Farmers and Gardeners

Apart from my lifelong passion for animals and my dogs in particular, I have always loved flowers and plants. As I grew up and matured, gardening was catching my interest, but various circumstances didn´t alow me put my hands on it, until now.

You see, growing up in a family, where gardening is a strong passion, way of life and art, is inspiring and tough at the same time. Living up to the standards of my grandfather (for whom gardening and hunting was a way of life), my mom (the artist - she can make a dry stick bloom) and eventually even my cousin Stepan (who became a professional gardener), is rather tough, but motivating in deed.

Aside from that, Jachym had been pesting about growing potatoes, tomatoes and other vegetables. As we have already a red current bush and a rubarb field, he had the vission of enlarging our "farm", while I had the image of me watering, fertilizing and otherwise taking care of all the new "life".

Ok, at the end, I said yes. So we got tomatoes (big ones, bush ones, cherry tomatoes in red and yellow color), yellow, green and red peppers, cucumber, egplants, various herbs, strawberries and those darn potatoes. I most certainly hope they will benefit from our care and bring those expected "fruits" eventually.

As our "farm" is not equipped for such "business", we had to help us with various solutions. The only thing we really purchesed, apart from the plants and the soil, was a green house. Otherwise nothing would come out of the work, as it is too cold up here and summer is too short. The advantage is, though, that we have constant light since the beginning of May, so things are eventually speeded up a bit.

We gathered old, broken dog poop buckets and empty nutritional supplement buckets and jars (thankfully, we buy all in large sizes due to the large number of dogs we have), and drilled holes in them for water drainage, and even an old wooden box in which we buy frozen herring fish for dog snacks, came in very handy!

We also turned our old send box (remains of our house previous owner´s), which in the beginning served as puppy play area, but unfortunately was taken over by the cats (they claimed it without asking) and used as toilett, which we totally disaprove of, into a mini potato field.

I listened carefully to my mom´s instructions and ideas. She came up with ideas for small bush-like tomatoes which do not need too much space and can be growed in a pot style. She planted strawberries into a large pot and insured me they will be happy that way.

Yes, the strawberries travelled 2000km up north, along with the tomatoes! And with a 1,5m high cactus, but that is a separate story I am saving for some other time :) Crazy will simply always remain crazy! :)

As for the decorative gardening, besides all sorts of hanging and pot flowers, which we have every year, we stopped by on our favourite spot in Sveg, where they sell great quality plants, along the way home, and also visited an awsome garden in Yxkaftkälen (our nearby village), and bougth several perennial flowers and plants for our next project, which I look most excitingly forward to. That will be a real pleasure and relaxation therapy! :)

So, if the winds don´t take our greenhouse (so far it survived the test of two tough

winds and heavy rains), we do not forget to water and feed the plants, nibble off leafs and sing to them, and if the Northern Gods bless, we migh have some proud farmers´ and gardeners´ reports soon again!

Gosh, it´s already 10:00 am! I gotta run to water the tomatoes!

Katerina