Frozen Garden

At this time of the year I always get the urge to start gardening. I need to resist the urge. Whenever I start plants indoors in January or February, they have a long hard time of it indoors before they ever see the sun. When it's sunny and the days lengthen, it's hard to remember that we have more than three months to go until the last frost.

Most years I have planted mainly flowers. In recent years I have been experimenting with herbs with some success, and the last three years I have grown some vegetables too. This year I want to expand this corner of the garden to accommodate more space for vegetables and herbs.

Last year I planted several tomato and pepper plants and grew some against this fence, and others on a second-storey, south-facing balcony. The ones on the balcony baked and eventually developed blossom end rot, but the tomatoes in the garden fared a little better. This year I plan to make space for more tomato plants, pole and bush beans, lettuce and a couple of squash plants.

I went out in the snow the other night, pacing out the space and picturing in my mind where each plant will go. This will have to be enough for now!

The Merlin Tree

We live in an older house in an older neighbourhood, with mature trees and bushes on all sides. The dominant feature of our back yard is this spruce tree. I don't know how tall it is, but we have a three-storey house, and it stands well above the roof. It provides generously for a small ecosystem of creatures. Chickadees and nuthatches comb its branches and bark daily through the year for small insects. Red squirrels strip it annually of cone-bearing twigs, many of which they carry promptly into our roof, but that's another story.

The most exciting tree-dwellers from our point of view are the ones that don't actually eat from it, but nest in its branches. Every second summer since we have lived here, a pair of merlins nest high in the branches, about halfway up the portion pictured here. We have never seen the nest, or been able to spot them sitting in it, but we know they're there! Early in April, as soon as the snow starts to soften, we hear them calling to one another from the tall trees in the neighbourhood. If we look carefully we can often spot them sitting on exposed branches.

They spend a few weeks going from tree to tree, calling loudly. They seem to be inspecting the possible nest sites and discussing their various merits. Eventually they settle on one. Two summers ago, and two summers before that, they chose our tree. Both times they have raised one chick to maturity, and by late summer we see the three of them taking short flights around the neighbourhood. This time of the winter they are still somewhere far to the south, but already we hope they will come and raise their family here again this spring.