Early Spring?

We hardly dare hope. But it has been mild and even rainy, so most of the snow is gone, and most of the ice in the river and the Bay. Yesterday it blew hard from the northwest, so I expect much of the ice in the Strait is over on the other side now. I certainly can't see any from here.
I have been starting seeds, mainly the really hardy ones in milk jugs for outside, and a few things in the house - sweet peas, peppers, anemonies (no sign of them so far, but Anne did hers at the same time, and, with the same result as me, excavated one last week. There are roots!) Most of my fuchsias are sprouting new growth here in the office, and the all-white ones have buds on, the crazy things! Unfortunately I'm not seeing anything on the more unusual ones - two triphylle 'Gartenmeister Bonstedt' I bought late in the season, and another really tiny one in the typical pink-and-purple. They may have gotten too dry in the garage.
I have put the smaller wire-and-plastic greenhouse out inside the polytunnel (which has withstood the weather perfectly!) and last weekend I put bubble wrap around it to see if I can keep it from getting below freezing inside it. It would be so lovely to put out some of the hardier things - I am sure the sweet peas would bush up (they are very stretched right now) and other things would do well. But it was -8 outside last night (and windy) so I doubt we managed above zero last night. I bought a great little battery-operated temperature and humidity gauge that records the lows and highs, so I have been keeping records out there for a couple of weeks. Soon!

January Thaw

         This was the post-Christmas snowfall - a festive look in the front yard. However it is all gone now, as we are having a break from the wintry weather. A bit of rain and quite a lot of wind, but warm. I looked out in the afternoon and the sky was blue! And the solar water heater was cranking out hot water in the basement.         
          Decided to go for a walk, up the hill as far as the golf course. In our sheltered corner there was not much evidence of the wind, but it was still blowing up on the hill, on my back as I walked. I was a bit worried about the return journey but it was not too bad - a function of the +5 degree temperature! However it started to rain a bit as I neared home.
               I stopped in at the polytunnel to give it a bit of a face-lift. It had popped a few clips on the Southeast corner in the wind before Christmas, and then of course the clips were under the snow so I couldn't do anything about it. However! The snow has disappeared and the clips were just where I thought they'd be so I got it all put back together again. It's a bit damp inside but warm. I wish I could grow out there! But I am not deceived. The cold will return.
            The cold frame was bare as well, and everything inside looks great. A bit dry but I don't want to water, as there's cold coming tomorrow - and snow on Wednesday. And as I look out now there are flurries. It's been nice to have the break, though.

Mists and Mellow

How did it get to be October so quickly? I am still in the garden, tying up the new raspberries and getting ready to plant garlic - and I think I am going to try fall sowing potatoes. Always something new to try! The rudbeckia I grew from seed this spring is really strutting its stuff at the moment. They are certainly doing better than the echinaceas, but of course they are perennials and the rudbeckia are not.
Another annual I shall certainly plant again is ricinus communis (Castor Bean) which didn't get as large as I'd hoped but still is making quite an impact.

The burgundy ones look the best but I like the red stems on the green ones. Those to the west of the house are big and doing well, but haven't produced seed, I suspect because they don't get sun until the afternoon. I hope to get enough seed from the ones in the photo to produce next year's crop! And speaking of seed, I am harvesting seed from Anne's giant bachelors' buttons (the ones I grew, I mean) to be able to plant them again. (*Update: They are Centurea Aloha alba - and there are 'rose' ones as well. Must find some. )I'll put them farther back in the border next year. They turned out quite tall.

The geranium "Rozanne" is in this same bed (and there's another one in another bed as well) and it has been blooming all summer and fall. It is certainly as good as everyone says.The cosmos are keeping on but man, did they ever get big as well! There are amaranthus in this bed too, but, unlike last year, they did nothing this time. Curses. I have some verbena "Bonariensis" here too, doing well. I actually saw some in parks in Dartmouth when we were there in September - catching on for municipal planting!!
I have harvested the cranberries in my cranberry bog - I think I counted 61 this year, up from 12 last year. And it's the big apple harvest I anticipated - we have had apple crumble and apple cake already, and they are only getting started ripening.The pruning last winter did no harm at all.

Heat Wave

      It's going to go to 31 degrees today, and the rest of the week will be in the high 20s. Not too nice for working in the garden, though I did do some renewing of shrub roses, cutting back a couple of Therese Bugnets, a Hansa, a Snowy Pavement and a Jens Munk.  I have more to do, but once it got to 11:30 I left the outdoors to bake on its own and came in. I did drag all the detritis to the burn pile, as roses like these have many too many thorns. They never compost down, the thorns, so for safety I have been burning them.  Not today, of course, but some cool damp day in September or October.
      I have been working on the pathways and seating area to the west of the house - finally got the landscape fabric and the wood chips spread for the seating area - now to work on the seats! I have a plan to sand down and spar varnish our old Ikea living room furniture - 2 loveseats and a sofa (or 2 two-seaters and a three-seater) and put outdoor fabric on the cushions. This may not all get finished this year! Anyway I could put them in the seating area, perhaps with the blue sunshade over them - or maybe we can get a screen house! (I have simply given up with the bloody mosquitoes - they are everywhere when I'm outdoors, probably because we have such good shelter - there's no wind to drive them away. I travel in a constant aura of Off when outside.) So, the woodchips need quite a bit of packing down, but we'll be able to get some of that done when it comes time to put the wood in the basement.  Tramp tramp tramp.

      It's a bit sunny there at the moment, but later on in the afternoon the linden will shade it - and there's usually a westerly breeze along the upper driveway that makes it nice for sitting. Or at least I hope so. The logs will be replaced by Island sandstones, as I locate them!
     We have been enjoying the woodland garden's coolness too - I put the hammock up in there, and it's a great spot for an after-lunch nap - or a reading spot. The lounger is there too, so Fred can nap too if he's having a day off. I have planted a couple of rhododendrons there - a Lepidote "Aglo" and another of the mini ones - like Karen Seleger but this one is white. And a tiny offshoot of Karen Seleger which was in the pot when I bought her, and I nursed her along in the cold frame and in the pot, but she wasn't showing any sign of growing so I put her in the ground too. I hope there will be enough light for them in there - of course we are planning to take down a few of the old pinus niger trees and that should improve things light-wise.

Invincibelle Spirit hydrangea

       I have been doing some propagation- the "Invincibelle Spirit' hydrangea had a broken limb that wasn't quite severed, but the blooms weren't coming out on it, so I cut it off and made up 9 cuttings. I had started a pot of Glowing Embers hydrangea earlier - still no sign of roots but I'm no givin' up! And the other day I pruned a lavender and had to take off some lower, dead stuff and one bit had some live stuff above, so I have a couple of pots of lavender. And, a propos of the woodland garden, I took some sprigs off the yew at the Hall, and I have them in pots now, too. I'm mostly using the shelf under the East window in the office for this - it is MUCH TOO HOT in the polytunnel for this stuff.
      Apparently yew loves the dark, and while I have not been able to source any of the fancy particular ones I've read about (that don't grow too big, etc.), I figure the bog-standard variety will be challenged enough in the woodland garden to stay a reasonable size. That's what I'm hoping, anyway.

August is upon us.

New berberis and goat's beard

      After a gloomy almost couple of weeks we are getting a good long stretch of sunshine. The gloom didn't actually result in a lot of rain, so I expect that there will be a need to water very shortly.
       I confess that, after potting up 8 tomato plants in the greenhouse (and one on the veranda) I ran out of room and steam, so some are out in the open garden. I can only hope that they don't succumb to the dreaded blight. They are all grown from supposed "blight-free" seed, so I may hope for a tasty outdoor crop. The quinoa plants, large and mainly healthy when they were planted out, are doing what they did last year - just shrivelling up on the stem. I don't know what to do to make them produce. We have had home-grown potatoes - one pot has been sacrificed, and they were very tiny - but now the commercial ones are starting to be a good price, so I may just leave the rest to swell a bit more.
      The Cornus Kousa is losing its bracts at last, though I have hopes of a few fertilized fruits as a result of them being available to the pollinators for such a long season.  I'll be trying to germinate them for sure. It feels like I've been away from the flower garden for a while; I have been working on weed suppressing and laying more wood pellets on the west side - and now I'm having to buy them so that is painful. But, I've put weed barrier and wood pellets on the big circular area for seating, and will attempt to get it all packed down like the original pathways are. It will not be easy - the pathways have been there for 3 years or more! I suppose when the wood goes in we'll be tramping it down quite a bit. I would like to put the patio table and chairs out there, though it doesn't make a lot of sense as it would be so very far from the kitchen.
     While the rains were upon us I started to make valances for the five big schoolhouse windows, using the rest of the vintage linen we found at Value Village. I had used a part of it to cover the Mission bench we got last winter, and I have enough left to make five valances exactly 16.5 inches long. I am lining them (of course) and allowing a tiny quarter inch to roll to the inside at the bottom. I know what the sun does to linen.

    

       I am waiting patiently for the raspberries, as we had the usual terrible crop of strawberries - I think I made a dessert for the two of us - once! Yesterday I found a ripe cherry on one of our three hardy cherry shrubs. It was on the one which had bloomed most profusely in the spring, and there had been small berries, but they all dropped but this one. Oh well, maybe next year! The shrubs look really healthy - but I am wondering if they need some sort of pruning. They have a lot of very low branches, which might come off, if that doesn't just stimulate more growth down there. AS the shrub cherries are a new thing, the pruning books aren't much help. Anyway, it looks like there will be lots of raspberries again - barring acts of god or whatever. Plagues of locusts.

Summer Fullness

China Doll

        Roses are continuing to bloom well, and the hydrangeas are developing blossoms. I keep buying new plants - I finally got a berberis, one of the lovely ones with the pink veining. I think I am going to put it in the shrub bed by the white pine. The new goats beard is blooming down there now, and the white potentilla (just starting to bloom) will be on the other side. It will be a nice foil for them.
It continues hot (for here) and dry, and so bloom is rushing by. The foxgloves are climbing up into the sky daily. The cornus Kousa is still looking the same, the blooms unfaded. What a good plant it is.

         I am finally dealing with the space along the foundation between the verandah and the little deck, formerly the home of a lot of broken glass and docks. I am putting down wet newspapers and then natural cedar mulch, quite thickly, and I plan to leave it un-planted - at least until after I get the East side of the house painted - a job for this summer.  There are shrubs in front - a weigela (possibly Wine and Roses) and a Persian lilac, Minuet - and I planted up a big, big grey planter with a globe cedar and some trailing plants, tradescanitas, ivy and a fuschia. The area is looking good for the first time ever.

Kalmia

        My Kalmia, which did not bloom last year, has some bloom this time. I am very pleased. I was worried that it wasn't getting enough light, but apparently it likes part shade. There are a lot of low branches which I would like to prune off, mainly to make more plants. It's a lovely specimen.

     The heat is such that I don't get a lot done outdoors any more; and there is still a lot to be done - edging beds, planting in the woodland garden, siding the shed! Not to mention the painting. Ah well. I do get to enjoy all the lovely blossoms.

Phew what a scorcher!

It's not really hot (like in BC, where there are 60+ forest fires) but it IS humid, with rain forecast for this afternoon and tonight. It's the kind of day where sweat runs down your face just while you're walking.
     The garden is doing very well. The Kousa is still blooming away (what good value) and just lighting up the area under the canopy of the white oak. Roses are coming out - the red one on the trellis,  Henry Kelsey. Dublin Bay is planted there too but doesn't do much. Though that bud in front, with the reddish leaves, might well be DB. Never say die in a garden.

Henry Kelsey on the trellis

        The white rosa multiflora has just started to bloom, I hacked it back quite severely this spring so it is not the mound of bloom it usually is; but it is putting on a lot of growth for next year. It's a lot like raspberries - blooms on last year's growth but the branches from the years before that have no bloom at all and eventually they die. Thus necessitating a clearing out.
     I have three clematis out - Nelly Moser by the deck, and Elsa Spath and Niobe in the beds by the lilacs, beside the path to the vegetable garden. The peony is full out as well - not a great colour combination, but I'll forgive a clematis anything.

Clematis Elsa Spath with peony

     I have lost the Nelly Moser by the door - last year it was huge, and this year it's gone. I have finally decided, too, that it does not matter AT ALL what kind of pruning it says on the package is required - in my garden they ALL die back to the roots every year, and begin again from the beginning AND everyone I know who has clematis says the same. The tiny dried out THREADS of branches that are left in the spring could not and do not sustain life. I am going to look for some more and different kinds- Joyce has a Markham's Pink that blooms really early and with quite a different bloom to these.
     I have had linum (flax plant) in the garden by the house on the West side for a couple of years, pretty but never blooming, but this year I was surprised to find one of them in full bloom! Quite pretty and delicate, as is the harebell, also on the west side. I feel I should be moving the similar things together as they may not have much impact on their own with rowdier and showier plants.

Linum usitatissimum.

Campanula rotundifolia

Aren't they sweet? The harebell had expanded greatly from the tiny pot I bought at The Brickworks three summers ago.

     The campanula crowd is expanding in my garden, though I seem to be specializing in blue ones only. Ah well. They are not orange. I planted a bunch of dwarf ones from seed, and I don't know anything about them, like how dwarf and if they are blue. But I have some dwarf blue ones from last year and they are TINY! I shall have to get going on the Alpine area at once, and move them all in. Decidedly more bloom than plant. How gorgeous.