2025 Garden Report

Our garden this year is a bit more chaotic than it has been, mainly because I'm working about eighteen hours a week and dog-walking another eight or nine, and those things eat up a lot of gardening time. But things grow whether I'm paying attention or not, and we've been enjoying produce as it comes. This morning I picked a gallon of beans (5 gallons last week), pruned and watered the tomatoes and squash plants, and marveled at how high some of the weeds got before I pulled them (there are still too many to count)! Oh, the dill!

Last night we tasted our first onion, peppers, and potatoes fried together (yum). I took a huge caesar salad to the Inner City Pastoral Ministry Men's and Women's hot dog roast and picnic two weeks ago, I've got cauliflower in the freezer (the broccoli bolted while we were on vacation in early July), and the peas (snap and snow) are pretty much finished. I'll have plenty of climbing beans, the cucumbers are coming on, and I've managed to keep the pumpkins from growing through the fence into the neighbour's yard.  I'll have lots of seed for next year's tobacco, and though the corn seems a bit stunted, we may get a feed or two. My one regret is that I didn't plant enough carrots, but what can you do? It was a busy spring.

Berry wise, the raspberries, haskaps and domestic Saskatoon (service) berries have been outstanding. I'm still working on improving our strawberry bed -- so there won't be any strawberry jam this summer -- but maybe I can make pear/rhubarb jam instead. It was a big hit this past winter.

Now that I'm too busy to spend a lot of extra time weeding, my husband and kids are making suggestions about how to downsize our garden, but what I'd really like is a bit more help. Jay has a friend who might come and work with me for $20 an hour, and I'm sure we could make a big dent in the disorder together. But in the meantime, I'm enjoying having the ability to share produce, embracing the lushness of it all, and looking forward to good eating!

Don't mind the chaos! Click here for this year's 3-minute video garden report, or watch below. And if you're itching to get your hands into the dirt, I'd love to garden with you. There's so much to do!

Wisdom and serenity for our present circumstances

The video below is full of hard truths about the cost of progress and our denial of the many problems we face as a human race... and offers some helpful suggestions for how to move beyond them. It's also quite liberating in the way it demonstrates that human short-sightedness is, quite simply, something that's centuries old, something we cannot blame on each other in our present day, something we have to forgive ourselves for, and about which we need to continue to be compassionate towards others. Had human civilizations understood, as many of our Indigenous communities do, that reciprocity with nature rather than its exploitation is the only way to sustainable living, we wouldn't be facing so many crises now.

There are always more questions than answers when it comes to the future, but the real trick is to move forward just doing our best -- and drawing the best out of each other. Grow a garden, grow community, grow kindness, do what we can to care for the planet (love-in-action) and leave the rest. Grieve, adapt, and change as best we can, and encourage others to do the same.

If you haven't heard of Michael Dowd, I recommend checking out his website, postdoom.com. There's a heckuva lot of wisdom there...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFGHdOyyx74