If it's Sunday, I must be in....Windsor?

Well, that’s about how I felt on Sunday morning, after getting into Windsor late Saturday night. Nice surprise at the Hilton when I got there—along with a great information package about the city and its parks, etc, there was a lovely bottle of locally produced Late Harvest Vidal…which I’ve faithfully tucked away in my bag to bring home to share with my better half. And my room was on the 21st floor, looking out on the Detroit River, the Ambassador Bridge, and Detroit. Wow….a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t wanna live there, though. It’s the flattest part of the country I’ve ever seen next to the Prairies, of course. And in fact, this part of southwestern Ontario is the edge of what was once a mighty tallgrass prairie! I didn’t know that, not until I read the package of information waiting for me at the Hilton when I arrived on Saturday night. The remnants of this once mighty ecosystem are under protection at the Ojibway Prairie Provincial Natural Preserve, located on the edge of Windsor. Of course, I could see none of this from my hotel window, on the 21st floor of the hotel, overlooking the Detroit River, the Ambassador Bridge, and of course, Detroit.

If Windsor and Detroit are sister cities, Windsor is obviously the beautiful sister. What an attractive, green, and clean city this is! I spent more time exploring Windsor than I did anywhere on the rest of my trip except Burlington, and liked what I saw. I had a guided tour all day Sunday courtesy of the Director of Parks, Don Sadler, and his partner Lou Ann Barnett, a professional photographer from whom I could learn a lot, if I could follow her around for a few days. They picked me up Sunday morning and proceeded to show me everything from the incredibly lovely riverside gardens to a couple of nature parks to several recreation parks to distinctive formal gardens to that tallgrass prairie. And I was smitten.

Windsor is a city of around 200,000, and while there have been some hardtimes courtesy of the downturn of the American car manufacturing industry, this is a city that loves its public green spaces. And not only that, the community supports that love with financial backing, so that the parks and green spaces and athletic fields are well tended, beautifully groomed in fact—and done so using green gardening techniques as much as possible. Put a city beside a lovely waterway—and there’s swimming at public spaces along the way—and clean up the waterfront to become a series of parks and gardens, and it’s amazing how people will flock to use it. On weekdays, office workers fill the parking lots as they take a break to walk through the gardens and along the waterfront; on the weekend, it’s family time, with scores of people out with their children, young couples dreaming their way along the waterfront…and there’s no litter to be seen! People actually use the large but discreet garbage bins! I was delighted by that, being accustomed to seeing the disrespect shown in some communities for public spaces.

The riverside gardens include three main areas; Reaume Park and Coventry Gardens, and features something for everyone. Children enjoy hunting through the gardens to find the various topiary sculptures of animals from dogs to dragons; the huge floating fountain, the Charlie Brooks Memorial Peace Fountain, creates more than 2 dozen spray patterns as it throws water high into the air; the gardens are full of imaginative plantings, using a wide variety of annuals, perennials, shrubs, and even tender perennials and tropicals (which go indoors for the winter, of course.) Further along is a wildflower garden, then the Bert Weeks Memorial Garden, built in honour of a former mayor. This place was incredible—well planted with perennial grasses, which were in full bloom and song when I visited, and which provided a wonderful counterpoint to the sound of music from the huge water feature called the reflecting pool. At the river’s edge is an interesting brick structure, which now is used to pump water not to the community but to irrigate the gardens along the river.

Naturally, I was entranced by the whole riverside garden experience, but there was far more. Further along Riverside Drive is Odette Sculpture Park, which is dedicated to a generous number of modern art sculptures. There are two totem poles, bronzes of horses and humans, wire sculpture, and my favourite—penguins!

One thing about Windsor—it’s a flat, flat city. There are two hills in the entire city, and both of those are manmade, reclaimed areas that are natural parks with trails for runners and cyclists and others to enjoy. We went to the top of both these hills, (Malden and Ganatchio) and could survey not only the city, but across the river to Detroit! Naturally, one of these hills is much loved as a toboggan run in winter—when there is snow that lasts any amount of time, of course, because this is a mild-wintered part of the country.

From the wild beauty of Ojibway and Malden and the Ganatchio Trail, we went to a completely different area: Jackson Park, dedicated by Queen Elizabeth some years ago, and featuring formal gardens and walkways (perfect for wedding pictures) and several war memorials to veterans. That was a particularly striking sight—there are two replica planes in one section of the garden, a Spitfire and a Hurricane. The third, a Lancaster, is being restored and is to be located in another park, but its silhouette has been outlined on the ground under the two planes, a haunting echo and a moving tribute to the sacrifice made by so many. Seems highly appropriate especially given our current state of affairs in Afghanistan.

There was almost too much to take in all in one day in Windsor—were I planning another trip, I would spend no less than two days in each of the cities I visited on this trip, and more if I could. It would be hard to pick a favourite site, either in Windsor or on the whole trip, so I won’t—I enjoyed all of them for different reasons, as each is very good at what it does.

After an early supper, I returned to my room to download another 150 or so photos, and pack up for a very early morning. Two days on trains, basically, brought me through Ontario and Quebec and back into the Maritimes via the Ocean again. About Miramichi, however, I decided I was getting restless to be on the ground again, and called my longsuffering spouse to meet me in Truro. It’s always wonderful to go away—and this was an exceptionally fine trip—but it’s even more wonderful to see my darling other half standing on the platform waiting for me. And be it ever so humble, there’s no garden quite like our own, is there?

From rocks to wetlands to neon to Niagara

High on my list of places you gotta go is the Royal Botanical Gardens, located in Burlington/Hamilton. What a great time I had visiting this time. In 2005 I was in Hamilton for PWAC’s Annual General Meeting, and got to see a bit of the gardens, but not nearly enough. This time, however, I got a pretty thorough visit of much of the site, which is actually spread out over several different locales around the edge of Hamilton/Burlington.

Last time, I was at the Rock Gardens in late May, and they were awash in colour from the 100,000 plus bulbs, mostly tulips, planted there. Big sweeps of colour, vibrant and jewellike; now of course that garden is planted with a host of annuals to provide equal drifts of colour, and those will be coming out soon for the bulb planting session. The Rock Garden is neat because it’s set down in this hollow with huge, native rock structures on the hills of the “bowl”—nice dramatic rocks, and since this is part of the Niagara Escarpment, it’s hardly surprising to find rocks there.

It was built 75 years ago in what was an abandoned gravel pit, using local limestone—a great make-work project to help counteract the grim reality of the Depression. There aren’t only annuals and bulbs here, howeve—there are some wonderful water features, mature trees and shrubs, (including magnolias and flowering cherries, rhodos and azaleas), and lots of steps and terraces to climb and view the garden from. It’s a peaceful and beautiful space, and much loved by the citizens of the area.

The RBG Centre is, of course, the place to start an entire tour of the Gardens. My host Andrew King and I had lunch in the Gardens Café, then headed to the Mediterranean Garden, an indoor collection under glass (and a perfect place to go during the grey days of winter.) There are huge specimens in here, ranging from false agave to banana (at least I think it was a banana!) flamboyant flowering plants such as bouganvillea, passion flower and bird of paradise, a fine display of cacti and succulents, and even wonderful citrus trees (all with fruit on them). Children can enjoy the outdoor Discovery Garden, which has all kinds of wonderful activities for them to help them get interested in gardening early.

Along with the usual displays of plants and structures, the Gardens were playing host to another unique display of beauty while I was there. ZimSculpt, a collection of Zimbabwean sculptures were nestled throughout Hendrie Park, looking like they had always been there--when in fact they were part of a touring exhibit--on its only stop in Canada--from that country, with the curator and three of the sculptors along for the trip, of course. They've spent a month in Burlington, have sold over 100,000 dollars worth of sculpture, and were hard at work making new pieces using single chunks of rock that they brought with them. Watching them was totally fascinating, and the sculptures were gorgeous...the tour is complete now, and they are heading homeward, but hopefully will be back again in the not too distant future.

Out the doors of the Centre, we enjoy the fountain court, where the cheery chiming of water from fountains provides the perfect anodyne to the rumble of nearby traffic. This terraced area is awash with annuals providing late season colour to push away even the dreariest of days—and it was dreary the day I visited. From there we walked into Hendrie Park, which is a huge, sprawling area with more than a dozen different theme gardens. The Centennial Rose Garden takes up a significant part of the Park, and you’d be surprised just how many roses are still blooming quite happily, even as we progress into October.


There are themed gardens for herbs and lilies, a wonderful medicinal garden, a clematis collection, more plots for children to enjoy, and the lovely tea house where you can pause and enjoy some refreshments before heading to the wild sanctuary of the woodland park known as Hendrie Valley Sanctuary. I loved this; we hiked down woodland trails, went through a clever fence designed to keep deer out of Hendrie Park proper, then across a lovely boardwalk over the wetlands area. What a pretty, peaceful spot; visitors were feeding wild birds, chipmunks and squirrels on the boardwalk rails, ducks were splashing and diving in a stream through the wetlands, and of course autumn glory was unfolding in the changing colours of hardwoods. Utterly lovely. We could have stayed a while, walked much further, but time was tickin’ by, and so we regretfully left this place and headed off to another site, Laking Garden.
It was beginning to rain quite sincerely when we arrived at Laking, but we did pause to survey the domain from a lookout that gives the perfect view of the terraced gardens. The lowest terrace is currently a work in progress, as the iris beds are being converted from a series of rather dull beds to a more aesthetically appealing showcase for the some 600 cultivars of irises on display. I’d love to see THAT in flower—maybe another year! There’s a lovely old cottage at the top of the terraces, site of the Barbara Laking Heritage garden, which features many heirloom culticars of perennials and shrubs. The central terrace is dedicated to perennials, all kinds of perennials, including many new and improved cultivars. I really, REALLY enjoyed this area, despite the wet—well, I thought Laking in itself was pretty fine, a public spot any city would be proud to have, and yet it was only one section of the RBG.

By now, the rain was sincerely soggy, so my intrepid host suggested, as we had some three hours before my train, that we go off to Niagara to see the falls. It was too wet to go exploring gardens there and we knew we wouldn’t have that much time, but we sallied off down the highway and yakked a mile a minute about many things, while I gawked out windows at things like the Welland Canal, assorted vineyards, and such til we arrived in downtown Niagara Falls.

Well. What a strange place that is. Ever been there? Yikes! Clifton Hill is called the Entertainment and Dining district of Niagara Falls. I have one word to describe it—ultratacky! I’ve never seen so much neon, flashing lights, and bizarre displays enticing visitors; how about Frankenstein eating a burger on top of a fast food joint? King Kong hanging off another site? A wax museum—de rigeur in many tacky tourist traps—and of course, a plethora of casinos and nightclubs, all designed to separate the biker chicks, greaseballs, nearly destitute, nouveau riche and others from their money. I felt like I needed a shower just driving through the area. But you know what? It was all washed away, nearly literally, when we turned the corner and headed down to enjoy 12 dollar parking and the main attraction that gives the city its name—the real, genuine, and totally awesome Niagara Falls.

It’s hard to take a photo up close that shows the true magnificence and power of the Falls. All that energy, sound, fury, colour, cascading over the rapids and down over the dramatic drop to the river below. Utterly, completely mindblowingly wonderful. Never mind the horde of hotels on the hillside overlooking the Falls. Never mind the neon nightmare up the hill. Never mind the hordes of tacky souvenir shops. The falls are worth visiting, any time day or night.
And nyah, nyah, nyah nyah nyah, nyah…the Canadian falls are way, way more impressive than the wimpy American falls nearby. Ours are better than theirs….

Toronto's Diva gets a facelift

I’m a trooper when it comes to visiting gardens. After rolling into Toronto at nearly 11 pm, where the highlight of the trip was being met by my son Ryan, (newly moved to Toronto), I was up and going again by 745 the next morning. First I ‘rode the rocket’ of the Toronto subway to Eglinton, where a transfer to a bus took me down the road a few more miles to the Toronto Botanical Gardens at Lawrence Street East. There I found a surprise—these gardens are open to the public at no charge! In the courtyard nearest the main building, a group of seniors were drifting through the movements of tai chi. I wandered around for a little while before being met by my guide for the visit, a very nice man named (I think), Ken—a Friend of the Garden who volunteers regularly at the Music garden downtown at Harbourfront, but who also lives near the TBG and was willing to give up an hour or so of his Saturday morning to squire me around.

Like many aging dowagers, the TBG is going through a period of rejuvenation. But in this case, it’s not liposuction and botox that is bringing this space back to its glory days, but the vision and dedication of its planners and planters. Much of the plantings now on display are new, tucked into the ground this spring, after a massive renovation of the grounds and the main building of the Gardens. There are twelve themed gardens in total, ranging from a very cool herb/kitchen garden, where each year a particular culture’s vegetables will be showcased, a terraced garden, a trial or show garden focusing on choice and sometimes unusual plants suitable for city gardening, a spiral mound (originally meant to be covered in thyme but currently grassed) from which you can view most of the Garden’s layout, and far more. Walkways are wide and most are paved, and there’s a lot to see in a compact locale—just like most Toronto yards, the Garden make the most of its available space.

My host said that people are sometimes offput by the fact that the gardens aren’t all as full and lush as they expect—but I think this is actually excellent, because it also gives real gardeners, whether seasoned or new, a look at how a garden develops and grows over a period of time. After all, we all face this, especially when planting perennials, trees and shrubs—things look a little sparse initially. But I thought everything looked excellent. There are marvelous drifts of grasses near the entrance to the parking area; these look like they’ve been here for a while; then as we walk down the stone-paved paths towards the heart of the property, there is a wonderful planting that will, in time, look like a wildflower or prairie meadow planting, featuring some native as well as introduced species. There’s a unique long curving wall, built using a variety of materials from the portion of the building that was torn down for renovating, and planted with sempervivums and other groundcovering plants. Some think this planting resembles a train, or perhaps a slice of the Niagara Escarpment—I just know that it’s quite striking now and will be even moreso next year when it fills in further.

The two carpet bedding displays at one end of the Gardens acknowledge another garden, Edwards Gardens, which is a City of Toronto park. The TBG is a charitable organization, funded by generous patrons and donors around the city, and shares space, as it were, with the neighbouring Edward Gardens.
I didn’t have a whole lot of time to visit Edward, but looked longingly down a hill—one of Toronto’s famous ravines’ at mature trees, a lovely creek, walking trails and much more.

The Garden Hall itself has areas that can be rented out, whether for weddings or other special events. Ajoining one part of the facility is the Floral Hall Courtyard, a screened in terrace also ideal for weddings and such. About this courtyard, I have to comment, because this is the third site in two days that I’ve seen featuring horsetails in a design. Not the irritating field horsetail, but the scouring rush, Equisetum hyemale, which DOES have a sort of Oriental quality to it and look really quite striking in a dedicated bed—bounded by stone so it can’t jump elsewhere.

My only negative comment about my visit is that I hope that the TBG revises their website soon—it doesn’t display properly, is hard to navigate and has more administrative stuff on it than information about the gardens themselves, which is why I haven’t bothered adding a link to its URL in this entry.

One amusing aside—during my stay at the Fairmont Royal York, I opened a bottle of mineral water in my room, thinking it was the water they provide with their turndown service. Imagine my surprise when my son announced that he’d never SEEN an EIGHT DOLLAR bottle of water before! When I went to check out, I told the clerk to add the bottle to my tab (for Internet service—this is the only hotel I’ve stayed in in months that charges for high speed internet—a black mark on them) but she graciously dropped that charge and seemed somewhat embarrassed at the high price. I was more amused than annoyed, but was also touched by her thoughtfulness.

There are many more gardens throughout the city, including at the famed Casa Loma, which I'd originally been scheduled to visit but which was just not possible in the time allowed. Maybe I'll go some other time, although Toronto gets more than enough press without needing any from me. And yes, I'll confess right here--Toronto is still not my favourite city by a long shot, even if my son does live there!

A leader first, a gardener at heart

I honestly didn’t know what to expect when I arrived in Ottawa, en route to visiting Kingsmere, Willam Lyon Mackenzie King’s estate, located in the heart of Gatineau Park, across the river from our nation’s capital. I had no idea that King, prime minister of Canada through three separate terms between 1921 and 1948, had been a lover of gardening since a young child, and at one time had wanted to be a landscaper. However, his parents also instilled in him a desire to serve his country, and hence his venture into political endeavours. We know that MacKenzie King was a dedicated Liberal who did much for this country—and I can’t help but think he spins in his grave when he sees what that bunch of Alliance wolves in cheap conservative clothing is doing to the country that he loved and served so well. Not a perfect leader, of course, as none are. When he died in 1950, King left his estate to the people of Canada.

After a not bad luncheon (though the service was abysmal) at the Moorside Tea Room, located in one of the summer houses on the estate, I went with my guide, Annie, around part of the estate. This area is at the top of quite a steep hill, much loved by cyclists, joggers, cross country skiers, and other outdoorsy types, and encompasses some 600 acres in total, some of it woodland, some of it resembling an English gentleman’s country estate—as King was a great fan of all things British, but more of a Romantic in tendancies than a late Victorian or Georgian. The houses didn’t particularly interest me, as architecture and old dishes, etc, aren’t particularly my thingbut I did, of course, love the typewriter, on which King wrote many of his speeches.

What won my heart, where this interesting gentleman was concerned, was the wonderful stone walls throughout the property. King had these built during the depression, hiring local, unemployed individuals to do the work and earn a wage they would have otherwise been unlikely to find. The walls feature local indigenous rocks, mostly igneous in type, though I am no geologist so can’t really say what all of them are. Just that they were beautiful with rain on them.

Yeah, did I mention it was raining? Fortunately, Annie had provided me with both a jacket and an umbrella, but at times my lens did get smattered with water.

The perennial borders at the property are past their full glory, but still showing good colour, especially against the flaming backdrop of the hardwoods, which are just beginning to get really beautiful. This is a wonderful place to visit, to stroll across well kept grounds with all sorts of mature trees, as well as interesting stone ruins and relics and statuary that King had brought to the property and added to the landscaping. One long garden especially delighted me. At the top of it, (as it sweeps down a hill) is a massive piece of igneous stone, part of the local geology of an escarpment—a primitive, millions of year old nod to the country’s natural history and beginnings. Then there is a long English style perennial border, acknowledging that country’s place in our country’s development; a stone archway which is a window on the woodlands looks down at native plants and natural plantings and a wonderful rock garden featuring alpine and hardy rock garden plants.

After this part of the tour, I was met by Francois LeDuc, who squired me around much of Gatineau Park proper. The park is over 380 square kilometers in size, with all kinds of landforms and geography, flora and fauna. At several places along the roads, there are incredible lookouts, the most dramatic one being at the top of the Escarpment looking down into the valley around Hull, Gatineau, Ottawa and Aylmer. And there are serious foliage fireworks happening—wow!
We took a drive to Meech Lake—yes, THAT Meech Lake, site of the failed accord—and followed the winding road along the series of three lakes in a chain. (there are something like 50 lakes in the park). Harrington Lake is site of the summer home of the prime minister, but we didn’t go up to the gates. Just as well, as I’d have had to show some sign of disrespect for that squinty eyed thug from Alberta…What struck me, once Francois drew it to my attention, was the careful pruning of the trees along the shores on the far side of the lakes…

…which, of course, is not pruning at all, at least not by human hands, but rather, by the teeth of deer. We saw a doe and two fawns on the roadside as we came down from the King estate, incidentally, as unconcerned about us as if we weren’t even there.

While I enjoyed this visit very much, I was also happy to get on the train again and head off down the road to Toronto. I’m so totally impressed with the service of VIA Rail—especially in first class. Let me give you all the menu from supper between Ottawa and Taranna—

Appetiser: melon and proscuitto; your choice of bread roll (with butter, not slimy margarine)
Main course; choice of three; I opted for braised beef, with tiny roasted potatoes, and a vegetable medly of fennel (delicious!), green beans, parsnips and red peppers; wine was an Ontario Riesling, I think (I forgot to write that down)
Dessert—an apple caramel cake, and then this chocolate in a chocolate cup—divine!
The staff came with wine several times, and then with liqueurs, even—Grand Marnier, cognac, Baileys, Tia Maria….I declined on that, but next time…I may treat myself.

And the staff is simply fantastic. This is an awesome way to travel!

Stiill, this is a hectic pace. Three gardens down, three cities to go.

Montreal's Other Masterpiece

Montreal’s second masterpiece


It’s a fairly long bus ride through the congestion of downtown Montreal, from the Midtown Holiday Inn (where I had to pout and threaten to call the trip organizer when I came to check in at 8 am after my 21 hour train ride before I could get my room) to the haven of tranquility that is the Jardin Botanique Montreal, or the Montreal Botanical Garden

Even though my energy was somewhat flagging after the train trip and then a spectacular time at Flora, I girded up my loins and my camera and prepared to see what this 75 year old public space had to offer.

And the answer is, quite a lot, of course.

From the traditional carpet bedding arrangement of annuals that greet visitors at the main entrance, to the zenful tranquility of the Japanese and Chinese gardens, from the rich woodlands of the Leslie rhododendron gardens to the flamboyant displays of perennials, childrens gardens and other themed gardens, this is a marvelous, and obviously well-utilized public space.

The Gardens were the dream of Brother Marie-Victorin back in the mid 1920s. (Incidentally, Agriculture Canada’s hardy rose series includes AC Marie-Victorin, a disease-resistant shrub rose introduced back in 1998.) When the dream was about to become a reality, unemployed people in Quebec were hired to build what has become a marvelous tribute to plants in the heart of the city.

They did well, and the dream continues to this day.

Currently, there’s a remarkable Chinese lantern show going on at the Gardens. While it really gets going at dusk and onwards, it’s worth visiting the Gardens at any time of the day just to see the incredible craftsmanship of these lanterns. They’re more than just your basic pagoda style lanterns, believe me! There are birds, fish, dragons, mythical creatures, lotus, people, all sculpted by artisans in Shanghai, China from silk specially treated to be water resistant, and the theme this year is celebrating Chinese holidays. So you’ll see a dragon boat, a dragon dance, kites, and much, much more The colours are vibrant beyond words, and you can’t help but leave the garden feeling both relaxed and exhilarated at this glimpse of genuine Chinese culture. Incidentally, the Chinese garden at the Montreal Botanical Garden is apparently the largest one outside of Asia—quite an accomplishment, and one to be applauded.

Bravo, Montreal, for all your horticultural triumphs.

Live and in colour from Montreal

If you’re going to be in Montreal in the next couple of weeks, you gotta go see Flora. If you’re not going to be there in that time, wait til next spring—then you gotta go see Flora.

Flora who, you ask?

International Flora Montreal This has to be the most amazing garden themed display in the country. Now, I can’t claim to have been to every intriguing garden across the country—not by a long shot—but this is a phenomenal, breathtaking, and FUN exploration of gardening and garden design.
Why am I so besotted with this show?
In the first place, it’s a living, longterm display—this year from mid-June to mid-October—whereas shows like Canada Blooms are short flashes in the pan, here today, gone four days later. Come back to Flora week after week and see how the gardens change over the season.

VIA Rail came up with this wonderful travel theme called the Garden Route There are twelve gardens from Halifax to Windsor, Ontario, all accessible by one train route or another. The marvelous people who put on Flora, and the team at VIA, made it possible for me to go to Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Burlington/Hamilton and Windsor, to visit some of the gardens on the route. Naturally, I’ve already been to Halifax’s Public Gardens, and to Kingsbrae in New Brunswick—another of those “You GOTTA go” places—but I did cartwheels, figuratively if not literally, when I was asked to go. And it didn’t take long to get me packed and into Halifax to meet my train.

I love trains. I despise flying now, especially since Canjet is no more—sure, flying is fast, but it reminds me of moving livestock, crammed into too—small quarters. Give me a train any day of the week, provided I’ve got the time to take to travel languorously across the country to my destination. Happily, in this case, I did. Travelling by train is infinitely civilized…not only are we not racing and crowded and stressed, we get to actually SEE a great deal of the amazing country we live in. Going Easterly class (first class on The Ocean, which sadly is the only passenger train left in the Maritimes) is definitely the crème de la crème of train travel. We had a ‘learning coordinator’, who entertained us in the park car at the end of the train, presented us with complementary champagne to toast the trip’s beginning, and gave us all kinds of insights into what it’s like to live in the Maritimes. (For those unfortunates who don’t live here, of course.) The sleeping cars are comfortable, well lit, with huge windows looking out on the racing landscape; the meals featured maritime flavours and wines from Jost, Domaine de Grand Pre, Gaspereau Vineyards, and other Nova Scotian wineries; the beds, while not huge, are comfortable, and I dunno where VIA gets their duvets, but I want one!

And though the sun sets too early these days, it was still up when we arrived in Miramichi--surely one of the most gloriously beautiful places in the country. No wonder David Adams Richards writes so movingly of that region.

So I arrive in montreal, the city that never sleeps, at 8 this morning—and two hours later, after getting checked in at the Holiday Inn Midtown, I’m en route to see Flora.
Here’s the best description of where the gardens are located, from the Flora website.

INTERNATIONAL FLORA MONTREAL 2006 take place on the Quays of the Old Port of Montreal, at the Lock Gardens in the area between the railway bridge and the Mill bridge. The Old Port is rich in history and culture and is one of the most important recreational and tourist destinations of Montreal. It benefits from a captive clientele of more than 7 million visitors who come every year to Old-Montreal and on the Quays of the Old-Port of Montreal.

Imagine all of these unique, vibrant gardens, planted and thriving along the locks heading down to the mighty river. For a backdrop, the ancient grain elevators brood on the skyline, providing the perfect boundary on more than fifty different theme gardens.

There are tranquil gardens when you can pause and reflect...
...and gardens where you can actually delight in the designer's sense of humour
There are gardens with ecological themes, as with this water-conserving planting,

And gardens that are just plain whimsical
Now, I haven’t had time to review all the literature—or all the photographs I took—because oddly enough, I need some sleep! But on the train tomorrow, I’ll do up the photos from this afternoon’s visit to the next stop on the tour, and let you know more about the trip. This is just a teaser to get you started.

The Colour Purple...

You know how so many plants at this time of year are in shades of russet, gold, orange, carmine, and so on? These are all splendid colours, but sometimes a gardener craves something to contrast and yet compliment the colours of fall. I think that’s why I’m drawn to plants like flowering cabbage and kale, butterfly bush, purple-foliaged shrubs, and any late flowering plants that come in magenta, purple, mauve…any shade of purple.

There are so many shades of purple—some of which horticulturists like to pass off as being blue when describing supposedly blue-flowered perennials—from pale mauve to deep royal purple and every shade in between. One of the stars at this time of year is an annual, Verbena bonariensis. It’s popping up in many fall issues of garden magazines these days, but I first learned about it from the late, much-loved and lamented Christopher Lloyd, the great British gardener whose motto was, “learn the rules of colour so you can break them.” (works for me). This verbena grows very tall—easily to five feet and has lacy clusters of small magenta purple flowers which besot butterflies. It is an enthusiastic selfseeder in many parts so I’m hoping that the few plants I have this year will selfseed into many more, the way the poppies, sunflowers and nigella do.

I’ve also succumbed to the urge to try Caryopteris ‘Dark Knight’ with its dazzling blue flowers; it will probably die down to the roots in our garden, but I’ve got a good sheltered spot for it too, where I can stare at its blue colour and be happy.

The other purple performer that threw itself at me today is ‘Purple Dome’ New England aster; I’ll have to tag it and plant it somewhere where I’ll KNOW I planted an aster, so as not to pull it out thinking it’s a wild one…a mistake I’ve made before. Tee hee.

Also wonderful in the line of purple are some of the heathers that are flowering now. I am fairly new to being infatuated with heathers and heaths, and I blame it primarily on Jill Covill and Jamie Ellison, who founded Bunchberry Nurseries in Upper Clements, NS. Jamie has moved on to teaching young horticulturists at the Kingstec Campus, but Jill has continued to grow the business, for years wholesaling fantastic plants to nurseries around the region. This year she opened a retail business as well, and she was one of the exhibitors at the Saltscapes Expo as well as at Agrifest. Anyway, Jamie and Jill smartly developed display gardens around their nursery, which are an excellent way of showing potential customers what plants will look like after they’ve been planted out for a few years. I challenge anyone to remain unexcited about shrubs, conifers, grasses or heaths and heathers after seeing some of the exciting and unique cultivars of plants available and hardy to our area.

So last year, I bought half a dozen heaths and heathers, some from Bunchberry and several from Dick Steele at Bayport Plant Farm (another individual who has seriously influenced my plant tastes in recent years). I made a dedicated bed for them in the upper end of the yard where the drainage is not too bad, added lots of compost and peat to the soil, and planted them out. They survived, so I added another half a dozen this spring, all of which have settled in and grown nicely. They’re starting to flower now, AND to get their fall/winter colour, which is what really besots me about them. The fall colour of some of them, such as Spitfire, Wickware Flame, Cuprea and Con Brio is enough to send me into ecstacy—without ever even having a flower on the plants. But they’re ALL starting to blossom too, so I’m a happy—and hooked—heather addict now.

One thing I really noticed was how good the garden centre at Bunchberry looked—all the shelves and tables of plants were filled with healthy, well groomed and attractive species of perennials, shrubs and trees.

There was none of the tired, picked-over look that I’ve noticed lately at some garden centres. Here I and my colleagues in the garden-writing world are crowing about how we can still be planting all kinds of things, and then people go out to many local nurseries and can’t find anything worth planting? That’s not a good thing. It’s also, of course, not the case at every garden centre--things are looking great at some nurseries I've visited lately-- and I do know that our local operators are up against the wall having to compete with the loss-leader bigbox bullies…But this is a time of year when nurseries can be making some decent money and gaining new, loyal customers, by having great quality stock and a good variety, because there IS still plenty of time to be planting.

Another nursery that is looking mighty fine, as I remarked in my regular email newsletter, is Cosby’s Garden Centre in Liverpool. Ivan Higgins is another smart nursery operator who is big on planting display gardens, but he also has a secret weapon in his arsenal; he is a concrete sculptor who does amazing, whimsical and unique pieces, both for himself and for commissions. Each year he creates a new sculpture for the garden centre, and here is this year’s:

Ivan’s garden centre is so good, and his selection of unique and exciting plants so delightful, it almost tempts me to pull up stakes and move to the balmy south shore of the province, where I could exercise a lot more zonal denial and plant things I can only dream about now. But I can’t see digging up several thousand plants from here and trucking them all down there…plus my heart really is here. I’ll just have to live vicariously on the south shore through Ivan, Dick Steele, and other great gardeners who live in the banana belt.

Suddenly September, and Mum’s the Word

Whether I like it or not, we’re being dragged kicking and screaming into the autumn. No matter that technically, there are about three weeks left of summer. This is Labour Day weekend, and that’s the unofficial winding down of summer for many people. Next week, kids will be back to school, students back into universities, those who have such things as vacations will be looking forward to NEXT year’s vacations, and some idiotic merchant will start clamouring about how there are only X more shopping days til Christmas.

NOOOOOOOOO!

Well, yes, the Halloween junk IS already out in the stores, as is the Thanksgiving detritus. But we’ll ignore all that in favour of what’s popping up in the garden centres. Fall foliage favourites, fall blooming annuals, and in just a couple of weeks, bulbs. For now, let’s consider the plants that are available for our enjoyment as we do wind down the summer.

There IS still plenty of time to be planting perennials, shrubs and trees—most plants need 6-8 weeks to establish themselves before a hard freeze comes along, and we’re not apt to have one of those before mid-November. That being said, however, it does seem like the weather has been hopelessly out of joint this past year, and who really knows what we’ll have for a fall, let alone a winter? Be that as it may, I’m gonna keep right on working away in the gardens.

Last week my longsuffering spouse and I went on a bit of a road trip, and ended up on the south shore of the province. We dropped into an interesting garden centre I’ve only visited a couple of times, The Village Nursery, just outside of Bridgewater. The nursery’s famous Dazee Dome, the greenhouse where they display and sell their huge selection of annuals, is closed, of course, but the areas where the perennials normally are housed were home to row on row of fall mums. These aren’t hardy chrysanthemums—in this neck of the woods, I don’t know how well even the so-called hardy mums are about overwintering, because I just don’t bother with them.

In fact, I’ve never dealt with chrysanthemums since 1980, when I was a new graduate of the Nova Scotia Agricultural College and worked for a few months at a greenhouse that grew hothouse tomatoes and chrysanthemums—poms, they called them—for the cut flower trade. We spent hours working among those poms, planting the transplants, pinching them out, disbudding them, cutting them…and before I quit the greenhouse to go farming, I used to see the damn things in my sleep. I can still smell the hideous chemical that we had to use to fumigate the soil, which sent me home feeling sick more than once. Small wonder I started leaning towards organic gardening in earnest back then!

Despite that long-ago misadventure with chrysanthemums, I do enjoy them outdoors for autumn colour. Every year, I buy a couple of richly coloured varieties in large, 8 inch pots, and these will do yeoman’s service out in the front yard for weeks to come. This year, the offerings seem to be better than ever—some nice, rich colours are on offer, much more interesting than the dandelion yellows, insipid whites, muddy purples of years ago. There are rich burgundies, lovely russets and coppers, and dazzling oranges, all of which complement the autumn foliage palette.

However, permit me a little bit of bragging rights…our container plantings are mostly still looking really great, and I give the credit for that to Seaboost, the liquid seaweed fertilizer I use indoors and out. When I planted the containers I threw a handful of seaweed meal into the potting mix, and every other week I’ve been watering really well with Seaboost in the water, and the results are obvious/ The calibrachoas are still flowering their heads off, the nemesia, heliotrope, portulaca and helichrysum are all looking fine, and even the annual lobelia, which usually is spent and gone by now, is still sending cascades of rich blue out of several large containers. The only annuals that are looking bedraggled are the plantings of cerinthe, or honeywort, which I neglected to cut back after they flowered, so they’ve gone to seed and are starting to die back. That’s okay, though, because I’ve got a nice stock of seed for next year.

Though many perennials are winding down their bloom, there’s still plenty of colour in the yard. The tall phlox David, Bright Eyes and another unnamed magenta variety have been intoxicating us with their fragrant clusters of blossoms, and the last of the bee balm and daylilies are wrapping up their display. The perennial blue lobelia (which also has a white form) has been doing very nicely, AND a red perennial type, which I thought had died, burst into splendid flower a few weeks ago, delighting me and the hummingbirds alike. The coneflowers and seaholly are still doing their thing, though most of the globe thistles are beginning to decline. And there are still things yet to flower—the tall perennial silvergrasses, Miscanthus Silberfeder, Graciella and purpurea, are forming flowerheads, and likewise our lovely clumps of Helenium, an underused and marvelous perennial. All in all, there’s still plenty of summer colour left, although the segue to autumn flamboyance has certainly begun.

We had a nice surprise last week—the swallows that nest in our barn hadn’t gone—they had hatched a second set of nestlings, which they were proudly teaching to fly last week. We sat all one afternoon watching the junior zoomers darting and swooping and fluttering, pausing to rest on the ridge of the house roof, while their parents exhorted them to ‘come on! You can do it! FLY!” Now, however, they have left, and yesterday was the first day I didn’t see a hummingbird, so I think they too have departed. There are mourning cloak and fritillary butterflies around, among others, but the monarchs too seem to have left. Fly safely, all of you, and see you in the spring.

Half Past August, fifteen minutes to autumn

One of the writing projects I’ve been doing for almost ten years is a tiny monthly community newspaper called The Canning Gazette. It was started as a project by the Canning Village Commission back in 1987 as a way to support local businesses, and was operated for its first 100+ issues by the highly talented Ron MacInnis. He passed the torch to me in late 1996, and I’ve been putting the Gazette together ever since.

I describe the Gazette as one part history, one part humour, one part hard news information and all parts heart. What I really like is when readers send me tidbits, essays, stories, that they’ve written or collected and kept for years. One of our reader families sent me a story clipped from a very old and yellowed New York newspaper, date unknown; the piece was called Half-past August, and talks about how suddenly the natural world around us has shifted from spring, early and midsummer to late summer, heading for autumn.

Yikes: it’s true. Just over two weeks until September; another three weeks to equinox, and the beginning of fall. A look around our yard confirms this. The perennial asters are about to bloom, and the wild ones have just started. Goldenrod is flush with colour, and the allergy-sufferers are lamenting the flowering of ragweed—for it’s ragweed that is the maker of sneezes, watery eyes, itchy skin and other downright miserable symptoms, not goldenrod with its heavy pollen that doesn’t float through the air! Dijya know that?

Onwards. The garden and the native meadows and woodlands are each telling their own stories of where we’re heading, weather wise. The milkweeds are starting to form seedpods, where they haven’t been chewed by enthusiastic Monarch butterfly caterpillars. This will be the generation that heads for Mexico for the winter, living 5-7 months instead of mere weeks. The highbush cranberry (Viburnum trilobum) and doublefile viburnum (V. plicatum ‘Mariesii’ are both starting to ripen fruit, though my doublefile still has a few flowers clinging to its branches. The perennial phlox is in full, fragrant flower. The later-flowering grasses are getting ready to put up their remarkable plumes of silken flowers; the big Miscanthus cultivars, primarily, ‘Silberfeder’ and ‘Graziella’ as the Calamagrostis have already flowered nicely. The hostas have about finished their floral display, but some of the clematis have yet to begin flowering. The echinaceas are in their peak, and the rudbeckias closing on them fast with their bronzed and golden blooms. Bursts of globe thistle and sea holly provide cooler colours of blue and lavender to all the hotcolour flowers that herald autumn’s approach.

The woodlands tell similar tales. There are beginning to be hints of colour in some of the hardwoods—those that haven’t been chewed to ribbons by tussock moth caterpillars and other rapacious critters, of course. Thistles are going to seed, and the centres of the pearly everlasting have turned from soft gold to deeper bronze. The wild orchids have finished their blossoming, although at the shore the beach peas and sea lungwort are still providing exotic and wonderful bursts of colour. (I wish I could grow these in my yard, but we’re just a little too far from the shore—a mile or so, too high to be considered really coastal.) In the woods, the ghost plants, Indian pipe and Pinesap, chlorophyll-lacking species that are parasitic or saprophytic, put their pale, nodding stems and flowers up under trees, alongside the outrageous outbursts of colour from marvelous mushrooms—but have a care with the shrooms! Here’s a field mushroom, an innocent and edible Agaricus campestris, nestled next to a deadly Destroying Angel, Amanita virosa.

The light is changing, too. Not only is sunrise later and sunset earlier every day, there’s a peculiar golden light in the late afternoons. William Faulkner wrote about the Light In August, and it is distinctive, a harbinger of rapidly shortening days and cooler nights and what is to come in a few more weeks.

And the birds are changing. The swallows have fledged their young, and I think they’ve left our barn now. The young mallard ducklings from the pond up the road came down in a flock to visit our pond, and have now moved on. The goldfinches are starting to look tarnished, losing their brilliant colour of earlier in the year, and someone told me the male hummingbirds have already left for warmer climates. The females are definitely still here, madly flitting from flower to feeder to flower to the window to scold me if the feeders are empty, but soon they too will be gone. I’ll miss them, because we’ve had so many this year and they’ve charmed us daily. But they’ll be back, and I’ll be here to greet them, with any luck at all.

Half-past August, and fifteen minutes to autumn.

My soul longs for the sea...

This is a non-gardening blog entry, so if you’re not into the sea, come back next time…

Went to a press conference yesterday at Bedford Institute of Oceanography, to hear the report on the most recent science cruise using the Queen of the science fleet, the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Hudson. The Hudson and her officers, crew and scientific staff just got back from two weeks off Nova Scotia’s southeastern coast, where they were using a unique piece of gear called ROPOS , a remote operated submersible vessel,to help them study, sample and photograph creatures thousands of metres beneath the ocean depths.

In a perfect world, I would have been out there with them. In another life, I must have been a sailor, a pirate, or maybe only a seagull, but I love the sea wholeheartedly, and love being out on the wide open ocean on an ocean going vessel, be it a Cape Island lobster boat, a Coast Guard fisheries patrol cutter, or my favourite, the good ship Hudson.



My first trip on the Hudson was three years ago in September, out to Sable’s oil fields, then to the depths of the Laurentian channel, the Stone Fence, and the Gully, where we peered into depths looking for deepwater coral. We also danced a slight dance with a little hurricane named Juan, but we were well out beyond the worst of it, and the Hudson is, in the words of her officers and crew, ‘the best damn sea boat in the Fleet, and likely in the country.” Yup.

Last year, I got to sail with the Coast Guard not once, but twice. First time was on the Hudson again, this time looking at undersea habitat for juvenile haddock. Might sound pretty routine, even dull, but it was anything but. I have held, in my hand, a sea cucumber scooped from off the sea bottom near Sable Island. I have two sand dollars collected from a nearby site, not as deep as some areas of the ocean, but with the brooding, restless shores and shoals of Sable only a few kilometres away. I’ve peered down into depths via computer monitor and unique, marvelous pieces of underwater surveying equipment created by the technical and engineering geniuses at BIO, and seen a universe unlike anything you and I normally can see.

It’s a different world out there, people. We look at the ocean’s gleaming, dancing water with sunlight flashing off the sapphire surface, and we have NO IDEA just how splendid, dramatic, puzzling and wonderful the undersea life and geography is. There are wonders, and there are terrors, and the sea is restless, wild, beautiful...and can kill you just as quick as look at you if you’re not smart. There are dolphins that race along the bows of a steaming ship…

There are flat calm mornings when there’s an oil platform, in this case the Sable Offshore Energy Project’s Thebaud platform, sitting a quarter kilometre away when you wake up and look out your cabin's porthole in the morning...


And there are waves that will scare the blessed heart and soul out of even a hardened, hardy, professional sailor.

This isn't one of those waves, but it was enough to take the dust off the deck...

This was on my second trip last fall, on the coast guard patrol ship Cygnus, doing conservation and protection work and also getting tasked on a Search and Rescue call. This was a totally different, but still fabulous experience…I got to operate the ‘sticks’ that control the good ship’s throttle, went from the Cygnus to a fishing vessel in the ship’s Zodiac or FRC, where I got to climb from the FRC up the side of the fishing boat with the fisheries officers on a routine inspection, and oh yeah, discovered I could actually get seasick, if the sea was rough enough and the ship jumped around enough while running INTO the storm on a SAR call…

There oughta be a tee shirt for those who sail on CCGS Cygnus that say, “I got sick on the Cygnus.” Yup, I think it’s a badge of honour—it happens to durn near everyone, except for hardy fish cops who eat beans for breakfast, chili for lunch, and sausages and sauerkraut for supper.

Never mind that. I’d go again in a flash, on either vessel. Or on the Needler, the Cornwallis, the Alexander, the Matthew, even the Earl Grey…or the Terry Fox, or Big Louis, the two great icebreakers that work out of Halifax up north.

These mighty ships come and go from our major harbours all the time, here on the east coast. There are sister ships on the west coast, in the Great Lakes too, and there are men and women who sail these vessels, doing navigational work, running fisheries patrol, doing science work in hydrography, habitat science, and much, much more…and dropping everything at the sound of mayday, mayday, mayday on the radio, to hie off full away to the aid of someone in peril on the sea.

It’s not all glory, adrenaline and excitement, sailing on a Coast Guard vessel. Sometimes it’s deadly dull routine for the officers, crew and staff. Sometimes it’s damn nauseating out there, and sometimes it’s pretty nerve-wrackingly terrifying too. But the work being done out there on the oceans—those same ocean waters that lap at our shores—is critically important, and so many of us know so little about what is done by the Canadian Coast Guard. We ought to feel the same immense swelling of pride when we see one of these big red and white ships that we do when we see the dress reds of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Or the Bluenose. The Coast Guard is emblematic of all that is Canada, from sea to shining sea.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. And if I get a chance to sail later this year, I’m outa here, like a shot.

Even to the Flemish Cap in November. Provided I’m on the Hudson for that one, however.

Beauty for a day--the daylily

Well, there’s no such thing as moderation in our weather anymore. We’ve gone from muggy and humid and foggy to just plain hot hot hot! Hot enough to cause little cats to just lay around in puddles of tiredness, too bushed to do anything more than sleep. That includes laying on my desk leaning against the laptop keyboard, when they’re just too tired to move, right Spunky Boomerang?

The hummingbirds and honeybees are still going strong outside, and it’s fun to watch the hummers roaring back and forth between flowers and feeders. Earlier this morning, before it was quite so sweltering, my darling husband pointed out the numbers of honeybees feasting on three sea holly blossoms…(the big blue Eryngium, I forget the species at the moment but it looks like Miss Wilmott’s Ghost except for being blue, not silver.) Not to be confused with E. planum, the smaller flowered seaholly which we have in various spots in the yard.

The heat and sun has helped to dry up plants that were feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the wet, including the roses that were balling their blossoms into soggy tissue wads…right now there are fireworks in the garden, as all the yellow evening primroses are in bloom, as are the brilliant orange Asiatic lilies; a real pretty type, not the common ones but a vibrant orange without speckles or spots of contrasting colour. The red bergamot Jacob Kline is also in bloom, as is the Maltese Cross, a host of annual poppies, the giant Macrocephala knapweed, and there are cooling touches in the hot colour scheme being contributed by monkshood, veronica, and some of the darker foliage like Diablo ninebark and Rosy Glow barberry.

And the daylilies have started to bloom. Of course, the oldfashioned ditch lily, Hemercallis fulva, is the first with its bright orange flowers. It’s common as crabgrass but I still love them because they are tall and elegant and will flower anyway.
But the REAL obsessions with daylilies are all the thousands of gorgeous colour combinations, flower sizes and shapes that can be found in the named hybrids—of which there are over 50,000, and perhaps even over 60,000 by now. There’s a daylily for everyone—or five or six dozen, or five or six hundred—and for every spot in your garden. Take for example, this exquisite Minstrel's Fire...I don't have it--yet. But I will.
I’ve loved daylilies for a long time, but I REALLY got into them after I first visited Wayne Ward and Wayne Storrie’s labour of love, Canning Daylily Gardens right here in our own community. The two Waynes have been into gardening for years, but a few years back they decided to try operating a daylily nursery—and it’s a wild success. They have over 800 cultivars growing in the display gardens, and somewhere between 350-450 cultivars for sale. It’s pretty hard to pick out just a few that you like, which is why I have some five dozen or so now. Some are fragrant, some aren’t. Some flower all season long, others only for a few weeks; they come in every colour but true blue and true black, but daylily breeders are a persistant bunch, and one of these days….

I have bought a number of daylilies from Wayne and Wayne so far this season, including the gorgeous Smuggler’s Gold, the deeply purple Strutter’s Ball, a wonderfully contrasting Edge Ahead, the cute as a bug Bug’s Hug, and the exquisite Malaysian Monarch. Today, the Waynes were cleaning up the display gardens prior to the official opening of their Open House days, from July 20-31, and they were moving a couple of clumps of deep red daylilies, name and breeding unknown. Would I like to have them? Well…it wasn’t long before these two big clumps were in my car, ready to go home and be planted…they may be of unknown name and breeding, but they’re going to be named; the taller of the two will be Big Wayne Storrie, and the shorter one will be Little Wayne Ward, and they’re going in my memory garden for Marilyn; just as the two azaleas I brought home from Bill Wilgenhof and Sharon Bryson’s gorgeous place in Antigonish got named Bill and Sharon. After all, Bill bred the azaleas himself, and what better way to pay tribute to the generosity of fellow plant enthusiasts than to call their plants (at least in my garden) by the name of the breeder?

Speaking of breeders, the daylily world was saddened on Friday at the death of daylily breeder Steve Moldovan at age 68. Wayne and Wayne had the privilege of meeting this giant of the hemerocallis world at the national daylily meetings in Niagara back in the spring, and were charmed by his warmth as well as his vast knowledge of daylilies. The world is a little poorer for his passing—but heaven should be well and truly laden with daylilies.

In the meantime, if you're in the Canning area, drop out to Canning Daylily Gardens, 165 Pereaux Rd, and visit the gardens, which are nearly in full bloom. The two Waynes have daylilies and hostas for sale, but you don't have to buy anything to come and visit--they're always happy to meet new people, and to talk about their passion for daylilies. But I defy anyone to come away without purchasing a daylily...or three...or three dozen....

Keep on planting!

I was talking yesterday with Tim Amos, a landscape designer, instructor and plantsman par excellence, about the mindset some people have about planting their gardens. They think that if they don't get everything planted by the middle of July, it's too late to do anything and they should just stop and enjoy whatever they got done.

Well, if you want to stop and smell the roses rather than plant them, that's fine, but it isn't the law, that's for sure. I don't know where people get that notion, but gang, just keep right on planting whatever you want to plant! Especially in Nova Scotia, where we so often have crappy springs but lovely autumns. I still have a bunch of plants lined up against the walkway, waiting for me to decide where the perfect spot is for them. They're all perennials and a couple of shrubs too, but I threw some annual flower seeds out into the garden earlier this week, mostly poppies and a few sunflowers, because they will have lots of time yet to do their thing. In fact, they'll come on later than their already planted and blooming kin, and provide some nice bursts of different colours to go with the usual colours of September.

On reflection, I suspect that the rush to plant comes from the cycle of the farming and veggie garden seasons. Farmers plant their crops and then wait to harvest them; a lot of vegetable gardeners get their cool season veggies planted, then after the risk of frost is past plant their warmer crops, and then that's it, they're done, unless they are the keen types that reseed things like salad fixings and beans every couple of weeks rather than have them all come on at once. And in the past, we bought our flats of annuals, planted them out into beds or containers, and had done with them, because they had been all grown from seed and had to be planted on time or the nurseries would miss the market.

But hey, this is the 21st century, and we can do things differently now. I am forever bringing home plants from nurseries until mid September, (when I switch to bulbs). That means I still have two full months to haunt garden centres and nurseries, looking for unique plants or irresistable bargains I can nurse back to health or the perfect plant to fill in a spot in a bed where I moved something else.

And our locally owned and operated garden centres and nurseries ought to be working harder to educate customers that they don't have to do it all at once. They need to capitalize on the fact that by mid July, the bigbox bullies have pretty well killed off or sold all the plants in their socalled garden centres and are getting ready to close up. NOW is the time for the local nurseries to put the push on to attract more customers. Some of them are doing that by making themselves very much into destination type nurseries and garden centres, offering plants but also other things, such as a cafe, garden art and accessories, books, workshops. They can bring in more interesting plants later in the season, (they could have been seeding some annuals themselves to use in containers for late summer and fall, or brigning in plant plugs from the big growers, etc). They could be encouraging the use of shrubs more, and offering really good choices; some of them do, of course, and some of them make excellent display gardens so that customers can see the plants in situ and be inspired to try them for themselves. Some of them have excellent, knowledgeable staff, which is critical to success in today's market.

I want to see all the locally owned and operated centres and nurseries around the province--and around the region--not just survive, but thrive, which is tough when you have the bigbox bullies trying to suck up every spare dollar around.

There are some local nurseries that ARE seasonally operated, of course, and that's fine. But we can all be working to encourage our fellow gardeners to keep on planting all season long, and to support our local nurseries all season long too. I walk around the garden here at home now, and some would say that it's 'finished' being planted for the year. But it's not. I have two new sections built, neither of which I'll get 'finished' this year, but which I am putting interesting new plants into as I find what I want and decide on the right space. In fact, I'm going out shortly to visit Blomidon Nurseries, Gerry's, and of course Wayne and Wayne's, because the daylilies are coming on to peak bloom very shortly and I want to get some more new daylilies--as soon as I see what they look like in flower.

So I'll keep on planting, and hope you will too.

Good things come to those who wait--and don't spray!

About ten days ago, just before I left for a few days in St. John’s, the rock of my birth, I was driving out to Springvale Nurseries when I spied a big clump of milkweed growing by the side of the road. I’d seen it before; the first time was two years ago when it was in bloom and its sweet fragrance enticed me to pick a few stems to bring home and put in a vase. Last spring, I went to dig some up to have in my garden, but was too early; later in the spring I figured I was too late.
Not this day. I had bags and a shovel in the car with me. I’m sure the people driving by in their cars thought I was nuts; down in the ditch, swatting at blackflies and digging clumps of ‘weeds’ out, stuffing them into bags, and lugging them back to my car.

I proudly brought my treasures home, after stopping at Springvale’s garden centre to water the bags. Once home, I put the plants in the shade to slow their wilting (they WERE, after all, about to bloom and somewhat traumatized by being dug up on a warm summer’s day…studied the garden, looking for the perfect place to tuck these new acquisitions in, and planted them carefully.

“Hold everything!” I can hear some people hollering. “MILKWEED? Milk WEED? That’s a weed, dummy! In some places, it’s classified as a noxious weed! What WERE you doing digging up weeds???”

The answer is real, real simple, dear friends. Milkweed is the host plant of choice for monarch butterflies. Their caterpillars eat the leaves, and grow to impressive size before pupating into those perfect specimens of flying flowers, monarch butterflies. Milkweed is also stunningly beautiful, fragrant as all get out, and I happen to love it. We have rosy milkweed and regular butterflyweed here in our gardens, but I wanted the regular milkweed too. And now, we have it. And behold, look what else we have:



Yup. This is the cherished caterpillar of the monarch, munching his way through the plant’s big lush leaves and flower buds. Eat hearty, amigo.

Because of this fellow—and there are a few of them—I won’t even put down diatomaceous earth around the hostas or heucheras, where slugs have been playing havoc. What’s a few holes in leaves when soon, very soon, there will be monarchs in our garden, to join the other butterflies that have been providing us with great pleasure?

And as for those who think milkweed is a weed—a weed is any plant growing where it is not wanted. Meaning that my magnificent Alchemyst rose would be a weed, were it growing in Bruce Rand’s broccoli fields, or the fabulous orange echinaceas if they were festooning Darryl Steele’s grain fields. In our yard, in our garden, milkweed is welcome.

We’ve had some sunlight and warmth in recent days—mostly, while I was away, naturally—but now we’re back to humidity and fog. Actually, the rain was welcome as the soil is getting a bit dry despite the humidity, but alas, this humidity causes balling in some of the roses; Thomas Lipton, Alchemyst, Polareis, even my perfectly divine Snow Pavement, all are experiencing some balling of flowers, resulting in soggy brown clumps that refuse to open. Not all flowers are going this way, however, and those that do open are so perfectly glorious that we simply cherish each one and ignore the brown Kleenex clumps hanging on some branches.

And this summer, victory has finally come to us. Four years ago, I got a rose called Veilchanblau, the so-called blue rose, from somewhere—I forget what nursery or gardener. For three summers prior to this one, I have waited patiently for flowers. I don’t know whether this is a slow maturing plant, or whether we’ve just had too much cold the past few winters, but til this year, not a flower, not a bud; just lots of green shoots.

This spring, I went out and frowned at the rosebush. I trimmed it a bit, tidied up around it, gave it a dose of Seameal, and threatened it.

“If you don’t flower this year, I’ll replace you with something that will,” I told it.

Well. Whether it took me seriously, or whether it was just a slow bloomer, I don’t know. But voila: we have flowers. Lots and lots of them. They aren’t huge, and they aren’t real blue, but they’re certainly more blue than anything else I’ve seen…and they’re lovely.

I wouldn’t have really replaced the plant, not while it is alive, of course. But we won’t tell it that.

Mugginess, Mungus, and Atwood's warmth

Oh, me nerves, as my fellow Newfoundlanders would say. We are into day I-don’t-know-what of high humidity, mega-fog, abrupt tropical showers, and other irritations. One friend is beginning to think he should wear a disguise when he goes outside, because every time he shows his face, it rains. My darling husband feels it’s all HIS fault it is so excessively wet, because whenever he plans to start mowing the lawn, putting a line of clothes out to dry, or even thinks about having a nap, the heavens open. It’s ridiculous. There’s mould on the horse’s bridle. The concrete floors in the barn are weeping moisture. Annuals are rotting off in containers; containers that we mixed with a little bit of moisture retaining product so as not to have to water so often. As if…No one can sleep.

Everyone is as touchy as a bear with a sore paw, including the cats…here’s Tigger and Mungus saying “this here window ain’t big enough for both of us…” Tigger, the senior cat, may not have double paws like Mungus does, but he’s the fastest paw in the house, and Mungus finally decided that maybe it would be a good plan to back down.



Mungus is a smart cat in all kinds of ways. Because he’s the apple of my darling husband’s eyes, he’s not allowed outside without adult supervision, which in his case means going on a leash, which he learned to do in about five minutes. He likes to be wherever we are, and he whines gently if he’s left alone outdoors, staked out on the lawn like a horse. He enjoys helping me in the garden, mostly by rolling around in the grass and purring a lot, which works fine for me, and with those polydactyl paddypaws he can really dig well, too. Indoors, he generally likes to burrow under the bedcovers and then start his LOUD, diesel engine purr…but he’s too hot to do that in these dogdays of June—why are they dog days, not cat days?—so he’s mostly laying in other windows (those not chosen by Tigger as his favourite window of the moment) and waiting, like the rest of us, for better weather.

The garden is wildly out of control, with weeds exploding into growth every time we have another rainshower. But the perennials are also growing exuberantly, although several of the peonies have blackened buds from all the wet weather and the fog. The perennial Oriental poppies have been doing beautifully when NOT becoming bedraggled tissue paper in the rain, and there are nice bursts of colour from the spiderworts, irises, soapwort and wood anemone. Most exquisite colour in the garden right now? The exultant true blue of the blue corydalis in the front bed by the door. And as a bonus, it’s fragrant too. I am going to plant one of the Sundown Echinaceas near it, I think. That blue and the orange-melon of the echinacea, coupled with both their sweet fragrances, will be divine.

I had a really, really exciting experience yesterday—I had the great good honour of interviewing Margaret Atwood, she of Alias Grace, The Handmaid’s Tale, Moving Targets, and Oryx and Crake fame—among many others. I stayed up wayyyyyyy too late the night before, preparing my questions for Ms. Atwood, worrying about what she would be like to interview. Would she answer my questions? Would she clam up? Would she be irritable, bored, distant? Would she cut me to shreds.

She was an interviewing dream. It’s funny, she is this tremendous literary giant who you expect to be somehow larger than life, but in person she’s small, delicate of structure but wirey too, and with a firm handshake, a genuinely warm personality and a wonderful smile. We had 50 minutes scheduled, but we went to over an hour—I kept worrying but she seemed totally unconcerned. Maybe she enjoyed herself too. We had some commonalities—her parents are both Nova Scotians, one from the south shore and one from the Valley; she’s a gardener of great enthusiasm who told me about her challenges, and we chuckled over how plants sometimes just plain die. We share similar concerns over global warming, the Harperites dissing the Kyoto protocol, the absolute disdain of Harper for ‘alarmists.’ She put it so well; (I’m going to paraphrase here, as I haven’t yet transcribed the whole interview). “an alarmist is sounding an alarm—which is something that is warning of danger.Why is Harper dismissing people who are warning of danger to our world?” She thinks Al Gore is a marvelous person, and she met him at Hay-on-Wye during the festival there, where she said that after his talk on climate change, if he’d called people up to the front to be saved, in the manner of evangelical preachers reaching out to the sinner, everyone would have gone forward—to take up the cause of doing something about global warming.

Maybe all this muggy, wet, almost-tropical weather is an alarm that we should take seriously.

Still in High Flight

June 11, 2005. It’s been a year, already, since my father slipped the surly bonds of earth for the last time, not to take off in a Boeing 737 jet, but to leave all the trials of this world behind. We still miss him, as we always will. Whether or not it was Alzheimers or some other nightmarish dementia that took our vital, funny, talented father, husband, brother, friend and erased his personality, his memory, and much of his self, the end result was the same. And we who were left behind to mourn, to love, to remember and to celebrate Ivan I. DeLong were forever changed—yet forever keep him in our hearts.

In other postings I’ve written about memory gardening and how it can help in some small way to heal a wounded soul. In some ways, my whole garden is a memory garden; the big butterfly planting for Marilyn is taking good shape, despite the monsoons, while specific plants are designated for specific people and others throughout the garden.

Earlier in the week I saw a clinical herbal therapist, who is helping me deal with some ailments without always having to resort to painkillers and other conventional medications. She asked me if I meditated, and I said, no, because my brain won’t let me—it’s always flitting from one thought to another, like those oh-so-active hummingbirds in our garden.

Then the other day, while I was weeding some of the beds, trying to get ahead of the couchgrass that could be mowed and baled into hay, I realized that yes, O do somrt of meditate at times. Weeding, or even planting, is so relaxing to me that passages of time flee without me having actually ‘thought’ about a single thing; I’m just one with the dirt and the plants, scrabbling along doing what needs doing, and not thinking about deadlines or new stories or housework or worries or happy things…just being. That’s my meditating time, apparently.

And it’s not always so. Sometimes, I’m planning a story just because something is going on in the garden that really interests me and makes me think others will be interested. Sometimes I’m thinking about the people, human and feline, who are remembered in our garden by specific plantings. A lot of time, my thoughts turn to Dad.

I am closest to my father when in the garden; I see the carefully potted mint, and I chuckle to myself, thinking of the mint plantation that developed in Dad’s garden after I errantly planted ‘just a few sprigs’ one spring day back in 1979. Oooops. He would feel definitely superior when comparing his tomato growing abilities to mine—he grew tomatoes that were the talk of the town, while I am hardpressed to get even transplants into the ground at the right time. This year, with the ongoing and seemingly neverending monsoons, I expect tomato soup…from the plants. A story for another day.

Today was far too wet to do any actual work in the garden, but I did walk around it this evening with a couple of visitors, showing them interesting plants and casually ignoring the weeds in some spots. Everything is profoundly, amazingly lush, but some things are being beaten down by the rains and winds we’ve had lately. I was really annoyed to find two broken shoots on my dearly beloved’s red buckeye; but it’s a young tree, only three years old, and it will recover.

Earlier today, however, I sat in my office watching the garden from the window, watching the hummingbirds and thinking about Dad. Yesterday I took Mum plant shopping in Truro, a sort of retail therapy for both of us, and I brought her hostas from gardeners who have plants for sale in nearby Port Williams. We talked some about Dad, and we both wondered how we would get through this day. We did, of course.

The year has done one good thing for me; it has pushed the images of my father, dying in that hospital bed for thirteen days, away from the forefront of memory. Stronger now than those images, stronger than even the one of my mother, asleep leaning over the side of his bed with her head on his chest, her hands holding his—that one will haunt me forever—are the good images. Dad in his garden, pretending to do damage to his scarecrow with a maul being swung at a strategic spot on the scarecrow’s anatomy. Dad and his dogs. Dad and his tomatoes. Making faces at us whenever one of us pointed a camera at him. Dad in his captain’s uniform, walking around his 737 before leaving on a flight, checking it outside and in. Dad holding his only grandchild as a small baby, or holding Mum’s hand when they went for a walk. These come to the forefront, along with his gleeful, naughty-little-boy laugh when he played a trick on one of us.

I do not profess to know where people go when they die. My father’s heaven, if there is such a place, will consist of a place where he can garden, fish, walk with good dogs, be with his parents and other family and friends who have already gone…but mostly, a place where he can fly jets forever on laughter silvered wings. We still love and miss you, Dad, but hey, go into High Flight for us.

The Year of the Hummingbird

It’s June! And I forget what year it is in the Chinese calendar, but at our house it’s the year of the hummingbird. We’ve never had so many; and they’re voracious, dining on both the feeders and the flowers for nectar sources. And they’re saucy to each other, zipping back and forth, swearing at each other “back off! Get your own feeder!” and zooming all around. They even hover a few inches from me when I’m working in the garden, especially if the feeders are getting low or I’m wearing something bright. They don’t regard me as any threat…and they’re mightily amusing to the cats, who line up in the windows to watch bird television….
Mangotango Babycat and Toby Soprano squish into one window to observe the festivities...

In another life, I’ll be able to just sit happily reading blogs of friends, longtime and new. I’ve mentioned Ami McKay’s blog a number of times, and thanks to so many of you who have helped to keep Ami’s book on the bestseller lists for many weeks! I heard from a friend that the book has been nearly impossible to actually pick up in Toronto; it keeps selling out and having to be ordered in again by bookstores. Go, Ami, you’re a star in all our books. (and a dear friend besides being a stellar writer.)

Then Mary Ann Archibald emailed me about her weblog, and wondered could she link to mine. The answer of course was sure—gardeners gotta stick together, always.

And last night, a welcome note came from a longtime acquaintance, newly met in Ottawa during the PWAC national conference; Charmian, fellow writer and gardener and ranter. She’s located in Guelph, and her blog is a hoot; at once funny and tender, as the most recent posting about her uncle Lindsay demonstrates.

Charmian gave me grief, in a good hearted fellow gardener’s way, for my ability to grow blue poppies—not just to get them to survive, but also to flower. I’ve been trying to locate a local to her source of these little finicky darlings, but so far no success. So for now, I’ll just link to her weblog, which for those of us who enjoy food is a delightful thing, and also tease her by saying, guess whose blue poppy is putting up flower stalks?

Yup. It’s going to flower shortly. The first stalk shot up out of that plant like there was no tomorrow—it wasn’t there, and then it was. Tonight it was showing colour in the bud; this is nearly three weeks earlier than last year. Mind you, this particular plant is in the sun where the others are in more shade…

Had a little plant-buying frenzy yesterday at Springvale Nurseries production site, when I was there for meetings. Somehow, a Katsura tree, a dawn redwood, a Middendorf weigela, a golden plumose false cypress, and a serviceberry climbed onto the back of my truck…and of course my dear longsuffering spouse wondered where all these new trees and shrubs are going to go…but already he’s decided that they’ll do just fine. He’s a quick study, my sweetie, and also a great builder of birdhouses and windowboxes and trellises too.