18 July 2008

My Foggy Fundy Garden


We're into yet another session of fog here in beautiful upper Scotts Bay. Honestly, this has been the summer of much fog, and while it doesn't bother me at one level, it does get tiresome not seeing the moon at night. Rumour has it that tonight or last night is the full moon, but I haven't seen the moon since last weekend. It's stinkin' hot in the Valley, and not exactly cool up here.


But the fog, even when not real cooling, does bring moisture to things and makes a nice artistic look for many plants, like the pink clustered bellflower at the top of this post.


"The fog comes in on little cat feet" wrote the poet Carl Sandburg. Well, here it's more the size of cougar feet, the way it slams in off the bay.


The hot temperatures that we're having when the fog is gone and the sun is out? They make things bloom and go past quickly. It's been fun to see what is new in bloom each day, but also amazing at how quickly some things are fading. The poppies started bursting in the past couple of days, while the lupines are fading.


I think I've mentioned in the past that things grow really large up here, sometimes. This year everything is of brobdingangian proportions. Submitted for your approval, this tiny white clematis bloom. That's a luncheon plate I put beside it for some sense of scale. I've never seen a clematis flower this big. We usually have lots and lots of blooms but not monsters!


Our honeysuckles are coming on nicely, too. This is Graham Thomas, one I bought from Bunchberry nurseries several years ago. Lovely plant, and makes the hummingbirds quite happy too.


And this is Mandarin, which was bred by Dr. Wilf Nichols, formerly of the University of British Columbia, but now at Memorial University of Newfoundland, where he tends to the awesome botanical garden.


This is Clematis recta purpurea, which has really purple foliage up til it blooms. I love the clouds of tiny white flowers, somewhat like Sweet Autumn. And the cranesbill is 'Red Admiral'. I'm liking it a lot, because it's quite tall and has that great colour, whereas most of the brilliant coloured ones are much lower to the ground.


Flowering alliums make me happy. This blue jewel is Allium caeruleum, and it's been making babies so I have more of them this year. I notice 'Hair' is starting to flower too, but I didn't take its photo just yet.



I wish I could remember the name of this lily! It doesn't get tall, and it doesn't multiply very fast, but the colours are just great, especially when festooned with fog.


And my favourite of the annual poppies, the deep wine ones. They're just totally awesome.


And this is a gratuitous shoutout to my alma mater, the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, where the school colours are blue and gold. I didn't PLAN this planting to work out, but it's definitely blue and gold: Yellow loosestrife, blue monkshood, yellow foxgloves and blue clustered bellflower. Aggies for the win!

Maybe the sun will come out tomorrow properly and we'll see the garden by a different light. Today it's dreamy and water coloured.

31 comments:

  1. Although pressed by the cougar-footed fog, your garden certainly looks lush and lovely. We'd sure love to have some of your moisture here in Austin, where it's dry as a bone.

    The full moon was lovely. I'm sorry you missed it and hope you do get some clear skies soon, Jodi.

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  2. Fog in the summer is completely foreign to us here, and it's only foggy here in mid-winter when the ground is wet from rain and it is dry and cold for a few days.

    Is it cold when it's foggy?

    Yes, there was a full moon last night, but the next few days should leave plenty of opportunity to see an almost full moon as well.

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  3. Yes Jodi, we have full moon in Toronto.
    Today it was quite warm und humid, we expect some rain or thunderstorms over the next few days.
    Love the pictures of your garden, the flowers look great and beautiful,
    cheers Gisela

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  4. I've had the same kind of trouble here on the Eastern Shore, Jodi, unseasonably warm day after day, and the ground is dry, weird for a NS summer. The fog rolls in at a ridiculously early 5:30 p.m. (instead of 7 or 8:30 p.m.). Flowers that normally stick around for a week are here and gone in a day. Plants in part sun are acting like plants in full sun (and not happy about it). And powdery mildew! Just the right combination of dry and damp to destroy my pepper plants and cause rot in the container plantings... *sigh*

    But I do love summer, I do! Because at least the sailing is still good, and I did get to see the moon last night when I was tossing and turning at 3:45 a.m. I hope you see the night sky soon. :)

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  5. I miss those foggy northern days. It does roll in rather thick from the ocean.

    The gardens are beautiful. Even the cottage gardens up there feel so much more tamed that the tropical and woodland gardens we do down here in Houston.

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  6. The fog does give an artistic effect and I do agree those burgundy poppies are extremely lovely. I enjoy looking at your wide selection of plants.

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  7. Jodi your garden looks wonderful .. fog or not !
    I remember when we moved to Louisbourg as a kid .. and how I hated hearing the fog horn .. it seemed so noisy .. then when we moved to Ottawa I missed that and the fog so much it wasn't funny .. I still do to this day. We have fog here in Kingston because we are on the lake .. but it isn't anything like the cold Atlantic fog. It truly embraced you .. the most awesome feeling in the world : )
    Joy

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  8. Your garden looks fabulous Jodi! Love the shots of your honeysuckle and lily. Things are certainly moving along quickly with all this fabulous weather we've been having.

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  9. Jodi, your foggy garden is lovely! The color of the lily is beautiful.
    I've had the same problem with fast blooming plants this year. The sunflower blooms only last a couple of days and the birds are already eating the seeds. Last year the salvia bloomed all summer, not this year, it's already gone. A big disappointment was the monarda; its bloom time was so brief. The hummingbirds just arrived and never got to enjoy it.

    Hope you're feeling better!

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  10. jodi, I love fog and the ethereal look it gives things.

    About that lily ... take a look at my Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day post and see if it doesn't look like 'Italia' to you.

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  11. Ooooh... I LOVE those deep purple annual poppies! Any idea what the cultivar name is, so I can dig them up somewhere online?

    I'm still giggling about the cat feet vs. the cougar feet. But I would hate to not be able to see the moon that much, too.

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  12. wow! what a show. Your gardens are lovely

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  13. My mouth is drooling at that poppy. Very nice.

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  14. Fog brings feeling of unknown and mystery - I love it when I am out in the Nature. Your monster clematis is surprising :) there must be something in the soil.
    I like all plants you have shown.
    White clematis with dark leaves draw my special attention.
    I hope you are better.
    Greetings,
    Ewa

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  15. I remember the foggy days when I lived in California. It doesn't happen much in the summertime here in Maryland. Well, once in a while.

    BTW, I WANT, WANT, WANT some poppies. Seeing yours reminds me to add that to my list for next year.

    Robin
    Gardening Examiner

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  16. I love that sherbet-colored lilly you posted. When you remember the name - please post. I'd love to add that one to my garden. :O)

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  17. Jodi, your gardens are gorgeous! You've been very busy since those ol' days back on the 4th floor at Acadia (and the conference in Maine!)

    Karen (Kraglund) McLean

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  18. Beautiful close up photos! enjoyed them very much - I agree with Kylee - gives a mystical quality! Enjoyed your blog!

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  19. Hi Jodi, be glad for your fog, you probably are. Your garden is a delight, especially the honeysuckles. We only have the red, those other colors would look good with the red in a tangle of color. Hope you are well.

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  20. OOOPs...I started writing a comment here, jumped to someone else's blog, went to write a comment, and erased my own. Big thanks to all of you for your well wishes and notes...I'm doing better but will be having more tests and probably surgery. It could be worse. If I was a horse, and had this much colic, they'd be shipping me to the zoo....;-)

    Katie, the fog is often cool but sometimes we have 'hot fog' which is just plain tiresome. I don't mind cool fog most of the time, but I'd like to see the water again...

    Kylee, I don't think my lily is Italia, but I must take more photos and try to key it out.

    Kim, the wine poppies were here when I moved here. NOW< I sent seeds to Kylee, and I don't know what she got for flowers...she may have some dark ones and I'm sure she'd share seed. If not, we'll do some seed sending in the fall. I got them to her, so I can get them to you.

    Likewise, Robin, I usually collect a LOT of poppy seed and share them with others. So we'll figure something out too.

    Robin's Nesting Robin ;-) (I'm skimming through comments with answers). It's being a strange summer for gardeners, and I don't know what to make of it all. Things seem on schedule here, just some of them are going fast. But we wil probably settle out again because we dont' get weeks and weeks of heat like we had last week. Today the fog is a cooler variety....;-)

    Thanks again to all of you...I'll be around to visit soon, I promise, maybe even today--after I deadhead and do some weeding, of course.

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  21. I have delphinium envy.

    Gorgeous gardens!! And an amazingly large clematis. If this is the type of garden the mist yields, I say "Bring on the fog!"

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  22. I'm so not a gardener. Only in wildest dreams could I stumble and bumble long enough and hard enough to create merely one half of a garden that's a fraction of the gloriousness and amazingness of yours and others. I bow in your general direction... and all the other true gardeners in the blogging world. Wow. I mean, your garden and land is so lush and lovely.

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  23. I'm sorry you didn't see the full moon, Jodi, but the fog looks quite appealing in your photos. I love the bellflowers in the first photo, but as I scrolled down I couldn't decide what I like best of all your blooms. That clematis is stunning--so pristine!

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  24. jodi, I planted the seeds and very shortly after, I got many, many seedlings. Of those, there are only a fraction of them left and they simply aren't growing. :-( I can't imagine what went wrong, but I doubt if I get a single bloom from them. At the moment, those seedlings would struggle to reach the half-inch mark on the ruler. :-(

    I feel like I've let you down! So was it Lisa that got half of what you sent when I sent them on to her? That seems like such a long time ago, I can't remember! I wonder how they did for her.

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  25. My goodness things sure have grown since I was last here. It all looks perfectly you and beautiful. Now that things are blooming and grown I can get an idea of what scale your garden is measured by and it's huge. I can't believe you take care of all that and write as much as you do. I'm amazed. It's good to be in your garden today.

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  26. Jodi your garden looks lovely peeking out from its veil of fog. I really like the white clematis that looks like the autumn clematis. The purple foilage sounds intersting.

    I did get some of the poppy seeds from Kylee. I tried planting them but didn't get any results. I will try winter planting them this year. Hopefully I will get some of those lovely blooms.

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  27. Your garden is just beautiful. I love that daylily. It's going to be over 100 today and the heat index might go over 110, and with our southern humidity, everything will bake. I wonder if the fog at your house is because of higher temps and humidity, too?

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  28. OMG! That was a BIG clematis! Don't go near it if it ever starts to utter things like "feed me"... ;)

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  29. I can imagine the fog must get pretty depressing after a while, though it does make for some dramatic garden photos. Your flowers are looking wonderful!

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  30. Fog or no, your garden in lovely.

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  31. Just wanted to leave you a note, hoping that you're feeling well and that the fog isn't getting you down.

    For us... fog=December=holidays

    I love how you've found that the summer fog you get makes the colors of the flowers look dreamy in the photographs.

    Hugs,
    Cindy at Rosehaven Cottage

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