Daffodils

Daffodils grow along the stone walls and next to almost every apple tree. There's an old border of daffodils that marks the place where the vegetable garden used to be.

I thought maybe they had been planted by Elizabeth Hyde, who lived here before us. But her daughter Joanna told me that the daffodils were already here when her mother bought the place, in the early 1960s. Elizabeth thought they had been planted by the early settlers.  She called those first settlers The Old Fellers. The Old Fellers were an inspiration to Elizabeth, and they are to us, too.   

 

The Perrys planted these apple trees and built these stone walls, and probably had a vegetable garden in this very same place between 1860 and the early 1900s.  After that, the Gouldens owned the property until the early 1950s.  So the daffodils that are blooming today have been coming up each spring for many decades, maybe for more than a century. 

I'm grateful to Maria Perry and to Bertha Goulden. One of them planted these daffodils, I think, or got their children to do it. I imagine Maria telling William one fall day, "Don't forget to get some daffodil bulbs when you're in town." Or Bertha down on her knees digging the holes and putting in the bulbs. Whether it was Maria or Bertha, I wonder if she thought about how many years of pleasure these daffodils would give to people she would never know, far beyond her own life.    

Worm sanctuary

The garden is now a designated worm sanctuary. My deal with the robins is: you can eat all the worms you want, anywhere you please, except inside the vegetable garden. I haven't bothered to put this deal into writing since I doubt they would take the time to read it, much less sign it. But so far, at least, they seem to be leaving the garden worms alone. 

It could be my fluttering anti-robin cloth strips that are actually doing the trick, rather than our little inter-species social contract. I have added the fluttering cloth strips to my defence repertoire, which started with the fluttering deer reminder cloth strips that hang along the outside.  The go-away-you-robins strips of cloth hang on twine stretched across the inside of the garden. The twine has gotten a bit saggy since I first tied it up there. Normal-sized people can still walk under it, but it might garrot a really tall person. Greg very kindly says that from the house the whole thing looks like a Greek wedding. I say more a used car lot.  It's a very fluttery garden now.   

This is the first full year for the vegetable garden. Last summer we got in on the middle of the growing season.  I was rather devil-may-care about it back then, figuring that, since it was my first, I had plenty of latitude for error.  It's not like I had any standard to live up to. 

This year the stakes are higher. Greg has been saying that there's no need for us to buy any vegetables -- ever-- from the grocery store.  I think he believes  -- touchingly -- that I actually learned something from my experience last summer. This great confidence in my ability makes me feel a little fluttery.

But at least I have begun earlier.  I double dug the beds, meeting countless worms in the process and getting a fabulous early harvest of stones. Which were definitely not in those beds last summer. We have built better trellises for the peas and beans and cucumbers, and we took some of the windows we scavenged from Roseway Hall and made temporary cold frames. I've been using the windows over the seeds, so that the seed-eating birds can't get them. Another line of defence.   

So far I've planted peas, turnips, beets, mesclun, chard, spinach, parsnips, fennel, carrots, mustard, shallots, cilantro, zinnias, and a little bit of garlic, to see if you can grow it in the spring. Also sweet peas and that honeysuckle I got last December from the field next door and a Casa Blanca Lily that I got as a surprise today. 

It's early by the calendar and by the average last frost date, which is about three weeks from now, I think. So all this planting could turn out to be pure-dee foolishness. But it's practically spring and out in their sanctuary those really safe worms are doing the boogie-woogie all night long. When I hear that party going on I just can't resist.     

Forest bog

The island's main road begins at the government wharf and ends at the Atlantic. It was first carved out of the forest in the 1780s, when Cape Roseway Lighthouse was built. When Fort McNutt was a defence post during the Second World War, the military engineers rebuilt the road and added drainage pipes.  So as you are walking from the wharf to the lighthouse you can see rust-red streams running from the eastern side beneath the road to the western side, then on down the forested slope toward the shore. 

But really the waters are more like rivulets than streams.  They meander through mosses and boulders and spruces and sometimes eddy into pools, but mostly they just saturate the moss and make a very soft spongy ground. 

Occasionally you can see a glinting through the trees and undergrowth further in, and know that the water coalesces there, where you see it reflecting the sunlight. It's very difficult to walk into the forested bog without getting lost.  But you can stand on the road and peer into it, and imagine yourself walking deeper and deeper into the woods, your boots squishing and sinking in all that soaked moss.