Glorious Tulips Last Only a Short Time

Sara's tulips grew extra large and tall this year, largely due to the tender loving care afforded them by my wife. She has nurtured the soil in her favorite garden beds for years, using kitchen-scraps compost, composted horse manure, rich topsoil, and most important of all, Humic Acid and Iguana Juice, great 100% organic products from Advanced Nutrients.

You can tell the difference, when you look at the same kind of tulips growing in the gardens of our neighbors. They're much shorter and their bowls aren't as full and robust as Sara's. I cherish this time of year, because I am well aware that just like those magnificent pink cherry blossoms a block away, blooms like tulips only last a relatively short time.

Tulips were prized possessions at one time in Europe. A single tulip of the right coloring was worth much more than its weight in gold. A man had to work for months to pay the prices they were asking. Then some blight or other took hold and tulips fell out of favor. Well, they're still very much in favor in our homestead.

As the attached photos clearly attest, the glorious tulips in Sara's garden are extra special this year. I can hardly wait for Spring a year from now to have them pop out of the soil once more and grace us with their presence.

Sara helped me construct a box for a new vegetable garden in a sunnier spot than before, and she planted seeds with the help of the kids. We have peas, carrots, arugula, leaf lettuce, spinach, and some herbs growing, as well as some well developed tomato plants which we haven't put outside yet, since the radio said something about the chance of frost tonight. We hope this doesn't happen for the sake of our seedlings!

But temperatures are due to rise over the weekend and then we'll be yearning for the cool days of early Spring! "You don't know what you've got, 'til it's gone!"

From Arab Spring to Organic Gardening

Last year it was the Arab Spring. This year, that phenomenon continues in the Syrian government slaughtering its own civilians. Closer to home, Harper and Co. are spending $25 billion of our money on fighter jets, $9 billion on prisons, and they're cutting the budgets of human right organization, environmental departments, and the CBC. Welcome to the Spring of skewered priorities.

Our little patch of the Earth, on the other hand, is ignoring all these disturbing facts and bursts forth with another set of wonderful Spring bulbs! Our crocuses, with their white, purple, and yellow petals, and yellow and orange stamens are more magnificent than the most expensive ball gown, while the hyacinths emit such a lovely smell that in another century it would cause women to swoon. Lemon- colored daffodils stand guard over the shorter flowers, while the tulips are itching to bud and bloom.

While Sara's garden is starting to fill in with bulbs and sprouting perennials, indoors we are incubating lots of flower and vegetable seeds and seedlings. We purchased some new grow-light units from Lee Valley and they work using a very primitive hydroponic method. Capillary action is the key, as the absorbent pad hangs into the rainwater (collected just for that purpose) and ensures that the coco coir seedling pots are well watered from below.

Weekly, I mix up some Iguana Juice Grow and Voodoo Juice in four liters of water and fertilize the more advanced seedlings. They seem to thrive on the stuff, and their white roots are sticking out from the bottoms of the bio-degradable pots. Sara insists on only using 100% organic fertilizers, so thank goodness for the Advanced Nutrients organic line!

I'll document the progress of our flowers, fruits, and vegetables as the months progress. Mother Nature is teaching us once again, that no matter how disturbing the flow of human history, the Earth follows a seasonal pattern and it's been around a lot longer than us humans. Let her teach us to be peaceful, loving, and respectful of her bounty.

Coral Sunset Peonies and William Shakespeare Roses

Sara has been doing quite a bit of landscaping and gardening at another property here on the Gulf Islands. She prepared the soil with fertilizer and mulch and built stone walls to contain her flower beds. She planted all her favorite plants and worked very hard conceptualizing, as well as carrying out her plans. Many a wheelbarrow full of new soil, compost, and broken rocks was pushed up the inclines in order to replenish some already existing beds and some new ones.

Her peonies were magnificent and many other blooms graced the sizable property throughout the spring and summer. The different kinds of peonies she favors are Coral Sunset, Bowl of Beauty, and Do Tell, as well as one called Madame Emile Debatene. There is a Gertrude Jekyll rose, and a brilliant red camellia, that looks somewhat like a rose. She also took some William Shakespeare roses from her Gabriola garden to her landscaping project.

Her future projects include the installation of a waterfalls and fully utilizing an irrigation pond to save on water usage. There is a fully automated underground irrigation system and many a flagstone pathway was created by Sara in order to save the wear and tear on the lawn.

Please enjoy the pictures of her "other" garden, and know that many hours of hard work have gone into creating this little paradise away from the urban rush. As is the case with our home garden, Sara used Advanced Nutrients Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom, as well as Bud Factor X and Rhino Skin to ensure vigorous, healthy plants, resistant to pests and diseases.

Thriving Zucchini, Beautiful Roses, Economical Hydroponics

Those of you who've read this blog before know that Sara does the flower gardening and I attempt to grow vegetables in the back of the house. It's not often that I have a success story to boast about, but this year my two zucchini plants have taken off like a comet shooting across the sky.

My cherry tomatoes are coming along, but I don't seem to have enough buds on the heirloom and beefsteak varieties. I think a treatment with Nirvana is in order. Nirvana is an all-organic foliar spray and that encourages your plants to produce more and more buds.

Some of you know that we grow our flowers and vegetables organically, usually fed by 100% organic Iguana Juice, made by Advanced Nutrients. There is Grow for the vegetative phase of all the plants, and Bloom for the flowering phase. I have to be careful not to allow the Bloom to fertilize the lettuce next to the tomato plants, otherwise the former will go to seed and taste bitter.

Sara, in the meantime, has helped produce a bouquet of incredible roses of different varieties, a bunch of glorious daisies, exquisite phlox of different colors, as well as black-eyed-susans, clematus, and some other flowers whose names I have forgotten.

The other day I received a confirmation of our decision to grow everything organically. I went into a Chinese grocery store and saw that while the regular bananas were all green and unappealing, the organic kind were perfectly formed and yellow and very attractive indeed. I opted for the organic kind, and even though I had to pay a bit more, when I tasted one the difference was heaven and earth. Non-organic bananas will never touch my lips again!

Even if you grow your vegetables or fruits hydroponically, you can still grow them organically if you use quality fertilizers like Iguana Juice and quality additives, such as Nirvana.

Speaking of hydroponics, such a setup doesn't have to cost a fortune. The current issue of Rosebud Magazine (the one with Justin Timberlake on the cover) has an excellent article written by hydroponic guru Erik Biksa, entitled Eco Growing Systems, Simplicity That Can Feed Our Planet. It describes in detail a new hydroponics system on the market that is affordable and simple to operate. Look for it in quality bookstores and newsstands. Better yet, pick one up at your favorite hydroponics store.

I leave you with a thought from the great Persian poet, Rumi:
"Observe the wonders as they occur around you.
Don't claim them. Feel the artistry
moving through, and be silent."

Back to the Garden!



Time to stop and smell the roses--literally. Time to slow-down. Hockey is a fast and furious and let's face it, violent game, and violence begat violence. It's a biblical truth and we cannot get away from it. Rather, let's look at how we raise our children. Are we teaching them enough of the difference between right and wrong?

The young people in the photographs of the riot on Facebook have somehow missed those parental lessons. Some of them seemed to relish the violence, posing in front of burning police cars and one guy even urinated at the riot squad. Sure, the rioters were fuelled by a lot of alcohol consumed, but a lack of ethics also played a role in the events.

It was only a hockey game folks. Someone's FB status said it well--if you're going to riot, at least do it for a worthy cause. Syria, Iran, Libya--the people in those places have some justification for being angry. The Stanley Cup is only an ornament.