We’ve been lucky this year with visits from Roddy’s parents, my sister Tori and her partner Nancy, and reunions of entire families on both sides in Ontario.

When we moved out west two summers ago, it was all in the name of adventure and opportunity. Now that we’re hammering out plans to start our own farm, however, location is suddenly an issue. We’ve met some fantastic folks out here, but to branch off from familial support in such a massive endeavor puts things in perspective. It’s brought Roddy and I to realize that family and connection to a particular landscape, geography, history and culture are intensely important. Important enough for us to reconsider where we want to settle and usher these factors into the equation.

It’s no wonder that the thought of spending Christmas here in Victoria without any family just depressed us. When the subject was raised a month ago, we had flights booked within an hour back to our respective “homes” in Ontario and Scotland.

My flight leaves in 10 hours, and I can’t wait to be “home”!

Our backyard in June

I work from home, and because I live in a quiet neighborhood just a 20 minute walk from the heart of downtown Victoria, I don’t have to face the noise of bustling streets. The sounds that filter through my window include bird songs and my neighbor’s hens. In fact, the sights and sounds of downtown are easily avoided as Fernwood is home to a few small grocers, seasonal farmers market, a pub, a few coffee shops and cafes, a theatre, art gallery, community centre, and handful of boutiques. Fernwood even has a community well!

But today an unusual sound is filtering through my window: the grinding of a wood chipper. Under normal circumstances, this cacophony would grate on me. However, today, it’s music to my ears. My landlord has been busying himself for hours chipping the branches from the recently pruned fruit trees in our backyard. This is the last task in his recent dogged yard work. And today I finally introduced myself to him.

For months I’ve been dreaming about starting a veggie garden in our spacious backyard. However, our plans being in constant flux, it seemed silly to commit. Not to mention my landlord has a slightly scary presence. On Thanksgiving weekend, when he undertook tending to his property, he was wearing orange coverall’s and looked like an escape convict.

As the months rolled on though, it dawned on me that it was sillier for me not to seize the opportunity to finally grow my own veg. Plus, I had word from two neighbors that my landlord was seeking urban farmers to cultivate his yard.

So today when I heard the chipper, I threw on my wellies, grabbed our overflowing bag of kitchen compost and struck out to the backyard to seal my fate as a willing gardener. The chipper silenced. The goggles were off. And here I stood before the tall, bald, coverall-wearing lord of this sizeable plot of urban land. The man I’ve caught glimpses of through my kitchen window as he transformed our front yard… while I kept my distance and created reasons why it was too premature to nurture a garden.

I’m still alive. He didn’t feed me to the chipper. My landlord is actually a very kind man. And I’ve just been given the green light to transform the edges of our backyard into a veggie garden! I got a bit carried away and mentioned to him how wonderful it would be to also have a few hens to keep our house stocked with eggs. One step at a time, as he said. I agree with him. This will be Roddy’s and my first foray into growing our own food – a tremendously exciting step in our locavore project!

The overgrown herbaceous border of our backyard in June

I used to be ashamed to own a creature that was responsible for the dropping bird population in our neighborhood. It’s hard enough to feel welcome in circles of bird lovers (read: cat haters), but we did try to stop this lethal killer in her tracks. However, our wee girl shunned the jingly bells we dangled from her neck as if to say: “Ha! But a challenge, silly human!”

If only she had a taste for mice, we thought. When we got Chika and her brother Yoshi back in Ontario, we were living in a old country house with a thriving family of rodents. In fact, although he’ll never admit it, getting cats was Roddy’s answer to our failing war against the intruders. The mice were outsmarting us, and we needed a night sentry.

But alas, neither of our cats proved their stealth in the kitchen. The yard was their territory, and Chika showed off her true talent maneuvering high in the treetops from an early age. It was the birds Chika was after. Height has never been an issue: I’ve seen her perched precariously on the 50 degree slope of a roof’s edge on an abandoned three-story house in Vancouver. Size is also no deterrent: she was stalking pigeons on that rooftop.

When we moved into the cute neighborhood of Fernwood in Victoria, I feared my neo-hippy neighbors’ reaction to our striking furball… when she sauntered by them with feathers in mouth… or shat in their garden. You can imagine my relief upon finding that Fernwood is full of cats - a sure sign of feline-lovers, right? Well, at least one neighbor isn’t a fan. She’s called three times to let us know that one of our cats has lost their collar in her backyard… right next to her fish pond.

So I was sweating it when Chika came bounding after me into our neighbor’s “Backyard Farm” earlier this year. My initial instinct was to ignore her and pretend I’d never seen the beast before. But I was surprised to find that Chika is a welcome guest to this urban farm. Jenny and Philip tell me that their biggest pests are the starlings, which destroy many of their crops. So our vile little killer is doing her duty to protect the crops which feed our neighborhood. And finally doing mommy proud!