“The 24th of May is the Queen’s Birthday. If we don’t get a holiday, we’ll all run away.”
That’s a little ditty that was enthusiastically chanted way, way back in the single-digit age of the junior grades at S.S. 10 Eramosa School that I once attended. Though memory lingers, time marches on, and by the time this article rolls off the presses, another May will have come and once again gone.
Though it seems like only yesterday, it will have been, on the 30th of May, five long years since my Little Lady left my side to walk with the angels.
It would be a terribly wrong statement if I told you time heals and I no longer miss her. There is a hole in my heart, and though others have tried, I know it can never be filled. Memories flow freely and when reality wavers, I often find myself softly calling her name. Perhaps that is as it should be; the fact is, I still love her.
Traditionally, we have always planted a garden on the May 24 long weekend. That has not changed, and I found myself sitting on the porch with sharp knife in hand cutting seed potatoes into the one-eyed sets for planting. They are now all planted, and trays of early-started tomatoes and peppers now sit on our porch getting toughened up to the reality of outdoors. They will not be transplanted out until all danger of frost has departed.
Our fall-planted garlic is up and has already been hoed once to remove the early crop of weeds. Our onion sets are already poking their noses through the ground and will be followed by the peas and carrots shortly. A package of table corn has already been planted, and two more wait on the table to be planted at ten-day intervals to extend the crop season.
I think maybe it is time that I take my hoe into the workshop and sharpen its blade on the little grinder; I don’t like when small weeds take advantage of me.
I enjoy working in the garden. Gardening should and can be fun. The secret to having everything in order is to hoe when needed, not just when you get around to it.
Our strawberries are all out in bloom, so I put up a couple of birdhouses on stakes down their row. Before I had the second one mounted, two pair of tree swallows were fighting over the first one. A couple of days later, I walked down the row with a half-dozen small white feathers in my hand.
The first I blew up into the air and a swallow grabbed it immediately. The rest they dipped quickly and took them straight from my fingers. Tree swallows like to line their nests with white feathers.
When I came out of the barn an hour later with more white feathers, they met me at the door, fluttering impatiently over my head, waiting for me. It is perhaps fortunate for them that half of our laying hens are white – and now moulting.
Take care, ‘cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-986-4105