A wee walk in the wind

Although we had a drownpour of rain last night and lots of wind, today we just got wind and cloud. Not too cool, though, so it was a nice day to go do some looking at sights around our community. Inspired a bit by our friend Yolanda Elizabet at Bliss, it seemed like a good idea to share my travels with you. So come along now--just a longsleeved sweater and a vest will do, and you'll only need walking shoes.


Look at the foliage on these wild roses--aren't they rich and wonderful? In the summer, we have a number of species blooming, including R. carolina, R. virginiana, R. palustris...and when they're not in bloom and going into autumn, they're brilliant shades of red and burgundy.


Among my favourite trees, summer or fall, are maples--native maples, that is, not the tiresome, overworked, overused, disease-prone Norway maples that boring nurseries and landscapers palm off on unsuspecting clientele.

Wow! That was pretty sardonic for me, wasn't it? Well, it's true. There are too many Norway maples on the landscape, and this year in the province, they are riddled with tarspot fungus. Now, I have to also tell you I have four or five in our front yard, along the edge near the ditch. We didn't plant them, and as long as they are healthy (and I don't care about a little tarspot), I won't cut them down because I can't cut down a healthy tree...but I prefer native species such as red, sugar and silver maples. Look at the colour in these trees, and you'll see why.


Oh, look; a festive display of pumpkins for sale! Perhaps we should get a couple to put on our front step?


Not a flower in sight, and isn't the foliage in this garden beautiful? Along the side of the road in Habitant, the yard this particular bed is in always catches my eye; a nice balance of form, texture, and four season interest. But gee, it's getting chilly, and that wind is still blowing quite enthusiastically, isn't it? Maybe we should go have coffee?


The North mountain where I live still has vestiges of old growth Acadia forest, although this section has probably been logged at one time or another. But look at the spectacular variety in the maples, ashes and birches along this hillside. They're just starting to get some colour the past couple of days, and within the next week they'll be turning the forest into a wash of colour.


Time to go down and visit the beach in Scotts Bay. In the summer, this is a popular place for picnics, bonfires and rockhounding, but today, it's as deserted as a schoolyard in July. The tide is just about at highwater, so the creek leading down behind the stony beach is full of water, and the marsh of course is always rather spongy.


Not a soul down here, and small wonder; though the waves aren't all that high, the wind is stronger down here than it was in the Valley. The shoreline slopes slowly upwards here, and the tide comes in over several kilometres of mudflats, hence the muddy tinge to the waves coming ashore.



Nope. No one up here, either. It's too windy to collect driftwood for a bonfire today, so maybe we should just walk along the beach for a bit. Don't you love the way the pebbles roll and slide under your feet?


Here's a closeup of some of the pebbles at the highwater line. Further down the beach, the stones are larger, and they gradually decrease in size as we come further up the slope. Among the rocks of the North Mountain we find basalt, quartz, sandstone and granite, and there are irregular seams of agate, amethyst, jasper, and other semi-precious stones too. I love how a handful of pebbles--any handful--is like a cascade of snowflakes--no too the same. Is it any surprise that I have a lot of beach stones at home?


Although this doesn't look like the most solid bridge around, it's been here for years, and is only used by foottraffic of course--of humans and dogs, that is. My horse crosses through the creek, which can be ankle deep or swimable, depending on the stage of the tide. But we left him home today in the pasture with his donkey, and we're walking, not riding, instead. We've had enough of the wind, however, and we're going to head homewards shortly.


Ah...don't the pumpkins look cheery on the doorstep? The door is unpainted yet because it's been too chilly to leave it open for a few hours...the next fine, mild day, it turns yellow like the rest of the doors. And look, there are still annuals blooming in containers--heliotrope, agastache and osteos--plus perennials, which we'll see more on Garden Blogger Bloom Day.


Ah....we stopped earlier today at Blomidon Wines at Habitant Vineyards, and admired the rich blue of the red wine grapes--whether Baco Noir or Marechal Foch, I don't know. But since the antibiotics are gone from my system, and I can have a little wine again...Slainte Mhath, everyone!

More marvelous magenta

Given that we've fallen into a dreary spell with a heavy rain and wind earlier today, I can feel the chill hand of autumn reaching for my spirits. To counter that, I present you with some more magenta moments; all of these are currently still blooming in my yard, with the exception of one photo, which I'll explain when we get to it.
To begin with, I love the juxtaposition of the vibrant flowers of this single rugosa against the startling clarity of its hips. I'm a real softy for rugosa roses--we have a number of Hansas, Roserie de la Haie, Dart's Dash, and a few that are just not known, all in various shades of fuchsia/magenta. (I have white, yellow and even soft pink ones too, but when the magenta ones start to bloom, I bury my nose in them and make happy sounds because the sultry fragrance goes so well with that voluptuous colour.


This is a surprise, or volunteer, nicotiana, because this year I didn't plant any at all, so it obviously flowered from seed cast away last year. The only drawback is the lack of scent, a problem with most of the hybrids. Next year, I plan to have species nicotiana, both in green and white, in the garden again.

Uh oh....I'm starting that talk about 'next year's garden' already!


I bought this as a not-necessarily hardy penstemon, (and I've written earlier that I wasn't crazy about penstemons til Sour Grapes. If this overwinters and comes back, terrific. If not, that's okay--I've really enjoyed its rich colour and it's still flowering its little head off in my garden. I don't know the species or cv, just that I got it at Glad Gardens and they always have interesting plants.


Here's how to get an obedient plant that really IS obedient, and doesn't try to wander all over the garden--get the variegated form, which not only features icy-white and green foliage, but leaves that develop a tint of rich rosey magenta as the season winds down. Oh, and of course those fun little florets in our featured colour, too.


This plant is just going out of bloom now--a variegated phlox, not the white and green variety other bloggers have mentioned in the past; I'm having an absent-minded moment right now because I can't remember this plant's name. It's an odd combination, perhaps, but it works for me for just that reason.


Ah, here we have one of those photos that just doesn't do the flower's colour justice. Rose campion is the deepest, richest shade of fuchsia imaginable; and with that silvery foliage it just leaps out of any planting, but it does it with class. It selfseeds around our garden, not overwhelmingly but wherever it is, I'm glad to have it. The white and white with rosey centre forms are also lovely and welcome, but this is my favourite.


My dear friend Flora dug this clump of autumn crocus, or Colchicum, for me several years ago. These plants fascinate me, coming up with great foliage in the spring that gradually melts away--then this profusion of ghostlike flowers emerge in September. They're still hanging on out there, several weeks after first emerging, too.


Now this is a fun photo. We have something like a dozen different clematis around the place, and while most are identified, this one isn't. Notice that it has both single and double flowers happening at the same time; the first time we saw this happen, three years ago, we thought there were two separate species planted by accident. But the next spring I checked when I cut the clematis back, and nope--it's all one plant. Weird, isn't it?


Anyone have any ideas what its name is? Isn't it a dandy flower?


This is a hardworking and never-troublesome false mallow, or sidalcea; I move little clumps of it occasionally and it starts up anew, but it never tries to take over the neighbourhood. The bees just LOVE it...and I love the light behind it and how it makes the flowers look so delicate. They're winding down, but there are still some out there to nourish the late bees.


An exuberant coloured aster of medium height is the New York aster 'Jenny'. She's quite different from Alma and Thyra Viking and other pink, red or magenta types, and really attractive.


To wind up today's post celebrating magenta, I leave you with this shot of a friend's garden; part of it, that is. Earlier this summer, it was awash in perennial sweet peas and heathers in rich shades of pink, purple and you guessed it, magenta. Now, the walls bordering one side are covered in Virginia Creeper, displaying itself in a host of fuchsia related shades. Behind the walls are tall, willowy clematis, purple coneflowers, perennial cranesbills also boasting this happy colour. But the main reason I post this is because Jim is recovering from very serious surgery, and this is my get-well-quickly wish to him and his wife and family. We walked around their garden yesterday, and that was good for him, and I hope that by spring, he'll be raring to get back working in this marvelous garden. So heal quickly and well, because I have plants to give you!

Meditating on the marvels of magenta

One gardener's muddy magenta is another gardener's marvelous magic, isn't it? That's one of the things I love about gardening--it can be so utterly individual and expressive of our tastes, and we get to do things in the garden that we don't do elsewhere. Get your minds out of the gutter, now...I mean with regards to playing with colour. I have no problem whatsoever in putting together lime green, magenta, orange and blue in a planting--but I wouldn't wear it or paint my walls that colour combination. (Actually, our walls are all sage green, yellow, or blue--the latter are going to be changed one of these days to different shades, but for now they are fine in bedrooms. I like colour and don't really care for neutrals, although they work really well in other people's homes.) That digression just proves how individual and varied we can be with colour.

In my previous posts exulting in purples, I also mentioned magenta, and said that it needed its own posting. It's going to get two, actually, because the more I looked, the more marvelous magenta-flowered plants I found. Magenta is technically a colour between red and purple, and it’s a primary colour in the printing model of CMYK—which stands, if you didn’t know, for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (which is called Key—I don’t know why.) Its opposite colour is green, which works well since of course most foliage of plants is green. In parapsychology, a magenta aura suggests a person is artistic and creative, while it also symbolizes anti-racism in the Netherlands, where the Magenta Foundation is based. Isn’t Wikipedia helpful?

There’s one drawback to the colour—there’s not just one magenta, and like red, it doesn’t always reproduce well in digital photography because of something to do with the red sensor in the camera. So not all of the photos I’m going to use are exact in their colour reproduction, and not all the plants are the exact same shade. Some may be closer to red, others to purple—but all of them get lumped into magenta (or fuchsia) in my colour sense, and all of them make me happy. Let’s have a look at some of them.

Magenta is especially welcome in the spring, when the first colours to emerge are often pale--white snowdrops, pastel crocus, daffodils in shades of cream and yellow. One of the first plants to speak up more strongly is the heath shown at the top of this entry--it's lost its name, unfortunately, but it's a welcome sight when it begins to bloom.
I'll be writing more about tulips in an upcoming post, but I tend to plant tulips with jewel colours--fuchsia, purple, orange, green (yes, green!) and I find the magenta-fuchsia ones are some of my favourites.


Meet the cranesbill 'Red Admiral'. It stopped me in my tracks early this summer, and I had to have it. Other magenta cranesbills in our garden include the basic Bloody cranesbill (G. sanguineum) and its cultivar Max Frei (both of which are flowering again right now. I love cranesbills for their exuberance and their floriferous, easy-care ways, but Red Admiral is going to become a favourite--a little taller (about 18 inches) than the others, and richly hued.


The same day as I got Red Admiral, I purchased this 'Crispa' spirea--which I like for its wonderful foliage as much as for its flowers. I'm waiting to see if it will usurp 'Tor' in the fall foliage colour category, but we still don't have a lot of change happening in our yard (no frost yet.)


This is Rhodochiton, or Purple Bell Vine...also sometimes called by another name, and if you look carefully at that phallic centre, you can guess why. This is an excellent annual vine here, extremely floriferous all season long, and it overwinters well indoors--especially if you remember to water it regularly.


Gosh, I just love annual ice plants for their shy, retiring colours--NOT! I do love them, but for the neon flash of their flowers, the more subtle central colours,and the frosted leaves that give them their name. Give them what they want for conditions--not too wet, so ours are all in containers--and they will be happy campers. Ousrs are still flowering and will continue until a hard frost causes them to surrender.


As a butterfly habitat gardener, I adore monardas of all shades, although one called Bluestocking is a bit 'muddier' in shade than this rich Raspberry wine cultivar. Although we've had a bit of mildew on some of our monarda this fall, they are still putting up some flowers, but most are slowly going to seed.


Two years ago I bought this weigela labeled as Bristol Ruby, but it's not. No one seems to know WHAT it is, but it's marvelous. It keeps that chartreuse and green foliage colour all season long, and it throws up some occasional flowers after the main flush of rich magenta blossoms are past. Most importantly, this particular shrub was a prime chrysalis location for our monarchs, as readers may remember from the postings I did on our monarch watching. So whatever weigela this is, it's a winner in my books.


I'm a recent convert to the world of astilbes, and they are fast becoming one of my top choices for moist areas of the garden.This one MIGHT be more lavender-purple than magenta (although I don't think it's 'Amethyst') but it's beloved because the flowers are almost luminous in any light.
These are just a few of the summer-flowering magenta stars; tune in next time for those I've caught in the act of blooming this week--yes, in nearly mid-August!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here in Canada, we celebrate Thanksgiving early in October as opposed to in late November like our American friends do. While today is Thanksgiving day, some of us gather on the Sunday instead, as we did yesterday with my mother, sister and brother in law. As with any gathering, we think of my late beloved father, whose presence is ever felt because we always share stories about things Dad did during family get-togethers or special meals, and we eat and laugh and enjoy one anothers' company.

Yesterday I walked around my sister's garden and took photos, some of which I'll share in a later post; today I strolled around our own yard, well bundled up because the wind off the water today has a distinctive bite. And I thought of some of the many things that I am thankful for, beginning with the glory of autumn foliage on maple trees;


But also for late-blooming roses such as my sister's Morden Sunrise (a Canadian bred beauty). Such a perfect antidote for the cooling, shortening days that we're facing...


...and for a happy home (with the painting now complete...) where wild creatures and plants share in our blessings...


And for many blooms in a tiring but still green garden...(and a new door that longsuffering spouse will paint AFTER he finishes mowing the grass--in October!)


For a comfortable, if messy, office full of plants and photos and oh yes, a few thousand or so books, where I work and earn my living,


...and for all the myriad other pleasures of hearth and home and family--including basking cats...perhaps especially naughty basking cats that sit on the table because they've been 'helping' me read the newspaper, right Simon Q?

I know it's not yet American Thanksgiving, but I'll ask my friends and fellow blogging comrades: what are YOU thankful for?

More purple passions

Yesterday I was procrastinating my way through breakfast, which is to say I was reading the paper while trying to eat. Something about double doses of antibiotics (still fighting with the diverticular aliens in me innards) just puts me off most things other than soup and sherbet, neither of which are recommended breakfast foods. I settled for half a pear, half a banana and some yoghourt, and was pushing that around in its dish when something caught my eye in the ‘living’ section of the paper.

Purple, apparently, is very hot this year in fashion.


Well, shucky darn. For some of us, who tend to make fun of fashion and who dance to our own music, purple is ALWAYS in. It’s one of those polarizing colours that people seem to either love or hate. Count me in the ‘love’ category. I trace it back to childhood and wanting most desperately to have my room painted lavender and also wanting a purple satin bedspread. I got the walls, (remarkably, in several of the houses we lived in as we moved around the Atlantic provinces with my pilot Dad) but the bedspread was another matter. I don’t remember having any clothing that was purple—in any shade, from lavender or mauve to deep purple—until sometime in my teens, but hey, it was the seventies and we were all wearin’ purple jeans, purple love beads, purple vests, weren’t we?


Okay, that was definitely a digression from gardening, but it might slightly explain my ongoing love for purple in the garden. I also love amethysts, my favourite fragrance is lavender, and while there are no purple walls or floors or furnishings in the house, the gel pad I rest my wrists on while typing is definitely purple, and there are purple accents throughout my office, from the fused glass mobile of the purple starfish to my purple exercise ball to the hatbox covered with hyacinths…okay, you get the picture.

Purple is associated with royalty, but while I respect and honour our Queen, I’m not particularly a monarchist. The colour has also meant wealth and power because in days gone by, only the most expensive of dyes could be used to create fabrics in shades of purple. I read somewhere that there are surveys showing that up to 75 percent of children pre-adolescent children prefer the colour purple over all others (gee, does that mean I was just an average child?)


How many shades of purple can you name? Lavender, mauve, grape, lilac, burgundy, violet, aubergine, orchid, magenta, amethyst, fuchsia…interesting, isn’t it, how many of the descriptive names echo those of flowers? Some tend more towards blue, others towards grey; some towards pink, others towards red. Perhaps you prefer those with bluer tones than those with hints of red in their depths. You might like the deep purple of an iris but shun the magenta—muddy magenta, as Eleanor Perenyi sniffed in one of her essays, is just far too common and shouldn’t be in a well-bred garden.


While I delight in Mrs. Perenyi’s ‘Green Thoughts’ (which we’re going to be discussing in the Garden Blogger’s Book Club) I lean more towards the late, beloved Christopher Lloyd, who embraced magenta and all other shades of purple. He did write, in Colour for Adventurous Gardeners, that he is wary of deep purple in the garden, saying that “if they are to show up, you need to be close to them and with sunlight behind you.” Or else you might need to have a LOT of it to make a strong statement. The Warsaw Nike clematis that stretches ten feet into the air on the east wall of our barn has no sunlight behind it, but it is such a striking wall of deep purple that you can’t help but notice it.
Or consider this hydrangea that brought me to a stop in the middle of a street, last autumn in downtown Yarmouth. The entire shrub—actually it was three or four shrubs—were covered in masses of deep purple mophead flowers. I have no idea if it was a combination of soil acidity and weather—this was in late October—or if a trip to Yarmouth in a week or two will show the same results this year. All I know is that I look back at those photos and am instantly happy with that huge wash of royal colour.

And of magenta, Lloyd says, “Don’t feel you have to be subtle in your use of magenta. It is apt to be brash but we are talking about flowers, after all, and their delicacy goes counter to brashness.” If you’ve rejoiced in the delicate frills of a magenta fringed orchid, or been gleeful over that ‘Sour Grapes’ penstemon, you understand exactly what Christo meant.
Or look at the star in the Grandpa Ott morning Glory, and see purple meet magenta in a jubilant flood of richness.

Some may find purple, especially its deeper hues, to be a somber colour; and indeed, it has been used as a sign of mourning in some cultures.

But to me, anything purple has joy in it, whether it’s the bronzy-purple leaves of a beech or the velvet falls of a bearded iris. Perhaps the happiest flower of all—and one I don’t have a photo of right now—is the simple, humble, pansy or Johnny jump up. I don’t care if they’re common as dandelions; I see a pansy in any colour, and I feel happier; I see one in shades of purple, and cares are blown away on the autumn wind. Which is actually WHY I don’t have a good photo of a pansy with which to conclude—although like others we’re enjoying a mostly mild and delightful October, we are having wind most days with great zeal…and today the Johnny-jump-ups were too busy jumping to stand still and have their portrait captured.

Pansies and Johnnys remind me of my maternal grandmother, who had these, and lupines, and poppies, in her long-ago garden of my childhood. And it was three tiny, deepest purple Johnnys, blooming bravely in the little greenhouse attached to the barn—in a bitterly cold February—that prompted me to declare my love for this place and for us to purchase our home. So the Johnnys grow free-range all around our gardens, smiling their deep purple secret smiles at us. We smile back at them, sharing the joy that we felt on that frigid February day when we found the place where we needed to be.

Instead of a Johnny-jump-up, I leave you with flowers on a butterfly bush—not purple as you would expect, but honeycomb gold. Because purples will really pop with gold, lime green or orange near them, and gold also may help to cleanse your colour palate if you’ve been overwashed with an excess of purple.

As for me…I’m off to bed. To sleep on lavender sheets of smoothest cotton, with the scent of lavender under my pillow. And to dream of purple blossoms, perhaps.