The Daily Dirt: Day 1

Figure 1- Your authors; Matt Beaver (right) and Zoë Muckle (left)

MATT BEAVER is an English and Drama teacher (in the making). He spends a lot of time in Black Box theaters and editing word files on his computer. He is thrilled to be in the UBC Orchard Gardens learning to touch wood and go for green. Matt grew up surrounded by forest and gardens, and is happy to be back in the trees. 

ZOË MUCKLE is a Social Studies teacher (also in the making) (nah, she’s there already - Matt). She has 61 indoor house-plants, so…yeah...you could say she’s into gardening. She grew up gardening with her mom and is very excited to get dirt under her fingernails. 

DARK ROOMS, BRIGHT GARDENS

So, we’ve spent ten weeks in the classroom: our hands are rough from paper cuts,

our eyes squinted against the incessant light of our computer screens.

Hunch backed, skin paled, we emerge from an academic hibernation into the bright

Spring light of the Orchard Gardens at UBC. All was clean and orderly in the classroom;

it’s time to get dirt under our fingernails.

So what’s the dirt? What are we getting up to?

How much is there to be done before we can throw in the trowel.

From heatwaves to heliotropes, it's time to dive in and follow the sun.

A PRINCESS IN A GATED FIELD

Getting our bearings on the location of the Orchard Garden was our first shared task of the day.

So many potential access points, but only one true entrance.

We all eventually were able to locate the meeting point, thanks to some loud and animated voices of the group.

We (like the teachers we are) began by a variety of icebreakers to get to know one another.

All of us having a different level of knowledge about gardening,

we began to learn about one another…and ourselves.

We were all mesmerized by what we were told was a “Princess Tree” as seen in Figure 2 below,

or (as later research from home tells me) the Paulownia tomentosa (tomentosa apparently meaning hairy?)..The internet tells me it is an “invasive” species.How can something so beautiful and called “Princess” be invasive?

Well apparently it is one of the fastest growing trees in the world.

Something that I am excited to learn about within my time at the Orchard Garden,

is the concept of “invasive species”. Collaborating with Indigenous knowledge and

Western knowledge together during our time in our CFE is something that I am excited to engage in. 

Figure 2

THE LIGHT THAT BURNS

I only got a small sunburn on my right shoulder where I unfortunately missed with  my four separate sunscreen applications. Oh well. I’ll have to ask one of my new CFE friends to help me in the coming weeks, because it looks like it will be HOT. According to Accuweather, we had a high of 29 degrees celsius today, which broke the previous record of 24 set in 1997. And it does not look like it will be getting any cooler for the rest of this week. 

BOIL THEM, MASH THEM, STICK THEM IN A STEW

Po-ta-to. Step one – hoe the pitch (much homophonic hilarity in this step).

Potatoes love level ground and our garden manager James has started us off with a freshly tilled mound

that needs to get flattened out. Once that’s done, we watch James stake the pitch with a fresh set of trowels

(one foot apart, to keep the rows neat and give the potatoes room to spread).

Our job is to dig trenches, fill them with manure, pop in taters every twelve inches, and cover them up

with a fresh layer of dirt. Easy enough work under the competent management of James.

We’re going with Russian Blues and [insufficient notes taken – something orange?].

We split the potatoes in half if they have more than a few eyes, the sprouting part of the potato.

Once they are buried, it’s a thirty minute break in the shade while James fights with the irrigation system.

Hard work? James is sweating – I’ve had a lovely cool drink of water and have my hat over my eyes.  

Figure 3

MORNING GLORY IN THE AFTERNOON SUN

2:00pm in the afternoon and the summer heat has struck early.

Straw hats are out of the shed and onto our heads as we sweat and hide in the shade.

One thing, however, is soaking it all up: Morning Glory (from the family Convolvulaceae),

a pernicious invasive species that grows unchecked in the flower beds.

For every twisting vine that you unroot, ten more twine around plants, trapping them in creeping vines.

It's an easy task pulling this stuff out… Until you realize that it's everywhere.

Snap the vine where it meets the ground? Its roots crawl unseen, ten meters into the dirt.

Yank it from the flowerbed? The rest of the plant is creeping in the verge.

One doesn’t expect to meet an adversary in the garden – at least not on the first day – but here one is.

Here’s to many days in pursuit of the uproot. As long as you don’t kick the bucket…

Figure 4