Phenology and Valentine Mnemonics

I am going through the laborious process of sorting through hundreds of digital photos on my hard drive. As part of the task I am also recording the phenology of the dates of flowers in bloom, bee sightings, and family events. Have you ever wondered how those folks managed to remember which winter was the coldest in their lifetime? Or the longest or mildest? Experiential memories get hooked together and anchored in the brain as signposts to the construction of an identity and a human with a past. There was that Vancouver winter that was so cold the rosemary died, but I can never remember which one it was. Maybe I will find the answer in my photo files. There was also that winter in my childhood in Cactus Lake Saskatchewan when the snowdrifts went up to the roofs. There will be photos in our families albums of my sister and I on the wooden toboggan.

In October 2011 we had quince ripening on our table and our son dressed as the Headless Horseman for Halloween. I had never associated quince with Oct. 31, but now the connection has been made and it will be hard to forget. On February 14, 2014 I saw the first honeybee of the year foraging in pink heather. To tell you the truth, I hardly ever see honeybees on heather, but I did see some honeybees this summer on the heather in the photo above taken in late August on Salt Spring Island, along with the moth that I think is meant to look like a splodge of bird poop. As I rode home on the bus from my bee sighting I saw heather blooming all along the route as if someone had tinted the heather plants in a black and white movie. I brought in 6 used jars at the Ernest Ice Cream shop and bought a jar of sour cherry chip ice cream for five bucks. Our teenage son just about ate the whole thing. "But it was so easy to eat, mom!" he protested. Uh huh. Those big chunks of Okanagan cherries in a custardy ice cream with chocolate chips went down much much too easily.

I encourage you to link family moments with seasonal changes. You will create a family heirloom that can be handed down through the generations and it will help you remember to plant your rosemary in a nice sheltered location.

Oleander, Oleander

Will you bloom again this spring?
I adored you
Then I ignored you
And now to me you're everything
And those white blossoms that you gave freely
Are now just twinkles in your eye
Oh behold her
Oleander grows on the inside

--Sarah Harmer

Milkweed for Valentines Day

The David Suzuki Foundation has a good idea on how we can celebrate sustainability on Valentine's Day. If you purchase an e-card for your loved one, they will plant milkweed for monarch butterflies. Milkweed  (Asclepias spp.) also supports a variety of native bees, so it's a good plant for your garden, and the pollen morphology is very unusual.

From the David Suzuki Foundation website:

Every fall, monarchs make an astonishing, 5,000-kilometre trip from Canada to Mexico—one of the longest insect migrations on Earth.

But monarch populations have drastically declined, due to habitat loss, pesticides and severe weather. This year there are fewer monarchs overwintering in Mexico than ever before.

In late February, the survivors will start their multigenerational journey northward, arriving in Canada early summer.

Your eValentine will help us plant milkweed—the plant where monarch moms lay their eggs and the monarch caterpillars’ main source of food—to welcome them back to Canada*.


Valentine's Day is also a great day to celebrate peace and love for humanity as The Valentine Peace Project continues to create dialogue around the flower industry and other "chains of trade".

Transforming gifts of love into agents for peace involves investigation into the nature and history of brands and romance commerce.  Global Witness has worked for more than a decade to track links between corruption, war and trade.  How can we reverse these damages and create peace products, chains of trade, with sensitivity and sensibility to human rights, environmental concerns, and conflict resolution?

Have a Peaceful Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day! I would like to highlight a project which I think is fantastic, created by an artist named Federico Hewson called The Valentine's Day Peace Project. I think he is subverting this consumer-based tradition in a really satisfying way. He is works with children to create community valentines and he is also working with growers to develop a tulip breed called Valentine Peace.

Inspiring excerpts from the Valentine's Day Peace Project website:

We plan to design and develop new breeds – including a Valentine Peace tulip – wrapped in personal poetry; build and promote community peace poetry gardens; construct bulb funding tools for international peace organisations; and assist emerging Fairtrade including conflict and post-conflict flowers and horticulture.  

"The purpose of activism and art is to make a world in which people are producers of meaning, not just consumers." Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark - The Untold History of People Power

VPP flowers and bulbs will help growers and spread peace on three levels - inner, community and global – creating poetry and art; education and awareness; transformative trade and new symbolism for global community and identity.

"Freedom's flowers are blooming." (US journalist on the Arab Spring)

Valentine's Day is Over

But let the romance continue, I say. Lunch at the French Table: give me a simple seafood salad any day. I love it.


For V-Day brekkie I cooked crepes which we ate with Bergamot marmalade from Beta 5. This is flowery, but with those real bitter notes you gotta love. I don't understand their aversion to pectin.

I also cooked up some blood orange curd which has a rather weird color and texture--like uni.

I made the crepes with half buckwheat and half wheat flour.

Chocolate covered ginger from Beta 5. I found it dry and stringy. Peter liked it.

We made pork dumplings for our Valentine's supper.


Valentine's chocs from Beta 5. The color coding system did not work. I like it better when you can just choose chocolates a la carte and I prefer the dome shape they used to make. I also get tired of every filling based in ganache. Do I sound like the Valentine's grinch yet?

Ullie's charming and disturbing treat bag. Pac Man says: "wakka wakka wakka."

V-Day Blooms

A fireman in orange overalls laughs easily in the back of a fire trick returning from a false alarm. 8:40 a.m.

Good choice! How's your sandwich? More iced tea? 12:15 pm

The harpists tune their strings. 1:40 pm

harp. siren. harp. 2 pm

I see her grey curly head in the window of her painting studio. 2:13 pm

A pot of knobby Solomon seal roots appear on the steps. 2:15 pm

Occupy Valentine's Day

Seven years ago Federico Hewson started the Valentine Peace Project, hijacking the "day for lovers" and making it a day for peace. What a great way to transform a Halmark Holiday! I love the poster on one of the photos on his website that says: "Compassion is the new currency." Federico helps inspire children to write peace poems, attach them to flowers and hand them out to people on the street. What are some of your ideas for "hacking" this holiday?

Valentine's Reverie

To make peace it takes
a sunflower and one bee,
One sunflower, and a bee,
And reverie.
The reverie alone will do,
If sunflowers and bees are few.

LDW (after Emily Dickinson)


This year, why not create a poem for peace on Valentine's Day, wrap it around a flower and give it to someone in your neighborhood. Valentine's Day is not just for sweethearts any more, it's for celebrating peace and kindness towards someone even if they're not your girlfriend. This Valentine's idea is brought to you by a Dutch performance artist named Federico Hewson. It is the Valentine Peace Project and you are invited to participate here. Isn't it a lovely idea?! The artist describes what will happen on the big day:

"5,000 beautiful fair trade roses will be coming to the Oude Kerk and carnations and roses will go to North Amsterdam, the Pijp, Antwerp and The Hague. In North Amsterdam students will create a Poezie Tuin. The roses from the church will be shared in the city with writings created at the event and thoughts and musings of love, peace and global community submitted to the website from the Netherlands, the US, London, New Zealand and from students in America and Holland. This is about celebrating and re-visioning this day to celebrate love, and greater peace in our cities, in our hearts and in our connecting globe.

I invite you to participate of course if you live in these cities but also there will be a template on the site soon wherein you can copy and paste your own expression, poems you like from the site, quotes or favorite poems or statements to share as a scroll or wrapped around a flower."