Drumming and Strumming On the Rural Music Scene

Media Release

Contact:
Jennifer Borean, Arts Administrator
Or:
Cathi-Lyn Dyck, Public Relations Representative


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Hamiota, October 30, 2007)–The exotic sounds of the African drum workshop were a popular feature. Now, MidWest Arts Council is hosting a guitar concert with Brandon musician Paul Madryga.

On October 13th, the African drum workshop took in 43 participants, some coming from as far away as Souris. Instructor Calla Isaak offered sessions for children, teens and music instructors. While less interactive, Madryga’s musical expertise and creativity promise an equally interesting experience.

Madryga, a Brandon University alumnus, longtime local instructor and composer, hails from Newfoundland. He completed his Master’s Degree in Brisbane, Australia. He teaches through the Brandon University Conservatory, and also privately in several Westman communities. Madryga is highly involved with the Brandon Folk Festival. His unique, broad-ranging style features influences from classical greats to modern folk and rock.

Paul Madryga will be featured at MWAC’s Sunday Afternoon Coffee House at 2:00 p.m., November 18th. Admission is free, with silver collection to defray costs. The Sunday Concert Series is an ongoing feature at the Heritage Arts Centre, located prominently on Maple Avenue in the town of Hamiota. For more information, call MWAC at (204) 764-2400.

Tea Timeless in Hamiota

Media Release

Contact:
Jennifer Borean, Arts Administrator
Or:
Cathi-Lyn Dyck, Public Relations Representative


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tea Timeless in Hamiota

(Hamiota, July 28, 2007)—Surrounded by images of decades past, antique quilts and delicious dainties, two hundred people lined up for afternoon tea at the Heritage Arts Centre in Hamiota on July 20th. Part of the town’s Centennial Week, Tea at the Bank was held by the MidWest Arts Council, which serves an area covering four rural municipalities.

“People continued to line up outside the door waiting for a table from two till five,” said Arts Administrator Jennifer Borean. “(We want to) thank all the volunteers and patrons for their outstanding support.” The doors were kept open an hour longer than originally anticipated. The Heritage Arts Centre’s spaces were put to full use, with the upstairs studio’s quilt display created by local Quilt Till You Wilt group. The main gallery and smaller main-floor exhibit areas featured selections from the Hamiota and District Archives, delineating the last 100 years of the town’s history. Outdoors, the Garden was also transformed into an outdoor tea room.

Funds raised will go to support MWAC’s community arts programming within Woodworth, Blanshard, Miniota and Hamiota municipalities and the town of Hamiota. Tea at the Bank continues throughout the summer on Thursdays from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m., with Dessert by Delivery offered so that local business staff can enjoy MWAC’s offerings on coffee break. For more information about the gallery’s summer displays and events, contact MWAC at 764-2400.

Beauty and the Beastly Budget: Money-Efficient Hardscape

I promised to tell more about how to do your hardscape as low-cost as possible. It would be great if every yard in Canada could get a government grant for purchasing statues, arbors, cobblestone and decking materials, but we have not yet progressed to that level of political bribery. We need to let our parliamentary representatives know what they have to do to get re-elected, people!

Oh, well. In the meantime, it’s good to be on friendly terms with your neighbours and local farmers. A look at what I have in my yard should illustrate why:

Metal stuff.
• Ornate iron headboard, single bed size, from mom-in-law - became a very ornamental garden gate.
• Wagon wheels - now decorating my flowerbeds. I even have a pair with an axle still between them.

Stone stuff.
• Brick patio with rock retaining wall - brick from an old church that had a porch or something torn off it, also from my mom-in-law’s farm; stones from the pile at the edge of the field.
• Mediterranean-style tier garden on the hillside - done with fieldstone.
• Stone “centerpiece” in the middle of the yard - three big rocks hubby brought in with the tractor.
• Gravel paths - you can make a really good path with the same gravel you’d put on your lane. With a certain clay content, wetting it (like with several inches of rain this spring) and packing it produces a firm surface that won’t scatter into the lawn

Wood stuff.
• Raised beds by the driveway - made from old rail ties that were left in the yard by the previous owner.
• Logs and stumps around the bog garden - stolen from hubby’s wood pile.
• Fencing - recycled from old sheep sorting chutes and barn board.

Recycled stuff.
• Old wall hangings with floral/garden designs, from a garage sale - now sitting on brick pads, edging a flowerbed, looking better than they sound like they do.
• Path paving and flowerbed edging - recycled concrete from our old basement floor, broken into “stepping-stone” chunks.
• My Grandma’s old flowerbox-on-posts from under her window.

Go garage saling. I dare you. One of my friends made a fabulous piece of garden art by starting with a recycled lamp base she’d found at a yard sale. Think outside the box about the things you find. The number one rule of making a low-cost yard is: Don’t Follow The Rules! Never mind what things look like they should be. You get to decide what they are. This is gardening at its most empowering.

So I’ve rattled on about hardscaping. Now, a couple of words on plants.

Trade plants with friends and neighbors, or give other people’s castaways a new home. Plant materials can be horrendously expensive too. However, I got a 3-foot birch tree off a friend for $3 at a yard sale, and many, many beautiful giveaways from citified friends who run out of room from time to time.

Also, keep an eye on the department stores in Brandon in mid- to late June. I got a hardy climbing rose for $3 from Superstore one year--toughest rose in my yard, probably because it survived being at Superstore. This year, I picked up a whole whack-load of junipers from Canadian Tire at $1 for a 1-gallon pot, $2 for a 2-gallon pot. Given that I’m short on evergreenery, this was a boon.

It can be done! And there is nothing in the world wrong with doing it the way Grandma did, sharing and creatively using things that are already there. Be good to your wallet. Be good to your environment. Enjoy your little paradise and make it truly your own.

Quackgrass Rules the World - Forget Arthur Dent’s White Mice

Egads! I can’t believe I just used that entertainment media reference for my headline. How cheesy of me. Well, here’s another one: It’s time for the MASH unit to set up camp in our yard, because we are officially The Swamp after all the rain. My bog garden washed away some time ago, and we literally ended up building a bridge to get from house to garage.

I also now believe it is quackgrass, not duct tape or the Force, that holds the universe together (possibly with the aid of Canada thistle). And unlike duct tape and the Force, quackgrass has a dark side and . . . a dark side.

Quackgrass has done an amazing job in a lot of places of standing up to the flooding across roads. We all know that this is not because it is a real hero, but because it is an insidious network of creeping roots that have clamped their vile tentacles into the ground in a bazillion gazillion places. Rhizomatous weeds (and garden perennials) can be a curse.

Thistle in its various varieties is another one that tends to propagate itself this way, making it difficult to get rid of. If only those freakish things didn’t sprout from the tiniest pieces, it might be easier to weed them out. I am not a chemical fan, but I have my limits when there are large areas of infestation to be dealt with.

Lawn edging can be an effective deterrent for creeping roots, provided it is deep enough. Grass roots - remember I yabbered about this last year? - sink way, way down (with their insidious creeping, clamping tentacles). The deeper the edging you can get, the more effective it’ll be, but to tell the truth, I’ve done well enough with the cheaper stuff. It’s still tons better than not having anything in place.

A solution for spreading perennials that my mother and I have both used with success is to sink a round section of an old barrel or pot about six to eight inches in depth into the ground, forming a seamless barrier. She has done this with a patch of iris, while I used a big bottomless plastic pot for my ribbon grass. Which may have drowned anyway, so, oh well.

In terms of garden plants that expand this way, there’s Lily of the Valley, native fern, anemone, Canadian violet . . . and, among others--oh, no, now you got me started--goutweed.

Goutweed is on my Plants of Evil Doom list, in spite of its outward beauty (be ye not deceived!) because it is impossible to kill and very, very difficult to weed out once it gets out of control. You cannot kill it with Roundup, and this time I am not just being over-the-top. To all who appreciate the surface attributes of this plant, I suggest planting it in an isolated area surrounded by concrete sidewalk. I’d say razor wire, but it wouldn’t help.

I’m sure someone out there is thinking, she forgot creeping charlie. Oh, no . . . I didn’t forget . . . I’m just receding into denial. See you when I get back.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, Why Bells and Shells?

Hardscaping. It sounds like a high-faluting term that applies specifically to landscaping a prairie yard. It’s a hard job.... Landscaping.... You know.

Actually, most of you who watch garden shows and read the magazines will know it means stuff in your yard that doesn’t grow. Um, so to speak. (I guess I have a few of those that don’t technically qualify as “hardscape”.) It means paths, walls and fences, patios, statues, ponds. Permanent features.

Is do-it-yourself hardscaping actually hard? Well, to be honest, it’s my all-time favorite part of gardening. I love playing with rocks, railroad timbers and recycled brick.

Know the size of your yard and the location of all the non-movable stuff in it. Don’t plan to put your gazebo on top of your favorite tree . . . Unless you really want it that way. I often just pace things off in relation to the house and property line.

Know where your gas/electrical/water/inconveniently-positioned-underground-stuff is. Everyone knows this rule, but given the number of people annually who don’t actually follow it, it bears repeating. (Gem of Wisdom: Your basement may be inconvenient, and it may be underground, but you are expected to know its location and be able to avoid destroying it for the most part with your yard project. This Gem courtesy of your wife.)

Grab pen and paper, and fear not! I will tell you right now, you do not have to spend a gazillion bucks installing brand new patio pavers or fancy stone paths. You can have a beautiful, enviable yard with recycled or “off-label” materials. (More on this next time.)

Know where you already walk. In a forest-trail sort of way, that thin line of black dirt worn in your lawn is your hardscape for that spot at this moment. Don’t plan to blot it out forever - plan to work with it.

What’s at the end of the forest trail in your lawn? Where are you always headed? What is the use of that spot or area? What makes you grind your teeth in frustration every time you head that direction? “Most liked” and “Most hated” lists focus your planning.

What to change? Know what your spouse will tolerate in terms of expenses. Know whether the hubby will “accidentally” murder the proposed garden gnome with the weed-whacker. (Myself, I was banned from purchasing concrete fish statues last year.) Sensitivity to all your home’s occupants is vital. Ponds and toddlers do not go together well. Children, baseballs and delicate wind chime collections? Hm. Rock garden near the trampoline? This is why we start with doodling.

Be realistic. Be ready to think in terms of what will change when the toddlers, baseballs, and trampolines are gone; when Hubby’s eyesight deteriorates and he doesn’t recognize a garden gnome at two paces anymore.

You know your family’s needs best. Start there. Think about now, the future, and how your garden will grow.

Bugging You Yet?

I do not actually like bugs. But I have resigned myself to learning not to look away immediately and hurry off at a quick pace when I come upon the ugly things. They’re part of a balanced environment. My grandfather, bless him, used to trap any spiders that he found indoors and return them to the garden. (I used to run screaming from them, but that’s another story. Nowadays I’m trying to hide my feelings at least until I’ve got the kids trained to dispatch the eight-legged mini-monsters for me.)

There are about 10,000 species of pest insects; there are many more that don’t make any obvious difference at all, though I suspect if we somehow wiped out all “indifferent” insect species, we’d see some changes in the biosphere; and there are, of course, the good bugs.

My husband deals in the good bugs. He keeps honeybees. Next time you’re tempted to apply a pesticide in your yard, pause for a moment and think of the lowly honeybee. One thing we’ve learned as beekeepers is how important it is to be aware of what local farmers are doing in terms of spray. Bees can be greatly affected by things not meant specifically to kill them.

We’ve also learned to identify wild varieties of bees. They sometimes seem to try to schmooze with our “tame” ones. Some are small and green, and rather cute – and you know that’s a high commendation, coming from a bugophobe. The wild population takes a lot of responsibility for pollinating your garden. It’s important to respect them when you’re making decisions about how to treat insect problems. Remember that often, sprayed chemicals will have “broadband” effects that may only worsen the biological imbalances you’re seeing in your environment. Incidentally destroying “good pests” may only make room for more bad ones to move in more easily.

There are many species of parasitic wasps and flies. Specifically, they’re parasitic to a lot of the Thug Bugs. Some of them eat corn borers in the early stages of development; many of them munch on crop pests, if they aren’t chemically dispatched along with their prey. Two-spotted stink bugs, despite their demeaning name, will prey on the eggs and larvae of such little creeps as cutworms and Colorado potato beetle. Ladybugs eat not only aphids, but also scale insects, mealybugs and other small pests, as do green lacewings. So while we complain about the mosquitoes, let’s keep in mind that they’re only one type of bug, and keep an eye out for the good ones we can encourage.

And now, a question I was asked last week, for which my mother-in-law has a creative solution: What can we do to get rid of yellow-bellied sapsuckers?

Well, technically, they’re protected, so technically, we can’t shoot them. That’s the technical side of things. My mother-in-law hangs old CDs in her trees. They spin and flash in the wind, acting as a bird scare. Worth a try.

The Other Side of the Bucket

Has anyone else noticed a marked tinge of yellow-green in some things this year? Maybe it’s just along my mile of road. Things are looking downright chlorotic. And this is not a reference to chlorine – it’s about the availability of nutrients in the soil.

This year has given a good example of what deep OVERwatering looks like. Some of you might recall a mention of my dad’s geothermal installation, and how cool it was for a dirt geek like me to see the soil layers (high-falutin’ technical term: Soil Horizons). I only mentioned the first of the layers before – the black one, where the dead grass roots are.

Well, today, I’m bringing it all together. The watering, the soil horizons, the yellow rose leaves. The second soil horizon, referred to by great intellects everywhere as “B” (can you guess what they call the first layer?), has a colour of its own. It’s where all the minerals leach down, and it’s where the alfalfa roots roam. I suspect my trace elements are down there somewhere.

So, while I may say to water deeply during dry spells, don’t overdo it; balance is important. It’s probably not going to work out well if you end up compensating by putting your flowerbeds to alfalfa for a few years. I have those lovely plants in my “lawn” (a loose catch-all term around here), and they’re hard to get rid of, even if the roots do relocate deep minerals upwards.

The petunia yellows (iron chlorosis) tend to be caused by pH imbalance, and you can help the immediate situation by watering with iron chelate, according to package directions. I babied one ignorant rose bush through last year on it. This year, it’s looking fine, while my tough established rose is now whining for its turn. Long term, you can add sulphur to the soil to adjust the pH, but do it according to instructions. Personally, I remain in favour of annual applications of compost and well-rotted manure.

The pH issue doesn’t necessarily mean you have a shortage of iron. It may just mean the soil’s too alkaline. You know, when you accidentally dump too much salt on your food, it renders your nutrients difficult to uptake due to alkalinity... Well, no, not really like that, but you get the idea. You can get your soil tested through the Ag Extension Office or buy a home gardener test kit to find out what your plants need.