And Something from Ovid Here.

The weekend was packed with energy and action - lots of things happened. Some of them I'll get to another time, but can I draw your attention to my very impressive, brand-new, raised vegetable bed?


The reason it's impressive is, I made it yesterday with all recycled materials. I went into the gloom of the shed and dragged things around, unearthing clay pots and pressure-treated beams that have lain forgotten for years before we even moved in. They provided excellent habitat for enormous spiders and wintering bumblebees, but it was time they were used for a greater purpose.



It's a small beginning. When we moved in here a few years ago, I tried to grow vegetables. I failed spectacularly, harvesting a miserable, terrified collection of anemic spinach and pale, stunted carrots.

I think it was the soil.

So this year, I started from the very bottom. I cut down and removed three inches of sod, laid a black weed barrier, boarded off the (small) area, and am going to fill it with a mixture of compost, some of the soil from the original garden, and Sea Soil. I do have to buy the compost, but it won't take much to fill this 2 meter by 1 meter bed.

I am not much of a vegetable grower, being more interested in perennials and flowers of all description. But veg gardens are the way of the future as well as the past, because as gas prices go, so go food prices.

By the way, we are at $1.26 per liter now ($5.04/gallon). I admit I gloat a little bit, as smugly triumphant as only a busser and a walker and a rider can be, when I hear people grumbling about how much it costs to fill up their Escalade. I am quite keen to see what happens this summer when it reaches the predicted $1.50 per liter and hits these complacent consumers right in the wallet.

Look what else happened this weekend.

Before:


After:



Some small person at the BC Children's Cancer Ward is in serious luck (for a change).