Garden Update

So it's been a few weeks since I posted pics of the garden... We were away for a few days and I came back surprised to see how much things have grown!  Seeing as this year we haven't even really tried to garden it makes me excited for next year, when we'll be able to try growing all kinds of other vegetables too!

We finally had a couple days of much needed rain, here are some progress pics I just took:

 

 A view of the garden looking to the right, deer had gotten into the squash so we put up some fencing to discourage them.  The pumpkin patch is in the foreground.

View of the part of the garden where we folded back the plastic. Currants, broccoli, kale, beans, squash - everything grew a lot!

Squash patch gone wild... zucchini, acorn, butternut, buttercup, spaghetti... I'm already picking zucchinis and looking up recipes.

The teepees that Brendan built are starting to fill in with pole beans.

Beep Beep the cat, fierce huntress and protector of the garden.  She always follows me down to it to check on her catnip patch and look for rodents.  She's posing with some pots of cilantro.

The basil is getting big, will soon be time to make pesto.

 Shot of the pumpkin patch which is getting really big, with a few young pumpkins started already.

Giant pumpkin plant climbing up some old raspberry bushes.

The herb garden is filling in with mint and oregano, catnip and one lavender plant.  I'll be expanding this!  Hot mint tea is delicious, you can just put fresh chopped mint in a bodum and steep it like you're making coffee.  It's good chilled with honey too.

  Giant Russian Sunflowers and onions, the onions aren't doing so well but the sunflowers are getting bigger.

Our poor tomato patch... after the bad experience with poor soil and some cold weather, they were starting to grow a lot! But then deer came along and topped about 2/3 - 3/4 of the tomato plants we had.  This one has some fruit at least, so we'll get some tomatoes but not the truckload I was hoping for.  Next year!

Delicious harvest, zucchini, kale and some herbs.  I didn't realize exactly how good kale is for you until I looked it up. It has a lot of vitamin K among other good things. 

Book Launch Invite/Swoon's August Shows Sat August 4th 2-5pm

Here is the official invite for the book launch, which will be at Swoon - Fine Art, Antiques & Fashion, 1410 Hammonds Plains Road, Hammonds Plains NS.  Saturday August 4th, 2pm - 5pm.

 

This particular opening at Swoon should be one of Swoon's biggest ever! There are 4 shows opening for August:

Open Air - A juried group show with 60 "plein air" paintings by 30 artists 

Carvings - carved sculptural pieces by Ralph Pardy

Gemini and Beyond - abstract paintings by Anna Horsnell Wade

and 

Get Better - a collaborative show by SEVEN, a group consisting of one poet and 6 artists from the Annapolis Valley

If all that art makes you hungry for delicious local food or thirsty for good coffee/espresso, there is FINALLY a good restaurant/cafe right close Swoon.  Edible Matters just opened this week to rave reviews at 1345 Hammonds Plains Road! I can't wait to try it out!

What If Michelangelo Was A Telemarketer: my first book "proof"

This past friday I picked up the proof of "What If Michelangelo Was A Telemarketer" from Kwik Kopy.  I'm so excited!!  It just needs a few minor edits here and there, but by early next week I hope to have my first batch of printed copies ready for sale.  Jean Langley at Kwik Kopy Halifax is doing an awesome job of laying it out, anyone looking to self publish a 'chap book' style book should definitely check them out.  Altogether the book is 58 pages, so 14 sheets of paper and one sheet of glossy paper folded and stapled which is right near the limit of what their booklet maker is comfortable with.  Good to know, as I have rough drafts in my head for a few more similar rhyming illustrated storybooks already.

The book launch will be Saturday August 4th, 2 - 5pm at Swoon - Fine Art, Antiques & Fashion.  This should be a jolly party since it'll be right during the opening reception for Swoon's August shows.  I'll have copies of the book available for $10 each, an ebook version (.pdf) will be coming soon to gumroad.com for $5.

I decided to go with colour for the book covers, here they are:

front cover

back cover

I did a pile of research into "colour pychology" and bright yellow seemed to be the best fit for the cover colour.  "Dubious Press" is the brainchild of my writer/musician friend Michel Lejeune, currently of Toronto, who plans on having an entire "Dubious Media" label.  I suggested a fox for a logo so here it is, the first ever Dubious Press logo.  Like other logos, I'm sure it'll evolve over time! 

Our House

 Well I had tried to include these two photos in the last post but it was getting complicated.  so here is a view of our house, as see looking up form the garden.  I was told the house was built in the 1920s as a boarding house for lumber mill workers, it probably used to have four large dormers in the attic.

And here is one of the two huge old oak trees beside the house.  I love this tree, it towers above the house and I see its leaves and branches from my studio and bedroom windows.  It makes me glad to live in a place that was settled long before there were giant grocery stores and malls.  I feel hopeful for our plans to grow food here, the richness of the soil in the field indicates that we aren't the first!

Today in the Garden

My other occupation since posting in May has been getting all the plants I started into the garden.  I perhaps got a bit carried away with planting seeds into the seed trays I got from Lee Valley, to realize that everything had to get into the ground....  So far so good though, everything is planted (with much help from Brendan!) and I have my fingers crossed there will be a harvest despite our getting everything a bit late.

 

 Here's a shot of the garden area with a big rectangle of black/white silage plastic that we lay down in April, black side up, and weighted down with all kinds of stuff.  The idea was to leave it until next year so the earth below would be weed free and rotted.  We ended up folding back some plastic on the left hand side to have room to plant all the seeds I started!

Tomato Patch Fail!! Right before I left for Long Island Brendan and I lay out another square of silage plastic (white side up as per Helen's advice) and punched holes in it to plant out all the tomato seedlings that I started.  Unfortunately they never really did well here; I think in part because the cow manure and soil I planted them into may have a herbicide in it... and also because there was a cold spell, and because the ground was still full of weeds.  Anyhow I couldn't handle seeing the dying little plants so I transplanted them all into the middle of the raspberry patch I started, and now all that is growing in the white square is weeds.



Here are the tomatoes today, in their new spot.  They aren't very big just a foot high so who knows if we'll get any, but it's been a learning experience! next year: I'll make sure to pot them into good soil, and also to bury them deeper when I transplant!

The raspberry patch I dug up, to the left of the silage plastic, with the tomatoes in between.  I read you aren't supposed to have raspberries near tomatoes, but this is a one year only emergency as I had nowhere else to move the tomatoes at the time.  I planted 40 canes of 4 varieties of raspberries.  Lol which I bought before I realized there are all sorts of old raspberry bushes in the field!

Delicious Basil! they can stay in these pots.

Bean teepees, with pole beans and scarlet runners started. I started everything inside. the teepees will need more string to climb, we ran out!

The currants my mom mailed me! all planted and growing like crazy.  I'll have to move them to their own area next year as they'll get big and we want this space for the garden.

Little herb garden, catnip, oregano, mint and lavender

Juicy harvest of raspberries coming, this is on one of the canes I planted

Kale.  the big ones were transplanted into different soil after jersi knocked over the pot they were in.  Good thing she did because I'm sure there's something wrong with the soil the rest of my transplants were in... everything is greening up and growing nicely now though.

Brendan's pumpkins are doing well, he started them in Halifax.  There are a bunch of plants of the giant ones and some of the normal size

Squash!! zucchini, acorn, spaghetti, butternut and buttercup.  with a bed of onions to the left.  When we pulled back the plastic the soil was so rich and full of worms!

View of the garden looking left; there are more onions and some giant sunflowers I planted in front of the plastic.  and pots of cilantro.

View of the garden, looking right.  hard to believe that the last owners would mow this entire field with the lawn tractor.  I have a feeling the local birdlife is grateful we can't be bothered.  We plan to get some goats and/or sheep and/or alpacas though, to help out with land clearing!

pretty wild roses surround the garden plot

Compost box we built out of old pallets, once we get a new belt for the lawn tractor we'll start making grass compost

Long Island Retreat, May 22nd - May 29th

Well here it is July already and there's a lot of catching up to do! So a few posts today and an update.  

Since my last post I had the good fortune of being invited by Helen Opie to stay on Long Island for a week, with Helen and 4 other artists.  It was a really lovely trip with very nice people!  And a really great break after the chaos of moving in the spring.   Red sand, islands, rock formations, dramatic skies, changing light, old trees and the breathing of the ocean made for a soothing stay indeed.

Most of the others set out to do plein air paintings, but I brought along my draft of "What If Michelangelo Was A Telemarketer" and re-drew many of the pictures to self publish; such that they'd make sense with a fold down the middle for a 'chap book'.  It was really great to have this time on an island to work towards finishing one of my many projects! My draft is now at Kwik Kopy in Halifax, hopefully I'll have the printed books within a couple of weeks!

Helen painting on the beach

Long Island is owned by Dick Lemon who created the space with the view of having a place where creative types could gather.  It has a main house which is on solar, and 3 outbuildings.  I got to stay in the "lighthouse" and enjoy a great view which inspired me to start doing yoga again; I'd not felt this relaxed, focused and in tune with everything since traveling to Asia in 2001.  It was a week of healthy living and eating and great conversation.  I'm extremely grateful to Dick for offering Helen this opportunity (which came about from Helen writing "Long Island Sketch Journal" on a different trip).  Getting to celebrate Helen's 79th birthday with her on the last day was an added bonus!
It was a great experience, thank you so much!

My view from in front of the lighthouse cabin

Gotland Sheep... In the beginning...

One day driving down the Northfield road I saw a small flock of sheep and thought, how pretty, and noticed that sheep have slender legs, not like the plump cartoonish sheep that I had made last year. 

 I'd really like to have some sheep out here!! But that will take time as we need fencing.  Meanwhile I decided it'd be fun to make sheep that would be life-sized, more realistic, and could stay out on the lawn of Swoon all the time.   We'd been putting my animals from last year on the lawn, but they weren't designed to stay out in the elements, nor are they life-sized.  After some thought, I got an idea on how to make 3 life sized sheep using minimal time and money.

The first thing I went and did was buy supplies.  These sheep will have bamboo armatures, papier mache heads and legs, and bodies made of fabric covered chickenwire.  

The project depended on my finding just the right fabric, for cheap.  So I went to Fabricville on Bayers Road and spotted some rolls of a mixed colour grey fabric for only 50 cents/yard!!  How lucky! It was so marked down because of some yellow water stains, but seemed excellent to me for making sheep.  I bought 12 yards which will hopefully be enough for 3 sheep.  

 

  

I want to tear the fabric into strips to attach to the chickenwire, hopefully this will make it look woolly.  I did a google search for grey sheep with black heads and legs,  and decided that Gotland sheep are what I'm trying to make: 
 

Next I bought chickenwire and bamboo poles.  For each sheep I used 2 x 6' bamboo poles, and 2 x 5' bamboo poles.  The legs are 5' poles cut in half, and the bodies each have 3 x 3' sections and 2 x 1.5' sections.  Here's a shot of my messy workspace, I like to watch documentaries while I work, on things like our Fiat Currency system and GMO foods.  I am going to try to work tidier though!! At least this shows the beginning of the 3 frames.

I cut up the bamboo with a small hacksaw and attached the bamboo using strips of discarded bike tire inner tubes.  This is a method I learned from some awesome puppet builders in Washington State. 

To stabilize the joins I also used some small bamboo pieces, and then wrapped up everything with newspaper and masking tape.  I find the Halifax Chronicle Herald is the best paper to work with, it's nice and 'papery' unlike the Globe and Mail.  Once my skeletons were made I started fleshing out the legs.  I made the heads separate.  To make the frames for the heads I crumple newspaper and cover it with masking tape. 

Two of the sheep leg frames

Frames for the legs and heads finished, I made my first pot of paste in my new home.  I use a cornstarch paste that I cook on the stove, also taught to me by awesome Washington State puppet makers.  I think I'll give instructions for that in a future blog post.  Last night I started papier macheing, my next task being to coat the head and leg armatures with enough layers of papier mache that they are solid when dry.

Sheep heads and legs, with bowl of cornstarch paste.  These legs and the head on the left have had their first coats of papier mache.

As well as working tidier, I'm trying to turn over a new leaf of starting one sculpture project and seeing it through, rather than living in a jungle of half-finished projects.  So I'm pretty focused on these sheep but have frames for a couple of other creatures who might get papered while I'm at it... once the sheep are done I want to make more dogs, cats and crows!

Frame for Pug and Crow