So here's what it looks like now
I've got tomato plants in the back, so that they don't cast shade on the rest of the plants when they get tall. There is an overhang from my neighbour's balcony, so sunlight is mostly accessed therough the front. They're Early Girl tomatoes this year, as well as one solitary cherry tomato plant, a little closer to the front. The Early Girls are supposed to produce a little more quickly than the types I've been growing (I think Beefsteak?) This should cut down on my intake of fried green tomatoes at the end of the season. I'm going to try trimming the leaves this year. Apparently that really helps them to produce.
Coming down the side, we've got cucumbers. I'm going to train them to go in the direction of the chicken wire fence, so that they'll climb it.
I have three types of peppers: Cayenne, Thai Dragon, and even a Ghost Pepper. If you don't know, the Ghost Pepper is the former world-record holder for hottest pepper in the word. It also coined the phrase "Superhot", which means anything hotter than a Habenero. It's outclassed officially by the Scorpion Pepper, the California Reaper, and unofficially by the Dragon's Breath, and the Pepper X. The latter two, I believe are generally considered to be the two hottest peppers in the world right now, but haven't been officially evaluated yet.
Yeah, I looked it up an it appears the Carolina Reaper still holds the title:
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/hottest-chili?fb_comment_id=847393145282055_871024686252234
My fondest wish for my garden this year is to grow a Ghost Pepper, but I doubt it can happen. It already looks pretty sickly, and I imagine such a specialty pepper requires certain conditions to grow.
I also have two celery plants thrown in the mix.
Here's something exciting! You guys remember how I brought a Blue Hyacinth back from the dead when I got my job? Well, it eventually looked pretty sickly. I kept it alive through the winter season, and in the spring I planted it in my garden, but a squirrel messed with it and it seemingly died a slow death. But I'm pretty sure it grew back this year!
I planted beans to crawl up the chicken wire. Usually, I do snow peas, but beans were all I could get my hands on this year.
In the front, I've got a plot of radishes and a plot of sunflowers. I'm growing radishes because they were the most consistent crop at our WALES plot, and of course, if you've been reading for... maybe nine months, you know I love sunflowers.
Last year, I tried growing sunflowers through four different methods. I had two kinds of seeds, long-seed sunflowers (I think that's what they were called) and Lemon Queens. I grew some directly in the soil and some in jiffy pots. The only ones to survive were three Lemon Queens, grown directly from the soil.
So I knew what to do this year. Unfortunately, people are still panic buying, and for some strange reason, people are panic buying sunflower seeds. They weren't at the dollar store, they weren't at my local grocery. I wound up going on my longest excursion since the pandemic started and went all the way out to Central Fresh Market, which didn't have any, and then finally to Wal Mart, which did.
Another thing people are panic buying is bamboo. I usually get bamboo stakes from the dollar store, but they're plum out, so I picked up some of those at Wal Mart too. Also, a new charcoal grill.
I'm really fascinated by which stores are seeing the most traffic. Because of physical distancing measures, only a certain number of people are allowed to be in stores at a time, and everyone has to stand two metres apart. It's not uncommon that I will be near my local grocery, and there will be no line up outside Food Basics, no line outside the LCBO (liquor store), and a line a mile long outside Dollarama.
Nobody seems to talk about Big Dollarama. Everyone talks about the mega-corporations like Wal Mart and Amazon, and I don't know if this phenomenon exists elsewhere, but Dollarama brand dollar stores are on every corner.
I remember walking back from a mall with someone I was supporting, and walking past three Dollaramas, and I know for a fact that if I kept walking, there was another nearby. So that's at least three Dollaramas within easy walking distance. Arguably for.
And if I chose to walk downtown from there, which is a walk I've done many times, there another one downtown. And if I chose to walk to Frederick Mall, which is only slightly off the heart of downtown, there's one in that mall too.
There's one near where I live. They're more common than Tim Hortons! (and in this neck of the woods, you can pretty well guarantee you'll run into a Tims' if you walk 15 minutes in any direction)
I get it. The stores themselves are never huge, their design is visually understated. They don't really advertise. Nobody brags about shopping at the dollar store. PRices are very affordable, products are more usable than most would like to admit. They kind of snuck their way into being this huge thing without anybody realizing it.
Maybe it's just a Kitchener thing, I dunno.
They've put up hand-drawn bristol board signs written in sharpy in their windows, saying "WE ARE OPEN" like all the desperate independently-owned businesses are doing. Dollarama's portraying itself as some poor, struggling, small business that needs your support. Give me a break.
Anyway, back to gardening.
Lee-Anne's mom actually dropped off the seedlings. She knows I'm on the hot pepper scene, so she got me those three types. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I've tried to grow peppers before with no luck. Apparently they have pretty picky sun conditions, and I've got a big tree in my backyard that casts shade on my plot. Oh well, we'll see what happens.
She also gave me a mask.
I've got a problem where nearly my entire wardrobe is plaid. Well, now I have a blue plaid mask! I took it out on it's maiden voyage to get the sunflower seeds.
Apparently masks are being politicized. Initially, we were told that wearing a mask provided little if any protection, and that you actually created a greater risk of contamination by mishandling your mask. Now, they're required on entry into some stores.
What I'm hearing is that you have "pro-mask" cultures and "anti-mask" cultures, and Canada is anti-mask. While we promote freedom of religion, Muslim women who choose to wear face coverings are required to have their photos taken with their garments removed for identification purposes. Generally speaking, people influenced by Asian cultures are quicker to don surgical masks for reasons ranging between an infectious outbreak and simple dust. Ethnic minorities who choose to wear masks are often seen as a symbol of gang affiliation. You're not allowed to wear masks in school fo Halloween.
So thoughts are that our firm disdain for masks as a culture put a bias in our approach to the pandemic. Now that we've had time to evaluate, we're trying to transition from an "anti-mask" society to a "pro-mask" society.
I'm still hesitant, because I feel like physical distancing and hand-washing are still our two best solutions to stop the spread of the virus, and I worry that if people see masks as the primary solution, they'll be like, "I can go to my rugby game, I'm wearing a mask!"
But now I'm wearing one just to remind people that the pandemic is still ongoing. People around here have relaxed way too much. The weather is better, it is brightening peoples' spirits and reducing their fear. People are weary from staying isolated for two months, and there has recently been a small relaxation in services that had been prohibited. Canadian Tire and Home Depot are open, garden centres opened, clothing stores that have an external entrance and exit have been opened, including the second hand store across the street, and restrictions on medical businesses such as dentists and optometrists are now allowed to see non-emergency clients again. Of course, all these businesses have to maintain certain safety precautions.
People don't realize that the country is walking a tightrope between public health and the economy, and the only reason that we can safely enter the second stage of our pandemic response is because when it started, we weren't practiced in how to slow the spread of an infectious disease. We should now be using what we learned to carefully reopen the economy.
But the parking lot is filled with children wrestling and sweating all over each other. My backyard is full of people playing soccer (since soccer fields are still closed). I got hit by a soccer ball three times when I was putting my garden in.
Sigh
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