CANADIAN REGION - What are you doing September 2015

Kelejan - I looked up Casteljar.  Probably got the name a little wrong but don't know how to go back and check.  Seems idyllic.  A sweet little town.  

And, yes, Hawaii is quite an interesting formation.  It is still growing, as you probably saw. We live on Kauai, which is more complete and has very old topography.

Rosina, you  got it nearly right: Castlegar not Castlejar.  Named after a small town in Ireland although that is disputed.

Yesterday I was able to mow most of my lawn, after spending several weeks canning and missing times when I could have worked in the garden. What I liked about yesterday was shortly after I finished the mowing, which was hard going as the grass was thick and lush and a bit too high, the rain poured down in buckets and has now rained solidly since. By the time the rain stops in a day or so, it will be as high as it was before and I will have to start all over again.

I dug up some nice potatoes; Yukon Golds, about ten pounds.  That was all I managed to plant this year. Funny that about ten pounds of potatoes costs under two dollars in the supermarket.  But we all know why we prefer our own produce.

Then lots of sunshine forecast later this week and I think I will be able to start gardening again and get ready for winter.  I have some pruning to do of flowering shrubs that should  have been done right after flowering, but I have sure they will survive my inattention as I planted them when I first moved here in 1979.

Looking forward to receiving some new tulip bulbs from Verseys to add to the ones I got last year. The pink ones I had last year were lovely and I had many comments on them.  I am adding  some purple ones and some white with green-tinged petals
that I think will go well with the pink. I plant them in groups as I think it looks better that way.

As it is raining all day today, my next job is to split the garlic cloves to pick out the best for replanting.  It will be soon enough to get outside later this week when the temps are expected to be up to 27C.

Night time temps are getting down to 10C on a regular basis so I will have to find space indoors for my three Wiggler Hiltons.  Give me more room and I will fill it.  I really should try living again in one room to keep me from accumulating stuff.

This is a day that I thoroughly appreciate being retired.  I do not have to get ready for school or to go to work.  I do not have to travel and spend my life in traffic.  I do not have to be at the beck and call of customers. I do not have to do anything I do not want to do.  I feel like a pre-schooler again. 

Kelejan wrote:
This is a day that I thoroughly appreciate being retired.  I do not have to get ready for school or to go to work.  I do not have to travel and spend my life in traffic.  I do not have to be at the beck and call of customers. I do not have to do anything I do not want to do.  I feel like a pre-schooler again. 

+1  Isn't it nice.  After 45 years of working (45 years sounds like forever) to finally be free to do what you want when you want for however long you want.

Huh, 45 does sound like a lot, but that is what I am in store for, good Lord willlin' and the creek don't rise.....

Never know.

Kelegan, you are right! We love our big friend to the North, many of it's topographic elements being repeated here in the U.S.

Scorpio Rising wrote:Kelegan, you are right!  We love our big friend to the North, many of it's topographic elements being repeated here in the U.S.

Yes, we had many friends to the south of us and always used to say "there are no borders between us" but that is twenty years ago now and things haves changed. I even read recently that if they built a wall between you and Mexico, why not build one between you and Canada?

I guess it is not surprising the we have similar topography as we are joined at the hip except for the Great Lakes.   When I look at topographical maps I can see many odd places because the people who drew the lines on the maps to say this should be Canada and next to that should be the  U.S.A. had no idea that there were things such as mountains, rivers and other things that made natural boundaries.  That has happened in so many countries where the population of tribes etc should have a bearing on boundaries, but the powers that be decree that a line on a map is set in stone.

Yolos and Scorpio: I started work at fifteen years of age, the lowliest one in an office who had to fetch the tea and biscuits (coffee and cookies) for everyone else morning and afternoon, and finally retired at 75 but that was because I was self-employed and liked what I did until my business partner died without a will and I inherited as a partner the person who got his part of the business. But that's another story.

[quote="Kelejan"]

Scorpio Rising wrote:Kelegan, you are right!  We love our big friend to the North, many of it's topographic elements being repeated here in the U.S.

Yes, we had many friends to the south of us and always used to say "there are no borders between us" but that is twenty years ago now and things haves changed. I even read recently that if they built a wall between you and Mexico, why not build one between you and Canada?

Well, at the top of the list why that won't happen is the U.S. is not being overrun by illegal Canadians ..... Just isn't happening.

The beauty about Canadians, scorpio, is that we return home.

Kelejan wrote:September 6
Where I live the amount of daylight today will be 13 hours and 12 minutes.

September 9th
The amount of daylight will be 13 hours and 4 minutes.

Kelejan wrote:The beauty about Canadians, scorpio, is that we return home.

Just [i] one [i] of the many beauties of Canadians and their beautiful land!

About the bears that have been visiting our area.  Today I heard a very loud shot and knew at once that a bear had met its end.  Later on my friend phoned me and asked if I had heard the shot and she then told me that one of the bears had been killed and traps set for the others.  So I am assuming that the big male bear was the one taken, and the mother and cubs are still at large.

We know that when the bears enter our area and start foraging, it is inevitable that they are killed as they have become garbage bears.  Me taking down all the apples from my tree may have driven them further on to get food. Walking around the two roads that I take Jazz morning and evening, there are still plenty of apples and plums on the trees and windfalls that are not picked up.  One cannot blame the bears, they need to stock up to survive the winter.

I feel sad.

Me too, especially since I was watching a show saying hunters often shoot the first bear they see, not knowing or caring if it's potentially a mother with cubs,leaving their pups to starve. So one dead bear could equal three.

Marc Iverson wrote:Me too, especially since I was watching a show saying hunters often shoot the first bear they see, not knowing or caring if it's potentially a mother with cubs,leaving their pups to starve.  So one dead bear could equal three.

Conservation officers often take the bear out into the wild and instead of releasing it, shoot it.  It is to save the feelings of the do-gooders.

Mimi2 from Ontario.  

You will find other Ontarians here so you will have some who can answer your questions with regard to planting times and weather etc. more specific to you.

As we all know Canada is a very large country and has a variety of extreme conditions.
I am in the Southern Interior of British Columbia and even here we have extremes of the coast and the interior, plus Canada's only desert region, the Okanagan.

I am hoping that this year you will have better weather that last. Here in British Columbia we need a lot more snow that last year, you hogged it all, so this year we had more fires than usual and many weeks without rain during a hot summer.

Kelejan

Just collected two bags of fall leaves from our town centre.Yesterday I saw this tree that had lost most all of its leaves and  reckoned there were about four bags there.

I crept out this morning at the crack of dawn (I am a very shy person ) with two bags,  a shopping trolley and a rake and within  five minutes I had two tightly packed bags of lovely dry leaves.

So in half an hour I had taken the dog for a walk, partly cleared a street and now have some nice leaves to shred.  I have nicely asked sanderson not to wash her car today so that it does not rain and I am out now to get that shredding job done as the weather forecast is rain for the next five days starting tomorrow.

Kelejan wrote:

Marc Iverson wrote:Me too, especially since I was watching a show saying hunters often shoot the first bear they see, not knowing or caring if it's potentially a mother with cubs,leaving their pups to starve.  So one dead bear could equal three.

Conservation officers often take the bear out into the wild and instead of releasing it, shoot it.  It is to save the feelings of the do-gooders.

I hope you don't have hunters going shooting right in your neighborhood!

At least hiring guides would be cheaper. You'd just have to hire someone who knows how to get you to Bill's house, out behind the shed. Or which off-ramp to take to get to the creek behind the Walmart.

No hunter actually shooting bears, just the conservation officers when needed.

Just now Jazz started barking and he saw off a small bear I could see  next door as he/she had activated the driveway lights in both places.  The bear then crossed the road as all my apples have finally fallen off the tree so nothing there now, then crossed the road to my neighbour so I phoned him and he said they knew the bear was there.

Fall leaves: sanderson kindly postponed washing her car so that it would not rain today and I finished shredding the leaves, adding some green ones from the prunings of my shrubs, ready to put on as mulch when needed.

Thank you for the warm welcome Kelejan! I hope that we have a shorter and warmer in Ottawa this winter too. Luckily I like to skate and ski if my wish does not come true. I have also started to add a cover to my square foot gardens to extend the season if possible.  Wish I had more kale and other cold weather crops to protect- but I'll plan better next year. This is my first year using Mel's method for growing veggies.

Nice to hear from you Mimi. I sincerely hope that you have a better winter this time around.  You had too much and we had too little.  Time we averaged out a bit more.

Last winter I had only two days that I could actually snow-shoe straight from my driveway.   The consolation was that not much snow-clearing of the driveway was required. Usually the task of clearing the drive-way means that I do not have enough energy left to snow-shoe.

This first year of SFGing will lay a foundation for your next year's effort.  I will be covering one of my 4 x 4 beds to see if the chard and stuff I have planted will last a bit longer and even revive in the spring.

Otherwise all my beds will have mulched leaves on them and this year my garlic and strawberries survived very well.

Hi there Mimi2 and welcome.  I'm also in Ottawa ... west end in Nepean.  I'm also looking for a better winter.  This was my first year with SFG.  Please check out my SFG thread at 

https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t19481-a-first-time-sfg-in-canada

trolleydriver wrote:Hi there Mimi2 and welcome.  I'm also in Ottawa ... west end in Nepean.  I'm also looking for a better winter.  This was my first year with SFG.  Please check out my SFG thread at 

https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t19481-a-first-time-sfg-in-canada

Mimi2, be prepared for a lovely long read.  TD loves to write and post photos.

Here I go again!  Writing, writing, writing, always writing.  

Just a comment about the Ottawa weather ... HOT! 

This week we have had temperatures at or close to 30 C which is about 10 degrees above normal for this time of the year. The forecast is for cooler temps next week in the low to mid 20sC/70sF and with no rain ... should be a very pleasant week.

This morning I was pulling Creeping Charlie (CC) out of my front lawn but it was so hot I had to give up. CC is very invasive and hard to get rid of. It is slowly taking over my lawn so I need to try to fight it back. Of course we are not allowed to use chemicals. The only weed killers that have the right ingredients for CC have to be bought in the USA and brought across the border into Canada. It is not illegal to bring them into Ontario but it is illegal to use them. Go figure! Anyway I'm focused on the manual removal. I've read that a diluted mixture of borax is sometimes effective against CC but since boron stays in the soil, too much of it can destroy the soil.  Maybe I will just have to let CC have its way and become a ground cover! 

Whatever grows in my lawn, I just mow over it.  My lawn is nothing like my neighbour's lawns, their lawn looks almost perfect, until they rented out their house two years ago and the tenants moved in then eventually it looks worse than mine.

They seem to water it every day in the summer and scalp it and when you look closely, it all looks lifeless.  Mine teems with all sorts of little plants, no doubt includingy Creeping Charley and it is soft to my bare feet as I mow it high and leave the clippings to go back to the soil.

Kelejan ... I pretty well do the same as you with my lawn ... never water, mow it high and leave the clippings. But I also fertilize, overseed and pull weeds by hand. Like you we have a rental house next door and the lawn there is pathetic. They let it grow long then scalp it and the cycle repeats. Of course all their weed seeds blow over onto my property. A few years ago I visited a master gardener in the area and her lawn was like yours.

Kelejan wrote:Whatever grows in my lawn, I just mow over it. 

Mine teems with all sorts of little plants, no doubt including Creeping Charley and it is soft to my bare feet as I mow it high and leave the clippings to go back to the soil.

Me, too.  The old timers call them Cape Cod lawns.  I call it my meadow.
The   love it, too.
CC