Three Cheers for our American Neighbours (whoops, NeighBORS!)

Three cheers for the Red...

White...

and Blue!

Happy 4th of July to all my garden blogging buddies flung across the United States of America. It's interesting living next door to a country as diverse, as similar, and yet as different as yours is to mine. In the last year, I've learned a LOT more about the US, because of 'talking' with garden bloggers scattered from Maine to Texas, from Lousiana to California, from Arizona to the Heartland. I've learned I need to win the lottery because there are a LOT of places I'd love to visit in the great country next door, and I have you to thank for enriching my education and my perceptions.

Here's hoping you all celebrate a fabulous day today, and that the coming year brings new hope and joy for your country. With love from us lot up here in Canada...EH?

Garden Bloggers Muse Day...of other muses

A little different post for this Garden Bloggers Muse Day, brought to us by the ever-talented and muse-inspired Carolyn of Sweet Home and Garden Chicago.

Let's see...who is responsible for this current unbearable lightness of being in my mind? Erato? Terpsichore? Polyhymnia? I'm not sure, though I have a theory which Muse has woken me up.

A long time ago, one of my cousins gave me an old guitar. I taught myself to play it. Not well, but adequate enough for college dorm parties, Scouting fireside singalongs, the occasional solo in church and so on. I bought myself a Yamaha guitar and passed the old one along to someone else who still has it as far as I know. I'm lefthanded, but I learned righthanded like most people. I dragged my Yamaha acoustic all over the place, through myriad moves, to many changes in my life, and always managed to find time to play it a little most days.

Then life got way, way way busy, and different. The guitar sat in my closet, ignored and unplayed. For weeks or months on end. Seven years ago, when I sold the car I had at the time to a young couple down the road, I gave the young woman my guitar, as she was learning to play and I just knew it was the right thing to do. I don't know if she still has it or not, but I'm sure if she doesn't, she's passed the old fellow along too.

A couple of months ago, I started feeling like I needed a challenge, something that would pull me out of the routine of work, work, work, work. The garden gives me tremendous pleasure, of course, but its sometimes a 'to-do' as opposed to a pleasure, and I feel guilty when I don't have an hour or two to spend in it. Guilt is not good. Guilt stifles creativity. Yoga has become a great pleasure, and something I can do for only a few moments if that's all I have for time. But it still wasn't exactly what I wanted.

Then it came to me, like a crashing crescendo. I wanted to start playing guitar again. Just for me. Just in this office, or out in the back yard. And take lessons. Call it an exercise in right-brain stimulation. Call it something that doesn't need a reason other than I want to do it.


Meet my new friend, Skittles. (I believe in naming guitars. They've got their own personalities, after all.) A Seagull S6 acoustic, made in Quebec. He sang to me in the music store on my third trip in to reconnoiter the possibility of buying a guitar after all these years. Well, to be precise, I had narrowed down the choice to two: a mid-range and decent Epiphone, and this guitar. I turned my back on them and asked the salesman to play exactly the same thing on both guitars, and not tell me which was which. He did, and I said, "The first one." And he told me I had good ears.

I took it home and played Cowboy Junkies Misguided Angel (one of the best. songs. ever.) for the first time in years. Then for good measure I learned to play Collective Soul's The World I Know that afternoon. Some of you will know exactly why that was the first song I had to learn. Followed by U2's I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. I'll pass on trying Within Temptation's Ice Queen, much as I love it, though.

What I didn't have was good callouses. Or long fingers. The callouses are coming, and I WILL learn a few bar chords this time no matter what. I start taking lessons next week. This is a pure self-indulgent thing to do, because like I said, this is just for me and to give my brain something else to think about. You can practice a guitar for ten or fifteen minutes at a time at any time of day or night and not feel guilty.

And sitting out in the garden, surrounded by the scent of roses and the hum of bees, practicing guitar? It's good for all aspects of this gardener's soul.

Happy Birthday to My Country...

How'd we get here again already? It's Canada Day, formerly known as Dominion Day...which is what this rose was called by the man I bought it from a few years ago for the huge sum of 5 bucks. I recognized it as being a R. pimpernellifolia species, but beyond that wasn't sure what it was. He called it Dominion Dy because the buds are red and white striped, and because in his garden near Annapolis, it always begins blooming on Canada Day. As you can see, it's right on schedule--I went out a little while ago and found it beginning its floral fireworks.


Let's continue with the red and white theme a bit, shall we? Here is 'Robusta', a fantastically tough and floriferous performer in my garden. Yeah, there's an aphid or two lurking around. I don't fight aphids. The ladybugs do that.


This old rugosa is Souvenir du Philomen Cochet, a favourite of mine for its quartered blooms, even though it invariably browns on its edges and turns to soggy kleenexs in the fog.


The highbush cranberry (Vaccinium trilobum) is having a spectacular bloom this year. And the foxgloves are just coming on, the oriental poppies (though scarlet rather than red) are still doing their thing, and we have a wee nod to our southern neighbours here with the red white and blue motif.


Okay, this isn't as red as it really is, but it's the best I could do. The Canada columbines are doing very well this year, and make the hummingbirds really happy, too. Of all the columbines that festoon our place, this is the one I hope spreads itself like crazy (at the moment we have one good clump, established last year) because it's a native and it's just so beautiful.


Sweet woodruff (Gallium odoratum) is a dandy groundcover, sweetly scented and great for shady areas. I let it run where it wants under the spruce trees, and once I get the mess under the birch trees under control, I'll be transplanting some of it to keep the hostas company.


Our double fernleaf peony is finished flowering (the big wind on the weekend sort of discouraged it) but its foliage will continue to delight for the rest of the season.


Well, this is a strange looking flower, isn't it? Hmmmmm. I took this photo of the Canadian Coast Guard science ship Hudson three years ago during one of my trips, and it's one of three CCG ships that I have framed and hanging on my office wall. I look up at those photos daily and think about how much I love my country, the water that surrounds it, and what I do for a living, telling stories and learning from others. It's about time I dug out my CCG passport and went with them on an adventure, too. We'll see what the year brings.


Whooops, there goes our neighbour with his horse, on their way to the big parade in beautiful downtown Scotts Bay...guess it's time to put on my red tshirt and white shorts and go down and take photos for that!

Happy Canada Day, all...travel safely, enjoy your loved ones, and celebrate that we live in the best country in the world, and have the bestest neighbours, too!

Annapolis Royal Historic Gardens

When I was in Annapolis Royal a couple of weeks ago, I took some time to go to the Historic Gardens for a visit and research for an article I'm working on. If you've never been to Annapolis Royal, it's worth a visit at any time of the year because it's steeped in history. Samuel de Champlain overwintered in the area back in 1605 and established a colony there before moving further into North America and establishing further posts.

Certainly the jewel of the town is the Annapolis Royal Historic Gardens, now in their 27th season of operation and a beloved destination for visitors as well as locals. The Gardens are unique in that they are a series of theme gardens, including a number that reflect periods in Nova Scotia's history. There are also collections, including the vast and glorious Rose garden, the rhododendron collection, and a fine collection of ornamental grasses that is partially responsible for my own growing love for these plants.


Although it was still early June when I was there, plenty of things were blooming (some of which are STILL or JUST starting in my Bay garden). The courtyard directly welcoming visitors from the admissions area/gift shop is cleverly planted with a sea of iris wedged between the stone pavers.


One of the most beloved spots for photos (especially of proms and weddings) is at the Laburnum arch. It also boasts several massive and wonderful rhododendrons near it for further colour.



This is the Governor's Garden, because from 1710 to 1749 Annapolis was actual the capital of Nova Scotia. The formal geometric plantings aren't my cup of tea, but they work very well for the setting and that's how they would have been planted back in the day.


This magnificent fountain is made of a variety of rocks quarried here in the province. It's one of my favourite parts of the garden.


The Knot Garden features interlaced patterned plantings of lavender, dwarf box and other low-growing plants. It's at its best when the lavender blooms, of course, and I was a few weeks early for that event. (Which is a perfect excuse to go back again soon!)


One of the wonderful things about the Gardens is how the site is on a sloping property, with gentle meanders here and there from the courtyard down to the Dyke walk. At one boundary of the Gardens is the Rock garden, built on a hillside and featuring alpines, dwarf shrubs and a few very fine Japanese maples.


There are several pond features throughout the Gardens. This one boasts a number of daylilies and hostas as well as beautiful flowering shrubs and mature trees.


The rhododendron and azalea collection includes a number of varieties developed at the Kentville Research station by Dr. Craig, as well as plants bred and tested by my beloved friend Captain Dick Steele, plantsman extraordinaire.


Minas Gold is a gorgeous cultivar bred in Kentville.


While I didn't get the cultivar names of all the rhodies and azaleas, they are bred to be cold-hardy as well as sporting magnificent colours. I become more and more enamoured of rhododendrons and azaleas with every passing year, and am preparing to add a few here this summer. (No, haven't done it yet. Not enough time. I need High-speed LIFE, not just highspeed Internet!)


At the base of the gardens is a walk out onto the dykelands that hold back the Annapolis Basin from covering some highly fertile and arable land in salt water. The dykes were originally built by les Acadiens pre-expulsion (1755) and include remarkable aboiteaux, or sluiceways, which they constructed using hollowed-out logs with one-way gates in them. There's an Acadien cottage featuring a potager garden in the Gardens, but I was in a hurry the day I was there and didn't get to that area. Yet another reason to go back soon.


And this is a remarkable barberry, the species or variety of which I don't know. The shrub was about twelve-fifteen feet tall and quite glorious. Anyone know what it is? I could ask the horticulturists at the Gardens, but thought it might make a good puzzle for readers, too.

If you're in Nova Scotia this summer--if the price of gas as set by our greedy asinine governments (federal, provincial and elsewhere) doesn't traumatize you into staying home...Annapolis Royal is always well worth the visit. Bring lots of film or a big memory card, because these are just a few of the photos I took--and as observed, the rose garden and other gardens weren't yet in full colour. The Gardens director also does a regular bloom report throughout the season, which I believe you can sign up for via the website.

Random thoughts in the garden

It's always a great hoot to discover that I've misidentified a plant. About four or five years ago, I bought this little twig of a tree sapling at a fundraiser plant sale at a local school. At the time, the foliage looked to me like it was Siberian pea shrub, as it was small and pea-like. I planted it, tended it carefully, and waited. No, I planted it and ignored it, basically, other than to give it a bit of a haircut in the spring if there were dead twigs. Figured it would bloom when it was ready to.

I was sitting on the picnic table the other night, drinking tea and forcing my fingers to remember some guitar chords, when something yellow caught my eye. Well. Guess it's not a pea shrub at all but a gold chain tree. (Laburnum anagyroides)That's actually pretty exciting, though I'm going to have to watch it to make sure it doesn't get too bid where I put it.


We've been experiencing some highly unsettled weather the past couple of days, with thunderstorms arbitrarily rolling in unannounced. And fog. Lots of fog. Today we had a storm roll in, have a hissy fit for a while, track off to the southeast...and then tonight, a dungeon of fog was lying around--but we could see stars overhead. Just like it was on solstice night. I suppose this means we're going to have a lot of fog this summer. Oh well, it keeps things from drying out.


The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation put me onto a project last year, tracking several different endangered bee species. Now, I happen to be a very happy fan of bees, especially native ones but also honeybees, and just take their pictures because I like them. Late last summer I took a photo that turned out to be the yellow-banded bee, Bombus terricola, which is one of the bees that are diminishing in populations. Now on calm days I stalk around the garden, camera in hand, trying to casually sneak up on bees and photograph them and figure out who they are. This little cutie hanging out on one of our gazillion columbines appears to be B. terricola, but I'll send a clearer photo to Xerces and see what they say.


While I love the irises that some of my fellow garden bloggers have, I don't grow many myself. Some spring-flowering Iris reticulata, a few dwarf bearded and standard beardeds, and a few Siberian iris. But while roaming around the garden earlier this evening with my Macro lens on my camera, I decided to look at flowers from a different angle. THis one is quickly becoming a favourite. I think I'll get it enlarged and put it on the wall in here.


I love 'Butter and Sugar' Siberian iris, though it hasn't been real reliable for me. Something about the soft colours really appeals, although normally I go for more, shall we say, 'robust' colours.


Like this 'Blazing Sunset' geum. I had to have it. Three of them, actually, because their colours just rocked my world. The secret to growing good geum, I have discovered, is to give them good drainage. And not mistake them for a weed and dig them up in the spring. Ahem. Yes, I have done so in the past.


I've been muttering a bit about some nurseries not carrying a whole lot in what I'd call new and interesting plants. This isn't the case everywhere, mind you, but I was quite annoyed to go to one of the largest nurseries in the province the other day and find only a couple of perennials that I would consider purchasing. Especially since that particular nursery is getting ridiculously priced. Not all of us are rich doctors or lawyers from the city, after all. Here's one plant that did follow me home--Blue Fountains malva--more blue than the standard Zebrina malva, and I'm sure it will be as floriferous, though I don't expect it to selfseed like its sibling does.


However, I found lots of good things at one of my favourite places to visit, Briar Patch Farm and Nursery in Berwick. Mind you, I didn't bring home everything I fell in love with. I haven't brought this gorgeous, glorious, magnificent Metasequoia 'Gold Rush' home with me yet, but I think I will bring it instead of the Sciadopitys (Japanese Umbrella pine) that I had been thinking about for a while. This will be more reliably hardy, and besides that--Metasequoia is one of my favourite trees. Bar none.


Ah, Thalictrum, or meadowrue. A lovely plant for shade or moist areas, and a fabulous butterfly magnet too. This isn't mine--it's not flowering at home yet, but it was putting on a splendid display at Briar Patch.


Yet another reason I love to make pilgramages to Briar Patch--they have excellent display gardens. Now, this particular bed might not excite some people, but it puts me into a fit of nostalgia. The lupins and poppies were star performers in my grandmother's yard, in her big old house which was and still is in Berwick. While we moved a lot when I was growing up because of my father's job as a pilot, we had two places that rooted us--our grandparents homes, in Lunenburg county and here in the Valley. My grandmother sold her home many years ago to some lovely people who were still living there a decade ago, when I stopped by the house and introduced myself, and Vivian kindly showed me through. It was really, really strange to go through a house I hadn't been in for 25 years, and have neat memories triggered as a result.


Today, I was out in my garden, and a car pulled in, and an elderly lady stepped out. "We're looking for jodi DeLong" she said.
"That would be me," I replied. I get this sometimes, people reading my columns and wanting to visit. No problem, though I warn them this isn't Martha Stewart's garden.

She then told me who she was. She and her husband are the people who bought my grandparents' home all those years ago. They still live there and are in great health. But they had acquired this old book from a cousin of hers, and she had thought of me and thought perhaps I would like to have the book.

I nearly fell over in delight. The book is The Wildflowers of Canada, which was created as a supplement to the Montreal Star newspaper many years ago. I can't find the exact date right now, but it was a big deal at the time, and though Lee Valley does a facsimile edition, I have a passion for old gardening books and I was really, really touched that Vivian would think of me and come looking for our place. We showed her, her husband and cousin around the garden, and she invited me to stop in the next time I'm in Berwick. Which I will surely do, as I'm there every few weeks, visiting my hairdresser...and going to Briar Patch, of course.

Bloomingwriter in the 21st Century...

Well this is cause for celebration!
EW may be trailing along a little late with the Garden Bloggers Bloom Day celebration here at Sunflower Hill, but we have happy news to report. Thanks to the dedication of Cross Country Television, our locally owned Internet Service Provider (and television provider, obviously)...our Intarnets is fixed. We now have genuine highspeed blazing along here. Steve installed some new equipment here on the hill and at the tower in Scotts Bay, and while he'll be working his way through the community, we got done first. And it works blazingly well. Whoo hoooooo!


So to celebrate, a look at the chaotic glory that is the garden here in mid-June. Those of you further south of us will be fascinated at what is STILL in bloom here, compared to what's happening in your gardens. We had a cool spring--no, at times it was damn cold, actually--and we've had a fair bit of fog and rain here too with the weather warming up several weeks ago. Things grow really, really well in such conditions, but then the cool evenings (and more fog) hold them longer, in a lot of cases. Mind you, there's also been a LOT Of wind this spring, and last week I was having great ranting tantrums because the wind was so strong it was breaking a lot of the lush growth. And the weeds have been a remarkably prolific and daunting collection this spring, too.

However. I'm keeping to my mantra of "One bed at a time." For the most part. But people would spear this was a garden of benevolent neglect, for sure, the way it's looking. I can only hope that they notice the splendid blooms and not the...um...other stuff.


These tulips and some others in this garden have done a very strange thing. Instead of having a dozen or so large flowers from the dozen or so large bulbs I planted...I have whole bunches of flowers of all sizes. I think, if my notes serve me correctly, that these are called 'Jackpot'

And this is Carousel, a fringed tulip with red flame. I can look out my office window and see these, and they make me happy. They've produced a lot of flowers, too.


These are Marilyn lily-flowered tulips, planted in loving memory of my former mum in law...whose birthday would have been today, I just realized with a jolt. Miss you still, Marilyn. Your quiet grace made this world a richer place while you walked this earth, and a poorer one for your leaving too soon.


Trillium luteum, the yellow trillium, isn't as showy as its red or white relatives, but I just love it for its own eccentric self. And its foliage is great whether it's flowering or not.


The first of my decidious azaleas to flower, 'Golden Lights' makes me--and the hummingbirds and bees--very happy.


Finally put a flowering crab in this year, and it's called Makamik. It's not as dark-flowered as I had hoped for, but that's okay. I've finally got one, and that's the main thing.



Along with my besotted affair with blue poppies, I love every other colour and type of poppies, too. These are alpine/Icelandic poppies, which will quite literally pop up wherever I scatter the seeds, including outside the garden bed.


Aronia melanocarpa, the black chokeberry, a lovely native plant and beloved of birds. It's planted with an Ilex verticillata, an Amelanchier canadensis, and an assortment of other shrubs.


The last of the fragrant viburnums in my garden to bloom, this is Burkwood, and a beautiful thing it is, too. It's actually just finishing after the wind beleaguered it last week, but still fragrant.


One of my favourite euphorbias though it does have tendencies to want to spread, Euphorbia 'Fireglow' is just so striking with its coppery-orange flowers and bracts. It really shows up in the garden, especially since it's near a 'Black Lace' sambucus and some brilliant tulips.


I should know which Heucherella (foamy bells) this is, but nope...not remembering. Possibly Skelton Key, r something with Mercury in the name. Or something else completely!

On the other hand...I DO know what this is. Meconopsis betonicifolia, my precious blue poppy. Several of them aren't blooming yet, and I'm not sure if they're going to or if they're putting their goodness into enlarging their crowns. They're in a slightly more shaded spot, so I'm not worrying about them anyway. This particular blossom is pretty well shot, compliments of the wind, but new buds are coming up behind it. So it's all good.

That's it for this Bloom Day report--there are plenty of annuals in containers doing things, but I really DO want to visit other blogs and catch up a bit, so twill have to do for us. I hope you're having a blooming good June, whereever you're gardening.