Our daughter Cathy was with us for a week.

 On her last morning in Toronto we took her to see Woofstock, a festival for dogs and all things canine.

This is a selection of her photos.

Commentary for most of them is superfluous.

Little treats for the doggie in your life.

A SMALL PHOTO ALBUM

The Encampment at Fort York

200 tents, each remembering a person who was alive in 1812,

with an installation by an artist in each tent.

The tents at ground level; quite a sight!

Tomato plant, growing strongly.

First sign of rocket seedlings.

Called arugula in Canada.

I love being able to grow basil.

Flowers on the courgette.

My daughter Cathy.

The building growing out of her head is the condo where we live.

Sunday 27 May

OK I know I haven't written anything for a while. I now know why all these famous authors always say that they have set hours during the day for writing, treating their profession like a 9 to 5 job. It is so easy to say to oneself that tomorrow will be a better time to write a few paragraphs. I wonder if Dickens ever had such thoughts?
(Fame at last....Dickens, writing and myself in the same paragraph!)

When I last wrote I talked about planting my tomatoes. On checking a week later I discovered that two of them had been chewed down to the ground. Groundhogs! People have now told me that while the little beasts do not like tomatoes as such, it seems that they are quite partial to young plants. So a major job has been done on wrapping the plot in chicken wire. It looks quite unattractive but seems to be yielding results.

These are my two remaining tomato plants and the pepper. The chicken wire has now been replaced by wire surround the whole raised bed.

I have planted strawberries. Most of them are quite small plants so they may not bear much fruit this year. I have also sown a couple of small rows of carrots and chives. As well there is a courgette plant and a flourishing clump of basil. In fact the basil has given us our first crop. I brought home a handful of leaves for a salad last week.

The one thing of which I am sure is that I don't have enough room for everything. I'm not too worried about that. I'll wait until everything starts growing and I can always thin the carrots (using the very small ones in salads) and if I really like, for example, the courgette plant I may have to sacrifice a few things to make room for it. We shall see.


Last weekend is what is known in Canada as the Long Weekend. Monday was Victoria Day (yes, Queen Victoria) and it is a National Holiday. It also is reckoned to be the beginning of summer and the best time to plant your garden. So I was back at the historic vegetable beds at Fort York. These are more properly known as the Officers’ Mess Kitchen Garden

We planted all the beds with historic varieties of seeds.

Raising three three mounds to plant runner beans.

I also took a few surplus seeds to grow where my two tomato plants had been.

Last Sunday (22nd April) I went back to the Community Garden to join up with some of the other members who are helping to look after the vegetable beds that Fort York has for growing old varieties of vegetables and  herbs etc. The produce is used to make dishes using old recipes to serve at various functions in Fort York.

We weeded, dug in some fresh compost and left the beds ready for planting. Then we were treated to lunch in the historic kitchen. We had turnip and carrot soup with fresh baked rolls. As anyone who knows me at all I cannot abide turnip, certainly not the type called swede. But the soup was actually quite delicious. I was offered poached eggs with sorrel but I knew that it would be too much, too close to our evening meal.

Weeding and thinning the lettuce

Lunch in Fort York kitchen

Caraway seed cake

The ladies who did the cooking also gave me some seed cake and ginger and currant take to bring home. The flavours of these were really great; much more pronounced than we would be used to today and all the better for that.

 This is how some of the food is cooked, over and around a wood fire. The soup is being stirred; to the left of the fire a chicken is being broiled and in the foreground the ginger and currant cake is being cooked in a pot with small pieces of glowing wood below and more on the lid.

I remember my Aunt Tilly baking cakes using this method in Moneysallin near Kilrea. The difference being that it was a turf fire.

One thing I have noticed about wood fires here There are no sparks spitting out from the burning wood. It burns very cleanly.

Today (29th Aug) I helped to fit new corner posts in my plot. I am told that it will still  be another couple of weeks before people get round to planting most things.

Susan and I also filed our tax returns today. Quite an ordeal; the first time we have done it ourselves.

It was all done online, so fingers crossed it will be OK.



Tuesday 17 April

Okay, I said I would add some more today. Susan has been very impressed with it so far. She really laughed at the title.

Our daughter Cathy has already started to recommend it to her friends and Conor, our son, has already guessed at something that I will be growing.

Tomatoes! Many, many years ago a neighbour gave me a couple of tomato plants that were left over from his greenhouse and I planted them in our back garden.
It so happened that the summer that year in Ireland was quite spectacular and I got quite a few tomatoes off the plants. But, in general, Ireland does not have a climate for outdoor tomatoes. Toronto is a different matter entirely. I have already been told that I will have no problem growing tomatoes, so I plan to have a couple of  "normal" size plants and a couple of plants that grow the much smaller variety.
One good thing is that the resident gopher population don't eat tomatoes! I plan to grow gopherproof plants if I can.


For gophers look up groundhogs. Yes I know that they are cute little animals with cute little faces and in the summer lots of cute little pups (if that's what they are called) running around. But I am not planting out my plot in order to provide food for them.

Told you he was cute.

What allotment?

So that is the first item on my list. I am open to any sort of advice on suitable plants or gopher prevention tactics so feel free to comment.


The Community Garden I have joined is located at Old Fort York. A most interesting site and an area that will become significant later on in the year when the 200th anniversary of the Battle of 1812 is celebrated.
What do you mean you've never heard of the Battle of 1812? What am I? A tourist guide? A history teacher?
My reading of it is as follows... A series of encounters between United States and Canada ended circa 1812. It was  "war" that neither side lost or won. The upshot was that because the US didn't win Canada did not become part of the United States. OK everyone? You were all taking notes? Good.
By the way, I do not wish to be corrected  in any way on my version of this part of history. If you think you know more than me, well and good. Get your own blog and educate the masses.

Where was I? Ah yes, Old Fort York.

http://www.fortyork.ca/

Check it out.

Our condo on the 29th floor of our building overlooks it. More of all that later.

One day late

I moved to Canada about two years ago. I had taken early retirement from The University of Ulster in Coleraine, N Ireland at the ripe old age of 60. The move to Canada was my wife's idea. She had always wanted to work abroad and I have no doubt  that this move has been one of the best things that I have done in a long, long time.

I do not intend to give a lot of biographical detail at this time. As time goes on I am sure that I will tell a bit more about my life. Most of it has been the usual humdrum stuff with the addition of lots of intense happiness and times of deep sadness.

My wife Susan and I live in a condo in downtown Toronto which has a small balcony. Last year we grew some herbs and lettuce in pots. We wished we could do a little more so I put my name down for a plot in the local Community Garden. I was told that my name was 23rd on the list of people waiting to take over a plot so I resigned myself to a long wait. To my surprise I got an e-mail on April 1st informing me that my name had come up.

Now please don't think that I have taken over some sort of smallholding. Far from it. It measures 4ft by 8 ft. It is half of a square raised bed and is exactly what I want. I haven't met the person who has the other half of the bed but if she is like the other plotholders that I met yesterday then I am sure we will get along very well.

I had intended to start this blog yesterday but other matters intervened. I want to keep a record of what I do in my plot and the sucess or failure that comes with it. All that I have done so far is to clear all the plants that had survived the winter and tidy up the bed. I was very pleasantly surprised by how good the soil was to work with. Much better than the clay that I experienced back in Coleraine.

See? I said it wasn't large.

There is still some work to be done on the surround. There is the possibility of raising a fence to keep out the gophers (more of them later).

Enough for today. I will add more tomorrow.