Spring Planting

A few weekends ago we did some planting and re-potting and freshening up of everything. I meant to post about this earlier, along with a few other things, but I've been soaking up every park visit and evening dinner picnic we can get, and making mental notes and random notes on all the things I'm supposed to write about. With the spring weather, we pulled out all the plants and pots and put in some new soil. It's one of my favourite times of the year, and I feel a bit bashful showing pens to customers in the shop with the dirt under my nails, but it's a glorious feeling to have plants fresh and alive. At first I wasn't going to do any herbs since the courtyard with the apartment doesn't get too much light, but I figured with the front of the shop south-facing, we could try a few herbs and shrubs and flowers right in front of the windows to the shop. One Sunday afternoon, we visited our local nursery + plant shop, on Gerrard in old Chinatown, a few doors down from where we pick up our egg tarts. You can walk there from our shop, probably ten minutes - just go north on Carlaw then head west on Gerrard until you see it. You can't miss it. That was a hot and sunny afternoon for everyone. The next day, we dragged everything out into the courtyard and made a huge mess of soil and water and mud and broken pots. There may also have been some cheese and squashed fruit on the pavement. I think we were quite a sight for folks walking through the courtyard. You might recognize Bogdan, on the right, from the shop. I managed to convince him to come out and do most of the hard work while Caleb moved plants from here to there and I took pictures. I think Jon was maybe ordering lunch. So the plan was I would have all of these beautiful pots and leaves and earthiness outside in front of the shop! I drew these lovely pictures with arrows and  numbers and had Jon build me these makeshift benches of different lengths and heights based on the lengths of our windows. We went to Home Depot, and picked up some wood, and I also picked up some more soil and some more plants, since I was in the zone (lasting a period of several days). Then at the last minute (really, after the last minute, as in after Jon had purchased the wood, dragged his table saw out, and cut everything outside in the dark of night, and then built the shelves), I had a change of heart, paranoid that thieves would come and steal all my potted plants. Is this what approaching middle age is supposed to feel like?? So we went back to Home Depot and picked up some planters. It was like the good ol' days last year when we first moved into this place and we went back and forth to Home Depot, and also had bubble tea while we were there. While I realize that someone could in fact just steal the planter, and while I have actually spent the time googling ways to prevent this (chains, cement, locks, signs, cameras!), I think I've resigned myself to the fact that someday, someone else in this great city of ours may be using my herbs to cook themselves dinner, and I hope their dinner tastes of all the wonder love we've put into it. And who knows what kind of extra fertilizer. In any case, the benches are now in the shop! We had to reorganize the furniture a bit to fit the benches and plants in. It's filled out a bit more since then as we've finished up with the re-potting and organizing, but I love having more plants in the shop! I think plants really do make a place feel cosier and fresher and just a bit friendlier. And even the cat is spending most of its shop time darting in and around the plants and attacking leaves. Every time Caleb comes into the shop, he peers under the plants to see if the cat is there. If you remember around this time last year (or really a million years ago), I did a post on some of the re-potting and planting we did. A bit of it was this new place that we had just moved into, and now that we had the space to spread out all of our plants. A bit of it was also the time - we had just moved in, but we were still waiting on renovations to finish up before we could open the shop, so why not take an afternoon and get our hands earthy. This has to be one of my favourite pictures of Caleb, both because of that expression of complete glee, but also because it was such a special season of our lives - a new chapter. Just having moved in to a new shop and a new apartment, spring weather now coming, Caleb sprouting up before our eyes, fresh and green everywhere (the two of us most of all).     It's crazy how quickly they grow.