Strange times

Well, I haven't been doing a very good job of keeping this blog up to date, have I? My impression is that the coronavirus crisis is creating a new generation of bloggers as people are more and more confined to their own homes and finding that blogging is a good way of connecting with friends and family. I should probably do the same.

Things are moving fast: right now we have 1,329 reported cases of COVID-19 in Canada, with 377 in Ontario and 19 deaths. The public library I work inside was still open on 16 March, but closed to the public that evening. I closed the archives on the morning of the 16th, but have been continuing to go to work, as I can still be doing things like answering enquiries and digitizing archival materials while the building is closed.

 Not that people are really asking questions about archives at the moment, but that might change as this situation becomes the new normal. I'm fortunate in that I don't use public transit to get to work and I don't really interact with anyone while I'm there. I will probably start talking to myself, soon, though...

Restaurants and bars were shut down last week, and my impression is that people here are being fairly diligent about maintaining distances from each other and not doing too much in the way of panic-buying.

The nursing homes started restricting visiting hours and screening visitors on 2 March: they were taking people's temperatures and I could only go and see my mother-in-law on my way home from work instead of my usual routine of popping in twice a day. On 8 March that changed and all visitors were banned in order to protect the residents. My mother-in-law is not well enough to be aware of this change (😢), which is some comfort, I suppose, but it must be very hard for many families.

Meanwhile, I'm focusing on getting the garden going and appreciating the change of season. Yesterday I potted on all my eggplants and peppers. I have 58 plants in total, so we should be fairly self-sufficient in those this year, all going well!

Next weekend I will sow the tomatoes and in April I am expecting a delivery of fruit and nut trees and shrubs to regenerate the orchard. It's good to have something else to think about...

Still here...

I thought I'd better post an update in case anyone is wondering why I haven't been posting much recently. The main reason is that I'm back working full-time again, for the first time since moving to Canada. Carving out time for gardening is one issue, but finding time for blogging about it is quite another!

I'm working as the archivist for the County of Hastings and the City of Belleville. I took over the job on a temporary contract last July, and was appointed on a permanent basis in March. In the first nine months I had to move the entire archive to a new location, which was quite a challenge but we are now safely in the new building and settling in. I am loving it.

In other news, Mike's mother has finally received permission to move to Canada as a permanent resident. (We got this news the same day I heard about getting the permanent job - a red-letter day!) We first applied for her to come over in April 2010, so it has been a long process, but now we can move ahead at last. The to-do list has grown again, but at least we can now make definite plans for bringing her here and making changes to the house to accommodate her. Exciting times!

Garden Bloggers' Fling, 2015

I'd been aware of the annual Garden Bloggers' Fling since the first one, back in 2008 when it took place in Austin, Texas. I didn't think I'd ever get the chance to go to one, but when I realised that this year's was in Toronto, I jumped at the opportunity.

I wasn't disappointed. The event was superbly well organised and in total we visited 30 gardens and parks in the three days that I attended. Those doing the optional Niagara excursion on the fourth day would have seen even more. It was a real pleasure to spend time with so many passionate gardeners and designers. I feel like I have learnt a tremendous amount and have definitely made some new friends.

It's hard to know where to begin with describing the Fling: there was so much crammed in to the three days. I'll just pick out a few themes from the 563 (!) photos I took.

There was an interesting variation of scale, from the huge formal garden of the Aga Khan Museum

 to the intimate gardens of Cabbagetown, once home to Irish immigrants.

The Toronto skyline was ever-present throughout the Fling, either up close when we headed by ferry to the Toronto Island gardens on Friday,

or glimpsed from a distance as it was from the Aga Khan Museum

and from the Hugh Garner Co-op roof garden.

This coming weekend is the Peony Festival in Oshawa, and peonies were a noticeable feature in many of the gardens we visited. From the subtle and understated,

to the bold and beautiful,

and the downright outrageous.

There were a lot of Alliums around, too,

The importance of pollinators was another theme of the Fling: we learnt about the Fairmont Royal York's rooftop garden and bee hives on Friday and at the Toronto Botanical Garden on Sunday we were told to plant up our containers to 'attract guests'  like this honey bee who was busy visiting the salvia 'May Night' at the TBG.

We saw some interesting human-made objects, too, in the course of the Fling. I completely fell in love with the reclamation work going on at the former Don Valley Brick Works, where an industrial site has been turned into a fascinating space for people and wildlife. The 'Watershed Consciousness' artwork on the site is amazing.

I also (inevitably!) loved the way that archival images have been used to tell the story of the site's past.

You don't need a lot of space to make effective use of objects. I'm not generally a huge fan of garden art (or of city skylines, now I think about it) but I did rather like this little elephant in a Cabbagetown garden.

All in all, this has to be one of the most exhausting three days I've had. It was packed full of sensory, social and learning experiences; I will be thinking about this event for days and months to come. A hearty thanks to the Toronto Fling Committee for all their hard work!

The extent of our civilization

It's been quiet around here recently, mostly because I've been madly busy with work, on or off the farm, or with campaigning to try and stay in work, given recent drastic cuts to funding for archives in Canada. The children and I spent a day in May demonstrating in Ottawa against the cuts.

It was great to see democracy in action like that and it's been wonderful to see the way that our small profession and those sympathetic to our principles have responded to the threats posed by the short-sighted decisions of the individuals currently in charge of Canada's national library and archives. There's an online petition with more details about the issue, if you are interested in what all the fuss is about.

As a consequence of losing a chunk of my income with these cuts, I took on a stall in the local farmers' market on Saturdays this summer. This has meant I've had to spend more time keeping the garden weeded/seeded and my weekends are correspondingly shorter. All in all, there's a lot less time for blogging, but at least I'm spending more time outside, one way or the other!

I went to the national archivists' conference was in Whitehorse this past week (more time away from those fast-growing weeds, ack!). The conference was the perfect place to be at a time of professional crisis like this: a sort of group therapy. The sense of solidarity among archivists from all over Canada (and beyond) was fantastic. A colleague of mine from Britain commented that she didn't think that UK archivists would react in the same way if there was a similar threat to archival funding over there. I think she might be right - and it's only when the Canadian archival system is under threat that you understand that its members do see it as a system, rather than just a loose affiliation of professionals. It's a shame the people at Library and Archives Canada don't recognise it as such...

The last stop on our trip to Ottawa on May 28th was the statue of Dominion Archivist Sir Arthur Doughty (the only statue in Ottawa to honour a civil servant). The words on the base of the statue are these:

Of all national assets, archives are the most precious. They are the gift of one generation to another and the extent of our care of them marks the extent of our civilization.

A dangerous foreign pest

That's how I've been brought up to think about Colorado Potato Beetles. I've been trying to find an online example of the 'wanted' posters that used to be in British police stations, warning the public about being vigilant and reporting any sightings of the creature to the authorities. I haven't had much luck: this being the closest I could get. The site says the image is from The National Archives, but I couldn't find any trace of it in the Catalogue or in their image library. The latter isn't searchable and is divided up into a number of categories, none of which suggested 'Colorado Potato Beetle' to me. But this post isn't supposed to be a rant about usability of archives' websites, so I won't go on about that (however tempting it may be).

The point I was originally going to make was that my impression from all those posters was that the potato beetle was enormous. They always showed it at such a high magnification that I was quite surprised to find that the bugs are really quite small. Here's one sitting at the base of my middle finger:

In spite of their 'most wanted' status, they aren't any sort of a threat to humans or at all difficult to catch. They don't move very quickly and their hard shells make them easy to pick off the plants (unlike the tomato hornworms, which are all wriggly and revolting). I keep an eye on the potatoes, but have only found four of these beetles so far this year. When I find them, I feed them to the chickens, who think they are a great treat. The rooster picks them up, one at a time, then makes excited 'look what I've got for you' noises and presents them to the hens. Seems a better way of dealing with the problem than spraying the crop with anything.

A long gestation

One of the promises I made to myself on emigrating from England was that I would use some of the extra time I thought I'd have (hah!) to go back to the story I started writing on 17 November 1985. Which was a little while ago now. It had been knocking around in my mind for far too long and I needed to get rid of it and move on. I started writing it in pencil in a spiral-bound notebook all those years back, often while travelling to and from school on the bus. In later years, I used a computer to re-write the same scenes when the mood grabbed me. All of those early versions of the story are now lost, which is probably a good thing (although it doesn't reflect well upon my skills as an archivist, I do accept...).

At Christmas in 2007, the year we emigrated, I did manage to get going on it again, but got stuck after I'd written down all those original ideas I'd had. Luckily, before I'd left Manchester* I'd confided my ambition to finish the story to a friend. On a visit back to the city in May this year I had dinner with her and she asked about it. Her enthusiasm for the basic plot outline re-energised me and over this summer I was able to craft it into a (short) novel. I was so pleased to have finally got this thing out of my system. But what was I going to do with it next?

I read Chris Anderson's book Free the other week. Free of charge, online (though it's now only available in that way in the US). This method of accessing the book was inspiring, especially when combined with the book's subject matter. In the old days, you needed to have agents, publishers and printers involved in order to share a story with other people. Which meant that you had to tout the manuscript around until someone decided it was worth smearing dead trees into sheets for (to borrow one of Anderson's phrases). Nowadays, it is easy to publish things online and the whole middle-person thing is less necessary. OK, that also means that there are some terrible pieces of work around, but at least they can find their own market and writers are able to get on with writing and to share if they choose to.

Which is all a round-about way of saying that my story is now out there: set free, sitting on a server somewhere for its audience to find it. Which I fully expect is not going to be the same audience as the people who read this blog (as it's basically a school story aimed at young adults). Oh well, I had to pimp it somewhere and if you've got a teenager lurking around the house, they might like it! I had a lot of fun writing it and testing it out on my not-quite-teenage daughter. I'm pleased with the way that self-publishing this book fits into our general ethos of self-sufficiency. There's another blog out there too, which covers the background to the story and my observations on the whole experience of self-publishing.

*The picture, in case you're wondering, is of Manchester Cathedral, as seen through raindrops on the Big Wheel in Exchange Square. Old, new and raining. Everything Manchester means to me, summed up in one photograph.

Women and potatoes

... have a special relationship, according to the United Nations anyway. 2008 is the UN's International Year of the Potato and they have produced a slightly old-fashioned-seeming video promoting its objectives, with some interesting potato-related facts:



I think it's the cut-glass accent of the narrator that gives the film its archaic quality: a bit like a World War II Ministry of Information bulletin. If you compare this movie with the Ministry's original Dig for Victory film, the resemblance is uncanny! Synchronised digging features in both films, too.

I'm delighted to discover that my very first year of growing potatoes has coincided with the International Year of the thing.

Milestones

Kilometrestones just doesn't sound the same, does it? Well, anyway, two big milestones today. First of all, we finally ran out of water in the house - both wells and the cistern were effectively dry. So Mike went off to get a 12-volt pump to attach to the plumbing he's set up to the big tanks in the barns (and the tractor). Then he was able to pump the couple of hundred gallons down the hill and into the cistern this afternoon. There is some rain forecast for the rest of the week, but if it doesn't appear then we'll have to buy a tankload of water from a water firm.

The other big event, a slightly more positive one, was the completion of our new roof. It looks very smart and includes a sunlight tunnel which connects the landing (which has no windows) to the sky through a hole in the ceiling and the roof. The landing is now a lot brighter, especially when all the upstairs doors are shut. The guys who worked on the roof did a really good job and worked incredibly long hours. They had to pack up early on Saturday because the wind became dangerously strong, but otherwise they've been starting at 8am and finishing when it gets dark. They all wander around quite happily on the roof - no scaffolding or obvious safety measures at all. The next job is for the other team of this firm to turn up and fix the new guttering to the house.

Gwen the curtain (draperies) lady came around this afternoon and we chose more fabrics. I feel very decadent, having an interior designer, but I'm hopeless at making curtains and blinds (shades) and haven't found anything half-decent of the ready-made variety. She seems fairly snowed under with work, so I'm not sure when any of the window coverings will actually get made, but at least we're making some progress.

Yesterday I went to a meeting of the Prince Edward Historical Society, which was very interesting. They look after the archives of the County, in conjunction with the library service (a fairly recent union). There was a talk by a speaker from the Archives of Ontario, who seemed to have trouble working his PowerPoint presentation, which was a bit cringe-making. He also claimed that all their copying services were on a cost-recovery basis only, which seems an outrageous assertion given that their digital images cost $20 each, even if the image already exists! Anyway, I joined the society, so might get more involved with the local archives through that route too, eventually.

Brief respite

Landed back in Toronto on Sunday afternoon and have been frantically catching up with everything since then. The bat man had been back while I was away and installed a one-way door in the roof so that the squirrels won't be able to get back in. Haven't heard any scampering in the roof space since.

Another man had been round to quote for replacing our roof and guttering (eavestroughs), leaving me with the tricky task of deciding which colour we would have for the roof. Hm, Weathered Wood, Colonial Slate, Driftwood or Georgetown Gray?

Last night I accompanied Mike and Toby to the Puppy Kindergarten class. It was a bit boring, to be honest, but some of the dog training theory was mildly interesting. The tutor commented on how much the dogs had grown since last week and I agreed with her - Toby seemed huge when I got back on Sunday. When we got back I remembered to turn off the ring under the steamer so that we didn't have a re-run of the earlier Christmas Pudding fiasco.

Today I'm back in Deseronto. It's really hard only being here one day a week - feels like I make little progress. Although, looking on the bright side, I did manage to create an accessions register and a donations form for the archives today. Technically it's only my fourth day of work here, so I suppose I'm not doing too badly. The display of school-related materials at the weekend went down well and I scanned in some of the photos for a caller today who'd found pictures of herself and her siblings when she visited on Saturday. I met one of the library cleaners just now who told me that she'd enjoyed the exhibit too.

I'm now killing time a bit (I've got time to blog, for goodness sake) while I wait for the Archives Board meeting to start at 7.00pm. Last time we met in the Town Hall, but today we're meeting in the home of two of the Board members, which was once the Anglican church of St. Mark in the town, so that'll be interesting. It's going to be another very long day, though.

This coming weekend is the Thanksgiving holiday in Canada - they're much more sensible (as always) than the Americans, having it in October rather than late November (far too close to Christmas) and making it a long weekend instead of having the main event on a Thursday. Whichever American decided that a Thursday was a great idea for the holiday definitely wasn't responsible for cooking the meal.

So I've been looking up Thanksgiving recipes. I think, as we've got Mike's mum here, I'll just make the meal an early Christmas dinner, but with pumpkins involved, either as a soup or as pumpkin pie, haven't quite decided yet. I somehow don't think Mum would go for Marshmallow Sweet Potato Bake. Though I suppose it might get the kids to eat sweet potatoes, which they normally scorn.

Working conditions

This is the phone at Deseronto archives. I had to lift it up to see if it actually works. It does. Well, there was a dialling tone, anyway. I had a good first day there: there's a school reunion at the end of the month to celebrate Deseronto Public School's 50th anniversary, so I was helping the town's Recreation Programme Co-ordinator to find school-related material, while trying to establish what else there was in the archive room. There is a PC, and Ruth, one of the library staff, helped me find out what the password for it was. It has an internet connection, too, which I'm sure will come in handy. The library is quite a thriving little focal point for the town and it also houses a job information centre. I haven't yet ventured into my other accommodation, at the Town Hall, but they're getting me a key cut so I might go in there next week and maybe even brave the dreaded basement vault (or at least try to figure out what might be down there).

Working from home has its own challenges - the dog has decided that my feet are its favourite comforter so I'm often sitting at odd angles trying to reach the laptop while he has his naps.

After a week where the dog was waking up and howling every two hours in the night we seem to have cracked the problem with another handy tip from my aunt (don't know what we'd do without you Laine!). We've been leaving a radio on at low volume in his room and that seems to do the trick. The only talk-radio station I could find was a French-language one, but, as Wikipedia says,

all Alsatians today speak French

so obviously that suits him just fine!

Roads, old and new

This is the view of Prince Edward County that you get as you approach from the Glenora Ferry, a 10-minute trip that takes you from the mainland to the county. We all went to Kingston on Monday to register with the provincial health insurance plan (you have to be here for three months before being eligible for it). As we were going to be out of the house for a few hours we took the puppy with us. This meant that we didn't need to rush back, so instead of heading back along Highway 401 (a very boring dual carriageway) we decided to take the old road, Highway 33, marketed as the Loyalist Parkway. It runs alongside the lake most of the way from Kingston and then along into the County. Although it takes a bit longer, the route is far preferable to the 401 alternative.

I've had a particular request for an updated picture of the puppy, so here he is. This is the 'Where's my treat then? Look I'm sitting down and everything.' pose. He is now house-trained and usually wakes us up to go out between 5-6am, which I hope will get later as the mornings get darker. He's still chewing anything he can get hold of with his needle-sharp puppy teeth - will be glad when he finally gets his adult set. He lives on the ground floor and doesn't venture up or down stairs (yet). I must admit that it's quite heart-warming to see how pleased he is to see you in the morning - his whole body wags!

I went to Deseronto last night to talk to the Archives Board about priorities for the next few months for the archives. I was handed the keys to the room in the library that serves as the current archives and, as the meeting ended, I met the Mayor and the Deputy Mayor of the town. The latter looked at me and said 'I was expecting somebody older'. So that's nice - I still look too young to be an archivist. Thought I'd moved on from that! So I start work there next week - I suggested that I would do one day a week and they seemed happy with that. I drove back as the sun was setting - more lovely views of Lakes Ontario and Consecon. The drive takes the same length of time as my commute into Manchester did, but the contrast in terms of traffic and scenery couldn't be greater.

Opportunities blossom

Last Wednesday I had an interview for the post of part-time archivist at Deseronto, a small town about 40 minutes' drive from our house. The town's previous archivist had been based in the library, looking after various deposited collections and he retired in March. The town council is anxious to make proper provision for its municipal archives (indeed, is required by law to do so), which had not previously been part of the archivist's responsibility. They are currently held in a very dirty vault in the basement of the Town Hall (which was once a bank) and nobody really knows what's down there.


Today one of the (five!) Town Councillors rang me up to offer me the job (assuming my references are acceptable). I had been a bit unsure about whether to even apply for the post, but now that I've seen the place and the sorry state of things there, I can't turn it down. It'll be a challenge!

I've noticed that many of the people who live here have more than one job (a bit like Local Hero or Northern Exposure). Well this will bring my number of current jobs up to three, so I feel like I'm integrating nicely. This will be my first local job though - which I think will be a good thing, as I will be working with and getting to know people who actually live here. There is a slight danger that I'm now taking on too much, so I'll need to be very careful about allocating my time, but we'll see how things go.