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.

i only "eh" in jest...

i climbed out of bed unapologetically late today to find that it had rained while i was asleep. this was a most welcome sight, as Eastern Canada is in the grips of a sweltering heat-wave. the rain brought a brief respite, prompting the appearance of some much-needed pollinators who have been mostly laying low over the past week.

the animator caught a shot of a butterfly resting on a rain-drenched squash leaf in this year's balcony garden project... which he promptly turned into a jigsaw puzzle.

there was some dispute regarding the use of said image.

me: i'm gonna put that picture in my blog post.
him: did you ask for my permission to use it?
me: did you ask for my permission to use my camera?
him: [silence]
me: exactly! my camera. my photo. 
him: but i took it.
me: good luck proving that.

there has also been a spike in the number of wildfires across Quebec, which makes sense with all this heat. however, forestry experts have identified an additional, wholly-unexpected factor that is contributing to there being twice as many forest fires as usual at this time of the year.

you guessed it...it's the covid!

people are stuck at home, with little by way of distraction/entertainment, so the great outdoors presents itself as an attractive destination for anyone seeking to escape the confinement (while maintaining the common sense avoidance of other human beings). as a result, a lot more of them than usual are coming to the same dangerous conclusion.

"let's go camping, eh?"

now, i feel a need to pause here for a moment to address anyone who may have read that last sentence, and are now concerned that i may have gone native. i assure you that no such thing has occurred. i could not stop sounding like i spent most of my life in New York City, no matter how hard i might try. that quintessentially Canadian noise only ever escapes my face when i am joking about the place. trust me... i only "eh" in jest.

where was i again?

oh, yes... more people going camping, which means more irresponsible campfires, which means more forest fires. so now there is one more thing to worry about in what is already shaping up to be the most stress-inducing year in recorded history.

speaking of stress...

'twould seem i am doing a particularly bad job at keeping mine in check of late. i actually found myself on the receiving end of a bit of (wholly professional) medical advice that is unlike any i have encountered before. "you need to calm the hell down," he said. so now i can add that the list of things to (try not to) stress about. good grief!

i began my quest for calm by harassing a farmer about some sheep, and eventually purchasing a couple fleeces from the good people over at Kinnaird Farm. yes, i did recently get two fleeces (from a different farm). however, i really wanted some naturally-colored grey/black wool, so i convinced myself that this purchase was totally justified.

the only disappointment was that i could not go pick them up in person, as a visit to a sheep farm would definitely have knocked my stress levels down a few notches. the animator was prepared to turn the drive into a fun day trip. however, i am taking the whole 'common sense avoidance of other human beings' thing most seriously, so i ended up having the fleeces shipped to me... and the box sat unopened in a corner for several days.

him: you're not gonna open your package?
me: nope!
him: i thought you were so excited to get your fleece.
me: i am.
him: so why don't you open it?
me: the covid. 
him: i see.

it was like every gift-giving holiday rolled into one when i finally broke the seal on that box.

then i broke the vacuum seal on the biggest ziploc bag i have ever seen, and stood there in awe as the fiber expanded. everyone is entitled to their brand of crazy, and i totally embrace mine.

first there was Frosty, a North Country Cheviot/Blue-faced Leicester/Romney/Rideau Arcott cross. i have never worked with purebred Romney or Rideau Arcott wool, but i can see the definite influence in the cross. Frosty is a "hogget", which means a sheep that is in its second year. the term can also apply to the wool and the meat from the animal. yes, i do take my hobby very seriously.

i laid Frosty's fleece out (tip-side up) on a painting tarp that i commandeered for this very purpose. ten points if you spot the ridiculous cat. that is Cordy. she will show up again... and again.

i grabbed a few locks from different parts of the fleece. this one should have been called "Jacob", on account of the coat of many colors. it is insane that all of this came from the same sheep.

next came Blackie. this one is a NCC-BFL cross, and the fleece is finer and more springy than Frosty's. as with most naturally "black" sheep, the color of the wool is actually a super-dark, greyish brown.

i was trying to get a shot with my dark-grey kitty Philly for comparison, but she was more interested in running around like a lunatic.

i forgot to get a photo of Blackie's fleece opened out on the tarp, so i had to pause composing this post to do so (cut-side up this time) .

i took fewer samples from this one, as there was less variation across the whole thing. it is a mostly-uniform dark color with a tweedy patch that left me wondering if this sheep might be related to Don King. [disclaimer for legal purposes: i am in no way suggesting that Don King has engaged in any activity that might have resulted in his DNA being part of a sheep's lineage.]

as per usual, i grabbed some hot, soapy water...

and gave the sample fibers a wash, keeping them covered to maintain the heat in the water. the yogurt containers from last time have already gone into the recycling, so i am using takeout containers this time around... if you need all the details.

those greyscale colors really come alive after a wash. Frosty is on the top row, and Blackie is on the bottom. i really love those silvery-grey sections of Frosty's fleece. it would be nice to find a whole fleece that color.

i decided to wash Frosty's fleece first. i want to keep the locks intact, so i have been carefully laying them out in plastic mesh baskets that i keep for this very purpose, and washing them one basket at a time.

yes, it does take longer than if i divided the fleece in a couple-few batches and washed it like that, but there is something indescribably calming about sitting cross-legged on the floor, carefully organizing chunks of dirty wool into neat rows. that calm was, after all, the point of this whole thing.

unfortunately, Cordy (the Little One of our furry trio) keeps hanging around, trying to eat bits of the wool, and keeping her out of trouble is definitely cutting into the relaxing part of this exercise. try explaining to a cat that the doctor says you need to "calm the hell down". she is as troublesome as she is adorable.

i tied pieces of bird netting to a collapsible laundry rack to make a two-tiered wool-drying rack.

i would have added a third layer of netting to the bottom of the rack, but this setup doubles as a cat trap, so that would have been a very most terribly bad idea. she is seriously my favorite cat.

i want to fill the bathtub with this stuff, and dive in head-first. it is so lovely!

you can see the difference between the tips (left) and the cut-end (right) of the fiber. i wonder if this was the first time Frosty got a haircut. [addendum: the farmer said Frosty also had a haircut last year.]

i am about halfway done with this fleece, then i will move on to washing Blackie's. hopefully my poor cat will survive the over-stimulation.

there has also been quite a bit of spinning in between playing with dirty wool. i mentioned back in April that i had started spinning up the fiber i bought at last Summer's Twist Fibre Festival. [naturally, said festival is cancelled this year... which was another excuse for buying two more fleeces.] that got pushed to the side for a while, but i want to free up the wheel to start spinning all the fleece i have been accumulating of late.

i have two full jumbo bobbins so far, with about half a bobbin's worth of that fiber left to go, which should (hopefully) be enough for a simple sweater of some sort for self.

oh, and there was also a calendar at the bottom of the box of fleeces, and it is filled (naturally) with photos of happy sheep. one of those days was my birthday. it was total rubbish. perhaps i will get around to celebrating it some other day when life is slightly less insane.

it seems to be raining again. i am going to resume sitting cross-legged on the floor, playing with dirty fleece, with at least one cat close at hand to keep me company. i would not have it any other way.

best bit of advice...

the single best bit of advice i have ever received in my life came from an old man who sat next to me on a subway train headed from Brooklyn to the Bronx in the city that will always be "home" to me.

i had opted to leave my car that day and take the train instead, so that i could use the commute time to catch up on some much-needed reading for the Neuroanatomy class i was taking at the time. i even left the house earlier than usual so that i could take the local train (the one that makes all the stops) instead of taking the express, which would make for a longer ride during which to read.

i boarded the train at the first stop on the line and took a seat in an empty corner, before pulling the massive textbook from my bag. i had even taken the precaution of bringing along a pair of headphones, a key component of the universally-understood "DO NOT DISTURB" signage i was trying so desperately to project to everyone around me.

that is when he entered.

he took a quick glance around the train car that was less than half full at this point... and made a beeline for the seat right next to me. i was just a bit, shall we say, vexed by his choice, but i assumed he would recognize and respect the sign.

that was not to be the case, naturally.

i could see him in my peripheral vision, sitting there... studying me... and it was not long before he tapped me on the arm to ask what i was reading. i answered politely, and returned to my reading... or, more accurately, attempting to read. after the third (or fourth) tap on the arm followed by the third (or fourth) question, i finally accepted my fate and closed the book completely.

by the time we reached midtown-Manhattan, he had given me the Reader's-Digest-version of his life story. i made my best effort to smile politely and nod occasionally at the old stranger, but my mind was mostly on all the reading i could have been doing in that time... or the extra half-hour of sleep i could have gotten that morning had i opted to take the car.

then, with no advance warning, he rose suddenly, prepared to disembark as the train slowed down to enter the next station (it was 42nd Street, i think).

that was the point when he leaned down toward me, and uttered the phrase that he stated was the single most important thing he had learned in all his years. his words were simultaneously so profound, yet seemingly out of place, that i spent the rest of that train ride turning the phrase over in my head, with a closed book on my lap, in an empty corner of a (mostly) empty train.

he said:

do not sully your soul to defend other people's lies.

those words i share with you to do with as you like.

don't ask questions...

every life has a nemesis, and this is (one of) mine.

i can hear you wondering what kind of lunatic has a plant as a foe. me... that's who!

this is a leaf of the American Linden tree [Tilia americana... if you need the too-much-information version of the thing]. it is commonly used as a street/park tree in the Eastern half of Canada and the States... which is were my problem begins.

Lindens grow to be lovely, large trees that provide much-needed shade in urban areas. they bloom early in the Summer, sending out waves of jasmine-scented joy. who could be mad about that, right? me... that's who!

the pollen from this tree is near the top of the (ever-expanding) list of things that Nature seems to produce just to drive me nuts, and they were in full bloom this past week. my allergic reaction to all that pollen is so bad, i avoid entire areas of the city in early Summer.

we were walking in one of the lovely parks along the riverside one day last Summer, when i stopped suddenly and took a slow, panning, three-sixty look at my surroundings.

me: every single one of these trees here is a Linden.

so now i steer clear of that whole side of town when the Lindens are in bloom. not that doing so would make any real difference, because... naturally... there is a gigantic Linden directly across the street from our building, and a few more down the block. they are on every single block in our neighborhood, and there is also a park full of them just a street away. i would probably have to move to the West Coast to get away from the cursed things, but there is probably some other form of Nature waiting there for me. good times. 

you can easily identify a Linden in the wild... or—in this case—in the middle of my living room. [full disclosure: i took these photos last Summer, following a stormy night that left tree bits scattered all over the street. the Lindens had already bloomed, and they were starting to fruit at that point.]

they have asymmetrical, heart-shaped leaves.

they also have elongated, leaf-like bracts located about halfway between the true leaves and the clusters of tiny white flowers that later become small, spherical, seed-bearing fruit.

the clusters of the flowers/fruit usually dangle from the tree like this, and the leaves and fruit/seeds are supposedly edible... that is, according to borderline-lunatic survivalist types on the interwebs.

now, it should be noted that i only really hate this plant for a specific period of time out of the year. they are an otherwise welcomed bit of texture in a landscape that is mostly dominated by maple trees. plus, they are also a major source of nectar for bees, so all of my suffering will be rewarded later with delicious local honey.

speaking of which...

i had a thoroughly depressing experience recently that began with a bumblebee and ended with accepting that some things in life are best left unknown.

if you were here last Summer, you might recall my fascination with a fat little bumble bee. there was only ever one bee at a time hanging around, so i assumed it was the same one who kept coming back to my little garden. and, no... i did not attempt to hug him or pet him or squeeze him, but i did i name him George. so, i was extra-excited to see a fat bumble bee buzzing around the balcony one particularly grim afternoon [this was a couple-few days before we planted this year's garden.]

me: it has to be George. look how he's buzzing around the containers.
him: but they're covered.
me: i know, but it's like he knows they should be filled with plants. it's like he's been here before.
him: maybe it is George.
me: hmm... now i'm not sure. just how long does a bumble bee live?

that is where everything went sideways.

i tried to ignore that nagging question—especially, as i have a tendency to go from 'mildly curious' to 'way too much information' with very little provocation. still, curiosity was getting the best of me, so i made the horrible decision to ask the Internets.

i will give you the shortest version i can manage.

so...

in Spring, a Queen bumble bee emerges from her Winter hidey-hole, and goes searching for a place to make a hive. she lays some eggs, which develop into female worker bees, and they all work together to build a nest and forage for pollen and nectar to stock it with food.

sounds simple so far.

the Queen's efforts now turn to laying eggs that will become male bees and fertile future-Queens. these... uhm... libidinous young ones fly off to meet-and-mate... and that is where the story ends... sorta.

Summer is usually ending by this point, so each of these... uhm... enceinte future-Queens digs herself into a hole and goes into hibernation for the Winter...

and everybody else DIES!

me: so, that is definitely not my George. so. much. sadness.

then i just sulked for a while.

him: why are you so upset about a bee?
me: it was a metaphor for life. and now it's gone.
him: so now you have a new bumble bee.
me: it's not the same.

then i sulked some more.

i am assuming that the new fat bee bumbling around the balcony garden project this early in the season is probably a female... maybe even a foraging Queen.

and, yes... i will still call her George.

and the proverb of this pointless tale is a simple one: don't ask questions!

what the...

there has been no snow or freezing rain for more than a week now, so i am going to take the bold move of declaring a start to iced-coffee season. yes, we are still getting overnight frost warnings in this part of the globe, but that only really affects folks who have a field of crops to worry about. so, yeh... i think Winter may actually... finally... be done. cheers!

naturally, this is the time of year when i usually have seedlings waiting to go for the balcony garden project, but we have not taken a trip to the nursery yet because... well... you know. instead, we ordered seedlings from a new-to-us supplier. they should be delivered in time for the customary Victoria Day start of the gardening season in these parts, which is the eighteenth of May this time around. i will never get used to having to wait this late in the year to plant anything outdoors. such an odd country this is. 

speaking of the balcony garden project, the animator started removing the covers from the containers, and he was greeted with the first fern fronds, poised to unfurl any day now. it is so heartening to be reminded that life carries on. 

you can almost feel that tension before those leaves open up.

he has some wacky plan brewing to squirrel-proof this year's garden, but i honestly stopped listening after "i can get some two-by-fours...", because i already know that nothing good ever comes after that. 

and speaking of squirrels...

i was transferring some photos from my camera one recent evening, when i noticed a strange new thing on the big maple tree. i had been trying—but mostly failing—to get a shot of a bird that was hopping from branch-to-branch, so this odd bulge had escaped my attention earlier that day. 

me: what the...?

him: what do you think it is?

me: don't know. could be some kind of mushroom and the cap hasn't opened up yet.

then we spent a minute or two joking that we might have to harvest it if the test-run-apocalypse gets worse. 

me: you do know that most of the mushrooms you stumble upon in the wild will probably kill you, right?

him: if it gets bad enough that we need to climb a massive tree to get one mushroom, we're probably gonna die anyway. we might as well have something interesting for our last meal. 

me: true.

it was my intention to give this strange new thing a closer look the next day, but it was gone by the time i got out of bed to feed the cats.

me: maybe the squirrels ate it.

him: good. i hope they die, then they can't ruin my garden again this year.

not gonna lie... i agree one-hundred-percent with that sentiment. 

so, i went back to the original image and zoomed in on that small section, and just stared at it for a while, trying to figure out what it was. then the old proverbial light bulb went on in my head. if you squint a bit, you will note that the bottom-right section of the bulge appears to have been chewed away, reveling a white substance on the inside, and that there is an interesting series of lines on the outer surface. that last part was the biggest clue.

me: i know that it is!

him: what?

then i showed him this... and we just shook our heads. those bloody squirrels!