Lambs to lions to downright frigid

Well, March is a week old, and we’ve had a whole year’s worth of weather in that time. After that lamblike entrance, we had admonitions from the weather-sages about a big storm on Friday…well, what if they gave a storm and nobody came? Suer there was wind, and about an inch of snow…then a weekend that was decidedly springlike at times, with a total lunar eclipse and a thunderstorm—yes, a thunderstorm—thrown in for good measure. The past couple of days we’ve been back into winter in earnest, with cold wind and lots of blustering and flurries, but these ARE things to expect during winter, so to my mind it’s no biggie.

Readers may notice a little bit of a change in the way this blog looks from here on in. That’s because I’ve gone over to using Firefox as my webbrowser, rather than Apple’s native app Safari. I’ve used Safari for several years, but I’m finding it crashes far too often of late, and some features of some websites are non-usable. Plus I’ve discovered the wonderful world of StumbleUpon, thanks in part to a nice note from Contrary 1, the host of www.frugalgardening.com. You gotta have Firefox or similar browsers in order to romp properly around StumbleUpon, and I’ve been finding all kinds of great gardening sites as a result. I’ll let people know about some of those whenever I have a chance, of course.

For the time being, however, let me extol the virtues of frugalgardening.com. I like this site because it makes serious sense; my philosophy is whenever I can save money on certain aspects of gardening, it means I can indulge in a new plant or three. Of course, sometimes the best way to get new plants is to swap with fellow gardeners. I’m looking forward to spring, when I know some of the perennials will need dividing…and I know of some gardeners who are looking for new plants, plus have interesting things of their own to share. Gardening is for sharing, after all…

I wrote a review in last Sunday’s Halifax Chronicle Herald of a new book that I’m really impressed with. It’s Katherine Whitelaw’s The Way We Garden Now, and it ought to be a bestseller and on every gardener’s bookshelf. Her philosophy is simple, and one I can embrace wholeheartedly:

“This is not your mom’s garden book. Nothing against your mom, but just as we have changed the way we arrange our homes, do our work, cook our meals, imagine our families, get our exercise and spend our spare time, we nesters have changed the way America gardens. The unattainable goal of “perfection” is a relic of the past, and I am here to yell ‘Whoopee!’”

I’m with her on that one! Our garden will never be perfect, not unless I win a lottery and have the means to haul in major amounts of soil, have large equipment to add drainage tile and level areas and build up other areas and bring in every bit of hardscaping and every single plant I’ve ever wanted to try. Oh, note to self…remember to BUY a lottery ticket if you want to win. No matter. Our garden may not be perfect, but it’s built with love.

Another thing about Whiteside’s book is she’s a smart, conversational writer. At the beginning of each chapter, she answers the question, “What’s the Payoff?” After all, if we’re going to take on a project, whether it’s creating a gardening journal or building our first compost pile, it’s always a good idea to know why we’re launching into this. And Whiteside’s payoff reasons are smart; these are not projects to give ourselves more to do (or more to feel guilty about not doing), but practical, delightful and even fun to begin—and accomplish.

It’s almost time, however, to start a few seeds—mostly the Nicotiana, which takes so long to get to any size. My talks at the Saltscapes Expo this year will include video displays of plants, rather than trying to grow a pile of seedlings on to flower on schedule for that weekend. So I’m in no real rush to sow seeds just yet. But I know others are starting: what have YOU sown on your windowsill so far?

A lamblike March entry, and some gardening gems

March has arrived, gamboling in like a spring lamb, first casting flurries around this morning like confetti, then bringing on a pristine blue sky and sunlight with real heat to it. The cats are shedding more than usual, but the horse has also begun to lose his thick winter coat--there are hairy patches of snow in the pasture where he's getting down to roll whenever possible. And can it be the chickadees have begun to change their song?

Tomorrow, of course, could be a nor-easter howling down at us, but we’ll take this fine day as a promise of things to come.

What would the world look like if we suddenly planted a billion new trees? It would be wonderful if we could drop seeds or seedlings into the ground, and then the next day witness a miracle like the Green Morning of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. “Before [Mr. Benjamin Driscoll] woke again five thousand new trees had climbed upward into the sun.” I have to thank the wonderful garden writer Doug Green for reminding me about the Billion Tree Campaign being encouraged by the United Nations. Doug asked how many trees we as individual gardeners plan to put in this year. I figure I’ll get at least half a dozen in—a mountain ash, an oak for my grandchildren, maybe a couple of maples and I’m not sure what else—plus of course some shrubs. My few trees might not seem like much when balanced against the massive clearcuttings going on. But every tree helps!

A couple of really NICE things to tell you about now. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned Tracey Martin’s new business
Lilies From the Valley ; well her website is up and going full tilt and she’s taking orders for her fine selection of oriental and Asiatic lilies (with some of the new hybrids also available). Tracey sent me a few photos of herself with her lilies, and told me she’s soon going to be qualified as a flower and vegetable judge for garden shows. This girl has a LOT of energy—she’s also president of her local garden club (Mt. Denson), which is a happening group of gardeners, let me tell you! She also does flower arrangements for weddings and other special events, often supplying the flowers from her own garden. She’s got me excited about trying some new lilies in our garden this year, including a couple of orienpets. I put in one orienpet last year—the name since forgotten, naturally!—and was instantly besotted with it when it bloomed. (Note to self—find the photos you took of it, and key it out!).

Back in the fall, a neat little book arrived in the mail for me, with a note from its author. Ron Robertson lives in Truro, and has been growing flowers from seeds for more than twenty years now. His garden is a wonder to behold, and he’s the kind of garden writer we all love—the kind that takes the time to explain things and never, ever talks down to others. He’s put his collected years of seeding wisdom together into the delightful Growing Flowers from Seed in Canada, which you can either order as a hardcopy book from Trafford Publishing or phone (toll free) 1 888 232 4444 (ISBN 1-4120-9406-2) or buy as a downloadable pdf file here. This is a dandy book, and one I’ll recommend wholeheartedly to everyone who’s ever contemplated starting their own seeds—or to those who have tried and succeeded, or tried and been less successful at growing their own transplants. Follow the sage advice of Ron, and your flower garden will be turning heads too, of that I’m sure!

Hearts, roses, snowstorms and lilies

"Good morrow, Benedick. Why, what's the matter;
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness"

(Shakespeare, from Much Ado About Nothing)

I’ve poached that quote rather shamelessly from the Old Farmer’s Almanac newsletter , because if there’s a more perfect description for a bad mood than a February face, I don’t know what it would be. Mind you, this day is full of frost, but also sunlight and crystal clear skies, which is why I’m contentedly sitting in my office watching the birds stuff themselves at the feeders. How long the nice weather will last is anyone’s guess, as the weather networks and Environment Canada and just about any prognosticator you can think of are screaming about a winter storm headed this way. A few centimeters of snow, some ice and then rain is what we’re supposed to get, which is nothing to get excited about. Those poor people in parts of the US are the ones I feel sorry for. 140 INCHES of snow in some places, or more? And still coming? I won’t growl about a few inches here. Although I don’t think the weather forecasters saw ‘White Juan’ coming back in February of 2004, so we’ll just sit and wait to see what happens here. It’ll be another excuse for those poor overworked teachers to have school cancelled, no doubt. (whoops, that was a bit of a rant, wasn’t it?)

Today is the Great Day of Guilt, Valentine’s Day, when millions of roses and other flowers will give their lives in an effort for spouses to tell their mates how much they love them. I don’t get roses on Valentine’s Day, by choice; I’d much rather prefer that my longsuffering spouse give me roses when he feels like it, rather than on some hallmark holiday.

Still, I like thinking about roses—the type that grow in my garden, not the pampered pets of florists. We have some wonderful roses bred right here in Canada, the Explorer and the Parkland series, and I tend to recommend these to people who want to have roses in their gardens but don’t want to have to fuss with them excessively. My favourites from these two are Henry Hudson, a white rugosa type, John Cabot, a red climber, Mordon Sunrise, a gloriously yellow-orange-coral blend, Quadra, a deep rich red, quartered double bloomer, and J.P. Connell, a lovely soft yellow. But my absolute favourite roses are Schneekopf (Snow Pavement), a rose described by author Barbara Wilde in her wonderful book Growing Roses Organically as being the colour of whipped cream with a few drops of blackberry juice added. It’s almost lavender. And its fragrance is divine.

Speaking of fragrance, I’ve also got lilies on my mind right now. No, I’m not thinking about Easter, though I do love the ghostly white and fragrant white lilies associated with that holy day. I’m thinking more about floods of lilies in the garden, fragrant Orientals, showy Asiatics, exciting crossbreds, and how much I enjoy them. Well, a young woman I know has developed a business here in the Annapolis Valley, selling aftermarket lilies—these are lilies that were used once for cut flowers; they are still perfectly good bulbs, and will flower the first year they’re planted, and then in subsequent years produce even more blooms. Tracey’s business is called—wait for it—Lilies FROM the Valley, which I think is totally delightful, and I’ve been drooling over her website, dreaming about which lilies we need to add to our garden. Hey, at 8.00 or 10.00 for a DOZEN bulbs—or more accurately, tubers—I guess we’ll have quite a few different colours. Of course, I’ll lean towards the fragrant Orientals and Oriental crosses like the Stargazer in this photo, but I like Asiatics too for their brilliant colours.



If I do have a bit of a mood going on today, it's because I'm feeling deeply saddened for a dear friend of mine, who lost her mother to a long battle with cancer just a couple of weeks back. I haven't yet decided what I'll plant in my memory garden for this incredibly brave and loving woman, but it'll be a shrub or tree that echoes her strength and wisdom. Probably a hardy
azalea, preferably one of the Lights series, and one of the fragrant ones, so that it both brightens the spot where it is and casts its sweet scent around the garden. It won't bring this lovely woman back, but perhaps, just perhaps, it'll give my friend and her family some little comfort.

From the land of the frozen chosen....

This is getting interesting. It’s been about three weeks now since winter rolled in, and it’s stayed cold; and with snow cover, at least up here on the mountain. We’ve been treated to several sessions of our famous Fundy ‘Flurries where winds blow on shore’ which have accumulated nicely in some locales. Great for cross country skiing, apparently, according to those who still pursue the sport (I don’t). It’s been bitterly cold up here and that tends to put me into recluse mode, so that I’m not going outdoors much except to do errands and chores.

This, of course means it’s a perfect time to catch up a bit on my reading about gardening, and to explore lots of new-to-me gardening websites, thanks to the joys of highspeed Internet. I’ve spent a fair bit of time poring over nursery and seed catalogue websites, seeing what’s new—even though I don’t expect to see some of these newer plants in this area for a while, either because of hardiness issues or supply availability. This is an ongoing problem that some of our nurseries face; they aren’t large enough to order massive amounts of plants, so some of the propagating nurseries and plant suppliers leave them low down the list of customers, and they can’t always get the new exciting plants. Some of them fight this by joining together and making joint orders, which apparently helps them get what they want. This to my mind is all the more reason to support our local nurseries, who DO go that extra mile for us customers. Take that, bigbox bullies!

I mentioned receiving a catalogue from Renee’s Garden out in California. Renee’s seeds are now available in Canada, and I was attracted to them because of the gorgeous watercolour paintings that adore each package. Well, my order arrived yesterday, only a week after it was shipped—that’s pretty impressive, and kudos to the United States Postal Service for their prompt service, because I’m pretty durn sure it wasn’t Canada Post’s efforts that got that package here so promptly. AND, I noticed the cost of mailing this package was $1.15 US. I’m pretty durn sure it would have cost way more than that to have mailed a similar sized package to the US from Canada Post. We pay more for way inferior postal service, in my mind. Except of course for our own community’s post office in Canning, and our intrepid rural mail drivers—they’re heros.

So, what did I get from Renee to try? Given that this is the season of the plastic tomato, which alas I still end up buying (at least in hothouse-from-Ontario form) throughout the winter, I’ve already started craving real tomatoes. So I got a package called Summer Feast, a mixture of three heirloom types including my beloved Black Krim. Mmmmm. That’s all I got in the veggie department; other treasures included sweet peas, sunflowers (can’t wait to see ‘Chocolate Cherry’ in bloom!), Shirley poppies, butterfly scabiosa (should go well with the blue lace flower, shouldn’t they?) California poppies (Eschscholtzia californica, surely the most difficult genus name in botany), Little Ladybirds butterfly cosmos, and two types of Nigella; Persian Violet, in shades of blue and purple, and Mulberry Rose, because it’s been wayyyyyy too long since I had pink nigella in the garden. Nigella reseeds, but it’s been our experience that either they revert to blue after a few generations or else it’s only the blue that are real good at reseeding.

Watching the birds at the feeders outside my office window, as they hop from feeders to the definitely asleep rhododendron, I can’t help but think surely this time, this cold snap will help kill off some overwintering insect populations. So I’m not going to grumble too much about the cold. Yet, anyway. I’ll just sit, like the cats, watching bird television and dreaming of warmer, spring days. And digging in the dirt, planting new garden treasures.

Of groundhogs and seed catalogues

I suppose it depends on where you live, whether the groundhog saw his shadow or not. Personally, I hope we have another six weeks of winter NOW, rather than in April!

Surprisingly, we’ve actually had two weeks of winter in a row, and today a mild spell; mild enough that my longsuffering spouse kindly got the barn cleaned out from where the iceberg of frozen horse poo was starting to look a bit bizarre in the back of the horse’s condo-stall. I’ve been more or less housebound the past couple of days, in part because of doing some computer housecleaning, and also because I cleverly got a wireless router in the house. Now LSS can look at boat-selling sites and storms on YourTube or whatever else he’s interested in on his computer upstairs, and I can work or goof off at my laptop wherever in the house I want. Maybe even outside a bit? Well, it’s far too cold to worry about THAT for a while, for sure.

But this week was a time for officially celebrating the kickoff of the gardening season. A modest seed order I made last week with Salt Spring Seeds Salt Spring Seeds, on the BC island of the same name, arrived 6 days after I made the order. Was I impressed! Am told by other gardeners that the seed quality is second to none, and certainly Dan has some interesting seed selections. I opted for a few different annuals that are sometimes hard to locate locally, even at Blomidon where they bring in Thompson and Morgan seeds as well as a host of Canadian and other English seeds.

So what did I get? Verbena bonariensis, of course, just in case mine didn’t self-seed like it does in some locales; the green-flowered Nicotiana langsdorfii; Phacelia, a simply gorgeous blue annual; Blue Lace flower too, Trachelium; yellow and orange Cosmos mix, blue woodruff, (a lovely, delicate flower), some mauve-flowered poppies…Of course now the trick will be restraining myself from planting them too early. I might see about seeding them at the Kingstec greenhouses in a few weeks, or might simply start them here in the living room. At any rate, I’m well pleased at the service and I expect the quality of the seed will also be terrific.

I also have a collection of seeds coming from Renee’s Garden Seeds sometime in the next couple of weeks. A press kit arrived last week from Renee’s, and I went through it with interest. Although she’s based out in California, her seeds are now available in Canada (except, curiously, in Montreal—must find out about that one!) Again, I’ve been told that her seeds are top quality and so I took her up on her invite to try a few types; mostly flowers, but one package of heritage tomatoes too, featuring the always-luscious Black Krim. So the seed bug is really getting at me. I’ve also been eying the catalogue from Richters Herbs, but I suspect what I’ll get from them is a selection of lavender plants to put out front, where I’ve decided I NEED more lavender. All in good time, however.

More to write, but not tonight; some work is calling me, plus some reading, plus there are all these new seed and plant catalogues to look at…never enough time to savour them all. And I do want to go to the Wolfville Farmer’s Market tomorrow morning; although, ironically, it’s FISH I want, from the local fishmonger, not so much produce, etc; which I mostly already get from local producers. More on that next time, though.

More Strip mining in Nova Scotia???

(Yellow ladyslippers on the peninsula. Photo courtesy of Mira McNeil, APWPS)

Nigh on 30 years ago, when I was a student at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, I spent one summer collecting wild plants as a job with a professor in the biology department. We were increasing the number of specimens in the A.E Roland Herbarium collection.

One early summer day, Dr. Bob took me and a couple of other summer student employees on a road trip down to Avondale, outside Windsor in Hants County. We hiked out into wooded areas where for the first time in my life, I got to see yellow ladysslippers in bloom in a natural habitat. I was instantly smitten; both by the plants, and by the natural beauty of the area. Dr. Bob explained that these were calcareous woodlands, with alkaline soil due to the large amounts of gypsum throughout the area, and that these beautiful plants were home only to these sorts of soils.

A multinational company's plans may well sound a deathknell for these woodlands, the watershed of the surrounding tidal Avon River, and for the way of life of those who live, work and play along that watershed.

Here's the situation as described on the website of the Avon Penisula Watershed Preservation Society:

"A foreign-controlled company is currently proposing an expansion of their operation which will include a new strip mine. If it goes ahead, their current operation will extend further into the heart of the Avon Peninsula - the heart of our scenic, farming community, where wildlife lives and unique flora and fauna grow. Where we live.

"The new strip mine will not only be in our backyards, it will be in the heart of our community and our community's watershed. It will prevent our community from growing by destroying our environment, our tourism potential and the opportunity to expand our agricultural sector."

Here we go again. The provincial "Backward-Forward" government, as Allan Fotheringham famously used to call the so-called Progressive Conservative party, is wellknown for turning a blank face and a tacit approval to these sorts of developments. Witness similar anxieties in people on Boularderie Island, where a fight to prevent strip mining has the attention and support of Elizabeth May, leader of the National Green Party; on Digby Neck, at the lower end of this marvelous Bay of Fundy, where another multinational is determined to develop a horrid quarry that will pave roads in the US--at the cost of a lifestyle and an ecosystem unique to Digby Neck.


What can we ordinary people do? There are a few things;

Sign the Society's Petition. There are several options; online, via email, at various businesses in the surrounding area, including at ArtCan Gallery and Cafe in Canning, (one of my personal favourite cafes in the province.)

Tell others. Point them to the Avon Peninsula Watershed Preservation Society website, where there are other actions suggested, including writing to our MLAs (for those of us who live in Nova Scotia). Join the society, and help make a noise so that our various media climb onto this story too. Don't just contact the Tories, either; contact the opposition parties and urge them to challenge the government on this.

And when it finally comes time to vote...send the tories back to oblivion where they so richly deserve to be.

This is about more than yellow ladyslippers. It's about a way of life that is in danger. Please help.

The Stillness of the Morning

Every now and again, there’s a truly perfect winter day up here on the mountain. Surprisingly, we’ve actually been having winter for five days running now, after the deluges of Friday. Even the gale of wind finally blew itself out sometime yesterday morning, and it’s been refreshingly calm ever since.

Ambling out to the mailbox, still a bit bleary-eyed and lacking that second cup of coffee, a dance of light in the driveway caught my attention. I’d dropped a glove last night getting out of the car; frost had rimed this with silver, and the sunlight was causing a pleasing shimmer. A closer look around the yard, and I darted for my camera. While the bluejays scolded me for having the utter gall to disturb them from stuffing themselves into repletion at the feeders, I had a nice ramble around the garden catching a little garden art—fleeting and ephemeral, as the sunlight has since melted the frost, but pleasant none the less.

An intriguing part about walking the garden and observing is that my mind gets to wander to other topics at the same time as I photograph subjects. For the past several weeks, my mind has been troubled by the plight of Nova Scotian farmers; in particular, the province’s pork producers, but other farmers as well. We have a provincial government that is far more interested in developing Cape Breton tourism (more Gaelic and fiddle music, anyone?) and covering its own excesses and misbehaviour than in tending to the problems besetting our own agricultural producers. Talk about shortsightedness. If our farmers go bankrupt, or sell their prime land to become plastic subdivisions, who is going to feed us? Apparently the so-called brain trust in Halifax fail to understand that when food isn’t produced locally but is brought in from elsewhere—by the greedy big-two grocery stores, primarily—we set ourselves up for problems in what is called food security. I’ve written about this before, I realize, both here and in publications, and it seems I’ll have to do it again. So these thoughts, and plenty more, were rolling around as I snapped garden art. I’m not alone in my concerns, of course. Fellow writers are taking to their pens—or their keyboards—and voicing their worries and support for our farmers. I hope it’s not too little too late.

Back to the garden, while I ponder this further.

Although I sometimes grumble about the seedy abundance of teasels, especially when I’m digging out some of their tenacious offspring, these spiky monsters are actually a favourite plant. They provide food for countless birds, they give winter interest all season long—right into spring when I finally cut down the seedheads—and they are certainly dramatic in the summer garden too. Days like today, they show their artistic side even moreso.


If I were a better bird-gardener, I’d have a heater in this birdbath to keep the water open;

I tell myself the old apples that I put out provide adequate moisture for our feathered friends, and besides that, it could rain again tomorrow. I’ll just enjoy the ice sculpture while it lasts.

This is one reason why I select so many hardy rugosa-type roses for our garden; not only are the fleshy hips loved by many birds, they delight the human eye too. Is this a rose-morel or a piece of modern art? You decide.

It’s hard to believe this is the same rosy milkweed that played host to monarch butterfly caterpillars well into the autumn. It too is a favourite plant because it truly performs all year long. Its only drawback is that it’s difficult to transplant or move unless you find seedlings early in the spring; but it germinates nicely from seed.

And this peaceful shot of a frozen saxifrage rosette—which cultivar, I don’t remember naturally—rounds out this morning’s arty-blog.


One more thing that I couldn't photograph--the fragrance in the air. Maybe it's because the wind has stopped blowing, at least briefly. But I'm sure I can smell spring.

What's new--or tried and true--under this garden's sun

Gnomey, the garden blogger at Kingsbrae Gardens in St. Andrews, NB, made a good point the other day. How many new cultivars of hostas, heucheras or daylilies do we really need? Every year, there are countless new cultivars of perennials, vegetables, annuals, shrubs…you name it and there’s probably a new cultivar or two on offer. And while this is a very good thing in some ways for us gardeners, on the other hand it can be daunting for new gardeners to deal with. Which of the forty-seven heucheras should she plant in her garden? If there’s only room in his tiny back yard for one hosta, should it be Sagae, Paul’s Glory, Revolution, or Guacamole?

At the same time, many of us get very excited when we read about new and beautiful plants in magazines or catalogues or here on the Web. And believe it or not, while it’s daunting for home gardeners of all abilities to figure out what new plants to try—or even what new plants are out there, it’s even more daunting for those of us who are garden writers, who are expected to keep somewhat ‘up’ on what’s new and hot.

So what I’ve decided to do is pick out ten of my favourite old standards (perennials to start with) and profile each of them; then we’ll move to ten of the newest plants, whether they’re brand new and not even in our home gardens yet, or some that have come out in the past year or so. This should give us plenty of things to talk about over the next few entries…plus, it will make me think seriously about what my favourite plants are, and why; a good offering to suggest to new gardeners when they come to me asking about what they should plant. That’s always a tricky thing to suggest. “Plant what makes you happy” is what I tell people, and if they have specific interests I’m pleased to direct them to growers who specialize in one genus or another; daylilies, hostas, shrubs, heucheras, alpine plants, grasses…but we’ll talk about some general favourites of mine. Including, of course, both pros and cons.

First on the list is the coneflower, or Echinacea. To be technical, there are several different genera that are referred to as coneflowers; Rudbeckia, Ratibida, and Echinacea. While I like the first two just fine, I simply adore Echinaceas, so that’s the one I’m focusing on here.

Coneflowers make me instantly happy when I look at them in bloom. They are so tidy looking, with those striking central cones in various shades (depending on species/cultivar), and their neat, symmetrical ring of petals. Sure, there are plenty of daisy-flowered garden perennials, but echinacea has to be the star of them all. And even now, in late January, there are still cones hanging on in the garden, providing food to some songbirds and winter interest to the gardener.

Coneflowers perform best in full sun in well-drained soil, amended with compost or well-rotted manure. They’ll do okay in part shade but won’t bloom as heavily, and while some of the older species and hybrids usually do fine in my back bed, which is prone to being a bit on the wet side, last year one rotted off due to the excessive amounts of wet and rain. Clay isn’t good for them, and while I work away at adding as much compost and manure to that back bed as possible, it all takes time. The front beds, where drainage is better, is where our coneflowers have done best.

One of the funniest ongoing jokes my longsuffering spouse and I have is about the name “Purple coneflower”. When I was growing one of the white hybrids, he asked me what it was, and I told him it was a ‘white purple coneflower’. Well. He wanted to know how a plant could be purple when it was white. I told him I didn’t make up the names. He then proceeded to declare the ‘Black Beauty’ Rudbeckia a black purpleconeflower. I explained that it wasn’t a purple coneflower, it was a rudbeckia. Didn’t matter. He now torments me about orange purple coneflowers, yellow purple coneflowers, and wants to know when there will be a blue purple coneflower. Okay, it strikes me funny, but maybe you had to be there.!

Speaking of all those different colours; echinaceas are a plant breeder’s delight. In the past four or five years, there have been a number of different coloured coneflowers launched on an unsuspecting public. Perhaps the first was one of those developed at the Chicago Botanical Gardens: Art’s Pride, or Orange Meadowbrite. It’s truly orange, and its fragrant too. People who know more about plant breeding than I do tell me that many of the funky new colours are the result of crossing E. purpurea and E. paradoxa, and this is why some of the newer coneflowers have more lanceolate leaves and thinner petals than our old standards. Whatever the case, they are marvelous.

I’ve heard rumblings from some gardeners about the newer ones being harder to overwinter. So far, (touch wood) our plants have settled in well and the older ones came through their first winter just fine. To be on the safe side, I did cover the new cultivars that I put in last year with evergreen boughs, just to help them get through their first Atlantic Canadian winter.
From Georgia’s ItSaul Nursery come the Big Sky series of coneflowers, which I have quickly become besotted with. I currently have Sunrise (yellow)
and Sundown (peachy-rose-orange, depending on the age of the flower) and I THINK there’s a Sunset out there too, but you know about me and LoLas…There are more to get my mitts on, including Harvest Moon and Twilight, Summer Sky and After Midnight, all from ItSaul Plants, so I look forward to seeing them in the not too distant future.

But wait, there’s more. Others are breeding coneflowers too, and bringing in interesting variations. I haven’t seen “Green Eyes’ around here yet, a native purple coneflower with a green cone,
but I did see it in Toronto and of course I covet it….(this one was taken late in the season and the green is waning, but you get the idea.) I'm looking forward to seeing it in Nova Scotian nurseries this year, or else I'll have to break down and order it from somewhere else.

From Terra Nova Nurseries out in Oregon comes the pumpkin orange ‘Tiki Torch’. If the photo's colour is accurate and not enhanced, this striking new cultivar should excite those of us who hanker after such beautiful plants. (photo courtesy of Terra Nova)

And they think there’s no global warming?

Talk about the weather vagaries. First, we had a snowstorm a few days ago; not a terrible one, just your average Nova Scotian winter snowfall with wind, snow, and so on. Then it got cold. Waaayyyyy frigidly cold with blustery winds and drifting snow, compliments of the cold snap that western Canada had been enduring earlier in the week. That was fine with me because I wasn’t planning on going outside anyway except to give a talk, (which didn’t happen due to both the weather and my having some weird flu bug). Our century old farmhouse is well used to such weather and we were kept nicely warm, but the only window in the house that isn’t thermal, an antique ‘stained glass’ window, always provides us with the most marvelous frost art during such cold snaps.

Of course, such cold weather can be hard on plants, which is why we tend to mulch some of the more tender perennials and newer shrubs after we have a freeze. These plants have been snuggled down under their conifer covers (the perfect use for a no-longer needed Christmas tree) for several weeks now and then the blanket of snow further protected them.

However…today we are having a rainstorm. Yes, that’s right, a rainstorm. Wind screaming inspiredly out of the southeast this morning when I went out to check the mailbox was decidedly milder than yesterday, and at that time we were getting the big, wet snowflakes that everyone knows means we could be getting wet shortly. And sure enough, before noon it was pouring in earnest, and it’s continued on throughout the day. So far there’s still quite a bit of snow left around the yard, or there was before dark; but by morning we could well be back where we started.

Still, we’ve had nothing too dramatic one way or the other for weather so far this winter. Lots of wind, but that’s nothing unusual for the Fundy. Whereas our friends on the west coast, and in parts of the US, and now in Europe too, have been receiving one pounding after another. And no matter what Stephen J. Bush and George W. Harper might say, we humans ARE making havoc with our environments and our climates are changing as a result.

I’d like to have decals made up saying “thanks so much for contributing to global warming…” which I would then stick on every Hummer and other obnoxious oversized gargantuan SUV that I could find in parking lots around the Valley. What are these people THINKING??? Who NEEDS something the size of a small tank to run around a city or town? Surely not this simpering, smug bleached blonde botox yuppy mamas that I see so often at the wheel of these monstrosities, driving their pampered children to freearange interpretive yoga or minor-minor-minor-peewee league no-contact no-ice hockey, or advanced geophysics lab classes or whatever else they’ve signed their Nintendo-glazed offsprings up for, all so they can show off more to their neighbours about what THEY have that the others don’t!

Whew. That was a bit of a rant, wasn’t it. On to other topics, I think. Ah yes. Here’s a rare two-headed feline reclining in the chair nearest the woodstove in out kitchen.
I was vastly amused by these two sharing the same chair, because of the herd, they are two who do not get along as a rule. I happen to adore them both and they seem to regard me as their personal person, so they sometimes are a bit competitive. Hence Simon laying as far away from his neighbour as he can, although their hind ends are touching…

To help drive the winter blues or blahs away, it’s always nice to have something flowering around the house. While our amaryllis are some weeks from flowering, they have all sprouted nicely after their time resting in the basement. I neglected to pot up any bulbs to force for the house in the fall, but there’s no worries about that; there are always potted bulbs on sale at grocery and department stores and some nurseries. Last week a pot of dwarf iris pleaded to come home with me, as did a white hyacinth; both are providing lots of brightness in the office window now, with the hyacinth also offering its sweet fragrance.

When out doing some things around the yard last week prior to writing an article about how this weather is or isn’t affecting our gardens, I took the secateurs to the forsythia, one of the honeysuckles, and the bittersweet vine. I clipped off a few twigs, brought them in and put them in a vase with a couple of inches of warm water, and let them sit for a few hours. Then I filled the vase with clean water and put it in the kitchen window. Two days ago, I was rewarded with the first forsythia buds:


Which are now already opened, with more to follow. The honeysuckle is sulking, mostly because it was showing some leaves and buds when I cut it, I think, but the bittersweet is showing nice green buds too. Forcing twigs is just SO easy with some plants. I’ve never tried our magnolia because it’s still too small, and the same with the two quince shrubs. The warm smiling yellow of forsythia, and the exhuberant growth of bittersweet, and even some twigs of red osier dogwood, never fail to produce smiles throughout whatever kind of winter we’re having.

Watching the sleeping garden

It’s a new year…

…and as Babe Ruth would say, it’s déjà vu all over again. One of the earliest entries to this blog (now celebrating its first birthday) was a lament about the weirdness of the January weather. Well, on this day, 5 January, the temperature outside at noon (Atlantic Standard Time) is 48 degrees. Fahrenheit, not metric. Although today is overcast and there’s a suggestion of rain to come, there’s also some golden light in the sky, where the sun is struggling to pierce the clouds and bathe us in more warmth. Yesterday was a textbook January thaw-day; not quite as warm as today, but sunny, crystal blue skies, and the seemingly inexhaustible wind finally had blown itself out and was quiescent. When I went for a walk, I was intrigued by the waves of scent on the air; scents we don’t expect to be able to pick up just yet. The smell of earth warming up; the tang of manure from barns, of hay in the pasture for the horses, of ice melting back into water…these are things I don’t expect to really notice at this time of year—unless of course I’m in the barn cleaning out the horse’s stall or throwing down hay. But normally, the cold seems to freeze scents as well as water and ground and such, and it’s not until a February thaw or later before we get that first warm bathe of scent on the air, promises of spring.

We need to have winter before we have spring! The whole continent is in some sort of weather crisis, of course, as if our seasons have twisted. The west coast is alternately getting pounded with snowstorms and rainstorms. We’re having spring in January. The Midwest (well, Colorado anyway) is seeing snowstorm after snowstorm. A humungous piece of the glacial ice pack fell off the edge of Ellesmere Island a week or two back…meanwhile, our various not-so-glorious leaders hide their heads in their butts and deny that there’s any global warming going on. I won’t rant though, not about those jokers and losers. Not today.

Just two days ago, when the ground and the air were of equal frigidity thanks to that wonderful west wind screaming in off the Bay, I put the Christmas tree to the second-last of its really good uses. After standing for nearly three weeks in the house, festooned with ribbons and bows and balls and ornaments from all over, this mountain-grown tree from a local man’s tree lot has turned into mulch for the somewhat fussy plants of the garden; perennials that REALLY don’t appreciate freeze thaw cycles, some plants that were newly put in last year and haven’t gone through a Fundy winter yet, especially young shrubs like the Callicarpa and the Pyracantha and the ‘Bluebird’ hibiscus. I also put some boughs down around the bed where the heathers and heaths are, because they too are still young and establishing.

That as-yet unidentified euphorbia in the front garden is still holding its leaves but looking more bedragged now after the all-but incessant winds of the past couple of weeks. The hellebores seem to be doing just fine under the spruce trees, but that first real cold snap finished off the cyclamen that I’d planted out; houseplant type cyclamen mostly aren’t hardy here, but they will keep on growing and flowering until a hard freeze. For now, though, I’ll have to content myself with indoor flowers.

And indoor flowers we have only in small amounts, right now. The other day while getting groceries, my attention was caught by several stands of fresh, locally grown plants in the floral department. A small yellow primrose, with its spicy-lemon scent that instantly makes me happy, clambered into my grocery cart beside the salmon and the granola bars. Then a deep-rose cyclamen, reminding me how much it likes cool rooms like my office, followed the primrose. Finally, one of the compact, birds-nest type of sanseveria, a wonderfully variegated one, hinted that it should be included too. So these three small plants are relaxing in the office window, where the cats have shown no interest in snacking on any of them, and where their happy colours bring me instant spring—regardless of what the weather is doing.

For a little Christmas break...5 things you don't know about me

Tired of wrapping, cleaning, baking, shopping, decorating? Then it must be time for a game of internet tag! My friend Charmian Christie who is the outdoor adventure expert at Nomadik, an outdoor living site, tagged me to post five things that aren't commonly known about me. So while the laundry is washing, the floor is drying, and the cats are watching bird television...here we go.

1. I have a secret desire to be emperor of the universe, at which time I will ban minivans and SUVs, vinyl siding, black Christmas trees and Celine Dion. Oh yes, and of course, goutweed!

2. While I enjoy a yearly feed of Fundy lobster on my birthday, which is tomorrow, my favourite food in the whole world is cod cheeks and tongues; preferably with a side of fiddlehead greens, washed down with a Wolf Blass white wine and followed up with something chocolate for dessert. If someone ever develops chocolate cod tongues, I'll be in big trouble. (Charmian, wearing your cook's hat, I can hear you shuddering from here.)

3. Although some readers know I've shipped out as a freelance sailer/writer with the Canadian Coast Guard on more than one occasion, I also used to be a volunteer firefighter--the first female member--with the Canning Volunteer Fire Department. Seemed like the right thing to do after I had the department come to visit and deal with a chimney fire I was having.

4. I believe that visits to spas should be weekly rituals covered by the Canadian Health care system (Medicare). We'd be a far happier country of relaxed, toned people with great skin, hair and nails, and the Harperites wouldn't have a chance with us. Though can you imagine little Stevie Harper at a spa getting a pedicure--or better yet, a FACIAL? Damn, I wish I could draw cartoons!

5. One of our 8 3/4 cats is the smartest cat on the planet; he can open cupboard doors with his polydactyl front paddy paws and is planning to take over the universe. Maybe he'll abolish Celine, SUVs, and etc for us. As well as dogs, of course.
Yes, we have 8 3/4 cats; Nibs is an amputee!

Now, it's time to draw someone else into the game....let's see...Ami, author of The Birth House and Cynthia, over at Tsukismom....you're it!

No snow, but lotsa wind!

Time now for something completely different.

We live in Scotts Bay, a tiny community at the end of the North mountain in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley. We're technically not in the Valley, but rather on the mountain. Our community is also on the upper Bay of Fundy, known far and wide for the world's highest tides. If you look at a map of Nova Scotia, on the left (west) side of the province, there's a comma of land projecting out about halfway up the province. Looks like an appendix. That's the Cape Split peninsula, and Scotts Bay is nestled in the cove of that peninsula. Our tides are truly dramatic, coming in over miles of mudflats and causing the boats at the wharf to rise and fall as much as 30 feet between tides. At low water they sit on mud; at high water, they're almost flush with the top of the wharf.

We get a regular dosing of nor-west winds during the fall and winter, normally about the time lobster season begins in mid October. The boats are hauled up on dry land here for the winter now, however, and here's a good reason why:
The boats normally are moored on the leeward side of the wharf, where it's somewhat calmer, but waves are smashing up and in some cases over the wharf on days like this. Good thing we build things tough in Nova Scotia.
These were taking at not-quite highwater a few hours ago; here's how we're bringing in solstice, winter, and the longest night of the year.

Of course, to really appreciate the contrast, you'll need to see photos at highwater when it's calm; and also at low water. Suffice it to say there's no dust down around the wharf today; and my hair still smells like salt water. Nothing finer--so long as we're not out on it, on days like this.



Days like this I'm very very glad, however, that my other half doesn't fish any more.

They said there'll be snow at Christmas...or at least Christmas roses

We have our live, green balsam fir Christmas tree up and decorated, and while we don’t go overboard with the interior décor, the house looks happy. A wonderful poinsettia, deep wine in colour, makes me happy just to look at it. Thankfully, it’s genuinely wine-coloured, not dyed like the hideous blue, purple, gold and other hideous “fantasy poinsettias” that are being flogged by some merchants. Yes, I know I grumbled about that earlier; well, I’m gonna grumble again.. Blue poinsettias rank right up there with black Christmas decorations in my book of yuks. I’m all for developing interesting new plants via genetics, but not through faking it—or through the ‘tastes’ of some supposedly-trend setting fashionista in Milan, Toronto or downtown Chibougimou.

Sorry if that last sounded curmudgeonly…as much as I love the Christmas season, I do get appalled, sometimes by the commerciality of it all. Last week I was observing this woman in Canadian Tire. She’ll never see fifty again, yet she was trying desperately to look thirty-something; black leather plants, tight red jacket, 4 inch spike heels on her red leather boots…clutching a pile of black and white Christmas decorations. I mused aloud to the cashier ringing in my purchase about the lemminglike behaviour of some people, and she said she’s had customers go through with hundreds of dollars worth of decorations in some new colour—be it bronze, turquoise, purple, lime green or yes, black—and she said to me, “Do they have any idea how many hungry people that money would have fed?”

Exactly.

Well, I love the colours of the Christmas season—red and green, some gold and silver tossed in for good measure…a little blue is okay, but in lights and ornaments only, puh-leeze.

Can anything beat the natural beauty of holly? Ours are doing very well, though I suppose I should prune them a bit. The female plant has a lot of competition during the summer from two overly-enthusiastic clematis that are scrambling up the arbour beside the holly, but it still manages to produce some great branches of deep red berries. The purple barberry, too, is heavily laden with brilliant red berries, and the multiflora roses still are holding quite a few of their tiny red hips.

Today, our garden is in a state of suspended animation, as we had a good hard freeze the past couple of days. Perfect time for me to spread the evergreen boughs I cut in the woodlot last week. Because we have so much in the way of gardening, only the tenderest of plants get covered here, or things I’m not quite sure about yet. We get so many freeze and thaw cycles, and that’s not good for plants, hence the mulching. So the blue poppies and corydalis, the geums and perennial potentillas, the lavender and a few newer shrubs, are all resting gently under their mantle of fir and spruce boughs.

But there was a surprise awaiting me when I went to cover the blue poppies near our line of spruce trees. I had just written in my email newsletter that finally things had stopped trying to flower…but wonder of wonders, the hellebores have decided that they are Christmas roses, rather than Lenten roses, and their flowers are formed and trying to open.
Now, I’m not sure which ones I have here; the three larger plants came from Springvale Nurseries, and I’m giving them the ol cold-test treatment. They’re probably orientalis hybrids; one was red, one rose and one greenish-white when I bought and planted them. There are also several other smaller plants tucked in here and there around the yard, including one that Kingstec landscape instructor and plantsman extraordinaire Jamie Ellison gave me (and I forget the species!). Here’s hoping that these plants manage to make it through; they’re certainly looking fine despite the variations on a theme of weather.

Finally, a few thoughts about the approaching holiday.

As I wrote in my newsletter, one of my favourite Christmas songs is by Greg Lake, formerly of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Called “I believe in Father Christmas”, it starts out, “they said there’d be snow at Christmas/ they said there’d be peace on earth/ but instead it just kept on raining/ a veil of tears for the virgin birth…”

It’s a lovely, if haunting song, especially if you’ve ever seen the video. This song was released in the early 1970s, when the Vietnam war was casting a veil of tears over the world, and the video shows Lake playing his guitar and singing in a desert, possibly in Israel. Between verses there is an instrumental sampling, which is part of a piece by Sergei Prokofiev, called the Troika movement (Lieutenant Kije Suite, for a long-forgotten soviet movie.) At the end of the song, the troika repeats twice; in the video, there is a barrage of images from war; missiles falling on land; tanks firing; planes and helicopters unleasing their own barrage; then it seques to a soldier, returning home to his joyous son.

Why does this strike me so poignantly? Well, between our Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, and our neighbour’s soldiers there and in Iraq…I’ve written before that I have no easy solutions, and I don’t like our people being over there; but since they are they I support them, and I hope that somewhere, sometime, there will come a solution so that there genuinely is peace on earth.

As the song finishes… “I wish you a hopeful Christmas, I wish you a brave new year. All anguish, pain and sadness leave your heart and may your road be clear…”

Merry Christmas, everyone.

The season of giving, part 1

It’s that time of year again…when we’re rushing around, madly trying to decide what to give as Christmas gifts to those near and dear to our hearts. Let’s see, we’ll start with a black Christmas tree and lots of black and white decorations, followed by a blue poinsettia…

I’m joking, of course. You already know my opinions on the latest trends in Christmas décor.

What to give as gifts? Well, in my world, of course, almost all things gardening are treasured gifts, both to give and receive. I wrote about some of them in my latest Chronicle Herald column, but that will only be online until next Sunday, and of course I couldn’t include everything that I thought of, or every photo. Mind you, I don’t have a say in which photos get published. So here are a few more suggestions, plus a small bit of self-promotion, which I hope readers will understand. More on that anon.

First off: If you live in or near a city that has a Lee Valley store, there are almost infinite numbers of choices there for great gardening gifts. There are tools of every possible sort, including my absolute favourite, the Korean ho-mi digger.
I LOVE this digger. It acts rather like a tiny plow when you drag it through soil, and it’s marvelous for loosening compacted soil, removing weeds, even digging furrows for dropping seeds in. However, as column readers will remember, it doesn’t handle being run over by a tractor lawnmower at all well. Here’s hoping my better half remembers that he owes me one…

Went into Topiary, a store for gardeners when I was in the always-irritating city of Halifax last week (irritating because of the greed of the parkingnazis in the downtown area, among other things), where I spent a delightful time, selecting gift suggestions to offer others as well as doing a little Christmas shopping. Topiary is a great store, with all sorts of delightful ideas for gardeners. I especially like that they have plenty of wonderful garden art, but also lots of birding ideas; as birding and gardening tend to go hand in hand. My longsuffering spouse ‘bought’ me one of James Chadwick’s metal crows (seen here perching on top of a birdseed wreath, almost too pretty to put out for the birds); I bought it as a business expense but told him he could ‘give’ it to me early. He’s not getting off that easy on the digger, however.

Speaking of birds, if you’re a birdwatcher/birdfeeder, I can highly recommend
For the Birds Nature shop in Mahone Bay. I ordered a gift for my longsuffering spouse from Kelly and Brian via their tollfree number, and it arrived THE NEXT DAY; it’s a perfect gift, too, and while I’m only about 90 minutes drive from Mahone Bay, I knew I wouldn’t have time to get there before Christmas. If you do visit the shop, it’s a delightful place to browse, but you can also browse online and find all their treasures; they offer free shipping, and as noted, it’s FAST!

Here’s my bit of self promotion. As some readers know, I wrote a gardening book last year. The Atlantic Gardener’s Greenbook has received positive reviews and feedback from those who have purchased it—or received it as a gift—and if anyone is unhappy with it, they haven’t let me know yet. You can purchase the book directly from me (so I’ll actually make more than a few pennies from the sale—an ongoing problem that book authors find with royalty payments). You can contact me directly at jodi at bloomingwriter.ca (substitute @ and remove spaces) for details.

Most of us find ourselves with dry, cracked skin during the gardening season—even those gardeners among us who wear gloves when working outside. Is there anyone who can actually work in the garden with their gloves on all the time? I can’t do it, especially when thinning seedlings or planting small plants. So my hands invariably get dirty beyond belief, along with calloused, scratched, full of prickles, and so on. However, I slather on some of Naturally Nancy’s protective cream before I put my gloves on, or before I venture out without gloves (I regularly misplace my garden gloves, but usually find them again—at least, one of them). Nancy is a Nova Scotian landscaper who used to be plagued with terribly dry, cracked hands; so she developed a cream for herself using beeswax from her father’s beekeeping business. The cream worked so well, people began asking for it. It’s used for countless other purposes besides dry garden hands, but you can take my word—it does work. It’s unscented too.

Now, I’m not sensitive to scents, and my favourite scent in the world is lavender—real lavender, that is, not the artificial perfumes developed by so many businesses. That’s why I was so excited to discover Beach Lane Lavender about two years ago. They’re also Nova Scotian owned and operated, and their lavender products, including lip balms and skin creams, are glorious—and truly lavender. I get their Maritime men’s aftershave for my dear other half, and he loves it too—not too flowery, but clean-scented and great on his delicate skin.

A final thought for today. Instead of mailing out Christmas cards this year, I’ve decided to give a gift that really matters. We spend a fair bit on Christmas cards and postage, to say nothing of the time spent writing notes, addressing envelopes, and mailing these out; I’d rather do something that will help someone else. So I’ve decided to purchase meaningful gifts from World Vision; instead of sending cards. 35.00 buys two rabbits; 50.00, two hens and a rooster; and these go to people in developing countries who need our help more than my friends need cards from me. Unlike some charitable organizations that pool their monetary donations even though they say you’re buying X with it, World Vision does genuinely use my donation to put the gifts I purchase into the hands of those who need them.

The only thing not to give as a gardening Christmas gift?

Goutweed, of course.

Taking "Blue Christmas" one step too far...

Be warned: this is a bit of a rant.

I’ve seen it all, now.

I thought my friend Alice was joking when she told me she had seen blue poinsettias in wallyworld, the bigbox bully that is trying to decimate small town Canada, having already pillaged small town America.

Blue poinsettias? Oh, she must mean silk ones. I’d already seen tacky black artificial poinsettias, to go along with the incredibly ugly black and white Christmas décor that someone deemed trendy for this year. More on that later.

But no, her email seemed to indicate REAL plants.

So, ever the intrepid gardener in search of the real dirt on such things, I girded up my loins, sallied forth into the commercial wilderness that is between Kentville and Wolfville, and waded into the throngs of unwashed masses eager to spend their last dollar on plastic junk from Wallyworld. (Why IS it so many people don’t bother to shower, wash, or use deoderant—and then go out in public?)

And there they were. Not only blue poinsettias, but a sickly mauve coloured crop too. Most of them half wilted, obviously traumatized by having been offloaded in a chill gale of Nova Scotia wind before being stuffed into a lightless, airless, overheated department store.

Oh, my. Are we approaching botanical Armageddon?

They’re absolutely hideous. Well, that’s my opinion. Apparently there are people who think these are the next best thing to wonderbread. Why, is beyond me. These aren’t genuine, genetically blue flowers; they’re dyed with some sort of floral dye to give them the colour. And not just available in blue, oh no. You can get gold, (for the harvest season, no doubt) lilac, fuchsia, green, and gawdknows how many other colours. Hey, probably even BLACK for the goth celebrants.

Now, I am a fan of new colours in plants when it’s due to breeding, crossbreeding, and so on. After all, who more than me loves the new echinaceas, or searches for the deepest purple or most brilliant gold foliage in shrubs and perennials? And I have loved the new advances in poinsettia colours; the deeper burgundies, the bicolours and marbles, the lemon-chiffon, the variegated leaves…

But these blue and other-hued poinsettias look ghastly; especially so when some benighted floral ‘designer’ decides to tart them up further with glitter or iridescent spangles. Doesn’t this look like something out of a dollar store clearance bin?

Okay, maybe I’m being harsh. Chacun on son gout, we all say. Fair enough; if someone wants a blue poinsettia, they can fill their boots.

But wait, there’s more. These blue poinsettias in a bigbox store in a Nova Scotian town—they were at least grown in Nova Scotia, right?

Wrongo. They are labeled “Product of Ohio.” Talk about pouring salt into the wounds. We have a fantastic nursery here in the province that grows huge numbers of poinsettias. That wholesales to all kinds of other nurseries and stores. And yet wallyworld buys its from an Excited State and hauls them up here to die in Nova Scotia?

Steady, jodi, steady. Deep breaths, girl. On to something else while I’m in my grinch-like mode.

What braintrust decided that we needed BLACK Christmas decorations? I don’t mean décor celebrating African heritage. I mean the colour black. Black ornaments. Black silk flowers—including, surprise surprise, poinsettias. Black table runners, swags, tinsels, probably even lights? Even black Christmas TREES! (Artificial, thankfully, so far—no sprayed balsam fir or scotch pine trees to be found so far…) It seems to have been a European trend which some designer-diva decided needed to be imported across the ocean to sully our shores. Paired with white, of course, for the tres chic, avante garde look. Oooh, lah lah. Pass me my glass of black champagne, darling, while I deck the halls with black holly with white berries.

Oh please. I was willing to go with the introduction of copper, bronze, purple, turquoise into the Christmas colour palette, though some of the more neon colours make me cringe. I saw a tree decorated in peacock colours that appealed to me as a curio, but not as something I’d want sitting in my living room for two weeks.

But black? The only things black and white I want to see at Christmas is licorice allsorts, and penguin-themed items like calendars and coffee mugs. Not ornaments, not trees, and definitely not poinsettias.

What’s next? Tied dyed Christmas trees? Orange-foliaged Holly shrubs with neon pink berries?

Sunlight and the gardener's soul

During a marathon garden cleanup over several of the few sunny days we’ve experienced in November, I’ve managed to get two beds more or less cleaned up, and about 90 percent of the bulbs are now tucked in the ground too. Of course, at the time I thought I had them all in…but then Blomidon Nurseries put their bulbs on sale, and I was in there looking for something else, and some more species tulips, crocus and alliums looked pleadingly at me…whatever could I do?

And even though a lot of the real showy tulips can only be treated as annuals in our climate, I have planted a lot again this year. Some of them are Triumph and Darwin tulips, which do come back for a few years; others, I simply must have because they are good for my gardening soul. Apricot Parrot is one of them. I was hooked instantly on this tulip when I saw it grown in a pot at Ouestville Perennials
in the spring of 2005; I’ve planted a dozen together with Spring Green tulips, which are a refreshing white and green combination. This will give me something very nice to anticipate for next spring.

I’m a bit late in putting entries on bloomingwriter because I was away working last week; spent a couple of days in New Brunswick, including a wonderful stay at the Inn on the Cove & Spa.

If I could swing it, I’d go there overnight at least once a month because this is most decidedly an escape from the ordinary and hectic demands of life. Located, as its name suggests, right on a quiet cove in Saint John, it’s the ideal stress reliever. From the kingsized bed and Jacuzzi tub in my room—with its own patio looking out on the Bay—to the marvelous meals prepared by Ross Mavis, the owner and chef, to the utter decadence of a treatment at the spa, it was an exercise in pure relaxation and restoration. I left feeling most decidedly like a better person—or at least, a person who was feeling much better! And yes, even in November, it’s a gorgeous spot. I took a stroll on the stony beach and picked up a couple of lower Bay of Fundy pebbles for the garden here, and at night, turned off the heat in my room and opened the window so I could listen to the most beautiful music in the world—the sound of waves tumbling in to shore.

Back to reality and my own yard, however, is always pleasant. We’ve finally had a couple of hard frosts but despite that, some annuals close to the house keep right on growing—and even flowering, in the case of one enthusiastic snapdragon. One of the pot cyclamen is blooming out under the spruce trees, an amazing splash of fuchsia among the deep rich greens of hellebores, wild ginger, and slowly winding-down ferns. But the plant that has most caught my love this fall (other than the heathers, about which I’ll say more later) is this wonderful euphorbia that I planted last spring. I’ve extolled its virtues before, but as the autumn stretches towards solstice and it still is gorgeous, I grow to love it even more.
Unfortuntately, I still don’t know which one it is—as it’s suffering from LOLA syndrome—Lost Label. I do know that I got it at Spencer’s Nursery in Shelburne, so perhaps some kind soul will set me straight on its species and cultivar. Whatever it is, it’s a winner in my books.

The continuing tale of hollyhock woe

Confession is good for the gardener’s soul, and I’m never one to shy away from admitting my gardening mistakes—whoops, that’s supposed to read experiments. Real gardeners have experiments, not mistakes, right?

Well, whatever the case, here’s my ongoing tale of woe regarding hollyhocks.

I love hollyhocks. Their old fashioned beauty makes me very happy, and I keep having visions of having a great host of them, up against the house, blooming in all kinds of colours, but especially yellow. I crave yellow hollyhocks, whether single or double.

Trouble is, the garden fates don’t seem to want me to have them.

It’s true that growing hollyhocks is a bit of a challenge in our garden. Oh, they’ll germinate well enough, and grow the first year; but that heavy wet cold clay soil of ours does them in after one too many freeze-thaw cycles, or one too many monsoons in early spring. The hollyhocks generally turn to slimy mush underground, and there we have it. I’ve even tried buying them as transplants, and occasionally have had successes, but usually only with plants that are potbound and prepared to flower because they’re stressed.

However, I’m nothing if not stubborn, and keep trying different areas in the garden. I finally hit on two beds that drain quite well and have tried seeding and putting in transplants in these beds. Last year, a spectacular plant developed and grew with vast amounts of enthusiasm…but bore white flowers.

This would have been okay but for the fact that yes, it was supposed to be yellow.

Before that plant showed its treacherous self, I bought a few transplants that were labeled as yellow, and put them in for this year in several different areas of the garden. When the white ones appeared, I was nonplussed but hoped that the labeled yellow transplants—bought at a garden centre, even—would survive the winter and finally give me my yellow hollyhocks. I wasn’t greedy. I figured if I got one to come into flower, I’d simply keep its seed and put them everywhere.

This year, the first plants to wake up grew enormously—they’re currently about 11 feet tall—and produced all kinds of marvelous, fat buds…

which opened up pink. Very pink. They are delightful, single flowers, and have charmed hummingbirds and butterflies and visitors alike. But they are most certainly pink.

In fact, I checked that plant today, and while one of the spires has toppled, there are all kinds of new leaves, and yet another flower spike is starting to grown. Apparently this plant doesn’t realize it’s November. I figure it will cast seeds everywhere and I’ll be overrun with pink hollyhocks for the next zillion years.

Another plant plant, off by itself in another bed, sheltered somewhat by shrubs. It was slow to get going, and I wondered if it was a seedling…except there was a tag beside it proclaiming it to be a double yellow hollyhock. Eventually it had a cluster of buds, about which I grew excited as they grew in size. They were showing yellow—definitely yellow. I thought victory was finally mine.

Until the day my longsuffering spouse came in the house and announced, “Your hollyhock is open…and it’s peach coloured.”

No way. I flew out the door, scattering cats and plant pots, across the yard to the plant. The buds were still showing distinctly yellow, but the half-opened flower wasn’t really yellow. It wasn’t really peach, either. We argued about it, and finally, out of desperation, I proclaimed it to be orange.

“There is no such thing as an orange hollyhock,” my spouse reminded me.

There is now. At least, in our garden.

Now, it’s entirely possible that this is an apricot hollyhock, because I know that such a colour does exist. And transferring the photo I took to the Web doesn't even do the colour justice--must not be a web-happy colour! But I’m in such a snit, even a month after that plant finished blooming, that I’m hoping it sheds a few seeds and presents me with more orange-flowered plants next year. Then at least I’ll have something interesting and bizarre.

Of course, many gardeners have already heard my tale of hollyhock woe in the past, and have been very encouraging, although occasionally a bit smug too. Even my own mother gleefully reported having a gorgeous double yellow plant in her garden. However, gardeners are also a generous lot and have started giving me seeds of yellow hollyhocks. They mail them to me, give them to me when I visited them, even drop them off at our house with a flower to prove that they came from a yellow flowered plant. I’ve planted them all, but I’m beginning to think I’m destined to never have one.

Or maybe we’ll develop a blue one.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Flurries where winds blow on shore...

That’s an often-heard prognostication made by Maritime weather forecasters, trying to justify all the science and computer generated models and other gadgetry used to tell us what we’re going to have for weather. Consulting the entrails of a chicken might be just as effective, given the accuracy of weather forecasts around here.

It’s hard to make judgment calls about weather systems overall when there are such a variety of microclimates, even in one part of one province. In summer, the Annapolis Valley may be shimmering with heat, but come up over the mountain to the Fundy shore, and you may find yourself wrapped in fog, with at least 15 degrees (Fahrenheit) difference in temperature.

In fall and winter, we’re often subject to that curious phenomenon of flurries where winds blow on shore—and those flurries can accumulate to serious inches of snow. So when I looked out the window this afternoon and saw the flurries, I grabbed my camera and took a picture of a typically bleak Fundy day in the NO month of November.
Then something caught my eye in the garden, something I hadn’t noticed when I was doing a bit of much-needed cleanup the other day. I pulled on a sweater and boots and traipsed out to have a look.
Yup, your eyes do NOT deceive you. This, dear friends and gentle gardeners, is the bud of a Golden Wings rose. There are actually two of them on the same branch, shimmering bright against the dying of the light, and the coldness of the Norwest wind coming in off the Bay.

They gave me hope, as blooms always do, that we’ll yet have a few nice days. In fact, Friday was a decent day, when the skies were blue and the light golden and the play of light on larch and pine made me intensely happy, if only for a few hours (while the sun was out.) And looking at this photo again, my heart with pleasure fills, just like William Wordsworth. True, there are no daffodils to dance through at this time, but still and all…there is beauty around us to lift the heart.

One of my favourite autumn sights is looking down from the Wellington dyke towards Blomidon, across cornfields, apple orchards, the dykelands around the mudflats, with the brooding edge of Cape Blomidon in the background. I’m always struck with wonder whenever I look at the dykelands that hold back the Minas Basin from flooding huge sections of the Annapolis Valley. The sense of history catches me, every time, as the dykes and aboiteaux were initially built and maintained by the Acadians who farmed and developed this land beginning 400 years ago with the establishment of Port Royal further down the valley and the Bay. The dykes and aboiteaux, or sluiceways, that work on the tidal rivers are maintained today by different methods and with different materials, but still they hold back the waters, claiming thousands of acres of arable farmland that would otherwise be underwater.

And I hear, too, the whispers of ghosts, the ghosts of Acadian settlers long gone, expulsed from this their homeland and scattered in their own Diaspora. And though I’m not Acadian, I pause to give respect to those first settlers, farmers, woodsmen, craftswomen, families…always remembering them, in sun or in snow.

Requiem for a mentor

Well. After four days of gale force winds shaking the house and stripping most leaves from trees and shrubs, the wind finally exhausted itself last night. A gentle calm descended....

...and so did the fog. An interesting way to start November.

I got some sad news last week, and am just finding time now to write about it. One of my professors from my days at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, Dr. Lorne A. McFadden, passed away a couple of weeks ago in Truro after an apparently fairly lengthy illness.

Lorne was directly responsible, along with his colleague Albert E. (Doc) Roland, for my development as a plant nut. He taught botany and plant pathology at the AC, and while he was on sabbatical when I took botany in first year, he became more than a professor to me--he became a mentor who encouraged me, and almost a friend. When he wasn't teaching and I wasn't in class, we would spend long periods of time talking about plants, plant diseases, treatments for diseases, weed control....all things to do with the mysteries of plants.

Even then, I was interested in organic gardening/farming, biological control, native plants and such. When in our plant pathology course we had to write a paper on a disease of a crop, I asked "Dr. M" if I could do an essay on biological control of plant pathogens--a topic scarcely discussed back then. He was totally agreeable, and I got an A on the paper--it was actually a mark, and I forget the mark, but an A for sure.

He always encouraged such thought and study in me, and when I decided to leave one program and transfer into plant science, he wrote a very supportive letter to the dean asking that I be allowed to change programs. He got me summer employment at the College, and put in a word for me for parttime work during the class year. He lent me books, answered questions, and was one of the two best teachers I had in my assorted years of post secondary study. (the other one was an English professor at Acadia)

And I'm only one of thousands of students he taught over the years, and one of many who he inspired and encouraged on to bigger and better things.

Lorne was a prodigious gardener, as I got to see once when a fellow professor, one I worked for as a summer student, was leaving to pursue Ph.D studies at Guelph. There was a going away party for Bob at Lorne's house, and I remember spending more time out in the garden looking at plants than with people.

It's been years since I've seen Dr. M--after he retired, I don't know that he ever visited the biology department, and on my infrequent trips to Truro, I wasn't inclined to visit a professor's home--even though several professors have become friends of mine over the years. The details of his illness are unknown to me, and in fact I missed his obituary when it ran in our newspaper; I only found out when my mother mentioned it to me on the phone a week ago.

I haven't decided what shrub I'll plant in his memory next spring, but there certainly will be one. Goodbye, Dr. M, you were one of the best, and i'll ever be grateful for your enthusiasm and encouragement.

blog-lag, jet-lag--err, train-lag--and autumn denial

Nice to know that I'm loved--or at least, that some folks enjoy reading my bloggy wanderings. I've had several emails in the last week, wondering where the heck I've been. Had the goutweed finally turned into Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors and decide I was dinner? Had the cats carried me off to a land of warm weather and many mice? Or had I been swept off on another garden adventure?

None of the above, as fun as they might be. Well, except for the goutweed part.

I've been busier than usual since getting back from my whirlwind garden adventures in upalong--hard to believe that this time three weeks ago, I was dozing on the train en route homewards! Self employment has its challenges, and sometimes we bite off more than we can chew. In that case, we circle the wagons, and less important things get set aside. Housework, laundry, paperwork, non-work email...even...GASP!...the garden.

Yes, it's true. I've been shamefully neglectful the past week or so, scarcely walking around out there in my peaceful green haven.

Now, we can blame that partly on the weather. Sadly, the monsoons of autumn have arrived--not that this is a tropical location, far from it, but every autumn the wind begins to moan and scream and we get scads of rain. And days that aren't rainy are still dreary, overcast, bonechillingly damp and achycold and just plain misery-making. So instead of being outside I hug the stove or hide in my office and console myself with garden related things on walls and shelves, and scarcely even look outdoors.

Days the sun comes out are much better; but the sun sleeps in much later in the mornings and is quick to turn in at evening--and in less than a week, the clocks go back, yuck. It'll be dark by 1730 then, and I will want to hibernate.

But I won't. There are still plenty of things to talk about with regards to gardening Always. Like the state of my houseplants. Some of them look radiant after their summer spent outside on the deck. Others are sulking the change in venue by dropping lots of leaves and getting dry edges to the leaves that are staying on--tropicals aren't designed for a normal household unless you have a solarium or a big bathroom where they'll get the necessary moisture and humidity.

I have one terracotta planter that is quite hilarious, actually. It holds one black plant and one silver plant. To be precise, one black mondo grass(Opiophogon) and one Silver sand (Calocephalus). This looked really stunning outside on the deck all summer, where the Silver sand looked like some ethereal plant from another planet, and was perfectly contrasted by the almost black leaves of the mondo, which is actually a lily relative rather than a grass. Because the mondo grass isn't hardy to my zone, and because I'd never seen silver sand before and want to see what will happen to it over winter, I brought the planter indoors.

Problem. The mondo grass, which was looking rather lush and healthy and profuse, is now looking ratty.


The problem is the furbucket brigade that live with us. Some of the cats discovered that mondo grass is quite tasty. At least, it must be, because they go after it like a shot every time they're in my office visiting. Spunky Boomerang and Simon Q Snark are the most naughty in ths regard, chomping on the grasslike leaves every chance they get. It's apparently not toxic--unlike dogs which are dumb as stumps IMHO, cats seem to know what is toxic and leave those plants alone--and while they do bother a few other plants--they ADORE spider plants!--they sure are intent on dining on this one whenever possible.

There's another mondo grass out in the garden, sunk into the ground in a pot. I may have to bring that one in, and hang it up in a window...and hope that Toby Soprano, the flying bosscat of this here family, doesn't do one of his acrobatic leaps into the planter. Imagine what all that cat hair will look like woven in among a jute macreme hanger! Scary for sure.

Oh look...I've forgotten that I'm mad at autumn. Talking about plants or cats will do that for me.

More soon, I promise. Photos too.