Backyard bounty

Once upon a time, I tried to garden on Saltspring. Now, I let nature take its course. I realized during a holiday this August that I still get lots of rewards anyway. One of them is these delicious wild yellow plums from a tree growing at the top of the hill in the garden. Photo by John Denniston.

The last remnants of my dream of growing flowers on Saltspring show up in the roses in this bouquet. Freebies from nature -- wild sweet peas and shapely weeds --  fill it out and make it even more interesting.   Photo by John Denniston.

Another gift from nature: the spectacular sight of icicles made from sap on the cones on the Douglas fir in our back yard. Photo by John Denniston.

When John and I first bought our Saltspring place, I was a mad gardener, wild to take advantage of the sunshine that was missing from our shady Vancouver property. I dreamed of sun plants – roses, tomatoes, fields of flowers, nut trees and special apple trees that would shower us with colour, taste and abundance. Then came the truckloads of soil, the holes chipped out of the stony hillside for new trees, the flats of tiny seedlings raised under grow-lights in Vancouver, and in-season, the constant drizzle of costly water to keep everything alive.

Twenty years on, all that remains of that early enthusiasm are some rosebushes that have survived several years without fertilizer or summer watering, a few shabby nut trees that have never produced a nut, and two unpruned apple trees that hang on despite regular infestations of tent caterpillars. Gardening is a hands-on operation, I discovered, and no amount of enthusiasm – or sunshine ­– can make up for long absences during growing season.

Coming to Saltspring for a holiday is a lot more relaxed now that I’ve given up gardening. But there's still lots happening out in that back yard. When we arrived in early August, the wild yellow plum tree at the top of the hill was laden with fruit, the blackberries were at their luscious height, a few yellow and pink roses were still brightening the bushes, and the 100-foot Douglas fir at the bottom of the yard had produced something I’d never seen before – clusters of cones bejeweled with icicles of transparent sap.

The plums and blackberries gave us fresh-picked dessert every day for three weeks; the roses combined with wild plants made fine bouquets for the mantelpiece, and the fir-cone icicles produced some interesting photographs for John. Nature continues to provide a back-yard bounty without any of our help.

The wild yellow plum tree at the top of the hill has been there for years. This summer, for the first time, I realized there's a red plum tree growing behind it. All without any effort on my part. Photo by John Denniston.

Every day, I picked a fresh batch of plums and blackberries for dessert. Photo by John Denniston.

 Red and yellow plums, plus blackberries from the various patches in our yard. Add whipped cream, and yum! Photo by John Denniston.

Another bouquet, with a giant rose hip from a rose bush I planted long ago, plus various dried plants from the garden. Photo by John Denniston.

And, another view of a fir cone with a dried icicle of sap. Photo by John Denniston. 

The truth about the warmest beach on Saltspring Island

Is this the face of a happy man? My partner John tests out the water on a rainy August day in Saltspring. 

We like to boast that Vesuvius beach, just a block down the hill from our house in Saltspring, is the warmest beach on the island. And yes, at the height of summer, on a hot, hot day in the right conditions, the ocean water there can sometimes feel actually . . . warmish. Mostly, though, the local beach aficionados admit to “refreshing,” while the less boosterish use words like “freezing.”

My partner John, an enthusiastic supporter of the Vesuvius Beach Indolent Society (he had T-shirts made up for the whole easeful crowd), is among the most boosterish. He favours descriptions like “tropical,” and “lukewarm;” reluctantly descends to “refreshing,” and positively scoffs at “freezing.”

But the truth, I think, is in the eyes. At the moment of his characteristic submersion, which amounts to falling backward into the water at a chest-deep level, even he can’t hide the automatic shock. It’s momentary, and he can deny it, but when he had me photograph him swimming in the rain during our recent stay on Saltspring, the proof was there. His lips said one thing; his eyes said “freezing.”

John's characteristic swimming strategy (usually minus the umbrella) is to wade out until he's waist or chest deep....

.... take a deep breath, and fling himself backwards.

Relieved that he's survived, he heads out.

That victory smile....

And, up the street to the house for a a hot shower, after proving definitively that Vesuvius beach is swimmable under many conditions.