Gardening in the Snow

We woke up this morning to a fresh blanket of snow on the ground. The hot arctic sun had burned it off by noon, but it was still discouraging. I am so ready for spring.

The skidoos are still getting out on the bay, but its getting harder and this is probably the last weekend. One of my work colleagues said that the other day she was coming back from a trip out to her cabin down Frobisher Bay from Iqaluit and she was waist deep in water for big chunks of the trip. Yikes. I asked her if that wasn't incredibly cold and she said, 'nah. you don't notice it with the adreline when you're skidooing through water.'

Another woman who works in my department was just stranded on a skidoo trip up to Arctic Bay (a trip of a couple thousand kilometres, by the way) and she and her husband had to call a charter in to pick them up at one of the DEW line stations. Inuit colleagues are saying that the snow and ice melt is three weeks early this year.

But I'm ready for srping (especially after a trip to Halifax last week, for work -- I couldn't believe how green it was and how nice it was to see trees and grass and great stretches of spring flowers again).

So, what do you do when the spring gardening bug hits and there is no topsoil outside (only gravel and sand in most places, with some bunches of moss etc)? You join the community greenhouse!

We joined the Iqaluit community greenhouse, so this morning we trekked over the melting snow to participate in the big tomato plant-off. John and I are floaters, so we don't have our own plot -- we help to take care of the plots for a couple local shelters and community organizations.

It was so nice to go out of the snowy cold outdoors into the hot humid greenhouse. Plants which were started last week are already sprouted -- and up an inch, in some cases (yeah radishes). Today we were planting the tomatoes and zucchini that hang from the ceiling.

Here is a picture from last year, of the hanging tomatoes being watered by Peter Workman (Peter also conducts the community choir that John and I are part of, by the way).