I'm making jam, strawberry jam...

       As it says in the song. Just 4 or 5 batches today -

it started to rain while I was in the berry field so I quit, like a wuss. Plan to make strawberry cake as well, for dessert. Gotta get going on that!
         My western garden is doing splendidly this year, it has come along a lot since its initiation, last spring! The F.J. Grootendoorst rose has come along a treat since last June, and the mountain laurel from my birthday before that has grown quite a lot and is looking good too. The variegated wiegelia bloomed as soon as it was planted, not in season, but it has put on a lot of growth since and is looking quite well. There are hydrangeas there, too - and some of them will bloom this summer for the first time.
        The little white rose is Morden "Snowmound" - moved from the rose mound this spring  - and not far away is one of the two "Daydream" roses - I managed to split the one rose plant up, planted one here (just to the left of the "Snowmound") and potted up the other for a bit of babying in the greenhouse for a while before planting it in the bed in front of the door. They are both blooming.

 
      China Doll has been doing well since her move last year, and this year is blooming very prolifically in the bed by the driveway. She does this lovely thing of coming out a really clear pink, and then developing pink freckles as the blooms age. They stay on the plant for a really long time as well.
    And best news of all, the "Ring-around-the-Rosey" bed is doing just what I hoped it would do, when I put it in. Well, perhaps I hadn't expected that the Rosa multiflora would do quite so well, but she's a great big mound of blooms with the other rugosas and hardy roses peeking out around her skirts.

She's a once-bloomer, so when she's done I'll prune her back a bit to give the others some grow room.
    I love rose season! And my very favourite rose, Celestial, is out right now, too.  Must go have a look - and take some photos.

First Rose

Terese Bugnet rose

     It's official...this is an early spring. My first rose bloomed yesterday - a Terese Bugnet on the 'Rose Mound'. I'm sure that in other years the first rose has bloomed about two weeks later than this. There are other roses waiting in the wings as well. Many of the roses have been attacked by bugs but I don't care - bloom season is the best.   
     Gardening organically as we do, these are the hazards we have to live with. I am pleased with the variety of ones that are preparing to bloom - the Blanc double de Coubert is full of bud, as is the Snowy Pavement, the Marie Bugnet and the rugosa at the corner of the south lawn area. It is usually the first, so it's nice to see someone else win! And I was sure that the first would be David Thompson by the door, because there was colour showing in the buds last week, but he is still in bud. And speaking of buds, check out the wild rose in the 'Ring around the Rosey' bed! It will be covered come bloomtime. I hope it's out for the party!

My 'wild' rose, full of buds

     There are ripe strawberries in the greenhouse (a few, but still!), and quite a few dry plants - I have been in town all day for the last three days and haven't been able to check on it as frequently as necessary. However, I have today, and several days next week. Gardening will progress quickly from now on. I watered thoroughly last night, and I'm hoping to see a few miraculous recoveries when I go out to the greenhouse this morning.
     I am also under the gun a bit to get my 'outfit' finished for the 'Party like it's 1952' on the 30th. Yesterday I bought the materials to make a 1950s hat - Vogue pattern 8052 - in white organza. It looks like a ton of fun, but also quite a bit of work! I have had my dress cut out for ages - it's a Butterick Retro pattern from 1952.  I'm making the short version, of course. There are a lot of 50s patterns out right now - and of course every one of them suggests that this is not the sort of thing that someone of my shape should wear - the block shape is not suited to this nipped-in waist and full skirt at all. Oh well, it's just for one day! But it won't be, if I don't get it sewn up and finished.

Making Progress in the Garden

    Tuesday night we fulfilled a long-term commitment to gather red osier dogwood (Cornus sericea - or C. stolonifera at the MacPhail Woods). We borrowed the Family Truck and drove to the Victoria Road after supper, and dug up 10 pieces from the ditch. We discovered that they are shallow-rooted, and the stems root readily and send up new shoots. We did get involved with some deeper-rooted bits but they were really hard to get out with just a shovel - an axe would have been handy. Since they were in the ditch, they have been bush-hogged countless times, so we weren't destroying or even damaging the stock - we even took from four different clumps.
       Back home, we put them in several places, mostly on the outside of the spruce and pine hedges so they will get lots of sun, which they like. I watered them the next morning, because by the time we finished planting it was dark! I discovered that we actually have nine plants, so perhaps we put two in one spot. I put two in the "front" garden, one in the shrub border and one beside the rose bed, and one in the line of shrubs under the maple in the "back" garden - the row of shrubs now consists of: 1. P.G. Hydrangea; 2. Cotinus coggyria (purple smoke-bush), 3. Potentilla (white),  4. Cornus sericea,  5. Chaenomeles japonica, and 6. some sort of Spirea, scrumped from the garden opposite Sears.

The Six Flowering Shrubs - not yet flowering, of course!

     Quite a list. It's a bit dark under there, and I have to keep the spruce hedge trimmed or it would overtake the shrubs, but it should make a good display - sometime.  If necessary, the maple can go - it's a Norway, anyway, and I consider it a weed tree. The number of saplings I pulled up in the flower beds this spring! Some of them two or three years old!!
     The Ring-around-the-Rosey bed is looking good - the Rugosa roses are putting out buds and the one in the middle is just fountaining out, over all. I am not sure if the last-year branches will flower, so I shall keep an eye on them and if they don't, I'll prune them out. They remind me a bit of raspberries at the moment, so I won't be surprised if they don't flower on last-year's canes.

Thornless! Mystery Rose

      I had decided that it might be Rosa Pleine de Grace last year, but in reading about it just now (got to love Google!) they talk about how thorny Pleine de Grace is, and mine has no thorns, none at all. Back to the drawing board, then.
      If anyone has any ideas I'd be happy to hear them. Blooms early, once, in clusters of single small blossoms, no scent that I've noticed, no thorns, vigorous, roots readily, blooms white with a hint of pink, turns more pink as it ages. Blossoms long-lasting. I once thought it might be Rosa Banksiae but their blossoms, though small, are doubles.
    The greenhouse has had a re-vamp, I de-skinned it and worked on the strapping, replacing four broken ones with new, and then re-taped the plastic and pulled it over again. There was one bad hole where a broken strap had poked through over the winter so I just taped it up. The plastic is quite opaque, so I don't expect it will last another year, but I am hoping it will do for this one. I hoiked out the strawberry plants I'd sunk into the vegetable garden bed late last fall and they are loving the warmth of the greenhouse at the moment. They all seem to have survived, and the ones which were on the West side of the bed were much warmer and so have started into growth - much more vigorously than the ones which had been on the East. I am sure they will all catch up eventually. The outdoor strawberries (the ones in the ground) are looking well. I have uncovered one bed and am leaving the other covered, to see if it makes a difference. There were three degrees of frost last night, so the uncovered ones are shivering this morning.

Frosted Lady's Mantle, April 19, 2012

    I am uncovering flower beds gradually, and discovered that the Alchimilla mollis was coming along grandly under quite a covering of brown leaves. It was quite big, so I dug it up (with quite an effort, it had made a considerable root-ball) and used the two-forks method to divide it into five pieces. I put one in the north-door bed, two in the South, and two beside the rock steps on the side lawn bed, pulling out two huge phlox to do so. I'm trying to keep smaller plants beside the steps. I should re-plant those phlox, because they are probably the nicer-coloured ones (not the dull light mauvey-pink ones I have in such abundance) - either white or the darker pink. I must check last year's photos to be sure. 
    I located some flower seeds at WalMart (though the garden centre isn't open yet) and bought some - another package of Nemophila Total Eclipse, some Morning Glories, and Cerinthe, which I saw on Beechgrove last year and loved. I started the seeds yesterday, and some are indoors in the wee greenhouse, while the rest are in the outdoor one. Fingers crossed - it's rather late to be starting them, they say, but I think 6-8 weeks until the last frost could be now.

Things are coming up!

Yesterday and last night we had a lot of rain and wind with quite warm temperatures, and this morning I saw parts of the garden which have been under snow since December. I was quite shocked to see the snowfall numbers the other day on the Weather Network - they say that accumulations were slightly less than the average (so far). It certainly seemed like more. But I think the key was that it NEVER melted, new snow just piled up on old snow all winter long. But now it is almost all gone, and there are crocus and daffodils peeking up. If it gets warm enough this weekend, I want to spend some time outdoors - I have shrubs which have been beaten down and even broken, that must be dealt with. Part of the trouble is that I never did mulch the roses, for instance, because by the time it should have been done the ground was covered with snow - and it stayed covered! So my pink potentilla is looking sadly flattened, and the spirea in the bed by the driveway is quite battered too. And those are only the ones I can easily see.
On the knitting front I have finished the Zetor shawl - I was worried about running out of yarn so I knit on anxiously, and finally cast off last night with 3.5 grams of yarn left - about 25 metres. Phew! It's not yet blocked in the photo above - it will be larger and the pattern will be better-defined after that happens, probably on the weekend. We have dance tonight, and I have a meeting tomorrow night, so it will have to wait.
Because the next round of Sock Madness hasn't begun yet, I'm trying to pull out old projects and finish them, even though for me the best part of knitting is starting something new. How shallow I am! Anyway, I dug out my bamboo Clapotis, started back in January with yarn I bought in Glasgow (part of the sentimental souvenir series), and I'm finding it pretty easy after fighting with mohair for two weeks. The bamboo is quite slippery, and I have it on Knit Picks interchangeable metal needles, so I might switch to wood if I have the same size. Or, because it is so narrow, I might even dig out some bamboo straights. Many say that bamboo with bamboo is a good combo.

Sure is close these days!

We went to the Victoria Playhouse Monday night to see Papillio, a trio of people we know - Jennifer Publicover, flautist, Colin Jeffrey, violinist, and Phil Schappert, guitar-and-vocalist who is also a PhD in insects (I don't know what that would be!) . He named the group, which is butterfly in Latin. It was a great show.
Anyway, it's barely a couple of weeks since we saw Rose Cousins in the same venue (although she had a bigger crowd) and she mentioned it's being CLOSE - as in the weather: close means humid, or muggy, in PEI-speak.
I'm glad she said it, because I hadn't heard the word used in that way for years. I'm trying to use it myself now, and the weather is cooperating by being "close" almost all of the time. It was quite 9 o'clock last night before it cooled off in the house, although it was nice outdoors by that time. The humidity has been high, and last evening the wind died, so the nice breeze that makes this kind of weather bearable was missing! However, we have a fan in the east-facing window of the room across the hall from our bedroom, and if you set it to "suck" there's a lovely westerly breeze in our room all night. Heaven!
I haven't had to consider using the A/C unit yet. Of course, if anyone was sleeping upstairs that would be different...it's much hotter up there as there's so much roof. When the girls come to visit in August I'll have to get it out and hook it up, if the weather continues as it is.
It's all great news for growing things, however! We have phlox paniculata out all over, as well as monarda (above), hemerocallis and lilies, the later roses (The Fairy and Alba Meidiland mainly), and the grass! It's growing like weeds, mainly because that's mainly what it is!

It's time for roses.

I am just so impressed with this rose - I put it in spring 2008, and in spring 2009 I discovered that it had been gnawed by mice - but the plucky thing just grew up from the roots, and this spring it grew plenty of canes and buds. The flowers are semi-double (about 25 petals) but the buds are quite pointy... and the most attractive thing, I think, is when the buds start to open. They make a lovely little whorl which gets bigger and bigger, over a day or more. And then they LAST, both on the bush and cut, for many many days. Now, if only I could remember what its NAME is? Or, failing that, if it would just sucker me some babies so I could plant them everywhere. That would be almost as good.

Speaking of suckers, the Bourbon rose, Tuscany Superb, on the rose mound, is making more all over the place. I have put one in the bed by the (new) lilac hedge, which had a poor start but is taking off quite well now. The main one is blooming, but, because it is behind a Therese Bugnet, doesn't show up that well. I must do more pruning. Heavens knows I have plenty of Therese Bugnet! The Snow Pavement is also suckering along well. I wish the eastern end of the mound was filling in as well as the western one, but I fear the nearby trees are at fault for cutting down on the light. Also the varieties there may be at fault? But surely Hansa is one that should sucker out like a good one - it certainly suckers all over old dooryards.

Awaiting Better Weather...

We've just had a siege of terrible wet stuff for over a week - cloudy, warm and drizzly. There were a couple of downpours as well, so the garden was well watered. But it's been drizzly-dreadful since my b'day, and I hadn't had a chance to use my new present, an eating-outdoors table and 4 chairs. However, we had a short window of opportunity last night and gave eating out a try. It was quite cool - both for the eaters and the "eats" - (man I hate that word...). But I can say I've done it, a week after my birthday, at last.

The garden continues apace, even without the sun. There are many roses out, and the Henry Kelsey on the rose trellis is a sight to behold. He's quite visible from the house, given that he's such a bright red. This morning the Dublin Bay was blooming as well...they are really quite alike in bloom, so I doubt that anyone will notice that there are two different roses on the trellis - though their foliage varies quite a bit.

And, news flash! I had moved my first Henry Kelsey from the rose mound to the hedgerow on the east of the vegetable garden, the year before last, and he struggled a bit and then croaked. However, I've been keeping watch, because he started to sucker up from the rootstock late last year. And today it was blooming (or rather, budding) and it looks like it's a very similar rose's root - maybe even ownroot (though there *did* seem to be a bud union) - in any case, it's a brilliant red, and single-looking. I'm so pleased. Now I have to get it a climbing apparatus of some sort.

I finally gave up on finding potato seed and filled up the vegetable garden with my own tomato seedlings - all Roma, so look out! There will be much salsa made. And perhaps even tomato sauce. There must be 5 dozen plants in all - one Duchess, 6 Lemon Boy, 6 Sweet Million, 6 Early Girl and the rest Roma.

The John Thompson by the front door is blooming beautifully - he is such a good repeater, and quite early, thanks to his rugosa heritage. I am kept busy deadheading, but this is not a big duty when he's producing so well. Of course the dreadful wet weather has made the blooms a bit of a sticky mess, but SOON this will be over (dry for at least the coming week, although cooler until Thursday or Friday).


I started to scrape the paint on the South end of the house -it is its turn to be painted this year - and, thanks to all this wet weather, the stuff is coming off most easily. I think it will need at least a week of dry and sunny before I would dare to put on any stain, though. The shingles feel like sponges.

It's the love, love, loveliest time of the year

Gardening is gearing up. Lilacs are out, vegetable garden is half-planted (more tender things go in this weekend). Grass is growing, mosquitoes and black flies breeding - summer on The Island!

I have one of the tree peonies planted, in the bed by the driveway. Fred suggested the perfect spots for the other two: on the lawn to the south of the house, above the rock wall which is the backdrop for the flower beds below. I think I'll have to dig right across, and place them in the middle of each bed. Then fill up the rest with the plants we have in abundance - phlox, shasta daisies, geraniums.

This will result in slightly less lawn to cut - yes, I did see his cunning plan to eliminate even more grass cutting from his agenda. However, they will be ideally placed there, with lots of south exposure. And it's been hard to mow by the rock wall without inadvertently dulling the mower's blades. It's hard digging, though, as this area has been lawn since 1977 or so. And before that it was the Connors' "patio" - a big pile of dirt with railway ties on top. It will need much amendment before the peonies go in. They seem perfectly happy on the deck in their pots, for now.

I've been working on the Meandering Vines shawl in Knit Picks Shimmer, in fennel colour. I got season 2 of Lost from the library and have been trying to see as much of it as I can before it goes back - tomorrow! It's fine to knit to, because there's not much to have to look at, in order to follow the story. And the knitting is pretty straight-forward too - I've been adding beads, but I think I'll stop now and save the rest of the beads for the other end. I don't know if I'll bother trying to see any of the other seasons of Lost. TV series viewing seems to be more of a winter activity; however, when I'm aching from digging it's good for breaks!

Another garden project almost completed is mulching the rose berm - as usual, it's hard to get enough newspapers for the project. I put layers of newspapers under the cedar mulch to keep the weeds down a bit. I bought 26 bags of mulch, and have - I think - 5 left. And about 1/8 th of the berm to go. Some of the roses are looking rough - William Baffin had a poor showing last year, and doesn't look great yet - very slow to come out. And the Grootendoorst is not showing much progress at all. I cut Sir Thomas Lipton down to the ground; there are a few new shoots coming from the roots now. The berm looks quite different without his looming presence! However, Blanc de Coubert was rehabilitated last year and did wonderfully well, so I have hopes of Sir T. The rose in the bed by the driveway (forget its name at the moment), which was gnawed by mice, is sprouting up from the root. I hope it's own root! The two reds climbers on the rose trellis are growing, the Henry Kelsey especially well.

I've been having fun with my little reel mower - it is just ideal for small areas like the south lawn, or the triangle below the spruce hedge - even Fred likes it. I ordered a sharpening kit for it from Lee Valley last night as the local repair guy didn't know how to sharpen it - and I understand that they probably need sharpening fairly regularly. I noticed that even when new, it couldn't cope with dandelion stems. But it loves cutting the grass!

I think I'm in love.

Yesterday I trolled all of the local greenhouses, looking for medium height hardy roses - the top of my rose mound is a bit sparse at the moment, as I have lost a few roses there and, I guess, never really had a clear plan for that area. Anyway, I was looking for something in the 3x3 size. I have been reading up and Frau Dagmar Hartroop looks nice, and of course for sweetness Dart's Dash. I have just one pavement and I think they are lovely too. I was keeping an eye out for Roseraie de l'Hay, which is NOT for the rose mound at all, as she is a huge seven footer, and bushy. I thought I'd seen some at Wally Mart, but if I did they're all gone. Anyway I did get a George Vancouver there, it's a medium pink and grows the exact size I wanted. And it was $6.97.

Tried VanKampens in the afternoon, and they did have Roseraie, but at $22.99 I thought twice. Even with a buy two get one free sale on, it's over $50! But on my way out I had a closer look at the tree peonies - the sale was the same, and the base price was $9.99! So I bought three: white, pink and maroon/deep red. I've been doing research on them online. These seem to have Japanese names, and I have a short list of those. They apparently need quite a deep hole and lots of compost and such. Also alkilinity, which doesn't come natural to PEI! And they'll need full sun. I had a bit of a dig around in the bed along the driveway last night, and I think I could excavate a big enough hole in the middle of it for one or two of them. Because they're so tall, it will add quite a bit of height to that bed. I would like to put the maroon/dark red one near the house, but I am not sure there's room or enough sun - because it faces East, when the sun goes over there's deep shade there in the afternoons. Ah well. It's a glorious problem to have.

The lovely man who digs up my vegetable garden was over on Monday, and bless him, dug out all the dandelions before cultivating. I put them into the compost cart and they'll be gone when I get home today. (I love Waste Watch too.) So no seeds from them, at least. I went to Vesey's on Tuesday and bought $60 worth of vegetable seeds. Apparently it will rain on the weekend, but I may plant some of it anyway. Can't wait for green onions and leaf lettuce, and so on!

The next big job is to buy a lot of composted manure and mulch, as the rose mound needs badly to be re-done this year. I've started to save newspapers to put underneath the mulch. It will be so great to not have to mow or weed up there any more.

It's been cool, but that's fine with me - it means the heavy work in the garden can get done without heat-stroke. Things are slow to come out, and slow to fade as well. It's an exciting time, garden-wise, as the lilacs, spirea and honeysuckles are about to pop. Today I could smell the poplars - even though most of them have died, there must be one or two left. The smell is the best part of them, of course!

Little by little, spring is creeping in.

We had a glorious weekend, weather-wise, and visited friends & had friends visit us, so it was great socially as well. Much rain and sun meant some flooding on Saturday, but it was a complete surprise to return Sunday evening to find the first of the flowerbeds out from under the snow, with exciting green sprigs appearing - muscari, narcissi, and even some of the perennials are peeping up. No sign of the new bulbs yet, but the bed at the corner of the house is almost bare, so there may be shoots soon.
Because of all of the snow cover, we will probably see lots of mice damage - already I spotted a rose which has had all its bark gnawed off. It's not well-protected with spines on the stems (like the Rugosa hybrids) so it was probably a lovely snack. I am hopeful that it will come back from the roots - they often get pruned pretty severely. Fingers crossed.

Because I was away from home, I didn't get the second Sock Madness pattern until Sunday. I got the cuff on the first one done last night (late, as we had some friends over to play music in the evening). It's a colourwork sock, and I usually find them quite fast, so I hope to have some progress to show soon. My version is in dark green and off-white. The pattern is Tokena, based on Maori basketwork, apparently.

About 7 pm, we were outside and there was a huge flight of Canada geese - we think there were literally hundreds. They all landed by the Creek, making a LOT of noise. I took pictures, but they were very far away in order to take in the vast numbers. Inspiring anyway, as well as spring-like. I don't think I've ever seen so many as I have this year.

On Sunday we visited the "hydrogen village", which is really a plant to make hydrogen from wind power (to allow the power to be stored for the future, thus evening out the load). It's being built in North Cape, and we have photos, but it's "technical. Pretty though".* Well, not pretty but really interesting!

*Homage to Local Hero, the best movie EVER.