Rod's Garden Report

The Garden Report #96

Sunday, September 2nd, 2012

'Morden Belle' Rose with blue petunias

• Writers write: I have to wonder: What makes a Canadian? Is it the ability to say the sound “eh” at the end of a sentence. Is it being polite to strangers or is it being obsessed with a hockey team? Or is it something else? The reason I am asking is simple. I work part time at a farm/ranch south of town. I have been there for four years. For the past year, I have been working with a man named Obed Ramirez, who is from Mexico. His wife and his two children live on the property with him. He does a wide range of work but his primary job is to look after the landscaping that I have installed. He is a good man. Works hard. Struggles with English but is trying to learn. Loves his two children and his wife. Of note, he loves being in Canada. He feels it is a great country. His children go to school and he doesn’t worry about their safety. He tells me, in his broken English, that where he came from, violence dominates their everyday life.

     My grandparents came here a hundred years ago for the same reason that Obed has come here. To find a better life. To raise his family in peace and quiet. To one day say “I am a Canadian”. It might not happen. The good people over at immigration have ordered him to return to Mexico. Seems the paperwork wasn’t filled out the right way. He’s not supposed to be here.

     Here’s my kick at the can. The man works hard. He works as hard as any Canadian born person I have employed. He is honest and straightforward. He never complains. All he asks for is opportunity and when it is granted, he is grateful. I contrast that with a half dozen people I know who were born here. They got a decent education through the public schools. They have had their chances to do the right thing, but if you offered them a good job, across the street from where they live, they would find reasons to turn it down. The bottom line is they don’t want to work and they are not grateful. They want someone else to fill their hand with goodies.

     Obed wants to work. He is willing. He wants to be a good Canadian and pay his way. We need more people such as Obed Ramirez, not fewer.

• Readers write:

Tina with her two sons

     • Alan Bratt has been a professional actor for many, many years in our province. He weighs in on what has happened in the last two years to our first class, film industry. “I agreed with what you said about the waste of talent resulting from the destruction of the film industry. When I was young, I saw many of my friends leave the province because they wanted to act and there was little opportunity here. And then I saw people like Rhonda Baker and Steven Onda and Kevin Dewalt take huge risks, using real entrepreneurial skills, build an industry. And I saw people like Andrew Gordon, Jay Robertson, Peter LeRocque and Tracie George impress producers from other places with the skill of their work. I saw people like Virginia Thompson create shows like ‘Corner Gas’ and ‘Incredible Stories Studio’. I saw wonderful people like Shannon Jardine and her husband Terry come back to the province, their home, to make films. Best of all, I saw people like Amy Matysio able to keep Saskatchewan as their base while building a career that crosses borders. And then I saw our government flick that away like some dirt on their trousers. There are a lot of fine people in the caucus and I really thought they had a vision for the future. I guess I was wrong.”

     • Joanne Vollbrecht’ has this say about powdery mildew. “Thank you Rod for the info on powdery mildew. I discovered it yesterday for the first time on my perennials in my front yard. I've not done a good job of keeping the yard clear this year so that area was shadier than usual which may have contributed to the mildew. I guess now I can tell my son it wasn't his fault for throwing bad water on the yard.”

     • Craig Livingston forms a team with his mom, as readers. “So you like my mom's lily-o-nine-petals? We were just talking about it and your name came up. Small world.”

     • Penney Pike reads The Garden Report from her home in Calgary. She relays an interesting story, this week. “Had to share this story with you. My sister is working part-time for a big box store that also sells plants. This lady wanted to return petunias and impatiens because, are you ready, a deer ate them! Living it up in God's Country.”

     • Edie Friesen sent along a compliment. “By the way, thanks for all the work of putting The Garden Report together. I can only imagine how long that must take! I often forward it to my son and daughter-in-law, who are creating a ‘Garden of Eden’ in their large, pie shaped, backyard in Maple Ridge.”

     • CJ Katz follows Edie Friesen by issuing her own kudos. “Rod, you’re a swell guy, if I can use an old phrase! Thanks so much for attaching my invite to your newsletter.”

Sandra's garden

• When I was seventeen: At Roberta Nichol’s concert last week, she told the story of being young and filled with confidence. She wrote a letter to Pete Seeger and asked him to perform at The Regina Folk Guild. Why not? He was the father of today’s folk music. Talk about chutzpa. Pete’s wife actually wrote her back, saying that he was a bit busy but thanks for asking. When I was sixteen or seventeen, I was a trumpet player and one of my heroes was Al Hirt. He was playing at The Regina Exhibition, backed up by a stage band of local musicians. I wanted to meet one of the biggest names of the trumpet world in person. How to do it? I made him a gift candle, something that was a hobby of mine at the time. I wrapped it up in a nice box and a gift card. My high school girlfriend and I took in the concert and then we snuck back stage when it was over. A security guard stopped us. I told him that I was a delivery boy and that I had a parcel for Al Hirt. He told me he would give it to Mr. Hirt. With all the balls of a brass monkey, I looked the security guard in the face and asked “are you authorized to sign for Mr. Hirt.” He mumbled a ‘no’ and I brushed past him, knocked on the green room door and this huge man answered. Al Hirt was truly a giant in the physical sense as well as the musical world. I said “Mr. Hirt, I am a trumpet player, just like you, and I made this candle as a gift just for you.” He thanked me, gave me his autograph and politely closed the door. He did not invite us in to chat or to jam into the late hours of the night. If he did, that would have been another story.

• Gardening for the couch surfers: My show, ‘Prairie Gardens’ is being broadcast on City Television, Channel Twelve, these days. I have seen it on Saturdays and Sundays at 1:30 p.m. I don’t own the show so I never know when or where it will appear. Last week’s show was about planting fall bulbs.

• Garden Tip: Now that September is here, it is definitely time to be planning your fall bulbs. I wrote planning, not planting. Planting occurs after a bit of frost has nipped your annuals. This usually means for our area, September 15th to the 30th for a start date. Planting fall bulbs is so worth it. They provide gardeners with spring color, long before annuals are safe to plant.

• Garden Tip: No more fertilizer or plant food for your lawn, perennials, trees or shrubs. The time has passed and now you must allow Mother Nature to begin her dormancy preparations. What you can still fertilize, if required, are your annuals and hanging baskets. These babies are not going to be surviving the winter so keep them green and blooming as long as you want.

• Garden Tip: Definitely time to band your trees against the dreaded cankerworm. The girl cankerworms are too fat to fly, so they will try to climb up your tree to lay their eggs. If you band your trees, you can stop her from making it to the top. Trees that need banding include elms, fruit trees including apples, crabs, cherries and plums. If you want someone to band your trees, give Rick a call at 347-0104.

Trevor and Judith's dahlia

• Good gardeners share #817: Trevor Langen had a query about growing and preserving dahlias. He and his lovely wife, Judith, are fairly new to the world of dahlias. I am no expert but reader Stu Wass has been growing dahlias for many years. So, I put the two of them together and now Trevor and Judith are on the right track. Said it many, many times before. Good gardeners share their knowledge, their time and quite often, a few of their plants.

• Good gardeners share #929: Reader Edie Friesen and I shared this week. She brought me some incredible Mennonite sausage from north of Saskatoon and I returned the favor with some back yard tomatoes. My birthday is coming up in three weeks time and I usually get gifts of garden veggies stuffed into boxes and bags from friends. When I was ten years old, the thought of a birthday gift being beets and onions would have reduced me to tears. Today, you can give me all of the garden veggies you want and I will always be grateful.

• Just wondering: I am a frequent flyer when it comes to our local health district. The Transplant Clinic is always getting them to check out something I own, even if I didn’t know I owned one. This week was my annual cardiac profusion test. In short, checking to see if my ticker can handle the surgery when a donor is found. I was there a little more than four hours. Staff treated me well, so no complaints there. My total time of actual testing, around thirty minutes. With scheduling, I could see being there an hour, perhaps an hour and a half, tops. But I wasn’t. I was there for four hours and another time, I was there for five and a half. I have reached a conclusion: The Health District, values the time of their staff to a much greater degree than their patients. You sit and you sit and you sit. Finally they call your name and somehow, I always feel as if I have won the lottery. I doubt if the CEO or any other administrator of The Health District would have sat in my office for three hours, waiting to have a twenty minute interview with me about their garden. Nope, they would have demanded I be much more efficient.

• Daisy’s Pantry: This is my second time there and it was good. I had their special which was a bowl of lentil soup and a ham sandwich. The lentil soup was basic and needed something more to spice it up. Whether than was cumin, coriander or lemon, I can’t decide. The bread was homemade and the ham was real ham, off the bone, not one of those processed pieces of crap. I get so tired of places serving up meat that had to go through any process at all. Just kill the pig and smoke the ham. It’s that simple. Didn’t mean to sound grouchy, but ham does not have to be complicated.

Trollius makes many a gardener smile

• Abstractions: This house form cappuccino shop on Rose Street, near 14th, offers up the best lentil soup in the city, next to the soup made by my Mrs. My good wife turns out a lentil and lemon soup to die for. At Abstractions, they have a very good one, just not worth dying for, but better than most places you get lentil soup. Definitely worth visiting. The kindly gentleman who runs the place is a wonderful conversationalist, if he is not too busy looking after the kitchen.

• Lentils 101: A few years ago most of us didn’t know what lentils were. Only a few vegetarian hippies knew that lentils were a wonderful thing to cook with. Today, we are growing many fields of lentils and they are being purchased all over the world. Turns out we grow a really great crop of lentils. Nicky Makris, everyone’s friend from Nicky’s Café, tells this story. Nicky was back in his home village in Greece. At the little grocery store, they were selling bags of lentils, shipped from Richardson, Saskatchewan. Nicky was so proud.

• Different strokes: Patrick (Number Three Son) was home for a few days. He quipped that his father-in-law, Ray, asks him to go for a beer: Whereas his dad (that’s me) wants to drive him around town showing him landscaping jobs. Well, looking at landscaping jobs is healthier and you never get the police asking you for a breathalyzer test on a garden tour.

• Fifty years and counting: Yesterday, I put on my Sunday go to meeting suit and my company manners. It was Ray and Angie Markwart’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. We celebrated with a party over at The Living Spirit Center. With their Ukrainian background, no surprise here, we ate cabbage rolls, perorgies and smoked sausage. No jelly salad as it was not a formal affair. Pastor Carla got the ‘kids’ to renew their vows which were first delivered on September 1st, 1962. She asked Ray for his secret to fifty years of wedding bliss and Ray cracked up the house with “Well, as a painter, I was high on paint fumes for at least half of the time.” I kind of thought the women required us men to say at a vow renewal, that we promise to be better husbands for the next fifty years. The least we can do is to say the words.

• Chicken marinade: I love to barbecue but chicken has never been my favorite thing to grill. I made up this marinade on Monday and it worked out just fine. I combined together two ounces of olive oil, two ounces of lemon juice, a tablespoon of liquid smoke and one of Frank’s Red Hot Sauce, along with two ounces of Hoi Sin Sauce and two ounces of honey. Then I whisked in a bit of salt, pepper and the mandatory garlic. I had bone in chicken breasts and I ran them through the marinade which in reality was now more of a glaze. I grilled them on high for five minutes and then ran them through the marinade again when I turned them over. I did this a few times during cooking and brought them to the table in the marinade/glaze now turned sauce. Very, very good. The sauce was spooned out onto the accompanying vegetables.

Another shot of Sandra's garden

• Are you certain: On television, they were interviewing a ninety-five year old man on how to stay happily married for seventy-five years. He answered that the key was to “never let the sun set on an argument”. I think, at his age, the old boy must have forgotten a few of the bell ringers him and the Mrs. must have had sixty years ago.

• Vicarious thrill, so what: I was driving across The Albert Street Bridge, early on Saturday morning. In the car ahead of me, there was a couple in their fifties. The woman was driving. She was just a reefing on her passenger, who I assumed was her husband. The finger was wagging to emphasize key points to her speech. Even from the back, the man had the look of someone with very little to say. I get home. I tell the family at the breakfast table about what I had witnessed. Adding fuel to the fire, my Mrs. says “you really derive a vicarious thrill when its someone else in hot water with their wife, don’t you?” And her point is…

• Thanks for reading…from the sunshine here in Regina, Rod McDonald !