Cherry Obsession

It all started out on a rainy Saturday at UBC Farm Market. My friend Catherine and I caught the bus and trudged past the new shiny Wesbrooke development to our destination. I huddled under a tent to peruse some jars of preserves and lo and behold, it's my friend Sivia with her new Gyspy Jams. We were excited to be invited to taste them all--so many choices--and each bursting with fruit-forward flavor. Sivia uses all natural ingredients and as little sugar as possible so she achieves an incredible depth of flavor.

It was hard to choose what to buy, but I chose three jars for 20$: hot cherry preserves, lime marmalade and spicy pepper jelly. This week I've been enjoying the spicy cherry preserves on the loaf of fig bread I bought from the vendor next to Sivia: A Bread Affair.



We stocked up on produce from UBC Farm: radishes, salad greens, and I even got that day's last bag of potatoes. Woot! We bought some Hungarian sour cherries from Jobst-Hof Orchard in Oyama and I have to say Catherine and I are both hooked. We both made cherry pies and I had the cherries on my porridge and yogurt in the morning. They are so ripe they don't even need a lot of sugar, but they have that lovely tart edge in the flavor.

Now where can I score some more of those babies?

Mercredi Sans Mots

Work Party and Talk this Thursday at the MOP

We'd love you to come out to a work party and/or talk at the MOP this Thursday. The work party is from 3-5 pm and if you like, you can bring a picnic supper or snack and stay for the talk by Todd Devries.

Thursday, 6-8pm July 21,
Todd DeVries:“ ith kil gaa” and “gannyaa” designate is of the Tsiij Git’Anee Eagle (Guud) Clan of the Haida Nation on Haida Gwaii. This talk and demonstration will focus on Todd’s discovery of working with cedar. Todd will be sharing harvest principles and techniques of working with cedar and bring examples of his work.

The Means of Production Garden is located at 6th and St Catherines Street in East Vancouver at the edge of North China Creek Park. We have an alternate rain date if it is really pouring down. Fingers crossed!

Bee Watch

As much as I love the color and form of these black peony poppies, I don't think they are great bee plants. The poor bees spend a lot of energy foraging in the frills. This poppy above is a lot less frilly than its compadres, perhaps reverting back to its no-frill genes. This is actually better for the bees because they have easier access to the pollen. I will tag this pod and make a note to see if these seeds bear this trait next year.

I can just feel the frustration of the bee above, getting lost in the petticoats of that poppy.

Here's a tiny visit to the cornflowers today.

I've seen lots of these bright yellow bombus this year.

I love the delicate nectar guides in these geraniums.

So I realize I've got lots of shallow flowers and lots of these nasturtiums with deep nectar spurs, but not a lot of good nectar plants with mid-size nectaries. I'll have to do some research to remedy that gap.


Did the old lady who swallowed a fly ingest a syrphid fly, perhaps? "Dude, that's too deep for me, I just wanna hang out on this bean leaf and catch some sun."

California (poppy) dreamin'....

My First Eco Print

Inspired by the work of India Flint, I have begun to explore the natural dye process that she created. I placed leaves between pieces of mordanted fabric and wrapped them around rusty bolts I found in my garden. In a funny way I felt that the pieces of broken crockery and bolts had strong residual emotions tied to them from the people who used to live here. I couldn't throw them away, so now they will become part of the stories of these used fabric pieces, which also carry their own history.

I just kept the detritus in a pot on the back steps with shells from our trips to the beach.

Here's my first eco-print on cotton mystery blend with an alum mordant, a rusty iron bolt and eucalytpus leaves from the MOP garden. It was wrapped for a week.

Here's some dye I created from UBC Farm black currants.

These samples are wet, so the colour is a bit muted when they have dried. The folded samples were created with more rusty junk. The darker samples are unbleached cotton. They've just been in the jar for 2 days. I love working with rusty wire and wrapping the samples in wire. I'm also going to experiment more with using shells inside the wrapping. Fun times!

July Bloom Day

A ladybug's work is never done. Sigh. Welcome to my first ever official Bloom Day post at Beespeaker Saijiki and thanks to May Dreams Gardens for hosting. It's overcast and drizzling today in Vancouver and we are thankful for the rain. Here's what's been happening in our garden in the past three days.

Aphids and ladybugs love the hops and I love ladybugs, so I am happy that things are kept in balance here and the vines seem to thrive in spite of all the action.

Hello little one!

Meanwhile, over on the west side of the house, the golden hops is just about to bloom and the bumble bees love it. It is climbing over the climbing hydrangea and normally they bloom in succession, but because of the late spring, everything got compressed into a shorter season.

The Bombus love this climbing hydrangea and since we have a nest living in our shed, we need to keep them fed.

This is a little blushing alyssum I grew from seed.

Here's some borage for the bees, a companion plant for the strawberries I had on my pancakes this morning.

We have had an excellent crop of sugar peas and now I'm ready to start freezing them because I must admit I'm getting a bit tired of them. We eat the pods in salads when they're young--more bang for your buck that way, but my son likes to pick out the peas so I let some fatten on the vine.

This is salad burnet and you can see the nasturtiums in the background. I notice the bees get frustrated by the long nectar spurs on those flowers, so they tend to pass them over in favor of the other flowers that are blooming right now. If they were desperate they'd rob the nectar by biting a hole in the back of each nectar spur. Of course hummingbirds love nasturtiums.

I hope the bees are finding the zukes. I guess I should pollinate by hand just in case.

This is one of those plants I call a "supermarket salvia". I lost the tag long ago and I'm not a big fan of this sprawling perennial, but the bees do love it. I see the wool carder bees competing for its nectar like roller derby thugs, bumping each other out of the blossoms.

This is cerinthe, another bee plant. The bumble bees make a heck of a racket when they pollinate those blossoms.

So now this is a series of plants I grew from a group of "black" flower seeds I bought from Florabunda Seeds. I'm going to save these violas in the freezer for some natural dye experiments inspired by India Flint.

This is the centaurea that came in the seed packet bundle.

I put one of the blooms in my little oasis for thirsty bees.

And here's the magnificent "black" poppy which may produce some pigment for dye as well.

I also planted some black hollyhocks, but they won't bloom until next summer.

My neighbor planted honeysuckle which chooses to bloom on my side of the fence. Of course on the other side of the garden my honeysuckle blooms on the other neighbor's fence and so on and so on....

I inherited some beautiful roses with this garden and this is my favorite because the colors morph and change as they develop. It also has a lovely fragrance, which is the best reason to grow roses IMO. I also have some lavender, geraniums, a few California poppies, some campanula and a couple different kinds of malva, which you can see in the post below.

Happy Gardening!

Playing Rude

What is this tiny ghost

I see as I water the raspberries,

a honeybee covered headtotoe in pink mallow dust,

frantically she preens powder out of her eyes,

plops down on a hollyhock leaf to perform her ablutions,

then heads for a bud on the vulgar malva sylvestris,

tries to pry it open with her tongue,

craving still more.

Note: "Playing rude" is an expression I read in a story by a B.C. author Annie Scoones. I need to reread her books to find that reference, so please bear with me and try to track down those books--they're great.