Spring Equinox.

March 20 marks the Spring Equinox of 2011. If that even makes sense. Does it "mark" it? Or it just happens? What is it?

Obviously, don't be fooled into thinking that I know anything about Equionoxs - though I am just savvy enough to realize that today is the first day of spring.

According to my very brief internet searching, spring equinox has to do with the position of the sun to the equator. While this scientific explaination seems rather boring to me and insignificant, the spiritual side is much more intersting. I haven't really looked into what other cultures think about the first day of spring, but I know for myself, when I stepped outside this morning, there was something special in the air.

For me, there is no denying the resonance of life in all it's forms on this beautiful March day.

I would also like to say Happy New Year! to everyone celebrating the Persian new year, or "No Rouz" today! I dare not pretend that I know much about the traditional or modern or cultural significance of "No Rouz", but don't take this to mean that I don't deeply repect and honour it! Because I do, especially as I have a Persian husband and in-laws.

Hmm. Now that I think about it, though it might not be connected in any way, it seems to make perfect sense that Persians would have the begining of spring mark their new year. A couple of years ago I went to the big museum in Toronto and they had a pretty impressive exhibit of ancient Persian culture. One of the things that stood out for me most was that so much of the artwork, from carpets to poetry, reflected a love of gardens. One specific piece of information has stuck in my head and you'll have to humour me because I'm just going by memory but it was that, admiring the beauty of gardens was a very spirtual experience because in essence you were admiring God.

While I'm not a religious person, I feel that I am quite spiritual and that idea made perfect sense to me. Maybe that's why I like working in the garden so much. If there is a God, he certainly knows I'm not doing him any favours by mucking around in the dirt and trying to make things grow. But for my own well-being, there is something that works about being connected to the earth.

I hope that everyone enjoys the day and I appreciate the chance to share my thoughts!

The Worms.

I like worms. They are totally gross, but I still have a healthy respect for them. They are selfless and peace loving little animals. So cute and pink, eating their way through garbage and leaving their wonderful poops so plants can have a better life. It's very nice.

A couple of years ago, when we were still living in our condo, I bought myself an indoor worm composter. It was a pretty simple set up, and I thought it was cool, cool, cool. I did really well with it actually. I tended them daily and made sure they had enough food and water, and by golly, they sure ate up those kitchen scraps! But then I got busy, and I forgot about them. Days turned into weeks and then I was too filled with guilt to even lift the lid to see the extent of horror that I had caused.

That was 2 years ago. The light of day had not touched their poor little corpses till Thursday, when my sister called and asked for me to pass it on to her.

Actually, when I did finally lift the lid, there was little evidence that they had actually ever existed. They must have just totally shriveled up. I guess I was expecting Pompeii or something. Anyways, my son and I dumped it onto our compost heap and filled it with new dirt, some leaves and about 50 hand picked red wigglers.

You know where I found all those worms? In my compost. It was amazing! It was a squirming metropolis! It was pretty disgusting . . . I kept having to reassure myself that they all weren't going to jump out en masse and burrow into my face. Ew.

There were actually more, but by the time I pulled out the camera most of them had burrowed down.

So, good luck Sister! I am so proud of her giving this worm thing a go. Up until a couple of weeks ago she didn't even recycle, and now she's composting?! Who rocks?? She does! Yeah!

Since she is going to do such a fantastic job with this, I have invited her to be a guest blogger so that we can all stay updated with the status of her new project. Graciously, she has accepted this invitation and so I will look forward to her upcoming posts!

In conclusion, I guess the moral of the story is: support mother nature, and be kind to worms - we are all in this together.

And it's never too late to recycle.

Peace out.

A bit of an introduction . . .

The state of things as of 7:00am this morning.

I don't want to give the impression that I have a lot of gardening experience. While I have spent hours, days, weeks, years, squatting in my parents' garden doing manual labour like pulling weeds and picking rocks, I have not actually had the chance to plan and follow through with my own plot.

Two years ago my husband and I bought our first house. While modest, it does have a "great", as in "larger than townhouse", backyard. That's really the reason why we (I) chose the route of detached house, as I can tell you, the joys of owning a 800 sqaure foot house built in 1948 are extremely limited.

It was last summer that my husband and I, with the help of our son, built the raised garden beds illustrated in the above picture. (That in itself was quite the ordeal, but I'll save that for a later post.) But we didn't finish until July(?) and so it was already late in the season and we didn't get much going on except for some lettuces and basil that I bought as seedlings.

I guess I should stop saying "we" because while my husband is awesome and supportive and does whatever I ask of him, he is not into the whole gardening thing, and he has made it very clear in his own subtle way that the fewer truckloads of dirt dumped on our driveway, the better.

Anyways, so this year I want to have an ass kicking crop. I want to taste vegetables like how they taste in my dreams. I want to have such bounty that I have to give it away. I want to have my pantry stuffed with all my canning and pickling and jamming and whatever else you can do with fruits and veg.

So, I've read a lot of books, or, maybe more acurately, looked at a lot of pictures in a lot of books, and taken a course or two (or one), and I think its time to actually do some practical, experiencial stuff. Personally, I find I learn best by doing and while I might not be the fastest learner, hey, this ain't no competition, so who cares?

Now is my opportunity to do my own thing! Cool. Well, lets get started!  . . . um . . . tomorrow.

I'd also like to thank you for joining me. We can garden together! I'm happy to have to you along for the ride and I appreciate all comments and input . . . except of course if they are mean comments and input. But you are obviously lovely, so this would not apply to you.

For my part, I'm going to try to write posts that are honest and entertaining, and definately not preachy. I hate preachy! I don't really forsee myself having the patience or expertise to write instructions on how to do various gardening things, so I'll probably just be linking you up with information that will hopefully be useful.

I'm going to practice organic gardening in the most basic sense of the word, which, we can talk about later. I also reserve the right to swear when I feel like it, but I don't have the dirtiest mouth around so things should be kept pretty respectable. Therefore, poisonous garden - no, poisonous language - maybe.

Well, have a wonderful day! It is Friday after all. I'll be back tomorrow with something interesting to say about compost or maybe something else. You'll just have to come back and see for yourself!

And, yeah, the dog does eat the compost. All. The. Time.

Gross!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

In my experience, St. Patrick's day has been a great day for new beginings, so I am starting off this blogging adventure with my wee shamrock. While, I don't have much to say this first day, I'm not going to let that stop me! So I'll just wish you all a beautiful day, and I'll be back tomorrow with an exciting post. Hopefully.

(And just in case anyone is wondering, the goldfish cracker is for perspecitve. This shamrock is in a really tiny pot!)