We’re nearing mid-September and the nights are downright chilly, but there is still a fair amount of summery colour lingering in Beaulieu Gardens at Lougheed House. To read a bit about this historic site, which dates to 1891, click here. And if you get a chance to visit Calgary, be sure to stop in for a tour – the mansion is gorgeously appointed and the grounds feature a spectacular variety of plants during the growing season.
Thanks to a lovely and extremely generous gift of veggie seeds from my friends Angie and Lisa, I finally grew turnips for the first time this year. I hadn’t previously given this crop a go, as turnips are one of the vegetables my hubby hates the most – and believe me, he hates nearly all vegetables equally, so this is saying something.
I yanked a few of the sizeable roots out of the garden last week and was thrilled that they were pretty much perfect for turnips…sort of beautiful, even, especially if you squint a little and overlook the flea-beetle-bitten leaves. Okay, that may be going too far, but still…colour me impressed. The phrase “low-maintenance” doesn’t even begin to describe how easy these things are to grow. I’m sure it helped that our summer weather was so rainy and chilly, but I’m going to claim it’s because I’m just such a good gardener. 😉
So…hit me with your favourite turnip recipes! (Or if you hate them like my hubby does, chime in so that he doesn’t feel so alone, LOL).
I see turnip puff in my future!
The package from Burpee Seeds classified this sweet pea as “High Scent,” which immediately captured my attention and imagination as I stood in front of the racks of seeds in the garden centre in early spring. Sure enough, they didn’t falsify such a claim. These sweet peas smell like all the deeply delightful Lathyrus odoratus cultivars – whatever they were – of my childhood. I’m growing them out on the balcony and I keep stepping outside for a sniff. I may be a little obsessed.
If you’ve ever spent any time in the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, you have probably visited the town of Banff, located in the National Park that bears its name. My hubby and I don’t travel to the townsite often even though it’s not very far away, but we decided to make the trip a few weeks ago so we could summit Tunnel Mountain, which overlooks the town. Instead of driving and worrying about where we would park in the busy tourist-filled town, we took a commuter bus operated by On-It Regional Transit. For ten dollars each way, we were able to board the bus near our home and relax enjoy the incredible scenery nap all the way to our destination and back. The On-It buses operate between Calgary, Canmore, and Banff and have a regular weekend schedule with several routes running during the summer. It’s definitely a great option if you don’t want to drive from Calgary and back.
As for Tunnel Mountain…we had fun doing this quick trek under cloudy conditions. It’s a short peak, relatively speaking, topping out at 1,692 metres. (It’s a 4.3 kilometre trip return, with a 300 metre elevation gain). Despite the name, the mountain doesn’t actually have a tunnel. When the Canadian Pacific Railway was working to push tracks through the area in 1882, they wanted to blast right through the mountain. While it was a shorter route than what was eventually constructed, it would have been far more costly, in dollars and labour, to build the tunnel. So the mountain doesn’t have a big hole in it…but the name has stuck. (The mountain’s Indigenous names include Sleeping Buffalo, Iinii Istako, and Eyarhey Tatanga Woweyahgey Wakân).
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There is a brand new story up at Paper Butterfly Flash Fiction, the online flash fiction magazine I publish six times a year. Check out Ed Ahern’s bittersweet “The Spring” here.
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We have a very cool art exhibit going on at the library branch where I work, a sample of multi-media work by children participating in art classes at the Wildflower Arts Centre. These kids are aged 5 through 14 and it is amazing to see such talent! Paint, charcoal, fibre, paper (collage and mâché)…the creativity is fantastic!
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Reading highlights for the month: the hilarious and action-packed YA novel The Epic Crush of Genie Lo, by F.C. Lee. Think Chinese mythology meets California high school – it has Buffy the Vampire Slayer vibes but it’s way loonier and, quite frankly, a bit more juvenile. But it’s silly good fun and I can’t wait for the next book…hopefully it is published soon.
Another YA offering: M.T. Anderson’s Landscape with Invisible Hand. I laughed, I cried, I despaired. I think I was supposed to eventually feel hopeful, but that’s actually the point where the tears appeared. This is a satirical (and just plain devastating) story of an alien invasion of Earth that has some startling, wayyyyyy too-close-to-home consequences.
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Soundtrack for the month: The 1990 grunge album “Uncle Anesthesia” by Screaming Trees; the newly-released single “Half-Light” by Madrugada.
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Early in the month, my hubby and I took a tour of the Coutts Centre for Western Heritage, near the town of Nanton, Alberta. This amazing place is the family homestead of Dr. Jim Coutts (1938 – 2013), a prominent southern Alberta lawyer, businessman, and art collector – and in addition to all the artifacts and buildings onsite, it boasts the most incredible gardens filled with predominantly native prairie plants. Truthfully, I hope no one noticed me while I was wandering around the grounds, because I believe my lower jaw was firmly positioned somewhere around my ankles and I may have been drooling a little. If you happen to find yourself in that part of the province during the growing season and plants are your thing, make it a must-do pit stop – it really shouldn’t be missed. And, if the gardens aren’t enough (what!?), the place boasts what is likely the only example in Canada of a camera obscura built from a 1920’s-era grain bin.
These. Poppies. Seriously.
Re: my vegetable garden. Things are just sort of making an appearance, finally, after thousands of days of rain. I have golf ball-sized kohlrabi! I have really diminutive turnips! I have the smallest, most perfectly round pumpkins you’ll ever see…the kohlrabi are actually larger and at this rate, it will be about a year before I can harvest them, LOL. The zucchini fruit might be more than five centimetres long next week…we’ll see. I’m heartened by this new grand emergence of things but…um…cautious. The weather has been WEIRD…it’s mid-August already and we occasionally get frost(!) at the end of the month, so you can see where I’m coming from. I am harvesting dill and parsley and potatoes right now, which is delightful (especially as those three things go really well together at suppertime). And these supremely pretty bush beans, ‘Dragon Tongue’, are just coming on now. I simply want to gawk at them – they’re almost too gorgeous to eat!
I was very rushed before the growing season began this year and I failed to get a handle on them as the months flew by. Next year, I am planning to do more winter sowing – it truly provides the jump start often needed in this climate. If my personal assistant, Smudge, deigns to allow me to do so, I’ll start some seeds indoors as well…but she has an annoying habit of constantly snacking while at work. 😉
Smudge’s Sage Advice: It’s important to actively track your prey in case it goes somewhere. Even if it can’t, really. ♥
What a strange growing season we’re having! Our spring was so cold and wet that I direct sowed my veggies almost two weeks later than usual – a huge difference when you consider that we have, on average, 117 frost-free days in the city. (I didn’t start anything indoors this year or do any winter sowing). June was pretty much a blur of rain – I’m not certain we actually saw sunlight for the entire month. To this date, July has been considerably more moderate as far as temperature and drying are concerned…and my potatoes are kind of blissed out at the moment. I’ve got foliage going on like nobody’s business – I just hope there are a few tubers forming under there. A gardener in the Alberta Gardening Facebook group recently remarked that her potato plants were over five feet tall and those that commented echoed her claim – this is clearly the year of giant potato plants in our province!
And yes, those are hula hoops forming the tunnel in my raised bed…you can see how I set that all up here. I’m a big fan of the hula hoops – they’re cheap, sturdy, and they liven up a public space with their colours! (I’m not sure what our community garden leader thinks of them, but she hasn’t sent me a cease and desist letter so I’m guessing they don’t offend too many sensibilities). Instead of row cover fabric this year, I put up fibreglass screen. Its purpose is two-fold: we have deer that like to jump the fence of the community garden and nibble, so this saves my beans; as well – and more importantly – we are plagued by frequent hailstorms in this part of the world, and this keeps most of the icy stones from shredding my squash. I could combine this set-up with row cover fabric in future years – a good idea if I decide to plant cabbages and want to thwart flea beetles, or if I get seeds into the soil early and need a bit of protection against the cold – but for this year, the screen without the poly has been a satisfactory choice.
Did you plant potatoes this year? And do you use hoop tunnels in your raised or in-ground beds?
And…just for fun – what is your favourite way to make potato salad?
And without further ado…wait, there was ado?
Harvest time is now virtually over for this early season crop, but a few weeks ago, my hubby and I headed out to Edgar Farms (near the town of Innisfail in central Alberta) for their annual Asparagus Festival. The celebration is held over three weekends in May and June, and features a farm tour, lots of yummy food, and artisans selling their locally-made wares. The star of the show is, of course, asparagus, which isn’t cultivated very much as a commercial crop here in the province – the family-run Edgar Farms is one of the only producers that I am aware of. Interpretive signs near the asparagus fields offer fun facts about this fascinating perennial veggie, tips to successfully grow it, and a history of the farm and its owners. (You can also take a guided wagon tour if you’d rather not walk the property; we chose to walk because I always find you see more if you’re on foot). One of the highlights of the festival is the opportunity to go out into the asparagus fields to break a spear fresh out of the soil and pop it in your mouth. And, of course, all the freshly-harvested asparagus you can bring home from the marketplace…YUM! It’s going to be difficult to wait another whole year for such a delicacy!
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A man with more literary awards than you can shake a stick at (as well as a little bauble called the Order of Canada!), renowned Canadian science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer was recently in Calgary acting as the visiting writer-in-residence at the Calgary Public Library. My hubby and I managed to squish in Mr. Sawyer’s highly entertaining lecture “Why Everyone Should Read Science Fiction” on June 2. In addition to defending his position on Star Trek’s superiority over Star Wars (I’d say the room was divided on that one!), we were treated to an educational and fascinating discussion of the history of science fiction writing and its focus on social issues.
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Speaking of science fiction, I’ve published writer Geoff Hart’s flash fiction work “Fly Fishing” over at Paper Butterfly. It’s a story you’ll fall for hook, line, and sinker…guaranteed. Head over there and enjoy!♥
If you follow me on Instagram (or if you don’t, you can find me here) or my new Facebook page (here), you may have seen me share this photo, but just in case you missed it, I’ll put it up here as well. The Little Free Library set up near the community garden I belong to is so adorable – I love the colour scheme that was chosen for it. From what I can tell whenever I stop by and open it up, it’s a popular fixture, with a varied and well-circulated selection of reading materials – everything from James Patterson to Robert Munsch, novels in multiple languages, cookbooks, hobby magazines, and religious tracts. Are there any Little Free Libraries in your community? Do you use them?
