Late Bloom Day: My Internets have been naughty....

One has to wonder why there are people in this world who have, apparently, nothing more important to do than to create malware programs that attack Internet Service Providers' equipment. Yup, we've been going through another week of fun with our internet. At times, it's been nonexistent. At other times, it's been about dialup speed-not exactly conducive for doing anything more than downloading email--assuming it's all been getting here, of course.

In my mindset, when things like that happens, it's karma trying to tell me something. A project I've been working on that isn't going well? Time to let it go. More importantly, after the wretched day I had on Thursday, it was time for a mental health day of the highest order. So maybe it was a good thing that 'The Internets' (yes, I'm poking fun at Shrubby) decided they needed mental health day too. I spent most of Friday in the garden, puttering--cleaning out weeds, preparing to divide things that haven't already gone skyward, moving a few plants around. Friday evening, Leggo and I went for a long contemplative ride in the woods, where I studied the wildflowers in bloom. Saturday, it rained all day, and today, LSS and I are going to go visit friends for a few hours. Monday is a holiday for some, but I'm going to assume that the now-partially recuperated ISP will continue to work as it has most of the time since Saturday afternoon, and get back to work.


Bouquets of brilliance to all of you who wrote such sweet and supportive notes about our loss of our dear furball friend Tigger. I did indeed plant a catmint clump under the viburnum that I added to the garden for him, and somehow, that brought great comfort to my heart.


This really ISN'T a proper Garden Blogger's Bloom Day report either; with so much going on, and with our garden being so far behind just about everyone else in the continent, I just decided to show off a few photos to let you know that we, at least, out of the snow zone for the year. And bizarrely, some parts of the province area already extremely dry, though we received much-needed--and cold!--rain on Saturday.


Despite the chilly days we had last weekend and early this week, my Stellata magnolia is just fine, and has covered itself in flowers. They have a slight fragrance, but nothing like some stellatas I've seen. Nor like 'Yellow Bird', which I discovered the other day down at Baldwin's had a lovely lemony fragrance. Still tempted to bring one home...


Of course for the next six weeks or more, our garden will be festooned with froths and petitpoints of forget-me-nots, one of my favourite flowers. I like the pink and white ones that pop up periodically in the garden, but the blues are my favourites, of course.


I'm really LOVING this Geum 'Mango Lassy'! It's still in its pot, so it's ahead of the geums in the garden, which are just starting to push up flower buds.


It's not a secret that I'm quite crazy about euphorbias, and while 'Fireglow' is one of my absolute favourites, this would be a close second. It's the well named, 'Fens' Ruby', and with the deep rich foliage and the strikingly neon bracts, it just appeals to my sense of fun.


The primulas are just starting to pop in earnest, and this makes me happy. I don't have a huge collection of primulas, but there are probably a dozen different species and colours out there. This purple one is a favourite; now, if I could just remember where it came from and what it's called!

A few more days and I figure everything will be UP in the garden and I can report on mortalities and successes. For now, I'll leave you with several comments:

Echinacea 'Green Envy' is up and doing just fine.
Weigela 'My Monet' sailed through the winter with flying colours.
You already know that I have FINALLY had hellebore successes;

and I have HOLLYHOCKS! Hollyhocks, of all things. Popping up everywhere. Will any of them be yellow? Doubtful. Could this be the year, though, that I break my yellow hollyhock curse?

Over the Rainbow Bridge to Catnip Land

The Rum Tum Tigger-Tugger, January 1996-15 May 2008


It's a perfect spring day here--the wind has exhausted itself, the sun is a warm balm, things are growing faster than the price of fuel...and I'm in a pool of tears. Our senior cat, Tigger, our big orange bobtail cat, died sometime overnight; I found him in the garden, no marks on him or signs of distress. I suspect it was simply a heart attack and he went to sleep. That's some comfort...but still my own heart feels like it has been ripped open. It's been nearly a year since we lost Quincy, and of course the upset with Dexter is still tender.

My son and I got Tigger and his sister JennyAnyDots from friends of ours who had six kittens. The three males were all orange bobtails; the females, all mackeral tabbies. Tigger had a strong personality, intensely affectionate, inclined to climb into a lap and then put his paw up on our faces. And purr! He was always a champion at purring, but even more he was a champion at putting the other cats in their places. He had, we would say, the fastest paddy-paws in the east.


Tigger was always my gardening companion, and I never saw a cat with more of a taste for catnip. He was obsessed with it. When we moved here 9 years ago, the first spring there was a giant catnip plant in the back yard, with gazillions of babies under it. Tigger was in catnip heaven as a result, and he ATE. EVERY. PLANT. He even ate the roots of the little plants. Now, granted, this took him quite a few weeks, and he did have help from the other catchildren, but he was the chief eater of catnip. The next year the big plant did come back a bit, and he finished it off; but he always went back regularly to the spot where that plant was, even this spring, remembering his glory days of overindulgence, I guess. He'd eat catmint in a pinch, too, but his main love was for his drug of choice.


Over the Rainbow Bridge, there are probably big fields of catnip, and cream and all the other delights that our beloved companion animals love to share. I'm sure that Tigger has already been greeted by Captain Sam Bucus and other members of the Bliss Dream Team, and by those beloved cats lost by Kylee and Joy and others (at the moment I'm in no shape to go check other blogs or I'll simply saturate my keyboard).

And the rest of the catchildren? They KNOW I'm sad. They're sticking to me like honey to velvet. Mungus and I will go out in a little while to bury our friend and to plant a shrub in his memory, of course. So there's no Bloom Day report from me today. The only happy note of course is that my Idol pick is in the top two...but even his music isn't lifting me right now. Though as I was writing this, one of his Axium songs came on my iTunes mix, and some of the lyrics seemed fitting for a final farewell to Tigger.

Walk away, it's your time
Deny the tear in my eye
Your memory will never die
At peace I trust in you every step of the way
To stay with me 'til the end of the day
So move on to your tomorrow as we all say goodnight
…Your memory will never die

"Balance" by David Cook


We miss you, Tigger. Your memory will never die.

They followed me home...honest!

Is anyone else having a May like this? We went through a spell of very nice, warm and sunny weather for a few days in a row; a little bit of rain or fog here or there, but nothing serious. I was planning to clear up some time so I could work in the garden this weekend, and what happened? The temperature dropped, the wind came up out of the north-east, and YUK! I don't wanna go outside. And I haven't, not at all on Saturday. Perhaps today, but we'll see what the morning brings.

Life has been madly busy, which explains both my lack of posting here, lack of answers to comments, and more seriously, lack of visits and comments on my favourite blogs. But I think most of us know what that's like; suddenly, the good weather comes that we've been waiting for (even if for some of you it started months ago) and all those things we wanted to do outdoors we can now do. But with the weather this weekend, I guess i'll stay inside and catch up on the indoor work and play, then take a day off next week when I can go outdoors.


On Wednesday, I went to Annapolis County to give a talk at the Clementsvale Garden Club, and that was great fun. Of course, I also had to stop at a few different nurseries and check out plants, though I resisted the urge to bring home very many. In the past week, however, there have been some great temptations throw themselves at me, so, smitten as I am by Urgent Plant Seeking Madness...I brought them home.

Top photo above, 'Sooty' Dianthus is such a lovely rich coloured flower, and while I had it for several years, it didn't come back last year, so it was time to add a couple of new plants to the chocolate-and-wine garden.

And as I prepare to develop my rockery this year, this pink pussytoes, or Antennaria dioica 'Rosea' batted its eyelashes at me (sure it did, didn't you see it?) I love the rich flower colour contrasted with the silver-green foliage.


Yesterday on my way back from Berwick, I had to stop at Briar Patch Farm and Nursery for a quick look around. I studied the hellebores for quite a while, but then decided instead to try my hand at growing a Lewisia again. I had one for several years that did just fine, and then I'm not sure what happened to it. The secret to lewisia is to give it perfect drainage, very little organic matter, and in my part of the world, protect it a bit from drying winter winds and excessive wet with some sort of protective mulch like evergreen boughs. And the jewel-like colours really get to me.


As many of you may remember, I'm obsessed with echinaceas, and have a fairly healthy collection of them. They're just starting to push through the ground, and so I thought that was as good a reason as any to pick up 'Lime Coconut' echinacea while I was at it.


On my last trip down to bug Rob at Baldwin's Nursery, I collected three native witherod viburnum (Viburnum nudum, formerly V. cassinoides) but also had my eye drawn to the handsome Judd viburnum. Into the truck it went along with three native red maples (Acer rubrum) and a 'Makamik' flowering crabapple. And a magnolia sapling. And a couple more Ilex verticillata (female Canada Holly).


I used to not do well with geums, but once I developed a bed with real good winter drainage, things turned around for me, and there are both yellow and orange geums to brighten up a midspring planting. I like these as much as I do perennial potentillas, which also began doing very well for me once I added them to the same well-drained area. So when I spied this 'Mango Lassi' geum the other day, I knew I had to have it.


And naturally, since I'm totally thrilled with the dazzling talent and obviously nice personality (and he's not hard on the eyes, either) of one of the three finalists in this year's American Idol (I NEVER watch the Canadian version because I despise Ben Mulroney), I had to have this Geum too. Its name?

Cooky, of course!

I don't think the geum will play a Les Paul guitar any time soon. But it's definitely a star in my books.

Oh, I crack myself up sometimes! :-)