Days are starting to lengthen! Our gardens are dormant, but our thoughts are active, enjoying where we are now and also looking forward to the next growing season.
This online newsletter collects many weeks of messages, links and photos sent from Harbord Village gardeners -- samples of what they're reading, viewing, and observing. Thanks to Leslie Carlin, Janice Dembo, Kate Hamilton, Marilyn Martin, Carolee Orme, Regine Schmid and others who have contributed material for us all to enjoy.
Please send more notes and photos to gardeners@harbordvillage.com, and I’ll be glad to compile them for future messages! (Margaret Procter, eblast editor)
Late start to winter
Even with a few cold snaps, we’ve seen plants linger long past their usual time. The photos here, from December and January, are more green and brown than white.
More photos welcome as we enter snowier and colder weather – with snowdrop season only a few weeks off.
Carolee Orme highly recommends Monty Don’s 3-part TV series, The American Garden. She says: "It's being shown on TVO (which can be streamed free if like me, you don't have cable) so is free. I bingewatched it last night, and really enjoyed it. He has done other garden series which are available free on YouTube."
Garden Planning
The web offers lots of ways to think of spring activity. Some focus on environmental concerns, others on gardening techniques.
Kate Hamilton writes:Suzuki Foundation is creating Future Ground Network -- "a hub of groups taking action in their communities to secure healthier, more viable futures in the areas of climate justice, biodiversity, waste reduction and sustainable systems. Many in the gardeners' group and in HVRA more broadly are strongly engaged w/these topics. So, thinking this might be of interest in the newsletter, and maybe there'd be some who want to create an HVRA sub-group with this focus. The organization already has pages full of resources on its website, and the launch is February 10." Have a look and see: https://futuregroundnetwork.org/
The Bowery Project in Toronto encourages community gardens. You'll see its logo on the set of gardening bins at the side of the FortYork Food Bank, Borden just north of College. Read about the project at https://torontostoreys.com/bowery-project-urban-farms/
Janice Dembo recommends an article about "nativars" in the online magazine Horticulture, saying "I choose plants for bees and butterflies and leave seed heads on, but the article has other interesting information." Read https://www.hortmag.com/smart-gardening/bird-garden-planting, and keep browsing the site for other interesting material.
Some people can grow things indoors, as proven by these photos. Let’s enjoy by proxy, those of us not in that category! Marilyn Martin: "My indoor herb garden was bringing me joy but is diminishing--the big Rosemary I was so enamored with is losing lots of leaves but mint is coming in so maybe March Mojitos!"
Bird feeders and other garden life also entertain those remaining inside. Janice Dembo tells us that this squirrel fed heartily for an hour after gaining a place at the bird feeder. The cat inside seems much happier than the cat who took two steps outside and came right back in.
Winter Walks
Outdoor exercise is recommended during the current lockdown, and several local gardeners are taking that advice and finding much to look at even when gardens aren’t blooming. Our neighbourhood is rich in laneway art -- check out the murals along David French Lane, and venture into Kensington for more. Garden sculptures bring joy too, especially when homemade. (Inquire at gardeners@harbordvillage.com if you want exact locations.)
Reading!
Kate Hamilton’s note about winter reading and viewing could keep us amused for weeks to come. She promises that the final link will remind you that you love the world.
How to play with a grouse
I’m tired of attending to covid – tired of hearing that we will, or will not, get back to normal and whether normal was good or bad or even a meaningful concept. My thoughts can go somewhere else now.
But … not to US politics; I’m bone-weary of cliff-hangers – even appalling ones – it’s been like a badly-done formula novel. I have been hungry for different pacing, better character development, more nuance! So at present I’m in the third round of quite different content (and yes, gardening comes into it now that the year has turned).
First was new and notable – book lists from The Guardian and others. I’ve tried this before with no luck, but this time hit treasure. Promising lists where you may find something intriguing and new to you –
Then it was cookbooks. The idea was to thin the shelves. Well. That may be efficient for clothes, or dishes; not for cookbooks. You have to read some way into a cookbook, to know whether you can part with it, even to friends. Thus the result of many happy, attentive hours was … half a shelf was cleared, and I’d been inspired by must-keeps – Milk, Ginger east to west, Good to the grain, Sephardic flavours, Asian grandmothers cookbook, Portuguese cookbook, Pleyn Delight….
As soon as the daylight lengthened the least bit I was on to the garden – catalogs (OSC, William Dam, J.S. Hudson, …), and also texts longer than a paragraph – regenerative agriculture, ecosystem services, bird habitat, caterpillar forage. My work with urban farms connects that to people and cities via Public produce, Civic ecology, Toronto’s 2019 Biodiversity Strategy, and ecotherapy in all its flavours (a review of The Natural Health Service gives a good overview).
So much to enjoy and to learn! When I was maybe 13 years old, I visited a friend in whose house there were no books. I hadn’t conceived of such a thing. Books have always been my home.
And yet – the very best treat I found is not a book. In this covid time, the ‘net is fulfilling its original promise. To remember swiftly that you love the world, watch how to play with a grouse – a text of a different kind, with as many layers, if you want them, as any Chaucerian tale.
Message prepared by Margaret Procter for the Harbord Village Gardeners
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