Bugs are Gross: The Yoga of Gardening

(Warning, this blog post does have some photos of bugs... but I've tried to intersperse some pretty garden photos to make up for it)

I am not a fan of bugs. I'm the person that will squish a bug without hesitation. Release it outside so it can crawl back in? No thank you. Once, during my speech therapy visit at a daycare, while sitting as part of their circle time, I saw a spider crawling amidst our preschool singing fun and in front of all the children, squished it with gusto. The teachers were not impressed.

LADY SLIPPER! This flower is endangered in NS. It's illegal to pick them- I was yelled at by a park ranger as a child for picking one- they only flower every SEVEN years! A true treat.

I thought these gorgeous purple flowers were weeds, until they bloomed! Good thing I resisted pulling them up!

Unfortunately, our new house appears to be built on multiple giant anthills. Trillions of ants surround us. I swear. For the past few months we have fought the fight of the Ant. Tiny sugar ants that roam the kitchen floors (and sometimes counters- ew!) by the dozens. When they found their way upstairs in our bedroom I drew the line. No more Ms Nice Nature Loving Yogini. I was going to kill them all. Or at least find a way to keep them out. After a month we're at somewhat of a stalemate with periodic Ant Attacks (today dozens of sugar ants found their way into the kitchen under the cupboards, like jerks).

Pretty magenta lilac bush- who knew they could be this colour?

The following semi-natural approaches have (kinda) worked:

• Diatomaceous Earth: Much of our house has this white powdery substance lining the baseboards. It looks like crap, but ants can't walk over it. It's seriously cruel actually, the Diatomaceous earth cuts at the ants and dehydrates them until they die. I know. But...it's natural and won't harm our cats if they try to eat it (which they haven't). They do tend to alternate course and try to find another point of entry. So a two-pronged attack is necessary:
• Borax and sugar water: This came from my dad's suggestion to get liquid Ant Raid, specifying that we needed a 7% borax ratio. Which made us think- why purchase liquid ant poison, if it's just the borax that kills them? We have borax, we can make our own liquid solution and we'll know for sure that it just has borax, sugar and water. 

Our cat proof ant trap

Borax Sugar Water Ant Poison:

1 part sugar

4 parts water

Borax

Boil the water and sugar together, allow to cool. Add slightly less than 10% of the volume in borax. Mix and keep in a glass jar out of reach of children and pets. 

Using jam jar lids (or pop bottle lids) add liquid. Leave it outside or inside where you see the ants and keep away from pets and children. Allow the ants to leave with the solution (they bring it to the nest and it kills more of them that way). We used an old yogurt container with small holes cut in the bottom, put the jam jar lid with the borax solution inside and sealed it away from the cats. 

My new hummingbird feeder spot. We shall see...

These awful little bugs have even invaded our hummingbird feeder. For the third time tonight, I had to clean out the feeder since it had become cloudy with ant remains. WTF ants? Don't MESS with my bird feeders! I have been forced to place the hummingbird feeder on the clothesline next to the finch feeder. It's a bit ghetto... but this is serious business. Plus at least I resisted putting legit ant poison all over the hummingbird feeder.

These little white flowers are so cute. I thought they were wild flowers, since I found them nestled in the middle of a little wild plant section- but have since discovered they were planted their on purpose some time long ago!

The epitome of bug grossness, though, was this weekend:

ew ew ew ew ew ew ew

OMG the entire stem is covered. took these photos tonight. We should really spray the lupines with water tomorrow...

Saturday I decided that I would cut some of the beautiful lupines and lilies growing in our yard and make a bouquet for our kitchen. I was super proud of my Secret Garden Flowers (each bloom is a surprise!) and posted a photo on Facebook to prove it. The lupines and lilies smelled amazing and I did a happy dance each time I walked by the evidence that to no credit to us, we had an awesome flower garden.

And then Sunday I noticed dozens and dozens of seafoam green little crawly things ALL OVER OUR FLOOR. I nearly lost my mind. Yelling for Andrew to come over, we spent frantic moments searching and squashing this little buggers and flushing them down the toilet. They looked eerily like wood ticks, only green and I had a (shameful) moment of panic: "WHAT IF THEY'RE BABY TICKS????" (If you don't know what ticks are- good for you. They are awful and currently are a problem and lyme disease carrier in Nova Scotia. Each evening after our garden inspection we do full body tick checks). In order to kill ticks you need to burn them or cut them in half with something sharp. They don't squash.

Gross creepy crawly talk break- these are my favourite flowers in the whole garden. Originally they were among the half dozen I thought were weeds- specifically I thought they were grass gone to seed until they flowered! They're still pink and puffy weeks later!

Anyhoo... Andrew in his calm manner looked our creepy seafoam green bugs of death and informed me that in fact they are aphids. Not ticks. Also, they have a fairly short life span. And they love lupines. A quick look... and to our horror the lupines in my beautiful bouquet were COVERED in them. Cue second panic attack. ("what if they fly????" "they don't fly, Lisa").

Since neither Andrew nor I wanted to touch the flowers, we put the entire bouquet, vase and all, out on the deck and left it there overnight.

Andrew threw the flowers out in the compost this morning.

(pretty plant photo to balance gross aphid photo. Also- I have no idea what this plant will become- any thoughts? A weed or a flower?)

Lessons learned:

1. Dunk flowers in a bucket of water prior to bringing them in the house (thank you Teresa for that tip!)
2. Rip up all the front lupines in the fall. 
3. Learn to love lady bugs.

These are herbs our of control in the front garden- the herb on the left has actually grown into the lawn- so every time you walk over it, a delicious smell wafts up!

Adventures in Gardening: An Edible Hedge

This gardening thing is HARD.

About a month ago Andrew and I managed to sell the pool (not "ours" since we bought the house DESPITE the pool). Yes, we sold the pool. Why? Because we don't have pool obsessed, splashy kids, neither of us like swimming in pools (ocean and lakes please!) and they are an energy and money drain (the previous owner's electricity bill went up over 200$ over the summer months).

Put an ad up on kijiji and the next weekend a dude and his friend came and tore down the fence (it was so rotten it really just needed a good push) and took off with our pool for 800$.

We now have a giant summoning circle in our yard. Yay!

My plan would be to have a gorgeous (I can dream right?) firepit area with a small food garden on the side and pretty flowers. This plan has a few hiccups:

1. We have no idea what is currently growing in a mini garden that was in front of the rotten pool fence (we send photos to Andrew's mom since she knows stuff about gardening- sadly everything looks pretty to me. I can't tell a weed from a flower).
2. We need to collect flat stones from somewhere since I don't want to pay for them. This will mean several trips to a beach where we will hopefully go unnoticed when we lug flat rocks back to my car. Friends: flat stones as gifts are welcome.
3. We no longer have privacy from the driveway.

The last one we decided to target a few weekends ago after some inspiration from Niki Jabbour.

Supposedly, we live near a very famous winter gardener, Niki Jabbour (maybe she lives in this amazing house that has a cool triangular hot house, solar panels and bubbles on the roof? I drool every time we drive by). So. I purchased her book, 73 Groundbreaking Food Gardens, cuz we have gardens and I have no clue and hey, I heart local right?

It's an amazing and inspirational book (and I'm really excited about her winter gardening book, the Year Round Gardener) but I was especially excited about the plans for an Edible Hedge (and the cocktail garden, but yeah know).

An Edible Hedge is exactly what we needed!

What is an edible hedge? It's a hedge made of berry bushes... cool beans, I know. The plan in the book was pretty large and with berries that weren't necessarily local to us. Thankfully Niki is super responsive and supportive on Twitter and she suggested: Blueberries and a few options to source them.

 Our cart of edible awesomeness at Baldwin Nurseries!

That Saturday Andrew and I hopped in the car and drove over an hour to a little out of the way nursery, Baldwin Nurseries, to purchase our edible hedge. The guy thought I was crazy, but gamely suggested a few blueberry options and Haskaps (honeyberry) as our other "berry". I learned that for best results you should have two types of each so we purchased 3 blueberry bushes (2 Duke:1Blue Gold) and 4 haskaps (2 Tundra:2 Blue). When I told him we'd then have to buy a shovel and some dirt I swear he thought "crazy hipsters".

(Haskap bush close up!)

One shovel, four bags of dirt (peat moss and shrimp compost, we already had bags of black earth left over from previous owners-thank you!) later and we were ready to plant! Except... it was almost 6pm by the time we got home. I guess gardeners get up EARLY. It was giving rain for the next day, though, so we had to plant that night.

Within 15 minutes the black flies were swarming our bodies and eating us alive. By the second plant we hit bedrock 2 inches in. An hour and we abandoned ship, leaving the potted bushes on the deck and running screaming from the voracious, insatiable black fly horde of death. (that week I made "black fly soap" with citronella and it smells awful. Hopefully it works).

We swore we would get up extra early on Sunday and finish the job. Which I am proud to say, despite getting dirt all over my arms and face, we did.

(Our edible hedge completed, shovel abandoned: WHAM )

(from from behind the summoning circle towards the driveway immediately after planting. The middle blueberry bush was named Nicolas Cage. I have no idea why.)

In the end we had two rows: back row closest to the road were the taller bushes: the blueberries. Closest to the summoning circle firepit were the smaller bushes: the haskaps. We ended up having to do two raised beds for two of the bushes due to bedrock. I spent an hour finding rocks on our property (not even caring about the ants crawling all over the bottom at that point) to create a small bed. They actually look kinda cute.

 (Edible Hedge tonight, two weeks post planting. Status: STILL ALIVE!)

 (these are the flowers on Nicolas Cage, aka the middle Duke Blueberry bush- kickin' butt as would be expected)

 (Cutest little blueberry flowers on all three bushes! Plus isn't that purple bush pretty? We can take zero credit as we had no idea what it was until it flowered last week...)

Two weeks later and the blueberries are actually flowering and nothing died! Score! We should hopefully have a few blueberries this summer and this edible hedge should be low maintenance and extremely hardy. Whether we eat the berries or they manage to attract wildlife (which would be amazing), it's win:win.