I knew I was going to have to deal with the maple helicopters. I'm not directly under a bank of trees but my plot lies in the direction of the wind. If all those seeds sprout, I'll have an 11' x 14' fledgling forest. Do you know what I mean by helicopters? They're the maple seeds that twirl when they fall from the tree.
After the winter on the ground they look like this:
Last year I thought they were like mulch and left them on the ground. Within weeks I had zillions of sprouts to pull out--the problem being that I'm such a newbie at gardening, I wasn't sure which was a maple tree sprout and which a leaf lettuce or a radish.
This year I thought I'd pick up all the helicopters, but after a couple of hours crouched under the sun, my lower back and knees grumbling curse words at me, I'd so-called cleaned less than half the garden. Now I'm debating whether I should just go with the flow. Do an experiment of survival of the fittest. What will I have by July? Maples or beets?
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The other day I visited the McCord Museum where they have an exhibit of First Nations' identity as represented by clothing.
Afterwards I went upstairs to the Montreal exhibit and found it interesting to compare the moccasins (ca. 1900) I'd just seen with slippers worn by well-to-do Montrealers in 1860. The beaded design on the moccasins are symbols evoking sacred places. The designs on the slippers are... well, I suppose the embroidered hothouse blooms evoke sacred places as well, though I wonder if the wearer thought of that so specifically.
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