I am about to declare this the international year of creep. I have been spending hours standing on a ladder pulling tent caterpillars off my apple tree, wisteria, house etc., not to mention the scores of them I have trampled underfoot, and the slugs I have been drowning and the cutworms I have been stomping, Maybe, lacking vegetables to protect, I just never noticed many of these critters before. However, this is the first year my poor and well-pollinated apple tree has been tented and I am struggling to save what I can.

Not reassured to read this message about these guys, who are northern tent caterpillars:

It is important to realize that, no matter what steps are taken to control tent caterpillars on individual trees, that the overall populations will increase over several years and then drop to low levels naturally as diseases and predators catch up with the population.

This winter I will look out for the larvae, though, to see if I can slow them down next year (though I read they can stick around for up to 6 years!), or at least divert them away from my favourite tree.

The egg masses look like 1-2 cm long masses of hard brown foam, usually wrapped around branches less than 1 cm in diameter.

Oh well. Here’s a recipe for slug bait, in case you share my reluctance to feed them good beer (apparently they like fresh beer every day) (cheap grape juice is supposed to work too) :

1 cup water
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4-1/2 teaspoon yeast
(I have also heard you can add 2 tbsp flour as well)

One site suggested leaving twigs in your containers to allow beetles to climb out. My slugs loved this home brew very much. Too much. (I will spare you photos of where greed gets a gastropod…)

Perfect weather, perfect venue yesterday for the Island Chefs Collaborative festival, Defending our Backyard. They were expecting around 1000 people who, once their arms had been stamped with a tater stamp

would be turned loose with a wine glass and eating board

to graze and sip the afternoon away.

Lots of preparation…

There was a good selection of foods to buy as well, in the farmers’ market section

Decorative cob ovens, from Earth Institute:

Young gelato eater.

Lots of lineups for food…

but music to keep all entertained while they waited…

Slow Food wuz here:

A day both educational

and cute (3 weeks old).

I enjoyed Saturday’s whistle through the topic of winter vegetable gardening with local permaculturalist Geoff Johnson. He began by pointing out that we West Coasters follow, wrongly, the veg growing guidance from over yon Rockies, where the season is short but hot and the winter too cold to grow a thing; whereas we are blessed with the climate-mitigating force of the ocean, which means we can grow food all winter.

Some other things I learned include…

• an easy way to sew salad greens: mix your seed with compost and spread it on the beds
• make more use of growing space by planting quick crops like radishes among slower-growing things like parsnips
• purple sprouting broccoli actually takes two seasons to produce florets
• parsnips and leeks are easier to grow than carrots and onions
• to grow leeks, seed them in pots and let them grow long and leggy; when the size of a pencil, trim their roots and their tops (to the first leaf joint) and drop them in a pencil-sized hole; this will give you lots of nice fat white root
• higher sugar content veg like beets are particularly resistant to freezing (though they might lose their tops, so make sure you mark the rows)

After that it was time to go to supper. My birthday had gone a bit adrift, like some of the script on this lovely cake I had in Calgary, so I decided to go on celebrating.

Supper was in Shawnigan Lake, at Amuse Bistro, a little house set back and below the street, so a bit tricky to get to, but worth the navigational effort.

Amuse’s amuse-bouche: savoury bread pudding with quail egg.

Salt cod fritters…

Oysters with lots of stuff….

Pan-seared halibut on a bed of heritage grains…

Half of a spot prawn extravaganza, complete with poached egg, and more savoury bread pudding.

Local scallops.