Tag Archives: community gardening

Guerilla gardener

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My “four-corners” jogging route in the Danforth neighborhood takes me past a forlorn block on the east side of Broadview Avenue.

It looks to be a former grocery store or other retail establishment than went belly up years ago. The sign in the window says a dollar store is coming, but I’m dubious.

At the north end of the storefront there’s a cute little brick patio full of weeds and trash. It will be the site of my first guerilla garden.

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I got the inspiration from my Mom.  After she and Dad moved to a condo in Don Mills, Mom maintained her passion for gardening by carving out three small circular gardens in a nearby public park.  Two of them surrounded trees she had dedicated to her parents Arthur and Ruth, each with a small plaque. The third surrounded, and filled, an old hollow log stump.

Many walkers, joggers and cyclists would remark on the pretty pink geraniums she grew. I donated some perennial pink mums that also did well in her little plots.

The parks department people respected the territory she had carved out — they neatly cut the grass around the edges.  And when three police officers on bikes dropped by once to ask her what she was up to, she indicated that these gardens, in fact, belonged to her, as she had paid for the trees dedicated to her parents. Duly noted. The police wished her well and hopped back on their bikes. After all, she was the guerilla gardener of Norman Ingram Park.

Mom lives downtown now and has been known to practice her guerilla gardening tactics on any geranium in the Davenport and Yonge area. This includes a nice flower arrangement outside a condo building that gets attention on her daily walks from spring to fall.

Now it’s my turn.

I’m still a proud member of one of Toronto’s oldest community gardens in the Thorncliffe Park neighborhood.  And I’ve got high hopes for my veggie and flower garden there this summer, and for some special projects. But on that forlorn little patio on Broadview Avenue, my first guerilla garden will rise.  I’m calling it Tiny Garden #2 — to imply that it is, perhaps, the start of a movement.

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I’ve set myself a few conditions for my first guerilla garden:

— it has to be pretty — there are many folks walking that stretch of sidewalk each day and I hope that Tiny Garden #2 will brighten their day

— it has to be low cost — I’ve already acquired a suitable planter pot left out by a neighbor: free to good home. My sources of soil and compost are close at hand and free.  I may visit Home Depot for some potted flower arrangements in spring.

— it has to be maintained. I will be a steward of my Tiny Garden #2, but also be open to the stewardship of others.

— I need to be prepared for both miracles and disasters at my guerilla garden, and be ready to tell its story. I need to be prepared to defend or relocate my garden if the promised Dollarama store does not take kindly to it.

The guerilla gardening torch is being passed, be mine to hold it high.

Wish me luck.

 

 

 

 

Making babies: propagating plants for your garden and others

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Fall and spring are good times to think about making babies.  And we’re talking about propagating plants for your own garden or to re-gift to friends and family.

Propagation is such a technical and intimidating term. Sometimes, it’s appropriate for the machinations of creating new plants. One example is the technique of “layering” stems of a living plant; the stems later put down roots and can be separated from the parent plant to become a new baby from the garden. Not too complex really, but some memory and delayed gratification is required. Another example recalls the story of a friend who used an electric toothbrush to stimulate reproduction of his squash. Similarly, a bit complicated, if not slightly provocative.

No, today we will keep it simple. Here are just a few examples of making babies in the garden:

IMG_2370 hydrangia

Hydrangea:

This low-maintenance perennial shrub puts up gorgeous globe-like blooms the size of Tilley Hats. It enjoys sunshine but can tolerate some shade too. We have some white-blooming and a couple of pink-blooming varieties. The blooms create a nice counterpoint to the shrub’s huge green leaves, and can be brought inside for a stunning bouquet, fresh or dried. Making Hydrangea babies: The Hydrangea roots spread vigorously.  I’ve found they benefit from a mulch of large rocks, twisting and turning around the rocks to see moisture and provide a solid base for the shrub.  In fall or spring, dig up some roots, with stems attached, on the side of the shrub’s root ball. Trim most of the leaves off the stems and place in a pot, well watered, until you have decided on a new site to transplant. Use some compost for a nutritional head-start when you replant.

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Red Bergamot (Bee’s Balm):

Like Hydrangea, this perennial flower spreads vigorously by roots. My parents-in-law Ann and Claus acquired some on a walk around Horseshoe Lake. They were dazzled by the red blooms and complimented the gardener, an older gent with a massive garden on Reynolds Road. He promptly offered them some. Now the gift has been given again, as Ann encouraged me to take a couple of plants from Claus’s veggie garden this summer. They had provided chaotic colour at one end of the garden, north of Claus’s orderly rows of beans, kohlrabi, peas and other veggies. Bergamot also has herbal/medicinal qualities. Making Bergamot babies: Dig up some root with stems and leaves in fall or spring, place in a pot and keep well watered until you find a new spot to plant. The leaves may die back a bit, but the plant will put out new leaves once it recovers. Once planted, stick a plastic marker next to the new plant to remember the location. With some TLC, your baby Bergamot will put on a nice scarlet and aromatic show next year.

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Concord Grape:

I found a stem of this plant growing as a volunteer in my Thorncliffe Park Community Garden plot, but I have also propagated it by digging up part of a vine from its root. A native Ontario species, it produces sweet small purple grapes in fall.  These were key to Ontario’s wine industry before fancier varieties came along. You can also eat the leaves, steamed or baked, I believe, as we have had visitors making off with bags full of grape leaves. Making Concord Grape babies: Keep an eye for a baby plant or dig up part of the root of an existing vine. Keep it well watered until you find a new location to plant the baby. In future, enjoy a sweet late summer grape-snack or make grape juice or jelly!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The snacking garden

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After all that weeding, watering and waiting, it’s harvest time — but in your haste to share your bounty with family of friends, take a moment to reward yourself first.

Depending on the season, a variety of instant snacks await the industrious gardener:

Let’s say it’s a warm late August day and you are stopping by your garden to pick the first of the carrot crop, along with some luscious-looking dark green-and-purple kale, and beefsteak tomatoes. These fresh organic vegetables will be gobbled up this Labour Day weekend by family who have gathered at your inlaws’ cottage.

But a bountiful harvest requires a well-fuelled gardener. So while you start to pick the big tomatoes, you can’t help but binge on some sweet Tiny Tims. These cherry tomatoes have grown as “volunteer” plants from compost you applied to the soil this spring. In fact, this year’s volunteer tomato plants are actually the prize winners — they ripened when the sun finally started to shine consistently late this summer after a wet spring. What’s more, these Tiny Tims are much better for you than that 12-pack of Tim Bits you had your eye on while in line for coffee at Timmies.

Nearby, your perennial spinach is delivering a second crop as fall sets in.  The flowers have died back and a new set of lush green leaves has sprouted.  You learned about this plant — also known as perpetual spinach — from your garden neighbor Pat.  She came by one day and asked to take home a few leaves.  You were puzzled by the perennial as it had been planted by the previous gardener of your allotment plot.  You were accustomed to annual spinach planted from seed each spring.

But Pat set you straight — perpetual spinach is a vigorous producer of spinach-like leaves that pack a spicy punch.  It’s a low maintenance and nutritious snack.  So you follow up your Tiny Tim binge with a chaser of several snacking leaves of perpetual spinach.

And as you admire your first crop of Kale, which will be steamed for dinner on the weekend, you cannot help but notice the first scarlet runner beans that are ripening on your crude bamboo trellis. Your nephew Ben planted the seeds this spring.  You pick a few to snack on — they are tasty and crunchy. And on a more sensible note, they are sure to give the snacking gardener his or her daily fibre requirement.

Now give yourself a pat on the back.  You are taking home some fresh vegetables to share with others. But as the Wealthy Barber once said when he shared his retirement planning secrets…

…you paid yourself first.

 

 

 

 

 

Garden muse — Interview with Mike Murakami

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What led a retired industrial designer to request a small plot in the community garden near his Thorncliffe highrise?

For Mike Murakami, there are many garden inspirations — but his original garden muse is his grandfather Shinjiro.

Born prematurely, Shinjiro’s 5-foot stature disqualified him from military service in brewing Russian/Japanese hostilities. He took his skills as a fisherman east across the Pacific, landing in Canada in the late 19th century and settling in the “Japantown” of Richmond, B.C.

“With the anti-Asian sentiment, the Japanese immigrants found employment mostly in lumber, farming and fishing,” Mike says. The salmon industry was huge and a cannery in Richmond provided high quality products and job opportunities. Japanese Canadians also established farms and fruit and berry operations in the Fraser Valley.

Shinjiro and his wife Kinu, who followed him from Japan via an arranged marriage, later settled in Victoria, B.C. “Most of the Japanese lived in the Chinatown area there – in fact both my grandparents picked up some Chinese language there.” Shinjiro and his sons prospered in the fishing industry.

Shinjiro in Victoria, 1936

Shinjiro in Victoria, 1936

Aiko in Victoria, 1938

Aiko in Victoria, 1938

Fast forward to the Second World War. Following the attack by Japan on Pearl Harbour, the majority of B.C.’s Japanese-origin Canadians had been uprooted and moved to inland internment camps by the Canadian government.

“I was born in ’43 in the Kaslo, B.C. internment camp,” says Mike. “When I was one year old we moved to the New Denver internment camp in the Slocan Valley. David Suzuki (the Canadian broadcaster and environmentalist) was in the nearby Slocan camp; he’s about six years older than me. My mom Aiko was principal of the New Denver camp school. My dad Dave drove a truck for the camp administration and learned watch and jewelry repair on the side, through a correspondence course. My grandparents raised me in the camp from ’43 to ’47.”

There are few first-hand memories of the camp as Mike was so young. But he’s inspired by the stories of the ingenuity and persistence of his extended family to survive and thrive after having lost their homes, livelihoods and financial assets.

Mike recalls: “The joke went something like: ‘What’s for supper? Cabbage and Pork. What’s for lunch? Pork and cabbage.”

To augment a bland internment camp diet, camp residents “used their knowledge as farmers to set up gardens,” Mike says. “My grandpa and others would also sneak out of camp to nearby lakes to get fresh fish for their families.”

After the war, Mike’s family came to Toronto via Hamilton. His school-principal mom Aiko found work as a housekeeper and the family lived in the basement of her employer’s house at first. She later worked in a small Jewish business. “We felt the Jews understood and sympathized with our situation.” His father Dave eventually found work in his trade as a watchmaker, repairing the large clocks carried by night watchmen.

As the family’s economic situation improved, Mike’s mom came across a fixer-upper in Toronto’s Cabbagetown neighborhood. “My mom was quite brash and struck up a conversation with the old Scottish lady who lived at 83 Metcalfe Street.”

Aiko then set to work to scrounge the down payment for the house by writing to all of her brothers, sisters and extended family. Her relatives provided what they could, the down payment was made and the deal was done.

Mike describes the home in the Parliament/Wellesley area as “a toe-hold for Japanese Canadians in Cabbagetown. Within about a year and a half, most of our extended family ended up in Toronto. We had up to 21 people in that house – it was kind of like an underground railway.”

Mike recalls his grandfather Shinjiro, then well into retirement, growing corn, carrots and other vegetables on a tiny but productive garden in their Cabbagetown yard. “In the early ‘50s there were still horse-drawn milk wagons. I remember my grandfather going out with a shovel to get horse manure to fertilize his garden.”

Mike returned west in adulthood, founding an industrial design firm in Edmonton.

“As Alberta was very resource-based I felt I needed to support diversification and creative mindsets in my profession there.” As a result in addition to his business practice, he also taught and advised on curriculum development at the University of Alberta, Grant McEwan University and Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. Mike also became a community activist and advisor in the area of “hate-bias” crimes prevention, a topic near and dear to his family’s heart.

As he approached retirement, Mike owned a nice home in a “trendy” section of Edmonton. In a bold move, rather than sell the house before his planned move back to Toronto, he rented it to a family of eight Burmese refugees. “The Mennonite Centre for Newcomers in Edmonton was hard-pressed to find accommodation for the large refugee family and they reached out to me. The Burmese family had been subsistence farmers before the army destroyed their village and crops. We thought our house and large garden would help keep them together as a family unit and help supplement their food needs.

“By year 2 they had turned the garden into intensive production and began gifting veggies to all my neighbours! Most of my neighbours had never known a refugee before. The Burmese family now thrives in their own home, the parents work full time and the kids are doing great at school.”

Mike's greens

Mike’s greens

Now retired and back in Toronto, Mike is looking forward to his third year as a member of one of Toronto’s oldest community gardens at Thorncliffe Park. He’s planning to grow some new varieties of vegetables and herbs, plus his standard crops of tomato, lettuce, garlic beets, carrots and Asian greens.

Most of all, he will continue getting to know his fellow gardeners. “The community garden is really a level playing field,” says Mike. Each person has a small plot. You are there to grow food and enjoy the beauty of the garden in the spirit of community.”

With the neighborhood’s diversity, “the garden is a great metaphor for the collective intersection of culture. We can find a common ground to work together in a shared space.”

With a continued focus on healing the wounds of hate and bias in our society, he has reached out to a local cultural centre to explore options to celebrate the plurality of cultures and religions both within the garden and community.

Mike and Aiko at Thorncliffe Park gardens

Mike and Aiko at Thorncliffe Park gardens

Mike is also going back to his roots to write an online account of Japanese Canadians in Cabbagetown. As it turns out, a well-known historian and archivist now lives at… 83 Metcalfe Street – and Mike and his mom Aiko, now in her 90s, have been by to share notes on their history projects.

It’s been more than 120 years since Mike’s grandfather — and muse — Shinjiro arrived in B.C.  Memories of gardens in New Denver, Cabbagetown and Edmonton hold stories and meaning that inspire Mike’s effort in his new garden at Thorncliffe Park.

“We’re continuing to learn from our past,” Mike says, “and paying it forward.”

Garden resolutions

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The community garden sleeps, so we make resolutions for 2013:

— take time to smell the roses, not beat the clock

— remember my fellow gardener Ralph Persad’s motto: you give you get

— help cut the grass — the Briggs and Stratton motor is the ninth wonder of the world, right behind the Sturmey Archer three-speed hub. Plus, clinical trials have proven that a volunteer community gardener mowing the grass on two dollars worth of gasoline experiences more joy than Steve Jobs got building his $200-milllion super yacht.

— try planting something different and radical — like brussel sprouts

— sharpen my spade and my sense of humour — does anyone know any good gardening jokes? I think that’s how Russell Peters got his start in comedy.

— support the volunteer committee that works hard to run our non-profit community garden at Thorncliffe Park

— leverage my folk carpentry skills to repair one side of my rectangular wooden fence; this means the fence will be whole by 2016 — the same time the Gardiner Expressway is condemned.

— be patient for once and don’t put the tomato plants in too early — NOT!!

— listen to my garden neighbors and share their stories.

10 reasons why you need a seed catalogue

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Dam, these are fine seeds1) Guarantees you will outlast the end of the Mayan calendar — the seed company in Dundas, Ontario knows something the Mayans don’t.

2) Great conversation starter at fancy dinner parties: “Have you heard about the new Atlantis hybrid miniature broccoli? How about the latest bolt-resistant Coriander Calypso variety?”

3) You’ve been mourning the loss of the Eaton’s catalogue since 1976; your garden seed catalogue is the next best thing.

4) Makes a great bathroom reader next to your dog-eared editions of Mad Magazine and the Economist.

5) Hastens the arrival of spring by a minimum of three weeks.

6) Heritage vegetable and flower seeds offset the guilt you feel purchasing the latest modified hybrids.

7) Your gardener father-in-law Claus piggybacks on your 2013 seed order and returns the form with cash tucked inside the envelope, which buys you a pint of Amsterdam and pizza after pick-up hockey.

8) You peruse fancy gardening tools such as the traditional English Half Moon Hand Hoe with Knob Handle, knowing that you are too cheap to fork out the 35 bucks and that you will enjoy that fancy implement in a subsequent life.

9) The 35 bucks you actually spend on your seed order will put some fine food on the table in 2013 and beats dropping $2,400 at Rama on a Friday night.

10) When the precious seeds arrive in a box from Canada Post, your nephew Felix helps you and Claus divvy the packets, because you have both forgotten what you ordered.

Praying for a proper pumpkin

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It’s 19 days to Halloween and you are concerned that your three volunteer pumpkins may not turn orange in time.

Let’s define a volunteer pumpkin. Back in May, you dropped a load of compost at your allotment plot at Thorncliffe Park Garden Club. The compost contained seeds from the 2011 pumpkins that had framed the steps to your front door.

Two hundred and fifty children had run the gauntlet past your 2011 pumpkins last Halloween. How do you know the exact number? Because your spouse had purchased 250 mini chocolate bars from the Loblaws Superstore, and when the last Kit Kat had vanished, you had turned out the front lights and cowered upstairs, hoping the doorbell would not ring again, but knowing that some worldly-wise older kids who were too cool to wear costumes would still thump your front door at 9:30 p.m. to trick or treat, well aware that you were hiding out with the candles blown out and the lights off.

(Okay, maybe 243 kids if we do the math: 250 mini chocolate bars, minus the four Kit Kats and 3 Oh Henry!s you scarfed down in between rings of your doorbell and pretending to calmly read Heather Mallick’s latest column in the Toronto Star).

Your 2012 compost pile sprouted some interesting vegetable “volunteers.” A telltale pair of rounded leaves growing quickly signalled a pumpkin plant in the making. You let it live and take its nitro-nourishment from the decomposing pile.

Thinking back to your days as a rookie allotment gardener, you knew that one pumpkin plant was plenty. You had learned that lesson the hard way. In your first year at the garden, you had planted a half dozen pumpkin seedlings, and each had run rampant in the summer months, squishing your leeks, throttling your tomatoes, sumo-wrestling your red currant bushes into submission, and threatening to lay seige to your neighbors’ orderly garden plots.

Yes, one pumpkin plant was plenty. And your 2012 “volunteer” was quickly filling every available crevice of your plot with its prickly vines and broad leaves.

Soon, three pumpkins sprouted on orange blossoms. You went on holiday and your plot neighbor Azeem kindly daily-doused your volunteer pumpkin with water while you huffed and puffed along the coastal trails of Cinque Terra. On your return, you found triplets — three decent-sized green pumpkins attached to the umbilical cord of your volunteer vine.

You wanted to let your volunteer pumpkins ripen to an orange hue. But by late September they were big enough that some of your garden plot neighbors began to worry. In polite terms, they suggested that your plump pumpkins might take a walk. Better to pick them now, knowing that a modest-sized green pumpkin in hand is worth more than three orange prize-winners in the hands of garden thieves. Your garden neighbor Andy was more blunt: “Pick them up!” he shouted. “Somebody gonna pick ’em for you.”

So you loaded the green pumpkins into the hatch of your minivan, and stuffed the dying vines into brown yard-waste bags.

Several weeks later, and with Halloween fast approaching, your trio of pumpkins are still green.

Your spouse is getting ready to purchase this year’s ration of 250 mini chocolate bars. But you are starting to sweat it. Will a trio of oval-shaped green pumpkins attract children to your house?  Will you neighbors think this is some kind of statement? Can you even carve a green pumpkin? Are these not pumpkins but some kind of mutant hybrid squash?

James Taylor’s lyric runs through your head and you curse yourself, knowing that you really should have waited until the frost was on the pumpkin, and the hay was in the barn — and your dark green pumpkins had turned a lovely orange in time for Halloween.

But there are still 19 days left, and maybe you can place your pumpkins at a good angle to take in the sun on your front porch, and you live in hope.

Perpetual harvest — Interview with Ralph Persad

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While some think about putting their gardens to bed while the days grow shorter, Ralph Persad is getting in a second crop of greens.

The long-time gardener at Thornciffe Park Garden Club is planting spinach, radish and Bok Choi for harvest throughout late October and November. Meanwhile, his mainstay crops are enjoying a renaissance. After summer dry spells, the tomato vines have started to set new fruit on yellow blossoms, and his pepper plants are getting a second wind.

In fact, with multiple crop cycles — and a little help from his freezer at home — Ralph enjoys a kind of perpetual harvest.

“I grow a lot of hot peppers and freeze them all,” Ralph says.  “I take them out whenever I need them throughout the year and blend them into sauce.”

He also freezes tomatoes straight from the vine. “When it’s time to make tomato sauce in the winter, you hold the frozen tomato under some hot water.” There are no frozen tomatoes close at hand in the East York Town Centre food court at the moment, so Ralph demonstrates using an imaginary one. He crunches his fist and the imaginary tomato’s skin pops off nicely. An interviewer can almost smell the sauce starting to simmer.

Frozen bitter melon, long beans and other greens also put food on Ralph’s table year round.

“They say bitter melon is good for the blood. You can fry it up with some onion, garlic and a little olive oil. It goes nicely with a pita and some melted cheese.”

Ralph comes by food-growing honestly, having helped his parents work a 26-acre mixed farm near Rio Claro, Trinidad as a boy.

“Before school, I was up at 5:30 to milk the cows, and I would deliver the milk in bottles on my bike to local customers.

Ralph wasn’t compensated for the milking duties, but his father did offer a 50-cent bounty on squirrels. “They would nibble our cocoa pods and bananas so they were considered pests. After milking the cows, I would try to shoot a few squirrels before school. The dogs got the squirrel meat and the tail went to my dad as proof so I could collect the bounty.”

Ralph’s parents both ran small businesses during the day but also produced bananas, mangoes, coffee, cocoa and oranges on their farm. Ralph would pick the oranges on demand – 4 cents each for 100 – for a woman who upsold them as snacks for 6 cents each outside a local movie theatre. The family also had a “cooking garden” near the house to produce greens year-round.

His uncle was working for the TTC in Toronto and invited the teenaged Ralph up from Trinidad for a few weeks in the summer of 1970. Ralph recalls the vibrant scene on Yonge Street when a long stretch south of Bloor was closed off in the summer as a car-free music and culinary mecca.

In short order, Ralph completed a welding course at a school on Jarvis Street, and obtained his welding licence, a work permit and a welding job at a hot water heater manufacturer. When the company moved out of Toronto, Ralph followed in his uncle’s footsteps by joining the TTC.  He brought his welding skills and upgraded his electrical, machine-shop and lock-smith talents as an all-purpose trouble-shooter for maintenance of TTC properties.

Around the same time, Ralph got back to his food-growing roots when a friend invited him to see his garden plot at the Thorncliffe club, one of Toronto’s oldest community gardens.

“I call it my backyard,” says Ralph of his small rectangular garden loaded with organic vegetables. “I go there, listen to my gospel music. I can sit and meditate. I relax and play a game of cards with my plot neighbor, or start a conversation with people passing by.”

More than 100 plots at the community garden — on hydro land north of Overlea Boulevard — offer fresh air, friendship and fresh produce for Thorncliffe residents and their families.

“This is my therapy,” he says. “When my garden grows nice, I sleep better. I put my head on the pillow and nothing bothers me.” A diet of organic vegetables, and daily exercise including running, doesn’t hurt.

Ralph learned new growing techniques for the Canadian climate from garden plot old-timers and likes to return the favour to younger gardeners.”  He says he’s still learning. In fact, he has his eye on a radish-like green grown by Indian gardeners that is reputed to be good for the heart.

At 61, the man of the perpetual harvest is still in perpetual motion at his job. But he’s planning retirement soon. He will work part-time with one of his sons, who has a heating/cooling business. And he wants to offer his energy and talents to the developing world.

“In life, you give, you get.”

Garden gymnastics

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In literary criticism class, you learned about “close reading” of a text. This often meant ignoring the story for the sake of deconstructing the book through a political or cultural lens.

What they should have taught you was a truly important life skill – let’s call it “close weeding.”

Who needs a personal trainer when you can drag your body through the motions of close weeding — and a variety of other gymnastics — in the safety of your own garden?

Close weeding

Close weeding TM means strapping on kneepads and crawling inch by inch through your garden rows, plucking away competitors such as crabgrass, unwanted volunteer raspberry roots, pretty but intrusive wild violets, or rampaging bindweed.

Each weed needs a different strategy. In the case of crabgrass, a sharp tug may break the grass from the roots, so you need a slow, steady pull to get the root bundle to release from the soil.

By contrast, eliminating bindweed requires a 10-year strategic plan and multi-pronged tactical assaults. Bindweed will easily give up its slender shoots and pretty blossoms, like a lizard gives up its tail to a predator. Persistent weeding of the shoots does sap the strength of the plant, but your strategic plan needs to tackle the roots as well. They bundle into tight white masses under stone pathways, and in forgotten corners of the garden. The roots may be several feet deep and require slow coaxing, and years of patience and repeated Close weeding TM, to the get them out.

Close weeding TM promotes ambidexterity. After 30 minutes of dedicated weeding, the wrist of your dominant hand is screaming in protest, and it’s time to switch.  To count down the transition, use the “four more, three more, two more” 20-minute workout method that you learned in the 1980s while sitting on the couch, watching other people exercise on TV.

The beauty of Close weeding TM? At the end of the day, if your aching knees allow, you can stand back to see the big-picture story of your garden, with your vegetable and flower protagonists advancing the plot, unencumbered by their weedy, villainous competitors.

Did I mention the fringe benefit of Popeye-like forearms?

Garden gymnastics let your plant protagonists blossom.

Rock it out

The rock garden presents a special opportunity to combine art and athleticism. You could call it Rock Garden Tai Chi.

To nurture your special patches of Flox and Lilies planted amidst decorative chunks of the Canadian Shield, and given your balance isn’t what it used to be when you were a teenager, you will need to assume the position of a Hermit Crab.

Scuttle on all fours from rock to rock. Get grounded near your patch of plants and initiate weeding, watering and mulching. As a Hermit Crab, consider adopting an umbrella as your temporary shell/home, to save on 60-weight sunscreen. Be careful to avoid spontaneous celebrations, which can cause you to stand up, pump your fists, and twist your ankle as your foot loses purchase on a rock.

Instead, scuttle again to the next plant cluster, and be sure crank your neck around to check for nosy neighbors who may be laughing at your garden gymnastics.

Let them laugh. You know that if you weren’t feeling so mellow from the meditative benefits of Rock Garden Tai Chi, your gardener’s martial arts techniques would allow you to beat them silly – in self-defence, of course.

To mitigate your sore back, quads, knees and neck the morning after, ask your family physician about the benefits of a proactive dose of Ibuprophen and Guinness.

Garden cardio

Who said gardening can’t provide a good workout for your heart and lungs, in addition to your muscles?

Sheep manure medicine ball – as the gardening season matures, good quality composted sheep manure can be found at $10-for-5-bags at your local grocer. The blood starts to flow when you see the “blow out” price, but you can really get your heart beating hauling those bags from the store to your SUV. As an added workout, bring your spouse, and use each sheep manure bag as a medicine ball. The workout resumes when you must haul each bag from your car to your garden.

5-K worm run – like sheep manure, worms enrich your garden. They produce nutrient-rich castings, with the added bonus of aeration as they bore tunnels through the soil. Wait for a light rain on a spring day. Strap on your track pants and running shoes. Poke holes in the plastic lid of a tin coffee can, and place a small amount of moist earth in the can. Take the can along on your 5-K run and scan for big moist earthworms on the sidewalk. Pick them up, pop them in your coffee tin and fasten the lid, as worms are escape artists. Run fast so you can beat the Robins and commercial worm-pickers. The excitement of finding a juicy earthworm will move the dial on your heart rate from “maintenance” to “fat burner” mode. During your cool-down phase, reward yourself with an ice-cap at the Tim Horton’s drive-through.

The dreaded John Jeavons double dig – Purchase a copy of the iconic John Jeavons how-to manual about growing tons of vegetables on less land than you can imagine. The less-land thing is related to Jeavons’ more-muscle soil preparation method, which involves two stages of deep digging, wrestling with a sharpened spade, and much grunting. It’s said to be the cardio equivalent to the Iron Man competition. Use this as a last resort if your other gardening cardio methods are not available.

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So lose the personal trainer.

And reap the benefits of cardio, meditation, self-defence techniques and Close weeding TM, in the safety and beauty of your garden gymnasium.

Wild in the garden — Interview with Linda Piwowarski

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Refuelling for the migration north.

The Rose-breasted Grosbeak has found a way station at Thorncliffe Park Community Garden.

After a winter in South America and the Caribbean, he is migrating north for the summer breeding season.

But the bird feeders at Thorncliffe are tempting. He’s checked in to refuel. His black cape, white belly and red breast add a splash of colour, and his song a new melody, to the feeding station at the east end of the garden, overlooking Toronto’s Don Valley ravine.

“He’s back this year and he’ll stay for 10 days or so,” says gardener and Thorncliffe Park resident Linda Piwowarski. “Then he’s off to Manitoulin Island and further north in Ontario for the summer.”

Retired from a Toronto financing company, Linda is the pied piper of wildlife at the community garden. And the Rose-breasted Grosbeak has fallen under her spell.

“He has a beautiful song, and he’s not shy. He’s quite happy for me to get close to him while he is feeding.”

He’s not the only one. Winged friends ranging from Cowbirds to Sparrows, from Blue Jays to Red Winged Blackbirds, and from Finches to Woodpeckers, recognize Linda’s black compact car as it turns from Beth Nealson road into the community garden, located on hydro land. They know it’s feeding time. “The Blue Jays will actually screech at me if they think I am not fast enough with the bird seed,” Linda notes.

She feeds the birds daily throughout the year and each one has a story to tell.

“Mallard ducks will come up from the valley for a week or so. There is a pair that resides in the valley near the Science Centre. The male will bring his wife up to the garden for a rendezvous, so to speak. He struts and marches around and she follows him. They are quite a pair.”

Sometimes tame birds such as Canaries and Budgies, which have flown their suburban coops, will visit for a meal.

Several varieties of Woodpeckers including Downy and Hairy stop by for a bite before finding a mature tree to knock holes in, creating a future source for tasty insects and bugs.

In winter, chickadees join some of the birds that stay put in T.O.

On the daily menu?  A healthy offering of mixed birdseed, sunflower seeds, peanuts, almonds, suet, and raisins.

Bird-feeding time at Thorncliffe Park

Linda is also the steward of a burgeoning variety of four-legged wildlife.

“The Don Valley is greening up” she says — species have moved back in or extended their range. Deer will climb the ravine hill to the community garden at dusk, sneak bites of lettuce, carrots and other vegetables, and leave hoof prints in gardens, along with the telltale powerful scent of their urine. Some gardeners ward them off with mesh fencing.

Likewise, as of last year, a Coyote is now on the scene. While gardeners use bloodmeal to repel creatures such as squirrels, it seems to have the opposite effect on a Coyote. “He dug up all my tulips trying to get at the bloodmeal,” recalls Linda.

Rabbits, squirrels, groundhogs and the odd raccoon round out the list of creatures.

Then there was Solomon the Cat. One day, Linda noticed a Siamese cat lounging near the bird feeders. He was surely lost, and had a tag, so Linda took him home, and phoned the owner. Turns out the wily cat had prowled all the way across the Valley from the Flemingdon Park neighborhood. Solomon’s owner drove over to Thorncliffe Park to retrieve him and thanked Linda.

But…

The cat came back… the very next day.

“He must like it here,” says Linda. But she will keep an eye on Solomon’s birdly ambitions.

Linda has been a Thorncliffe Park resident since the 1960s, when a new community of high-rises, schools, churches, services and a shopping plaza had replaced an old horse-racing track on the site. The Thorncliffe Park Garden Club is one of the city’s oldest community gardens, started by volunteers in the early 1970s.

“A girl-friend of mine lived on the same floor or our apartment building and we would go for walks after work,” recalls Linda. “Her mother-in-law had a plot at the garden club. It was really peaceful there, and something different to do outdoors.”

Linda applied for a plot and has been gardening – and taking care of the birds – ever since. “I started with a small feeder in my own plot, and when a cardinal landed on it, I was amazed. It kind of grew from there.” For the past several years, she has also served on the non-profit community garden’s executive committee, supporting more than 100 local gardeners and their families.

The bird feeding station with its few donated chairs and tables also acts as a scenic lookout and social space for gardeners seeking a break from weeding and watering. Today, Ann and Arielah have dropped by for a game of Scrabble in the sun-dappled shade. With two triple-scores so far.

Feeding the birds is a joy and a responsibility. “I don’t take holidays,” Linda admits. “In a way, this is my holiday each day.”

“It’s so peaceful here and the birds and animals can teach us a lesson about how to get along.”