That time of year again

My column, published in airdrielife magazine (http://airdrielife.com/), Spring 2011.

Gardening, like learning a foreign language, comes easier to some than to others. I am one of the others. I don’t like gardening. There, I’ve said it. Admitting to not enjoying gardening comes close to supporting non-breast feeders on the scale of societal abominations, but let’s be clear. I like gardens and I like planting things and watching them grow. However, I have no aptitude for picking the right plants for the right spaces, I don’t like mucking about in the soil, and I don’t like watering the little sprouts while being eaten alive by mosquitoes. However, a certain amount of gardening is necessary if I want to enjoy my yard.

I usually start out with a burst of energy in February. With lengthening days, my tiny sprouts, carefully planted in milk cartons and little peat pots, are primed to burst forth in time to transplant to planters and beds. But this is optimistic. Year after year, I start plants only to have them wither, possibly from lack of water, light or both. I prepare the soil and plant bedding out plants from the nursery with only slightly more success and when tender, delicate perennials poke through in other people’s gardens, my hardy ones remain dormant. Not a crocus to be found. Sometimes a rare tulip pushes through, only to be frozen by a late frost that somehow doesn’t hit the tulips in the yard across the street.

Years ago, I gave up on anything fancy. In my yard, I have peonies, daisies, a few day lilies, a couple of hardy rose bushes, a poppy (yes, just one) and several lovely plants whose names I can’t remember. I have low-growing snow-in-summer planted behind towering day lilies, ground hugging campanula ensconced near the roots of a seven foot rose bush, a Virginia creeper that, rather than cling to brick as my neighbour’s does, flops lamely along the fence. I dig and poke, but not with much enthusiasm. There seems to be more weeds than plants and mostly, I can’t tell the difference.

People tell me I have a lovely yard, due mostly to the lawn, kept manicured by my husband. At least that part is tidy. When I visit other gardens, with flowers blooming in rows, dancing like well-dressed maidens in the breeze, I am in awe. I make plans – next year my garden will be like this. But when I return home, to my lawn swing, my cup of tea and my book, and see the unorganized wildness of determined perennials, violas thriving in sidewalk cracks and under the swing, surprise plants – gifts that have arrived in bird dropping, and the disorder growing around me, I am not tempted to change it. Somehow there is comfort in the confusion.

Reform School

I am looking for a good reform school a.k.a. puppy class. Lily has graduated from ripping my nylons and eating the keys on my laptop to chewing cupboard doors, chair legs and shoes, not coming when she’s called, and fastidiously keeping the outdoors tidy by coming inside to poop.

Her manners are lacking, could be because she’s spoiled rotten, but nevertheless, she must be taught that “down” means down, “come” means come, "outside" means outside, and “stop chewing that” means stop chewing that.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a puppy, about fifteen years to be exact. Maybe I don’t remember, but the four Pekingese that preceded Lily weren’t chewers or jumpers, nor, until their twilight years, inside poopers. But there is a huge difference in dogs here.

I’ve come to realize that, on the whole, Pekinese, although cute, fluffy, lion-hearted and affectionate, are dumb as a bag of hammers. Lily, on the other hand, is very quick to learn, smart to the point of being manipulative and definitely sure of what she wants. Unfortunately she wants to chew my shoes and jump up on anyone standing.

Apparently, according to the sales clerk at Pet Smart, Lily needs to be “socialized”, whatever that means. I’m sure she was advocating for the puppy classes held there where I observed teeny Yorkies and Chihuahuas strutting their stuff, but I’d rather find something closer to home, somewhere away from the big city where big dogs are the norm, where there might be a rowdier bunch, a group of peer puppies that could intimidate a very teeny dog with a big attitude, into submission.

Salad time again

Last year, about this time, I decided I would blog the “salad days of summer” based on a previous summer’s experience that I wanted to duplicate. That summer, I ate a salad a day – sometimes very healthy fare, sometimes not so much.

Green salads ranged from lettuce, celery, cucumber and a lite dressing to the other green salad, the one my grown children asked for at Christmas, which includes lime Jello, pear juice and cream cheese. Fruit salads varied too, from strawberries and blueberries in a bowl to a selection of various melon balls, pineapple, strawberries, and assorted other fruits and berries, soaked overnight in a lime/rum mixture. Once, after taking this salad to a staff meeting, I came upon one young lady holding back the fruit with the serving spoon while pouring the “dressing” into a cup!

Some salads were complete meals, some just tasty sides. Some combinations were delicious; some didn’t bear repeating, but all in all, it was fun, tasty and I came up with some new and interesting salad recipes that I thought might be nice to share. So, last year I started out all ready to blog a similar experience. However, a repeat performance was not to be. After about two weeks of occasional blogging about lettuce salads with different dressings, I gave up. Salads just were not happening.

So, this summer I’m not going to be fanatical about it, but if the odd salad recipe shows up, don’t be surprised. Tonight we’re having a favourite, original invention. It evolved from a fridge-emptying experience several years ago. The original was macaroni, grated cheddar, ham, celery and onion with a light mayo dressing. Now, I use shell pasta, grated cheddar, a large chicken breast chopped into small pieces (still warm), celery, purple onion and sometimes sweet red pepper. The dressing is a generous amount of light mayo mixed with a tablespoon of Dijon, salt and pepper and thinned with milk. Easy and tasty. Never quite turns out the same twice – maybe I should measure?