New Veggie Garden!

For a while now I have been craving growing some of my own food for mostly health and environmental reasons but the added bonus on the pocket book never hurts! :) Never having grown veggies other than tomatoes in pots I was a little hesitant but after reading this post at Little House in the Suburbs I was determined to start this year! So we monitored our backyard throughout one full day to see where the best spot would be. Our backyard is surrounded by huge beautiful trees that give a lot of privacy and also block out the sun for 3/4 of the day! Somewhat disappointed we went looking for another location...the front yard...again too shady...the south side of our house is very sunny and mostly driveway...BUT...
We found a little strip of grass that we transformed into our veggie garden!!! See it with the reflector? Our driveway is shared and wanted to be sure neither we or the neighbours would run into it. We used rocks that we collected from a local beach and reused wood that we had in our basement! So really the cost of this garden was just the soil, plants and weekend of fun building it! (also check out our second floor sanctuary, the petunias are visible from the street!)
We had to modify the layout as seen here but kept the veggies the same with the addition of lettuce! Since it is a lot larger we also added some other flowers.

So here is a list of what we planted:
Swiss chard
Cherry tomatoes
Red Peppers
Radishes
Basil
Bush beans
Onions
Red and Green Lettuce
Marigolds
Gladiolas
Lillies

Here is a pepper plant and the swiss chard with the radishes poking up in between! The basil is just starting to come up and I saw 2 beans poking their heads out of the soil. I will keep you posted on the progress!

Happy Friday!

A picture worth a thousands words.

Title:Breaker

Artist: Owen Freeman

Narrative: “This artwork is meant to convey not only the similarities between life about and below the ocean, but also to reflect the cyclical nature of water in a tangible visual way. By allowing ourselves to consider that the ocean floor is as important as the land we walk, the hope is that the notion of disconnectedness can dissolve and we can begin to think from within the ocean, rather than simply above it.”

The other winners of the ocean artwork contest open to students of all ages at aquariums across the U.S are found here:

http://community.csc.noaa.gov/coastalamerica/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1589&Itemid=197

Intertidal Ballad

I just wanted to share a song one of my students' wrote for the Intertidal Ecology and Diversity class I was teaching. He wrote the lyrics to a Tom Petty tune and here are the students singing the song after class one day. It is brilliant! The song is called Being the Tide.



Here they are signing it during an end of class party that I unfortunately could not attend! There is much more gusto in this version! :)



I will post the actual lyrics here tomorrow.

New Routine

When I turned 30 last year, I made it my quest to be as Chem-free and local as possible. This means we (Diego has been fully supportive although skeptical at times) have been on a long journey to find the right deodorant, shampoo, soap, cleaning, skin care, food...and the list goes on. One of the hardest things that is still an ongoing battle is finding a skin care regime that works for me. Since eliminating the chemical-ly stuff my skin has reverted back to my 15 year old state and I have frequent break outs. Also, many of the natural creams out there are butters and are too heavy for my face and only enhance the 15 year old look (with wrinkles so it really is not and anti-aging tactic!) of my skin.
In comes the sugar scrub seen above. I happened across this page from Little House in the Suburbs and decided to give the naturally clear skin regime a try. It goes like this (taken from Ivory's site):

1. Use homemade basil sugar scrub in shower and leave on for a couple of minutes.

2. Rinse a bunch and then a little leftover shampoo bubbles or other dilute amount of soap over my face for the final rinse.

3. After shower, wet washcloth and sprinkle a few drops Tea Tree Oil on it.

4. Wipe over face.

5. Apply Tee Tree Oil directly to any trouble spots.

So upon discovering this I promptly made a batch of the sugar scrub. Instead of dried basil, I added rosemary and lavender and 2 drops of peppermint oil. Let me just say that I love the scrub! It leaves your skin feeling soft, smells wonderful and the peppermint is very energizing and invigorating in the morning!

After I apply the tea tree oil to my trouble spots, I follow up with a new not so heavy face cream that I discovered a few months ago. It is the youthful glow face cream from Avalon Herbals.

It is water based rather than oil based and is wonderful for the face and chest. They are a local company (for those of you in Nova Scotia) that sell in Pete's Frootique and every two weekends at the market. They are lovely people and grow a lot of their own ingredients. What more could you ask for!! Actually, definitely ask for the "Bliss" foot cream...IT IS AMAZING! It smells of rosemary and feels like heaven. I use it on my hands and they have dramatically improved in elasticity and no longer look dry...hang nails...gone!

As for the rest of my body, I am still in LOVE with Earth Elementals Soaps' Midsummer Night's Cream for my eczemic arms and Cocao Butter Mousse (you just want to eat it it smells so good!) as an aftershave delight. They too are local, grow many of their own ingredients and are just all around wonderful people. They also sell at Pete's and every weekend at the Market.

So I have been on the new facial routine for a week now. It usually takes a couple of weeks for your skin to get into a new skin care rhythm. So I will give it at least a month (likely 2) to see if the results are consistent. I will keep you posted.

Happy Sunday!

Second Floor Sanctuary

Now that the threat of frost has passed (we hope!), Diego and I have been busy readying our sanctuary. We live in a second floor flat and were lucky to find one that has a HUGE deck. Since we moved in 7 years ago, we have made some major changes to enhance our enjoyment of our outdoor living area. We both love being up and away from the neighbours, not to mention in the tree tops, but we were sorely missing some non tree greenery and flowers...so over the years we have built our own pots to make our patio come to life!
This is what you see as you come up the back steps from the driveway. We added planters both on the outside around the top of the railing and on the bottom on the inside. These go all the way around the deck. you can also see our lovely torches that are awesome at night!

This is the side view of the above picture. They are our newest planters so they aren't filled out yet.

We have a few issues with our deck garden. One is that it is facing south so gets full sun all day and gets very hot. We love petunias because they can handle the hot south sun and flower all summer long. However, lucky for us, the top planters provide some shade for the bottom so we can have some less sun and heat tolerant plants. We also have the issue with perennials. These pots are quite narrow and of course are built in so there is no way we are bringing them inside in the winter. We have had some mishaps...if you look closely at the photo above you will see the remnants of last year's experiment. We planted English Ivy to climb and give us even more privacy but the didn't make it. So we cut the branches from the base and left them as climbing structures, took out the root ball and planted clematis. We will see if they make it!
We have had success with bleeding hearts and have one in each corner (the corner pots are bigger). This one is our oldest (3 years) and has lots of flowers this year. As well as with sedum as a ground cover. They have beautiful yellow flowers and the leaves look great year round!
Our growing season is pretty short in Nova Scotia and we are very much into the instant garden so we packed our petunias pretty tight in the top planters to give a gorgeous show of flowers. As long as we water and fertilize they should be just fine! This year we chose to alternate between fuchsia with a black centre (you can get some with white centres)...
...and deep purple.
Against the house we have a herb garden. I built the container last year to house the herbs as well as have some storage beneath for the watering cans.
I have two types of chives, parsley, lemon thyme, flowering red thyme and rosemary. We also wanted some climbing vines against the house to make it even greener but also to help keep the house cooler in the summer. So you will see in the herb garden above we also have a Boston Ivy and it surprisingly survived the winter!!! We also have another Boston Ivy in a large 1/2 whiskey barrel behind our BBQ mixed in with mint.
All in all we are surrounded with greenery and hopefully our quest to get some more privacy by covering the railing with some climbing plants will be successful this year. It really is our sanctuary, we love having our morning coffee and evening dinners out there.
We even have the occasional visitor join us for a snack!
We just happened to encounter some folks selling perennials for really cheap on the side of the road over the weekend, so we are on a mission to beautify our front yard! We are also putting in a small vegetable garden this year. We share the backyard with the downstairs tenants and they are ok with this so lets see how far we get today! I will post more on my progress...gotta run the sun is beckoning! :)

Coming to an End

The class I am teaching ends tomorrow. It is a small class of 14 students that runs 6 days a week at least 8 hours per day... which means you really get to know each other over the 3 weeks and we had such a great time!

We traveled around the Province to 4 different beaches and mudflats and collected sediment and animal samples.
This is the first beach and mudflat, near Kingsport Nova Scotia. This beach is on the Bay of Fundy, and for those of you not familiar with the Bay of Fundy, it has the highest tides in the world (15m or 32ft)!! Here we have just arrived and the tide is WAY out!! To collect the samples we used what is called a sediment core (aka. a PVC pipe). We stick the core into the sediment the dig a hole around it so we can get the shovel underneath to keep the sample from falling out when we pull it out.
Then we stick it in a bucket, take a couple of handfuls to bring back to the lab. Then, they have to sieve the sample. Which means, pass it through a fine mesh so that everything smaller than the mesh passes through and all the larger andimals and sediment are left behind to be sorted through back in the lab.
We did this at all 4 beaches and mudflats. Two on the Bay of Fundy and two on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia. The second site we went to was called Bear River and was also on the Fundy side of NS. This was a beautiful site. The students had a great time playing in the deep and sticky mud!
We sampled this site early in the morning after camping overnight in a small town called Annapolis Royal, NS.
This town had one of the world's first tidal power generating stations and we got to take a tour!
The third beach and mudflat we visited was on the Atlantic side of Nova Scotia near Liverpool and here the tides are a modest 2m or 6ft. The beaches are beautiful light grey sand and the mudflats are a little less messy!
The last site we visited, is in my opinion one of the nicest beaches on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia. It is called Martinique Beach. It is the closest thing to a white sand beach in these cold waters and it is a Provincial Bird sactuary.
We were lucky to have a local expert with Birds Canada come and talk to us about the endangered Piping plover, a little shorebird, and their efforts to protect and educate about these little summertime visitors.
Although we focused all of our sampling on the sandy beaches and mudflats for their major project. The coast of Nova Scotia is dominated by rocky habitats. So we went out to Peggy's Cove, which is near Halifax to see the different species that are found there.
The rocky shores are dominated by seaweeds which creates a completely different habitat to the sandy beaches and mudflats! Here the 3rd dimension of the habitat is above ground rather than below. So, you get more snails, crabs and the fun things you always associate with the ocean, whereas the sandy beaches and mudflats are dominated by worms and clams and there aren't too many things living above the sediment when the tide is out!

It wasn't all work though! We did have some time to toss around a frisbee and relax in the sun.
Although it is a ton of work, I absolutely LOVE it and am always a little sad when it is all over. I hold a special place in my heart for all of the graduates of Intertidal Ecology and Diversity! You have all done a great job!! :)

Olfactory Delight!

I wish you could smell this through the internet! Such a subtle yet sweet scent, that is not too flowery or overpowering like some perfumes or scented oils and candles that claim to be magnolia. I highly recommend the real thing!!
This is the biggest magnolia tree I have ever seen! I look forward to its blooms every year. It is just right around the corner and I visit it almost every day when it is blooming.
The owner appreciates that I enjoy it so much. It is too bad they are so short lived, but I think it makes me enjoy it even more!! I never tire of my small detour to wrap myself in the warmth I feel when I close my eyes, breath deeply and fill my lungs with the sweet scent of magnolia. I will soon have to say goodbye to the papery white flowers and await their return next spring!