There’s something primal about the rich scent of dark, freshly turned garden soil in September, when the warmth still lingers and the wasps are bumbling around searching for food..

In 2021, there were thousands of fat, almost-ripe apples hanging heavy on the branches. A nice surprise after our wet spring, an invasion of moth caterpillars and pandemic shutdowns. The year, almost nothing. At least there were no moths to hand pick and dunk in soapy water. Now that was a yucky task. I felt less guilty about harvesting last year’s windfall, however, when I noticed the coyotes were enjoying the fruit buffet after the first snowfall. By spring, they’d pretty much cleaned everything up, so I had no need to get out the rake to scrape the leftover mushy bits.

Well fed…

After having our front gardens renovated (at huge cost) last summer, I replaced all of the spring flowering bulbs the ‘landscaper’ and his young helper ripped up and trucked away. The challenge, was laying enough mulch to disguise the locations of the plantings so the voracious squirrels and night critters didn’t undo all my hard work. One of the little buggers has a habit of watching me from a distance. Probably plotting revenge of some sort.

Last fall, after I did my cannabis (legal in Canada) harvest, I tossed the leaves and seeds into the garden by the deck. Surprisingly, two seeds germinated and now tower over the plants I so tenderly cultivated in pots. Go figure. The thing is, I have no idea whether the opportunistic weeds are CBD or THC strains. Guess I’ll have to wait a few months to find out.

I made the mistake a couple of years ago to leave everything ‘au naturel’, but random plants (aka weeds) find it easy to grow in the tilled beds, so I have to come up with another low maintenance method. Still, the beauty of what grows makes it all worthwhile.

Yeah, it’s me against Mother Nature and her challenges. That’s what we get for living in the country.