Flowers and Berries and Veggies

I think that it’s been many years since I’ve worked as dedicatedly as I have these last several months on an art project. “I’m Not The Only One” (last two blog stories) took every spare instant of time that I had. I’m realizing now that it’s already July and I have yet to share any pictures or stories about my gardens. So, that’s what I’m going to do today…

For the last several years I’ve really enjoyed being able to share my garden photos with my friends from around the globe on Facebook. This pic was created as my album cover for this year. It looks nice, but it’s hard to see how much time went into creating this image… it took almost an hour – fiddling with sizes, art media effects and so on. Notice the size of the flowers in the immediate background? Very tiny…

This is what this garden looks like today! These are called Day Lilies and they got this name for a very simple reason – the flowers last for only one day. You may think that these flowers would complete their flowering rather quickly, but their flowering season lasts for almost an entire month!

In this photo you can see the many stems that grow so tall. Each stem is filled with many buds that take turns blooming.

Here’s a zoomed in crop shot of those same flowers. It’s now easy to see how these flowers continue to brighten our days with so many wonderful colours and shapes for so long during their flowering season.

Day Lillies also come in a variety of colours, shapes and sizes. I used my computer to help me create this interesting ‘arted’ image of a yellow Day Lily that grew near my Blueberry patch, several weeks ago.

Each species of Day Lily probably has its own unique name, but I don’t know what they are – I make up my own simple names for them. I call these ones my ‘Wine Day Lilies’ cuz their burgundy colouring reminds me of a glass of red wine.

During the springtime, my berrybush garden looks rather empty, so I’ve planted a few Daffodils and Tulips to brighten it up until the bushes and berry canes grow and fill the area in. These were my first flowers this year.

Even if an area only has one or two flowers you can still find ways to get in really close to take interesting photos. By fiddling with different computer effects a stimulating image can be created to please any eye.

I’ll often visit an area of photographic interest many times over the course of a day or two, to find the perfect light, shade, dryness or wetness from the rain to compliment my compositions. Sometimes, inspirational lyrics from songs get added to my photos to share simple ideas – simple ideas that may be a little more complicated than, at first, they may appear.

This fun series of pics shows how my Blackcap patch has filled in to produce a rather large amount of berries for my family to enjoy as well as my next door neighbours, who received several small bowls during the height of the season.

Like most fruits, Blackcaps taste best when eaten straight from the vine. I find that keeping them in a refrigerator changes their taste and texture, so I’ll often find myself picking these berries several times during a day so that their taste is the freshest!

This year’s berry harvest was so successful that I’ve even managed to freeze a nice sized bag to use in making jams – I’ll be adding these Blackcaps to my Black Currant and Wild Cherry recipes sometime very soon. They also blend with Maple Syrup very nicely to make a sauce for pancakes or French toast!!!



I’ve always found that having a garden – whether it’s a flower, fruit or veggie patch – is the simplest and most rewarding way to understand the importance of life’s miracles here on planet Earth! It boggles my mind to try to understand how a little seed can be filled with so much information and motivation to want to reach for its Creator – our sun! How does a plant know how to or where to put its leaves? Or branches? Have you ever watched the tiniest of buds – smaller than the head of a pin – grow to produce a colourful flower larger than your hand? How does that work?

Yeah! Yeah! We know enough to fill books on this subject and if I was interested to learn about all the strands of molecular growths and movements I’m not sure if I’d feel satisfied. To me, it’s a great mystery. A mystery that I have no desire to solve. A mystery that makes me feel content to leave as a mystery, so that I’ll forever be amazed by all the complexities that are life!



Now, I’m definitely not saying ‘Live life in ignorance’ cuz that’s a completely false appraisal of my attempt to define the word ‘mystery’.



My desire to learn about the things that grow in my garden is great - I’m learning new things about these plants all the time. My garden if forever being moved around as I learn about what a plant needs to flourish and I try to provide that personalized environment.

By reading a book about how to prune berry bushes and berry canes I was able to produce this beautiful arrangement of fruit. These are Red Currants and they’re always a little on the tart side. I grow them cuz they’re easy to grow and care for and the fruits are very useful.

I grew up with these berry bushes in my parents’ garden, but I’ve never known them quite as intimately as I do now. Because of their tart taste, we store these berries in our freezer. The freezing process seems to bring out a richer, sweeter taste in the berry. We’ll just use a ½ cup or so of the berries in our muffins and pancakes that we bake. Very nice!



When I eat a berry – especially one that I’ve just picked – I can’t help but to think of the sun! Because of the sun we have life on this third planet of nine, hurtling through space, simply spinning in infinite surround! There’s this great gaseous inferno blasting all of space with its energy and warmth and here… in my garden… a simple man touches the sun… and enjoys the freshest of berries!!!!

It’s been a really hot and dry summer… and then there was an accident of some kind that burst apart a major water pipeline that keeps London wet! We were under water rations for several days!!!

My veggies were just starting out and they were struggling because of the non-winter we had (creating no ‘snow-pack’) plus the lack of rain in the spring. Joanne came up with a great solution! We started using Devon’s bath water on our gardens. That – combined with the way I shape my gardens for water conservation – allowed my potatoes, carrots, eggplants and tomatoes to grow to their potential.

It’s good that humans have the great capacity to be able to adapt to ever-changing conditions. As each of us strives to live life more simply – cutting back on fast food dinners ( C’mon, now!! Let’s not just cut back – let’s stop supporting factory farm fed industries altogether!!!) – we’ll begin to appreciate, on a deeper level, the value of our food and water. Then a new kind of change will occur… humans will begin to work together in new ways, planning a future instead of merely adapting to a decaying present.



Normal, evolutionary adaptations have always been fine throughout the history of our species. This is because these changes occurred over thousands (even hundreds of thousands) of years. The last three hundred years (a sliver of time by comparison) have seen such a swift and massive change in humankind’s ability to dominate global natural environments that our ecological support systems has been threatened with extinction… simply affecting every living organism on this space marble of ours. This time, our greatest abilities to adapt could never be enough to overcome the obstacles we could soon face. The time to plan was 100 years ago… but the time to act is now!



Ohhh – the problems!!!!! Yet – all the glory as we reach our true instinctive potential to bring peace and balance for all life forces to this breathing Earth of ours!



Having a garden brings these ideals to life!



So… I should end this story on a lighter note and so I will share a few more lovely photos taken in my gardens this year…

These are my chives in flower. The density of the purples tingles the senses in my eyes. Not only do they look gorgeous but they add a nice tongue sensation to my bbq’d ‘taters!

I just love this photo. These Blueberries are soon going to fill out and change to the deepest blue hue – it’s so nice to seem them at this young stage in their lives. Some people may say that I really missed my shot by a week or so cuz all the baby blue Forget-Me-Nots have already flowered and have turned to seed – only a few flowers remain in bloom, but I think the timing of this photo was perfect. It captures the whole ‘cycles of life’ idea with the end of one species of flower and the birth of a new one. Also, if all the Forget-Me-Nots were in bloom then the background would have been a simple wash of only one colour and texture instead of the many presented here.

And finally, the other component of any great garden… the rain!!!! I just love rain storms… except when they are moving at such a rapid rate that the sneak up on you and send a blast of lightning that you are close enough to hear to your left side followed by the loudest thunder you could ever imagine deepening the distance between your ears – LOL!!! – making your heart miss a beat. That scared me to one step closer to death!!!



Ha! I’m alive to tell about it… so I guess it was all for the good.



Jim

It’s Berry Time!!

A lot of people still have the belief that big businesses, manufacturers and governments will be the organizations that will stop pollution and protect our environments. Because of this belief these people continue to live their lives as they always have… not realizing the impact that simple, everyday decisions can make – like picking your own strawberries!


By spending one single hour in a local farmers field you can pick enough strawberries for your entire family for an entire year… unless you have plans to make your own jams, in which case you’ll need to spend two hours in the field. By doing this you will have no need to buy any strawberries imported from Mexico or California during the winter months. This means that you are not supporting the creation of plastic boxes needed to pack the berries, tonnes of carbon dioxide are not added to our atmosphere as fewer transport trucks are needed to import the berries, etc., etc.

Buy local! Buy in season! Spend time now to save for the future!


And you get a free tractor ride to the picking area! :)


Flash freezing is a term that I learned about many years ago. First – wash all the berries and pull the green stems from the middle. Next – place the berries onto cookie sheets and then put them into the freezer for an hour.


Once the berries are frozen, you can put them into freezer bags or reusable yogurt or margarine containers and that’s it! Simple eh!! Now you’ll have berries to enjoy all winter long in your pancakes, loaves, muffins and pies.

If you were to clean the berries and then put them immediately into freezer bags and then into your freezer you will find that all the berries will freeze together into one big clump. Flash freezing the berries ensures that each berry is frozen individually and when they are put into storage containers they won’t become a solid mass.

On our way home from the strawberry farm, Joanne and I made another stop at a roadside vegetable stand – another way of supporting local farmers and cutting down on the fossil fuels needed by big trucks to import veggies from far off places. The other benefits of this is a financial savings. The farmer had some ‘day-old’ baskets filled with peppers and tomatoes and we bought one of each for $1.00 a basket.

So… simple actions CAN save our environment. Joanne and I spent a total of $25.00 for the freshest of fruits and vegetable. We saved around $15.00 by getting some exercise and enjoying the sunshine. We didn’t create the need to burn fossil fuels. We supported a localized economy thus making this world a better place for future generations!!!

And we had fun doing it!!!!

Jim

You Vote When You Buy

It is significantly true that more and more people are becoming aware of the connections between our economies and famines, extreme weather patterns and clear cut forestlands, pollution and population, and more and more people are beginning to wonder what the solutions might be. It’s an exhaustive chore to comprehend just a small amount of the problems facing our world, so a hearty ‘THANKS’ goes out to the many who have found small ways to make this world a better place. Here is a small way a small thing can make a big difference…

Joanne and I always like to spend our money in significant ways. We like to buy fruits and vegetables from our local farmers. By buying locally grown, in season produce we are supporting an industry that does not need a lot of resources to exist. A can of tomatoes from California needs to be processed, packaged, crated, carted, driven and driven and driven and all of this is unnecessary and harmful to the environment. By buying local we are getting the produce straight from the farmer with no processing, packaging or crating.



This is one of the many farmers markets that exists here in London. Jo’ and I were asked to bring a fruit tray to the party we were going to that night and we got a little bit of everything: blueberries, strawberries, cantaloupe, watermelon and plums. I think that this is my favourite time of the year. Our house is never as abundant with fruit as it is in August. The blueberries that Joanne and I picked a few weeks ago were – possibly – the finest tasting blueberries I have ever had. I will be enjoying them until next spring in my weekend pancakes.

Joanne and I love our fruits and veggies and we also enjoy a little chicken and bacon. The farmer’s market is great for that, too – no styrofoam!

When I’m at my local supermarket I’m amazed at the wastefulness of many things. In the meat section, each two-person portion is individually wrapped in a styrofoam container. I think about how many styrofoam packages will be bought in this store today, then in all the stores in London, then Canada, then the world and it almost seems sadly comical to picture all the millions of packages that are used for such a brief period of time ending up in our landfills, poisoning our land and water.

I believe that a great change is needed by all manufacturers to make sure that their products and all parts associated with the production, distribution and consumption of their products do no harm to our environment. I believe that a great change is needed by all consumers to realize the significance of simplicity to reduce wasteful packaging.

Jim