coming up...

February 13      Seedy Saturday 

With co-hosts Seeds of Diversity, Winnipeg  Community Gardening Network, Rare Breeds Canada, The Friends of the Assiniboine Park Conservatory and 

Fort Whyte Centre

Free Admission     

Location:  Fort Whyte Alive 

Winnipeg's Seedy Saturday has a new home! On February 13, 2010, 10 am to 4 pm, the 10^th annual mid-winter gathering of gardeners takes root at Fort Whyte Alive on McCreary Road. Celebrate prairie biodiversity with a full day of workshops, displays, vendors and visiting. Bring your seeds and join the fun of the seed swap. This grassroots garden show offers inspiration and information on heritage seeds, organic gardening, native plants, and urban agriculture. Admission to Fort Whyte is free for this special event.

Enjoy a tour of Fort Whyte Farms winter greenhouse project, crafts for kids, and outdoor activities for the whole family. Meet some heritage poultry breeds, live and in full feather, thanks to the Anola Cluck and Quack Poultry Club and Rare Breeds Canada.

10:00 am          Seed Swap Begins
11:00 am          Pollinator Friendly Gardens … Susan Leblanc
12:00 pm          Growing Heirloom Vegetables … Mandy Botincan
 1:00 pm           Community Compost Projects … Compost Action Project
 2:00 pm           Poultry Raising for Beginners … Wian Prinsloo

Participants include:  Devil's Creek Herb and Berry Farm, Herb Society of Manitoba, Heritage Harvest Seeds, Living Prairie Museum, Mandy's Greenhouse, Prairie Flora, Sage Garden Herbs and more.

Fort Whyte Alive is beyond the city bus routes – if you have a vehicle please offer a ride to your friends and fellow gardeners. Limited shuttle service will be available between the Assiniboine Park Conservatory and Fort Whyte.

Thanks to Food Matters Manitoba and Heifer International. Brought to you by volunteers from Seeds of Diversity Canada, the Friends of the Assiniboine Park Conservatory, and the Winnipeg Community Garden Network; hosted by Fort Whyte's Naturescape program.  Contact: winnipegcgnetwork@gmail.com

home sweet home update

Back in May 2008, I posted about the things we wanted to do to the house we just bought in order to make it more energy efficient, to indulge my gardening addiction, and just to make it all round nice to live in.

From our original list, we have accomplished:

• 5 new windows, including the one that is basically our whole living room wall. After much research and deliberation, we went with fibreglass over PVC. The choice seemed simple, but fibreglass windows are quite a lot more expensive. Very happy with our choice, though, and will replace the rest as well are able.
• New front and back door. Steel & insulated = more secure & warmer. Also new storm doors.
• Insulation in all the walls and attic. Our house was built in 1912. You'd think even back then insulating the walls would be something builders would just do. But no. We have gone from no insulation to fully insulated and are noticing a huge difference in our comfort level. Hoping to notice a huge difference in the heat bill as well!
• Fence & raised garden beds in the back. The summer sucked, so gardening was frustrating. Loads of rain and cool weather through July & August, then hot in September. Everything was leggy. Nothing fruited well. We got loads of small tomatoes, but many of the skins split. Being a gardener, I've already put it behind me and I'm planning for this season. We're a hardy bunch, even when the plants aren't.
• We also painted the trim on the house and the whole garage, using Benjamin Moore's Aura paint. Seemed very thick but was actually great on the trim, especially when we were reaching up, as it doesn't drip. It's self priming, so two coats were enough. Has no smell, and as proof... we were painting under a wasp nest and they completely ignored us.

Oddly, the easiest and cheapest things that we could have done, we haven't gotten around to yet. Next on the list: low flow shower head and programmable thermostat!

A few pics of our progress:

When we moved in...

Summer 2009...

The after pics were taken prior to painting the garage and getting insulation. The garage is now the same burnt orange as the trim, and our house is pretty polka dots from where the insulation was blown in. Will repair and paint the stucco this summer, and then, I dunno... maybe just enjoy it for a while!

why weeding the garden is good

I discovered this...

Which turned into this:

And left behind this:

Three weeks of patient waiting this past August paid off in the best way. Didn't get to see the butterfly emerge, but spent three hours protectively watching while it dried its wings and blended into the sidewalk. Prior to this, I only knew the name of one butterfly. Monarch, obviously. But now I know two. This one is the Eastern Comma.

In love with the new Ron Hawkins album. Looking at these pictures again, in the middle of a bracing prairie winter, I keep thinking of a line from one of his songs: mighty as a sparrow, fragile like a whale. Wonder if my fragile, mighty cocoon will still be tucked under its leaf once the snow is gone?

love my neighbourhood

The people here are just so.... neighbourly. First, we went to a free vermicomposting workshop sponsored by the Spence Neighbourhood Association, and came home with a recycled bin and a load of worms. Then, the awesomely crazy lady across the street organized a block tree banding group. So we all banded together (oh, haha!). And finally today, a guy out shoveling his walk thanked me for picking up after my dog. I mean, how pleasant! How friendly! Love where I live.

A few pics from the tree banding...

bike week - friday

Ode to My Favorite Bike Shop

Ahhhh... Good ol' Natural Cycle. Bike shop co-op and sustainable transportation advocates. Inventors of the PrairyBike 'cause in Winnipeg, there are no mountains. Bike are made from the ground up using recycled frames and custom-made with whatever parts your little heart desires. Generally they are a 4-season, single-speed commuter, but my co-worker had one built with gears.

Natural Cycle is donating two cool rides as prizes for Bike to Work Day: a PrairyBike or a Batvas Old Dutch. I got a new bike last spring after 18 years of bombing around on my Trek mountain bike, so I don't really need to win a new one, but I am smitten with the Old Dutch. Hopefully someone else's name gets pulled and I'm spared the guilt of having three bikes when others have none.

bike week - thursday

My Commute

To get to work, I have three routes to choose from.

Option A: Straight down Portage (10 min.)
Option B: Westminster to Assiniboine, Assiniboine to Fort, left on Fort (20 min.)
Option C: Westminster to the river trail, river trail to Bannatyne, Bannatyne to my office (30 min.)

And then up three flights of stairs to get to the secure bike lock-up, which I totally appreciate even though the stairs are killer.

So guess which option I choose? (Unless I'm late for work, or the floods in Illinois raise the water level here so that the trail is under a foot of water.)

bike week - wednesday

A saint in the saddle?

A funny article and lively debate in the comments section about who the biggest jerks are: bikers or drivers? I know what I think the answer is... (ha!ha!)

bike week - tuesday

Top 10 Songs About Bikes (in no particular order)

10. Bicycle Race by Queen
9. Motorcrash by the Sugarcubes
8. Bike by Roots Roundup
7. Riding on my Bike by Madness
6. Why Don't We Do it in the Road by the Beatles
5. Broken Bicycles by Tom Waits
4. My Bike by Ghoti Hook
3. Acoustic Motorbike by Luka Bloom
2. Bike by Pink Floyd
1. Daisy Bell

Other suggestions?

bike week - monday

Ride a bike, save the world
[from the David Suzuki Foundation website]

May 30, 2008 - "Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H.G. Wells

Science has had a tremendous impact on the planet in an incredibly short time. In just the past few hundred of our 150,000 years on Earth, we have invented everything from steam engines, cars, and airplanes to sophisticated weapons and supercomputers. And the pace at which we keep inventing more complex and fascinating machines is increasing. Some of our inventions have been a great boon, some have been harmful, and some, such as cars, have turned out to be a mixed blessing.

But one invention is so efficient, beneficial, and simple that it may be the best thing we’ve ever made. People across the land will celebrate that invention as we ride into June, Bike Month. The "modern" version of the bicycle with pedals and cranks was invented by French carriage-maker Ernest Michaux in 1861. It’s come a long way since then, but whether it’s a high-tech racing bike or a one-gear street cruiser, the bike is still a marvel of ingenuity. In fact, it may well be the most efficient form of transportation yet invented.

The best part of the bike is that you, the rider, are the engine. The fuel is what you eat and drink. Putting the human engine together with the gears, wheels, and frame of a bike gives you a mode of transportation that uses less energy even than walking. As for our most popular method of getting around, the automobile, there’s no comparison. According to the WorldWatch Institute, a bicycle needs 35 calories per passenger mile, while a car uses 1,860. Buses and trains are somewhere in between.

During Bike Month, it’s worth thinking about the potential this amazing invention offers. With oil prices climbing and environmental damage from car emissions increasing, bikes are becoming a more attractive form of urban transportation every day. Cleaner air, reduced congestion, safer streets, and lower noise levels are just a few of the benefits. As more people get out of their cars and onto their bikes, they’ll also become fitter, leading to lower health-care spending. The money that could be saved nationally on things like health care - not to mention the infrastructure required to keep so many cars on the road - reaches into the billions, but the money an individual can save on fuel, insurance, and maintenance costs alone is also substantial. And because biking is a lot of fun, it will probably increase what the people of Bhutan call "gross national happiness"!

But we still have a ways to go. Canadians and Americans use bikes for fewer than one in a hundred trips - although in Vancouver where I live, it’s a bit higher, at about 2.3 per cent. Compare that to the 20 to 35 per cent of trips taken by bike in the European Union and 50 per cent in China. (Unfortunately, the trend is reversing in China as the country embraces car culture.)

Shifting from car dependence will take action at the individual level, with more people simply deciding to get on their bikes, but governments must also do more to make it easier for people to ride bikes. And they can. In just three years, from 1998 to 2001, Mayor Enrique Peñalosa of Bogotá, Colombia, turned his city of 6.5 million from a gridlocked parking lot into a city where public spaces live up to their name. He did this by restricting car use, increasing gas taxes, and building hundreds of kilometres of bike and pedestrian paths, as well as investing in buses.

Making our streets safer for cyclists by giving them space to ride is an essential first step. The investment required is far less than that required for infrastructure for cars. Tax breaks for cyclists also help. Last year in Ontario, Premier Dalton McGuinty removed the provincial sales tax on bike helmets and bikes costing less than $1,000. Bikes are also exempt from PST in B.C., and the province’s $100 carbon-tax rebate could be put toward buying a bike or tuning up your old bike.

Employers can also help out by offering secure bike parking and showers for those who work up a sweat on the way to work.

Of course, cycling isn’t a panacea. In parts of Canada, the weather isn’t always conducive to cycling. And not everyone has the strength to ride up the hills in some of our cities. But if more of us choose bikes whenever possible, using public transport or at least energy-efficient vehicles when we can’t ride, we’d all be much better off.

So, get on your bike in June, and maybe you’ll like it enough to make it your preferred method of transportation year-round.

bike week - sunday

Friday, June 20th is the first Bike to Work Day in Winnipeg. Have already signed up because a) I bike to work, and b) they are offering some mean prizes.

So in honor of the big event, I'll be doing a bike themed post every day this week.

not peat

Trying something new in my planters this year. Coco Earth, made from coconut husks. Trying to avoid peat moss as much as possible. Coco Earth is a renewable resource, but don't know anything about how it is made. Will look into that further for next year. In the meantime, it's super cool stuff!

Before - a 5 lb block



After - 2 blocks worth

home sweet home

The love of my life and I have finally bought a house, after six months of searching in the stupidly tight and crazy Winnipeg market. I asked for only three things: 1) if there was a garage, I wanted it detached; 2) a shower we can stand up in (it's been 4 1/2 years since we've had that luxury); and 3) a reasonable distance to work, so we could bike. He was more fussy, but in the end, we're both satisfied and have a place we can (semi) afford.

Now to start "greening" it...

To start, we had an ecoEnergy Evaluation done. This means that we will be eligible for rebates on the energy efficiency improvements we make. The list is long! These are the things we could/should upgrade:

• windows (all but one)
• doors (they are wooden, old and not sealed properly)
• insulation (basically, there isn't any, and we live in Winterpeg, Manisnowba)
• hot water heater (ours has reached it's life span, so we want to switch from gas to electric)
• shower head (much as I love the torrential downpour we currently have)
• window frames (need to be caulked)
• programmable thermostat

On the want list are:

• new fridge
• fence for the back yard
• ceiling fans
  
• painting the exterior of the house
  

Add to this, we have old wooden soffits with a hole in them, and therefore "tenants." So new soffits, fascia and eaves troughs, though not eco, are essential. Since we aren't swimming in money, we may go a bit deeper in debt and get a Power Smart loan for some of the work.

And then there is the yard. I have started 5 types of native prairie plants from seed, but let's just say, it's going to need a bit more than that...