Air Quality, and Peony Love

We have had a beautiful stretch of very warm weather (for the Canadian prairies, at least). The trouble for most of us is the weather is a month early and has preceded any amount of seasonal rain. So although we've enjoyed some time at the beach, the 30C heat that we enjoyed all week is actually baking the crops in the fields and turning pastures to dust. If you're a farmer in these parts, you're probably getting worried.

I put the sprinkler on my garden every few days to keep things alive. I am lucky that I don't have to carry buckets of water. But most days I do. I run the sprinkler on the garden to cover more ground but water most of my flowers by pail. We have a couple large totes that I bought from the nearby Hutterite Colony (previously used for canola oil) that I use to catch rain. Then I also have my 3 rain barrels, and they have a bit of water left from the 8/10 rain we had a few weeks ago. Slowly I've used most of it to water my tomatoes and grape vines, and all the perennials near the house. Speaking of those, I'm having some serious love for the peony I planted last year. There are 3 new ones as well, but they haven't bloomed. I was so proud of the hot pink one by my shed....

Until I went to my mom's and saw her pale pink one in all its glory....

I do so love peonies!

It is a smokey, hazy day today--smoke arriving here from fires in northern Saskatchewan. My mind is on my friends there, hoping no homes are threatened and that the fires are soon under control.

It is smokey here, yes, and it is a reminder to treasure the clean air that we normally take for granted. To think of all the people that live in similar haze everyday of their lives...we are truly fortunate to live where we do. How is summer shaping up where you are?

A Garden Update, of Sorts

For some reason I'm having a hard time believing we are halfway through June. I have the odd sensation that we somehow missed spring, but I think I know why. Last year in the spring we had no lawn to speak of, just topsoil, and our driveway had exposed clay in places. We got extra gravel and our lawn grew last year so the mud and mess being tracked in was so much more manageable this year. It felt like the season of mud didn't happen, in a way :) add to that the fact that May was unseasonably hot and dry, and it just feels like spring didn't happen. Thankfully, things are growing although we have had minimal rain. We have our big totes in place to use as rain barrels so we can catch every drop of rain possible for use in our yard. 

I got a 6 pack of dahlias at a greenhouse. They are among my favourites but I've had no luck buying and planting the tubers. We had a touch of frost after I planted them out so 5 of them in the apple tree bed look scraggly and forlorn. But this lovely is on my sittin' porch where I can enjoy it everyday. 

My mom has had some success with her incubator, despite power outages and other mishaps. Unfortunately the day after things started to hatch the cord wiggled out of the incubator and the rest of her eggs were lost, including guinea eggs that we were so excited about. 

Lambo. 

Suzy. Our lambs are in our little pasture here and are a constant source of amusement. 

As for the garden, potatoes and onions are doing great and I planted 4 or 5 varieties of sunflowers that have all come up. It will be so much fun to watch them get taller than us, along with my first ever crop of corn. I started pumpkin plants early and managed to plant them out successfully. That is actually the first thing I've started indoors that survived hardening off and transplanting, so I'm excited to have grown our own jack o lanterns and pumpkin purée. 

My spinach, kale, lettuces and carrots are slow to appear and I dread a year without a fresh supply of beets. Our elderly neighbour plants a big garden and usually offers us part of his excess. This year we may be counting on his generosity:) likewise, I've replanted cucumbers which simply didn't germinate and my next crop has not come up either. It's a bit discouraging but I've had slow starters before, replanted, and ended up with everything coming up at once and being too crowded. So I guess I'll give things more time and concentrate on what is doing well. 

I also planted a row of asparagus and some tiny shoots have appeared in my straw mulch. I'm nervous to keep the weeds out of that row but we have really enjoyed the asparagus out of my brother's garden. It is definitely worth a try to grow my own. 

Last year I planted 5 grape vines and 3 survived the winter. I don't have a picture but I do need to come up with a trellis idea that works. Perhaps a post on grapes will be in order. I am never sure if I should jump the gun and blog about something before I know it will survive. But if I stuck to that around here I may never blog at all ;) how's your garden growing?

My Stone Wishing Well

We are extremely lucky to have a good well. When you live in the country, your own source of water dictates the convenience of how many loads of laundry you can do, if you can use water for your yard, even the length of showers. Although we have a plentiful supply, we are careful to conserve and I talk to my kids daily about how precious water is.

Our well is directly out my kitchen window, smack in the middle of the only flat lawn space this yard offers. We are on a slope and having the well in the middle of everything might have posed a problem but my mom and I were excited to turn it into a feature in the yard.

Above and below: the water driller, before there was a house or a shed in the yard. 

Below: this is our well. We thought we could do better!

In progress: we used mortar between the rocks and tried to keep our stack level as we continued in a circle around the well (although this photo doesn't look level at all!)

We used some stakes and chicken wire to give our rock circle some stability. In hindsight, more stakes would have kept our circle more stable and round. If I do another project of this type I will also cut the stakes to the required length beforehand. Once we were done we were afraid to cut them incase it made any of the rock work come loose. Now it is simply one of those jobs that we forget needs doing and it has been that way a year and a half. Perhaps Husband's next days off? We will see ;)

I used some of that awkward black plastic edging around the base of the little flower bed we built around the well. I thought that once the grass grew in we wouldn't see it, but it has been visible all along and every time I do dishes I gaze out the window at it and wonder how to better hide the edging. The other option was to remove it, but for now I have moved it to the inside of the rock edging. 

Before:

After:

Once we get those stakes trimmed back I want to put a large planter of trailing flowers atop the well. I'll be sure to update with some photos if we ever get that done!

One (Lonely) Swale

I began to read Toby Hemenway's Gaia's Garden in the winter of 2012/13, when we still lived in our old house an hour's drive south of here. It is a very practical guide to planning one's yard, and one that impressed upon me the importance of water conservation (among other things).

In the book, Hemenway illustrates the usefulness of swales in reducing water runoff on slopes. The idea is to dig a trough of one to two feet deep (in my case, much closer to ONE backbreaking foot deep!):

Although it looks like I have put the swale running downhill, the actual slope that we lose most of the runoff from is to the left of the trench I dug.

See what I mean? This is facing uphill, where snow melt and rain runoff had actually worn deep gullies into the soil before we harrowed (carrying away my valuable topsoil). But back to the swale. Into the bottom my helpers and I deposited first, gravel. We topped that with sand because, hey, they had loaded their John Deere trailer and I hated to disappoint ;)

The next layer was straw (or rather long dead grass out of the bushes). It was straw-like and more plentiful than the bit of straw I swiped from the farm for my compost. We quickly covered it before the wind blew it away. Looks like the helpers are conspiring...

Ah, yes, they moved on to more exciting adventures and left mommy to finish the job. As usual ;)

The point of the swale is to catch water as it moves down the slope and give it somewhere to go (rather than gushing downhill in soil depleting rivers). When the water hits the swale (and the slight berm that is on the downhill side of the swale...difficult to photograph...) it should soak in and travel along the gravel bottom before soaking slowly and more deeply below-ground--the width of the swale.

I had high hopes that we might get three or even four swales installed because our yard is sloping in every direction. Alas, I managed only this one poor lonely swale by the sweat of my own brow. We are short on time and very short on horse power, but if there is a chance this fall after my cover crops get turned under I hope to try another.

Have you any water conservation strategies in place in your garden? Or is the rainfall plentiful enough that you haven't the need?