Bouquets of Fun with Blotanical

It's been a few weeks now since Stuart of Gardening Tips n Ideas rolled out Blotanical, the new and improved web-directory of gardening blogs around the world. If you haven't been back to explore, what are you waiting for? There are over 400 blogs to be checked out, some of them brilliant; you can keep updated on the latest posts easily, if you don't have a newsreader or newsfeed or whatever the heck the RSS feed readers are called. I 'only' have about 100 blogs I read on a daily basis (some don't post daily, or have very short posts, or pretty photos) but there are obviously hundreds of others out there, and so I now pop into Blotanical daily--well, or a few times daily, depending on whether I trip over myself and get logged out!--to meet up with some of those I haven't visited before.

A lot of you who have great blogs have registered, but then haven't been back to explore, comment, favourite, or even tend your own little plot. Again, I gotta ask: whatever are you waiting for? As Mr. MacGregor's Daughter said about garden dreaming, what else is there to do in winter...other than go exploring more blogs and, in time, other websites. I like the way the front page has been redesigned, and now you can quickly see who are new additions to the site. Plus there are places to recommend posts, and there will be areas to review all manner of things to do with gardening in the coming months. It's a really fun site to hang out at, and while I don't profess to be an expert navigator of the site yet (witness my logging myself out more than once), I stand by my original prediction that this will be as good a site--or better--than Dave's Garden, in time. But Stuart has put a huge pile of work into it, and we only get out what we put in by participating, making suggestions, and cheering him on.

Plus it's in our own best interests to participate, collect points to be blotanists of different levels, and drive more traffic to our sites--even if they exist just to entertain and inform, not to make money. I know some people make a decent supplementary income from their blogs, and whether you do or don't...we do put our words out there for others to read, and we do WANT them read, don't we?

Given how much banging-my-head-on-the-table I did in doing something relatively simply like redesigning the look of bloomingwriter--and thank you to all for your nice comments, and especially thanks to Kylee of Our Little Acre for putting up those posts on giving blogs a makeover--I can only imagine how much work creating and maintaining a site like Blotanical would be. So to Stuart, here's a big bouquet of appreciation for this site; it's a terrific resource for gardeners of all skills, and it will just continue to grow.

Now, my blogging friends...click on over to Blotanical and get tending your plots! I'll see you there soon, I hope. And I want to see some others join in the race between Carolyn of Sweet Home and Garden Chicago and me to hit the next level of Blotanist. ;-)

Bright colours to chase the chill

Still in the deepfreeze, and still dealing with wicked winds blasting more cold in. It's enough to make a person--feline or human--want to just stay close to the stove and snooze, isn't it?


That's true enough, but I figure our longing for colour and garden dreams is at its pitch peak when the weather turns this stolidly frigid. So to help drive the cold winter away--or at least warm the gardens of our minds--here are a few brilliant blooms for your viewing enjoyment.A few rainbows to begin; first a flower arrangement done by someone at a garden show a couple of years ago. I don't know who did this, just liked the colours. And because we can never have enough rainbows...a brilliant presentation of potted Asiatic lilies caught my eye this summer at the Truro Farmers Market.


Although my ericas and callunas are presently slumbering under a blanket of hay and snow, some of them turn to blazing colours over winter, like this copper-foliaged wonder, possibly Cuprea or Con Brio.


I was salivating over epimediums in one of my earlier wishlist posts last week, and this is why. Look at the wonderful froth of flowers they produce, and that heartshaped foliage is beautiful all year long. If my notes are correct, this is simply Epimedium X rubrum.


I find that St. John's Worts, or Hypericum, are underused, both as shrubs and as perennials. This particular wonder is 'Brigadoon', and while its flowers are fantastic with those long stamens (this one is also called Aaron's Beard', the foliage is the real prize--gold to bronze leaves that keep their interesting shades all season long.


Some gardeners don't care for cranesbills. I'm not one of them--I LOVE all that we have, which include various species like this G. phaeum, mourning widow, but also somewhere around a dozen others. This plant's flowers are more subtle in colour than others, but I think it's great. Last spring I got a second cultivar, 'Springtime' with varigated foliage and the deep chocolate flowers...I see Tony Avent's Plant Delights Nursery carries that particular cultivar, for those of you in the US.


Won't it be nice when we can lose ourselves in the rich colours of bearded irises like this?


Or rejoice in the jewel tones of Corydalis elata and Meconopsis x 'Hensel Violet'? Okay, that was a tease. But isn't it a beauty, especially with the corydalis's electric blue to compliment it?


Well, that's about enough for this post...it's heading for 4 am (it's just too windy to sleep, so I've been tending the stove and reading instead) I think it's time to opt for the snoozing option, like the sweetly sleeping Simon, catching the rare bits of sunlight yesterday.

De-Stressing and distressing

The irritations and challenges of renovating a blog are absolutely nothing compared to things that really matter. After fighting with a recalcitrant website until the wee hours, I went to bed about 5 am...and was woken up at 930 am by commotion down in the kitchen.

The second most terrifying words you could hear: "Call 911. Our neighbour's house is on fire!"

At first we had a blind panic because we thought he was still in there. The passerby who alerted us and my husband headed out the door after calling for the fire department, only to meet our neighbour coming in the yard. Thankfully, he is fine. Thankfully, he has insurance. But it has been a very distressing day.

I used to be a firefighter with the local volunteer department, as I've written before. I did my share of puttin' water on fires, and medical emergencies, and the like. Always, I would go into this calm space and do what needed doing. Afterwards, as the adrenalin settled, I'd de-stress in any number of ways. And I still do.


Sometimes, when I'm upset over something, or dealing with a cranky deadline and need to relax a bit, I 'go away in my head' to the sea. Yes, I live right beside the mighty Bay of Fundy, where I can always see the shoreline. Sometimes I need to think about deeper, wider water...like the Labrador Sea, and standing on the top of the hill looking down at the community of Battle Harbour, Labrador. This was one of those perfect late-summer afternoons, miles from anywhere, with only peace and nature to occupy our thoughts.


I have a deep and abiding love for the ocean, as opposed to lakes and rivers; they're fine, but they're not the ocean. Perhaps in another life, I was a sailor--more likely a pirate, though not a-la-Johnny Depp. I love looking at the land from the water; here is the mighty promontory of Cape Split, the end of the North Mountain here in Scotts Bay, at slack water, as seen from the deck of CCGS Matthew, the hydrographic research ship I was on this spring.


This is what Cape Split looks like from our community, and from the lobster boats and other smaller vessels that go out around it. The mighty waters of the Bay of Fundy charge up here twice daily, spilling into the curve of Scott's Bay and then bellowing out around the end of the Split in an 8 knot riptide. Not a place for faulty motors or faint hearts, except when it's quiescent at half-tide, like it is here. I have to find one of my photos of the 'dancing waters' that happen when the rip is running.


Sunrises and sunsets also manage to settle a turbulent soul. This is sunrise over the Annapolis Valley a couple of weeks ago, from the LookOff viewing park a few miles up the road from here. Tonight's sunset, down over the Bay about an hour ago, painted very much the same colours, on a different landscape.


And what does all this have to do with gardening? Easy: the other way I de-stress, of course, is to head to the garden, to re-ground myself by working in the soil and surrounding myself with nature. Well, that just wasn't on for today, of course, especially since we're back in the fro-zone, with the mercury dropping faster than the Harpernista government's popularity ratings. So instead, I'm gardening in my mind--remembering sunnier days, quieter days, and knowing that things will work out.

My blog renovations are nearly complete, but I still have to rebuild the cat-photo-gallery, and also finish adding my links. If I don't have your blog or other website back up yet, I'm working at it...but finding Blogger boggier today than usual. So I hope to get things tidied up in the next day or two. This sort of busy-work is great for days like today when, despite de-stressing, my concentration is shot. I guess I'm just giving thanks for the good of the day.

Memory and Anticipation

Yesterday was one of those perfect winter days (a drastic contrast to this one, when we had snow to rain and a lot of wind before everything just calmed down to mild). The sunlight reminded me of days to come, there was no wind, blessedly, and I took a bit of a break from my labours to stroll around the yard listening to the garden's secrets.


My big Catabiense rhododendron is right outside my east office window. Two bird feeders provide me with entertainment when I take a pause from whatever I'm working on, but the rhodo also entertains. I call it the weather umbrella, because when the sun is on it and the temperature is warm, the leaves open up their faces to bask.


Where the sun had gone off the shrub and the cool of shade was holding on, the leaves were still in their pulled down, partly rolled up, "gee we're cold" mode.


I was fascinated to find this one seedpod of Asclepias incarnata, still with its treasurelode of silk-feathered seeds nestled inside, peeking out like baby birds, wondering if they should escape.


Jim at Art of Gardening did an awesome post on Garden Blogger's Bloom Day showing off a splendid vase of physalis seedpods. I commented that I loved the seedpods when they start to degenerate and become skeletal. Curious, I went out to my patch (nicely corralled inside a raised bed) and found this one brave pod, still relatively unscathed, but with the ravages of time beginning.


I was surprised to find a few berries still clinging to the Celastrum vine; normally by now they've been dined on by hunger feathered friends.


This is the best time of year for my curly willow (Salix contorta) to show off its splendid branches and their twisty, curly limbs. Last year I cut off one small branch and put it in a pewter kenzan in my office, where it sprouted foliage and reminded me of a breath of spring for some weeks through the winter. Haven't gotten to that yet this year, but I can look out the window at it any time I want.


Just as the seedheads remind us of last season's successes, the buds are a promise of what is to come. My magnolia stellata is showing lots of flower buds; the 'Anne' magnolia looks like it's also got flowerbuds swelling, but last year was the first year in our garden, so I'm really not expecting too many blooms this year, as I usually expect shrubs to take a couple of years to settle in and relax before they start flowering much.


Almost as attractive as the curly willow is my young copper beech; I love the architecture of the branches, and how a few leaves are still clinging to the plant even while there are rich new buds waiting for spring's invitation to open.


As I said above, I normally expect shrubs to take a couple of years to settle in well before they start to flower in earnest. Patience has its rewards, and look what our 'Mountain Fire' pieris is going to do this year! This shrub was given to me by my nonagenarian plant hero, Captain Dick Steele, about three years ago. "Take it home and cold test it!" he said, knowing that some plants are challenged by the wind here. It's done brilliantly...and maybe, my confidence raised, I'll opt to try 'Valley Valentine', with its pink flowers...

Are you seeing spring promises in your gardens?

(Okay, not you Austin Gardeners, who are still blooming...but I still want to know what you look forward to come spring. And I AM trying to figure out how to get down to visit you come spring!)

Wishlists in the wind AND snow, Part 2

(Photos are from various nurseries and propagators)
WE're back to winter here in the beautiful upper Bay of Fundy, which suits me just fine; I'd rather have winter now, not in May! I can sit here happily, reading catalogues (mostly online) and watching birds through the window, and making plans for more new plants (when don't we need new plants?) Here are a few more I'm going to be on the lookout for, starting with a dandy primula, 'Green Lace'. Isn't it splendid? Well, maybe you have to be a fan of primulas AND a fan of green-flowered plants, and of course I'm firmly in both of those camps. I plan to add a number of new primulas this spring, as they do quite well here and they're just such fun plants.


This cultivar of delphinium, 'Delft Blue', has been around for several years, but I've not seen it locally. It IS available in a certain Canadian catalogue that I refuse to mention by name, having long since given up on this company for all but its seeds; I won't be ordering any of their overpriced and undersized plants any time soon. At any rate, I'm hoping to find it somewhere in my travels other than from that PEI company. If you know who I mean....;-)


WE already know I'm quite dotty about eryngiums, so it will come as no surprise that 'Amazing Jackpot' is on my list of plants I can't possibly live without. There's a similar new one, 'Paradise Jackpot' that is also appealling, though I can't really tell a lot of difference between the two from only a photo and scant description. Both are very floriferous and have tightly packed heads of brilliant blue bracts and florets. Sea hollies are always a good choice for a pollinator garden or for growing near coast areas, as they're salt AND drought tolerant. And they're blue, too.


Well, look at this! It's Bergenia 'Solar Flare', and our friend the Blackswamp Girl (Kim), is also quite enchanted by it. I actually have to move my bergenia, because where they are, they just don't get enough sunlight, and sometimes don't bother to flower. So they'll be relocated come spring, and hopefully I can tuck this unique cultivar in to set the others off.


Like Mr. McGregor's Daughter, I'm quite smitten with Campanula 'Blue Eyed Blonde'. She asked, "do I need another campanula?" and I asked myself the same question: the answer was promptly "You bet!" Especially one with gold foliage like this! I love the peachleafed bellflowers at the best of times, being easy to grow, requiring little fuss, and reblooming when I remember to shear them back, and this also reminds me of Tradescantia 'Sweet Kate'..


This is a new foxglove, 'Candy Mountain', which is getting quite a bit of attention because its florets face upwards. Foxgloves are also dandy pollinator plants, and hummingbirds adore them, which is why I encourage them to selfseed all around our garden, and add new plants each year just to make sure we have lots.


Speaking of delphiniums, here's a perfect candidate for my 'CHOCOLATE AND WINE" garden, Delphinium 'Chocolate'. According to White Flower Farm, where I found the best information,

It's a border Delphinium in the traditional style of well-packed flowers on tall stems, but each floret varies in color and patterning. Shades range from dark bitter chocolate to milk chocolate and light cocoa to white chocolate (sometimes including a pale pink wash) with contrasting veins and stipples. The hairy "bee" in the center of the bloom may be brown or white.

Delphinium do well for me here because it's cool in the summer, although I do have to stake some of them because of the wind. I wish I had access to the good people at Chocolate Flower Farm, because then I could REALLY develop my chocolate and wine garden! But I use their plant list as inspiration for my garden, as chocolate isn't just a food group, it's a great colour for plants.

I'm planning a post on more Goldberg Variations, this time focusing on gold-foliaged plants rather than yellow or gold flowers. I LOVE the way gold foliage lights up a garden, especially in a shady spot, and this lobelia, 'Golden Torch', looks like a must-have plant for my pollinator patches. Lobelia is a hummingbird magnet in our garden, and tends to come on later in the summer (probably because it's cool), making it a good plant for those birds that tarry a bit longer before winging their way to warmer winter climates.

The Rosehaven Cottage Rose Medallion for Excellence

Well, this is a delightful way to celebrate two years of blogging! Look what I found yesterday in my mail:

It is our honor to present you and your blog with "The Rosehaven Cottage Rose Medallion for Excellence". You have received this award of recognition for your excellence in blogging...Thank you for your wonderful blog and for your friendship. There is so much about your writing that brings us joy. We feel like we've gotten to know you and consider you a friend. In fact, when we saw that a nor'easter was forecast yesterday my first words were, "Poor Jody!" :)

Heartfelt thanks to Cindy, Brent *aka Hubby*, and the catchildren of Rosehaven Cottage for this award! Indeed, they are friends across the miles, as so many of you are, and that's the true joy of blogging, isn't it? Cindy and the gang are great cheerleaders for other bloggers, but they also deserve to have cheers sent right back at them, because the various blogs at Rosehaven Cottage are not to be missed. So if you haven't already, get on your snowshoes and snowsurf over to Rosehaven, and prepared to be delighted by the wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm there.

Which suggests to me that I ought to initiate a blogging award too. But first, I'll have to figure out HOW to do the HTML for an award (oh, son...I need some help here!? ) and just what I'd like to give it to people for. I'll have to do some mulling over that, maybe as I watch the snow blow by. (We got a nice dumping of about 8 inches, but the wind is blowing here quite well and so I expect snow sculptures all around the yard before day's end.)

Garden Blogger's Bloom Day: January

Once again it's time for Garden Blogger's Bloom Day, brought to us by every garden blogger's friend, Carol at May Dreams Garden. Now, given that we here in Scotts Bay are back in the Fro-zone (a chuckle for anyone who loved The Incredibles as much as I did!) there's perishing little to show off in terms of blooms outdoors. And while we still have plenty of flower festivities happening indoors, I showed them all to you in December's edition. So whatever could I use for blooms in January?


How about a little of my indoor blooms that last all year round? We have quite a bit of interesting floral-motif artwork and such throughout the house, especially in my office, since I spend so much time in there. But this leather sunflower scupture, which is about 3 feet tall, blooms on the wall in our living room. A local leatherworker created this for me, and he does freestanding leather flowers as well as pictures and sculptures like this.


Suzanne Craig is a very talented gardener and artist living near Mabou, in Cape Breton. She does photos and other items using her unique printing method, but what I really like is her switchplates and socket plates. This one is of seaweed, but I also have ones with violets, poppies, and other flowers, in various places around the house.


A young woman who took the Horticulture program at Kingstech made this sculpture of copper echinaceas for me a couple of years ago. Sometimes I think I might take the copper cleaner to them, or at least to the petals, but haven't done so yet. Pretty unique, aren't they?


Allan Banks is a daylily grower here in Nova Scotia, and does these wonderful ceramic tiles of some of the daylily cultivars in his garden. He also makes jellies and vinegars using daylily flowers, but I haven't tried those yet.


While I take a lot of photos and get some of them blown up and framed, I also enjoy other people's work, both photography and painting. The blue poppy painting was custom done for me, while the gladiola photo and painting are fundraisers from Marg's Glad Garden, which I've written about in several magazines, including Reader's Digest. Oh, and there are those wonderful beeswax flowers, too.


This is a wonderful collage of real flowers, placed on a flatbed scanner and used to create a 'painting'. It was done by a woman in Prince Edward Island, but she doesn't seem to still be in business. That's a pity, because her work is really beautiful, and I'd hoped to add a few more to my collection.


I don't grow gladiolas, but every year I buy the fundraiser painting or photo from Marg's Glad garden when I go to see Murray and the garden. Usually there are many happy hummingbirds zipping around the garden, and they make ME happy. The other two pictures in this shot are from a science trip made with the Canadian Coast Guard ships Hudson and Alfred Needler in October of 2005; I took many of the photos, (at least, those on ship or from the zodiac, not the underwater photos) and one of the digital wizards on the trip made up posters for all of us.


Okay, I realize that these aren't flowers, as such. They are, though, fabric flowers as far as I'm concerned, because they're bursting with colour and joy. They're the work of a very talented fibre artist in Bear River, Nova Scotia, Zoe Knorek-Onysko of Oddacity Designs. Her eye for colour and pattern and joy shows up in everything she does, whether its her twice-dyed silk scarves, cosmic cat pillows (like these two), tea cosies, purses, or dresses, jackets and other clothing. I always enjoy visiting her studio, although I don't get there very often, and invariably something comes home with me.

So that will have to do for this bloom day! I'll look forward to seeing what others have blooming this month.

Wishlists in the wind, part 1

One of the most important activities of the winter gardening season is salivating over catalogues and websites, looking at new plants. Okay, perhaps we shouldn’t salivate on our computer keyboards, which aren’t keen about moisture, but more nurseries are going paper catalogue free, so many of us are turning to the Web to check out new offerings. I should be outdoors mulching before the temperature drops and more snow comes, but it's windy and I'd rather write about plants than deal with the weather today.

I wrote my own list of gardening trends for 2008—Nova Scotia style—in today’s Sunday Chronicle Herald, and I’ll talk more about that in future posts as well as articles. But right now, my mind is on yummy new plants that my garden longs for. To be specific, some of these might not be (the newest of the new; there are plants out there that I’ve loved and longed for, and just haven’t gotten around to planting yet. But at this time of year when we’re having the dingies in our gardens, I do find myself looking at new cultivars as well as plants that are new-to-me, thanks to fellow bloggers and garden writers from around the world.

Regular readers know that I love heritage plants, native plants AND new cultivars too, and happily have lots of room for some of all of the above. My next few postings will be about new plants I’ve been hearing about that I really, really REALLY want—my Echinacea 'Green Envy’ plants for this year.


(photo Terra Nova Nurseries)
Kylee at Our Little Acre set me off a week or so back with some of the plants she spotted in Tony Avent’s great Plant Delights Nursery catalogue. Two of the plants she mentions also set me into raptures. I noticed Corydalis ‘Berry Exciting’ in Terra Nova Nurseries lists last year, but didn’t see it offered anywhere locally. Having great success with a few other corydalis species and cultivars (C. lutea, C. elata, and Corydalis quantmeyerana 'Chocolate Star') I’m really longing for this one because of the luminous gold foliage setting such a nice contrast against the yummy purple flowers. I don’t know if this one is fragrant, but that’s okay—it’s the foliage that really has me thinking.

Like Kylee, I’m also very fond of lilies and lily-like plants (daylilies, fritillaria, toad lilies, etc), so the Sandhills fire lily (Lilium pyrophilum) also sounds like a winner to me. Tony Avent’s catalogue calls this a butterfly magnet, and given my love of butterflies and pollinators, it’s a must-try for our garden.

One of my favourite informative blogs written by a professional plantsman is Graham Rice’s Transatlantic Plantsman. I haven’t met Graham but we’ve corresponded a tiny bit via his blog, and I have several of his books in my library, and have reviewed them favourably. He’s an engaging and affable-sounding writer—and probably as affable in person, if his photo is any indication—he knows his stuff, and presents it in an encouraging and friendly way, in his articles, books and postings. AND he answers his commentors, unlike some professional writers who apparently can’t be bothered responding to blog comments.

He wrote several delectable posts on echinaceas—including on some that are in production but not available yet, inciting more echinacea-lust in me—but currently I’m obsessing over epimediums (bishop’s cap) thanks to Graham’s recent post on them. He mentions three dandy new cultivars, but the one I’m quite sure I can’t live without is called ‘Fire Dragon’, with purple and yellow nodding flowers. Epimediums work well in shaded gardens, although in the past I killed several by planting them where the winter drainage was less than terrific. Having found the right site and given it better drainage, my bishop’s caps are now doing just fine; and since I’ve discovered that Dominion Seed House is carrying both ‘Fire Dragon’ and ‘Amber Queen’, I am hopeful a more local nursery will have one or several of the new plants too. If not, I’ll have to order from Ontario!

(photo from Gardenimport website)
Graham also alerted me to another plant that is near the top of my wishlist. I’ve written before about my deep fondness for Eryngiums, or sea hollies, and they do surprisingly well here, especially E. planum. That’s great, because E. ‘Jade Frost’ is a sport of E. planum, and while the flowers are wonderful, once again it’s the foliage that tempts me; blue-green edged with cream and tinted with pink, somewhat reminiscent of Weigela ‘My Monet’, or ‘Nishiki’ willow, both of which I love. Dugald Cameron’s wonderful Gardenimport nursery in Ontario has ‘Jade Frost’, so I can see making an order with him this year, something I haven’t done in a number of years.

(photo Terra Nova Nurseries)
No post about plants that obsess me is complete without at least one echinacea! Layanee at Ledges and Gardens also talked about new coneflowers as she went through new catalogues, and while I know some gardeners don’t like the double forms, the colour and shape of ‘Coconut Lime’ really looks tempting to me. I’m also hoping that ‘Tiki Torch’ (both developed by Terra Nova Nurseries) will be available here this year, but if not, I have my Itsaul echinaceas from the Big Sky series to keep me happy—and maybe I’ll find ‘Summer Sky’ (Katie Saul) in the province this year.

What new plants do you have on your must-have lists? Remember—no drooling on the keyboard!