way this looks with the darker-colored flowers where the pollen-coated inner bits (yes... i do know they are called stamen) look like teeth. admit it... you are shivering with fear.

methinks this dragon needs a tube of toothpaste.

where is the snap, you ask? just squeeze to open...
 

and when you release the flower, it snaps shut again. SNAP!!!

think of it as a cheap magic trick with Mother Nature providing the only prop you will need. yes.... i am easily amused. most of all, it amuses me to know that the bees have already found my garden, so they should be around when my tomatoes and peppers start flowering... which will happen if the sun ever shines again.

then my mind started wandering, which is always a dangerous thing.

me: when we get through the Marvel movies, can we watch the Transformers movies next? i love that cartoon. 
him: the Michael Bay ones? no way. they are an atrocity.
me: come on. i want to watch Bumblebee—which he did not direct—but OCD requires me to watch the rest of them first. 
him: we can try, but i bet you give up halfway through the first one.
me: that is why beer was invented.
him: uh huh.

so now i will be subjecting us both to a series of bad movies, all because of one pollen-plundering bumblebee. luckily, i have set myself on a beer-sampling adventure, so that should provide any necessary buffer on those bad-movie evenings... but i will talk about that bit of absurdity some other day.

** i am editing this to add that we ended up watching Transformers later in the day. it was disappointing, but that is usually the case when revisiting the happy things we remember from our childhood. best part was, i got through it without resorting to beer. we did, however, have to pause a whole lot to engage in mini-rants about things we found infuriating (seriously... what reason would the military guys have for putting their trust in the Autobots when their only experience with the Transformers involved them nearly getting killed in the middle of the desert? and how do you have the main bad guy show up with like forty minutes left to go in a move that was almost two-and-a-half hours long???). the cats slept on undisturbed through the whole thing, as they are used to that kind of nonsense from us. a good time was had by all.**

what is the point...

after what was without doubt one of the most soul-draining Winters of my life, i was really looking forward to the arrival of Spring. it seems to finally be here.

him: uhm... Spring happened like two months ago.
me: that is adorable. 

then i just shake my head in pity that he thinks this is what Spring is meant to feel like. 

still, while it has been mostly chilly, wet, and grey with hardly a trace of sunlight to distinguish night from day, the temperature has remained above freezing for a few weeks now. i think it is safe to call this season Spring.

i am not abandoning my warm blanket just yet though, especially not with an "aggressive cold front" in the forecast. and, no... i have no idea what makes a cold front "aggressive", but that sounds like a meteorologically-polite way of warning us that it will feel like "not quite Spring".

this is the time of year when my fancy usually turns to thoughts of gardening. we are going to try something a bit different this time around. there is only so much space to be had when your garden consists of however many containers of soil you can squeeze onto a (moderately-sized) balcony. as a result, for every new thing you add to said space, you have to abandon all plans of growing some other thing.

i usually scoff at the idea of growing flowers. you know... all those brightly colored plants that serve no purpose other than to be pretty and to bring joy. yuck! however, i allowed myself to be talked into giving it a try for this year's balcony garden project. so, off we went to the garden center, and home we came with an assortment of pretty, colorful things.

see that?

it is called a dahlia, and it is beautiful. now, i ask you... what is the point of such a useless thing?

we also picked up a variety of small annuals, which i planted in a couple of the troughs on the railing. the troughs are mostly symmetrical, except one has red snapdragons...

 

and the other one has yellow snapdragons. OCD may require me to run out in the middle of the night and remedy this kinda sorta but not quite symmetry.

there are also flowers in one of the ten-gallon containers that would otherwise be holding edible things. i expect them to explode into a lovely display of color... should we ever get anything resembling actual sunshine.

i did manage to squeeze in a few tasty things for future culinary adventures. so far, we have three types of tomatoes, two types of peppers, and an assortment of herbs.

oh... and i also bought a few strawberry plants which i will add to the remaining trough before the end of the day. strawberries usually do pretty well in containers, and i look forward to the dramatic effect of them hanging from the railing. naturally, there will be many frustrated reports of damage-by-squirrels in the coming weeks.

[i transplanted the strawberries and grabbed a few pictures before pressing the "publish" button, so i will insert them in here for your viewing pleasure.]

if you look at the center of a strawberry flower, you will see the start of a tiny strawberry. i call it... future strawberry.
 

while i do feel a touch of sorrow at having lost the rest of my precious... precious... garden space to pretty, flowering things, we do have a few indoor plant adventures planned for the near future. that should keep me distracted for a while. then there is the furniture to be reupholstered... teaching him to sew... and a couple rooms that (still) need to be painted.

this would be a good time to sit back, have a sip of my coffee, and look out at the pretty, useless things. i can get used to this.