Katie sent me this beauty. A cooking video that will not make you hungry, at least not for food!

http://www.todaysbigthing.com/betamax/betamax.swf?item_id=273&fullscreen=1

Meanwhile, I spent a pleasant afternoon shovelling dirt, pulling weeds and moving strawberries around on my first Wednesday work party of the year at Haliburton Community Organic Farm, where things are looking readier and readier.

There’s a demonstration garden

going in on the Terralicious plot, to show people how they could manage to grow food, keep chickens and still have room to play in a standard sized city plot; there are seedlings sprouting and a big beautiful new veggie stand waiting for action.

It was just over a week ago I said goodbye to Saskatchewan,

touched down briefly in Calgary…

and then returned to Victoria where the herring run is in full flow, which brings out the fishermen

and the seabirds, including mergansers,

as well as harbour seals –and the odd otter.

Meanwhile, thoughts turn to plantings; I have some wading pools and car tires ready to roll. I’d heard that you can plant lots of potatoes using a stacking method and car tires, so I’m going to try that. On the other hand, this guy has had pretty good luck growing everything from corn to eggplant to okra in his Tennessee garden using 163 car tires. The wading pool idea came from this article about inner city gardening, which says they last at least 6 years in Chicago, so hopefully will prove even more durable here. The article also describes using car tires (with plastic liners), feed bags (you can use big burlap sacks as well) or other discarded containers like wooden crates, bricks, barrels, and plastic pails with holes in them.

But at present I don’t have to do anything more than plan, since we had a surprise snowfall this morning – though it is melting as best it can.

Luckily there’s poetry to keep us warm. I’m looking forward to David Cavanagh‘s reading at Planet Earth Poetry this Friday.