Lies and promises on a British Properties trail

They said it wasn't steep, but here I am, puffing away after following John up a trail in the forest above the British Properties in West Vancouver. Photo by John Denniston.

They said it wasn't snowy, but yup, snow has already landed here if you go up far enough. Photo by John Denniston.

The beauty of the greenery and a bridge over a rushing creek made up for the day's exertion. Photo by John Denniston.

“It’s not a very steep climb,” said John en route to a Sunday-afternoon walk in the woods above West Vancouver’s British Properties. “It’s quite short and then you turn off to a flatter side-trail.” That was the first lie. The second was from a young couple just finishing their walk as we were starting out: “Oh, it’s lovely,” said the woman, “there’s no snow at all.”

She was right that it was lovely. The deciduous leaves were turning gold, softening the predominant evergreens. Rays of sun slanted through the trees. Sculptural mushrooms climbed all the way up a mossy trunk. The air was the freshness of forest things, and though it was cold, it was perfect for walking.

But the trail was up, up, up, and it wasn’t short and it didn’t level off. To athletes and serious hikers, it would have been scarcely worth noticing, which is likely why John misremembered it. “It is a bit steep,” he admitted as I puffed along behind. “And it’s farther than I remembered.” The turnoff was just around the next bend, he kept promising, then the next, then the next.

By the time we reached it, we were in icy snow. The side-trail stretched whitely into the distance, delightfully descending, but John wasn’t sure exactly where it would take us. A wrong guess meant climbing back up, up, up again, this time over slippery snow.

By then, the endorphins had kicked in, and the pleasure of being in the autumn woods had more than made up for the unreliability of my trail guides. I bore them no ill-will, but just to be on the safe side, we turned in our tracks and went back the way we came.

Mushrooms like sculptures amid the moss climb up a tree trunk along the trail. Photo by John Denniston.

Rays of sunshine through the trees brighten the trail path. Photo by John Denniston.

Another angle of the bridge over a creek. This was taken on a lower, flatter trail closer to the residential area of the British Properties. Photo by John Denniston. 

The shapes of fall

All summer, nature works busily away at producing the fruits of the year. In fall, we see the results; usually familiar, but sometimes so unusual that we have to take a second look. Here are some shapes of the fall that have caught my attention lately:

These remind me a little of the coronavirus images that are all over the media these days. In reality, they're the marble-sized fruit of the Korean dogwood tree in our front yard. Colourful and edible to some birds, they weigh down the branches and often end up in a trampled-upon red jelly underfoot. Photo by John Denniston. 

There's a tree on a pathway in Pacific Spirit Park that produces a whack of often-blighted apples that are usually just shoved off the path in a heap. On my walk one day, I discovered that someone had carefully assembled them in a long, snake-like row all along one side of the path. A striking new shape indeed. 

Here's that long line of apples from the other end. The next time I walked the path, the assemblage was gone, and the apples were rotting in heaps in the underbrush.

On our walk one day, John and I noticed some unusual shapes emerging from a tangle of vines edging a garden and wondered what they were. Weeks later, I passed again and saw they had grown huge and assumed much more definite shapes. A little googling tells me they are gourds.

Objects like this were peeking out of another tangle of vines just a little further along; it seems this hairy fig-like shape is another kind of gourd. 

This is the garden of the gourds. Clearly, true gardeners work here. Vines above, and you can see some of the flourishing vegetables -- still going strong in October -- below at the base of the fence.

Tiny perfect round pumpkins on a bed of leaves have replaced the sweet alyssum that in the summer decorated this "bathing" boulevard mannequin. I notice she's lost her flowing blond wig and gained a mask since I saw her last, but the wine glass in her hand remains. 

During our last visit to Saltspring in September, I found a few roses for a bouquet, but mostly depended on the berries, colourful leaves and dried grasses growing around the garden. The different shapes created a mantel display almost as pretty as a summer one full of flowers.

One perfectly shaped, unblemished apple from the ancient apple tree in our back garden. You can see the tree's branches through the kitchen window, and maybe even catch a glimpse of red apples still up there.

And finally, another look at those strange coronavirus/dogwood fruits. Is it a coincidence that they're especially prolific this year? Photo by John Denniston.

 

Gardening lessons

We learned a lot about raising vegetables in our little back-yard garden plot this summer. We'll do many things differently next year.

This little handful of tomatoes is pretty much all we got out of a jungle of tomato plants that took over a whole bed. One thing this summer taught me is how not to grow tomatoes. Photo by John Denniston.

Poking through the enclosure into the lane, another little bunch is still trying to ripen in October. I don't think they'll make it; the vines are already shrivelling. Photo by John Denniston.

 It was an experiment we undertook this Covid spring -- partly for entertainment, and partly due to vague rumours that the pandemic could threaten the food supply. If things got really, really bad, could we grow vegetables in a garden so shady that moss and ferns are the happiest plants there?

The results are in now, and the answer is that we’d survive just fine if we could live on kale, Swiss chard, bok choy and rocket. All those cool-weather, shade-happy vegetables were what was available when I did my panic buying in March; I didn’t know it at the time, but they were exactly what the gardening gurus would have recommended for our garden. Other, more marginal, possibilities failed. The bush beans put out handsome leaves until the moths ate holes in them, but actual pods were scarce. The peas, supposedly of a type that would support each other if planted close together, quickly flopped over, taking their neighbours with them and disintegrating in the dirt. So there were no peas, either.

The veggies that flourished -- rocket, Swiss chard, kale.

Predictably, the worst failures were with heat-and-sun-intensive plants, which we planted against any sensible advice. The basil got smaller every day until it vanished altogether. The tomatoes fooled us by bursting into a jungle of greenery that took over an entire garden bed and climbed 10 feet into the laurel bushes behind. But blossoms were long in appearing, and summer was on the wane before we got any hints of actual fruit. And then the rains came, turning the vines into a fuzzy greying brown and some of the fruit black. Turns out that tomatoes actually do need to be pinched and pruned to produce fruit (I held back, not wanting to discourage their exuberant growth) and they do need weeks of intense sunshine to become sweet and tasty. We gave them the best spot we had, but it wasn’t enough; that whole green tangle of tomato vines produced only a handful of pallid-tasting fruit.

The tomato jungle to the left. This plot originally also had peas, rocket, bok choy and basil, but everything succumbed to the monster tomatoes and disappeared.

I didn't plant any tomatoes in the plot closest to the lane, but suddenly, there they were, growing and heading through the lattice for the road (and the sunshine.)  I assume tomato seeds left in the bed's compost germinated and took off. Tomatoes are a lot tougher than I thought. 

We had fun with our gardening experiment, and our successes reminded us of the vast flavour chasm between home-grown greens and store-bought ones. But our little effort at defying the gardening gods has returned us to reality. Vegetables touted as flourishing in shade and cool weather do just that. And sun-lovers won’t thrive in the shade because of wishful thinking. Nature has its rules. Which also seems, somehow, a good lesson for Covid times.

The failure of the tomatoes has me wondering about the future of the strawberry bed I planted so hopefully in the spring. I took all the buds off this year, but when they bloom again next year, will shade-grown strawberries have any flavour?

Once you start veggie-gardening yourself, you begin noticing other people's efforts. John and I came across some wonderful beds on a boulevard during a walk one day in the summer. The kale in this one beat mine hands down. Photo by John Denniston.

Chard and other greens to die for. Photo by John Denniston.

Whoever was responsible for these was thinking not just of vegetables, but of adding beauty to the street. The beds are unusual, made of grey blocks instead of boards, and surrounded by grasses. Photo by John Denniston. 

Cool Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving weekend brought us our first glimpse of our newest grand-niece, Mia. Because of Covid, we had to meet outdoors, but luckily Mia has the best baby blanket ever, made by my knitting friend Linda. Photo by John Denniston. 

We all got a little cold, standing in the back yard, but it was as close a nod to Thanksgiving as we were going to get this year. My nephew Etienne and his wife Aya, who are as serious about Covid precautions as John and I are, dropped by with their six-year-old daughter Emi to show off the family’s month-old latest arrival, Mia.

No food was served, and Emi had to make do with exploring the garden instead of entertaining herself with drawing, as she usually does. But it was a chance to reconnect with family, and to be grateful for what we have, rather than what we’re missing.

Their visit brought together two strands of my life that I’m particularly grateful for. One is Etienne, my sister’s son, who arrived in Vancouver from Montreal as a bachelor about 10 years ago, and is now surrounded by family. The other strand is my friend Linda, who wasn’t there in person, but was well represented by the pretty blanket she knit for little Mia, who was probably the only cozy person in that back yard.

They've all met, mainly for Christmas celebrations, and it's a pleasure to me that they like each other. Linda knows how to play with Emi, and Aya and Linda share a similar aesthetic sensibility. Aya says that when other young mothers ask her where she got that blanket, she tells them she has a rather special connection.

Aya, Emi and Etienne with Mia, in our back yard. Photo by John Denniston.

Another closer look at that blanket. Photo by John Denniston.

A Thanksgiving without goodies is unthinkable, so I made a carrot cake to send home with our visitors, pictured here in its box for transport. 

Living in bird-land

 

When you live surrounded by birds, you start thinking of creative ways to make them happy. Would this dollhouse, photographed in the back yard of our Saltspring place, make a good bird condo? Photo by John Denniston.

One of our existing contributions to the neighbourhood bird population is a birdbath. It's a well-used stopping-off point for a drink or a swift splash of the tail-feathers. Photo by John Denniston.

We live amongst the birds here on Saltspring Island, which is a beautiful thing.

They soar past our windows, singly, doubly, or in flocks, zipping up to settle in the tall trees around us, or plummeting down to check out the birdbath or goodies on the ground. They settle by the dozens on the hill behind us, pecking and scratching, turning part of the hillside black. Herds of quail with their head-plumes like ridiculous hats motor past our doorway, swiftly diverting if we dare to open the door. And the song! Sometimes it’s almost a wall of noise, one set of birds laying down their warbling and chirping overtop the next and the next, with a few high-pitched trills belling out over top. When I left the house for a walk this morning, I could hear the song from our place two houses down and around the corner.

Like many people on this island, we are charmed and delighted by this abundance of feathered life, which seems like a cheerful, hopeful thing, especially in a world turned dour. And like many others, we do what we can to encourage it.

Our neighbour Kathy, who loved wildlife so much that she suffered the deer to eat her precious roses, attracted flocks of birds with seed- and sugar-water feeders on her balcony, and distributed peanuts to favoured regulars every morning. There was an emptiness in the air when she died six years ago, but now a new neighbour one house down has taken over. Six or more feeders and plenty of places to perch have turned his front garden into a Grand Central Station of busy birds and their chatter.

We haven’t put out birdfeeders ourselves, as we are here so sporadically (plus, rats!), but we do our little bit. Our birdbath is a local hit, a lively focal point for splashing, drinking and territorial disputes throughout the day. The birdhouses John built 20 years ago, painted to mimic our own house, have been so well used that when he opened one this summer, it was packed front to back with straw and feathers.

Soon, we hope to up the ante. This summer, John spotted a two-storey Victorian-style dollhouse in a pile of free stuff just down the street. “A birdhouse!” he exclaimed. If renovations go well this winter, we hope to be offering the birds of Vesuvius some choice condo units this spring.

Me at the door where quail often roam underfoot, and a birdhouse overhead attracts occupants every spring. Photo by John Denniston.

A close-up of the birdhouse, painted to mimic the colours of our house. Photo by John Denniston. 

Another  birdhouse sits high atop an unused chimney. Photo by John Denniston.

Another look at birds on the bath; such photos are rare because the birds are so skittish that they vanish at the sight of a camera. They seem to tolerate the cherub, though. Photo by John Denniston.