Vivian painting in studio with daughter and grandson




Standing in the greenhouse looking at a choice of seedlings of 200 varieties of heritage tomatoes I could grow was a thrill.This Spring having built more wooden boxes and added more colored plastic tubs to my office roof top vegetable garden I could still only accomodate about 60 varieties, accounting for multiples of favorite ones from last year. I had poured over the printout catalogue and circled the…
The invitation to my birthday party read, “To v. or not to v.?” That is the question. Come to a birthday party to celebrate my birth, rebirth and the birth of William Shakespeare. I’ll supply the Elizabethan feast, please supply your ideas of Shakespeare or of the Elizabethan era or just come as you. After…
One of the most beautiful, healthy and delicious parts of my garden is my “front chard”. It grows between the sidewalk and the road on a patch about 140 square feet ,which is about the size of a large Tokyo apartment or a very small Florida walk-in closet. Well, you can’t live in it, but you can certainly…
Last year my boulevard garden yielded, as far as I know, 100% of Canada’s cotton crop. Continuing my quest to live off the land in the city and grow “wearables” not just edibles, it was time to plant this year’s crop. Giving new meaning to,” you reap what you sew,” I gently pried the seeds from…
If you think; ” a new broom sweeps clean,” is a refreshing adage, you have no idea of how the concept of getting to the root of my garden’s suffocation and plague is rejuvenating. After all, a new broom is only sweeping away some mildly irritating dust mites and dust bunnies revealing a clean floor but digging out pernicious roots…
Christopher Plummer commands the stage, so it is not a stretch, as Prospero commands a tempest. When Prospero said goodbye to Ariel it made me cry. I played Ariel as a child and my daughter is an Ariel, just what I was saying to Christopher Plummer when this photo was snapped.