A perfect day…

The weather gods smiled on Nova Scotia again today and presented us with a hot, sunny day; ideal for heading off to the south shore, to the lovely community of Port Mouton (pronounced Ma-tooon, although it is French for sheep so you’d think it would be Mooton, right? It’s a Nova Scotian thing…). I was giving a talk to the lovely ladies and gentlemen of the south shore district of the Nova Scotia Association of Garden Clubs. The famous south shore hospitality was in full bloom and we had a great day. The meeting was hosted by the Queens County Gardeners, a wonderful group of green thumbs, and held at Coastal Queens Place, the old schoolhouse which is now a public community access site, a small library, and a craft agora, as well as a marvelous hostel! It’s so good to see old schools restored and kept as the heart of a small community.

Before we got there, of course, we landed at a couple of garden centres. First stop was the remarkable Pine View, in Bridgewater. This is a very large and very diverse, full service garden centre, with a huge collection of annuals, perennials, shrubs and trees. I was focused on looking for a few different annuals to include in my talk, and then of course I can’t pass up perennials ever…and found a few that needed to get in the car too. I’ll report on those next posting, but for now, here’s a marvelous lantana (I’ll bring the tags in from the greenhouse in the morning).

Beautiful place, the only fly in the oinment being a very rude staffperson who snapped at my longsuffering spouse, “this area is for employees ONLY!” He was standing off to one side near some building, waiting for me to stop drooling over perennials, apparently near a potting shed or something. Well, this was his first visit to the garden centre, he didn’t know his way around, and he was just STANDING there! So that was a bit offputting, and she’s lucky I didn’t hear her rudeness. Maybe she hadn’t had her coffee yet. The staff I dealt with were marvelous.

Next stop was Ivan Higgin’s in Liverpool, which is called Cosby’s Garden Centre. I’ve mentioned Ivan before: he’s a whiz of a garden centre operator, plus an artist par excellence, sculpting the most amazing figures out of his own special concrete mixture. These are lifesize sculptures, his winter’s project: I call them Cirque du Ivan! His tulips are still in peak conditions; these brilliant beauties caught my eye, even thought they’re not species tulips, I was very well behaved (fiscally, that is) at Ivan's today and only bought one plant. But I’ll be back next week…and have my eye on one of his concrete wind gods…

After we were done in Port Mouton, even though I’m still full of flu or bronchitis or pneumonia or whatever the heck it’s morphing into, my dearly beloved and I did go a bit further down the shore, as I wanted to go to Lavender Hill in Jordan Falls. This is another jewel of a nursery, a family business, and while it was sweltering hot by this time, we enjoyed visiting with Madeline and Alison, the owners, and picking out a few more choice plants. They always have a wide selection of really excellent plants, usually something I’ve never seen before and I took them out to the car to show them some of the interesting oddities I’ve collected along the way. It’s a challenge for smaller nurseries to get a huge variety in, when they have to buy a minimum of say 100 of a nemesia or a portulaca or a lobelia, and what if people aren’t into new things? SO I take it on as goal to encourage people to try new things—and mostly, people just need to see something new put together in containers to get excited and go for their own colour adventures.

After we left Lavender Hill (with a dozen happy lavender seedlings in the back seat along with other great finds), we headed back up the shore. It was really hot, and I sooked that I needed to go walk in the water at Beach Meadows beach near Liverpool—surely one of the most beautiful beaches in our province.

Some adventurous souls further down the pristine beach were in swimming—or at least splashing—but I contented myself with just walking in the water up to my ankles, and admiring the still life portraits of seaweeds. There are at least six different species of seaweed in this photo—a rainbow of colours, from the underwater tapestry so many will never see. These broke loose in the tide and the gales of wind recently, and swept up the beach. While they’re in water they pulse and heave and shimmer; then once beached they dry and become excellent fertilizer for gardens, or just nutrients returned to the sea. That circle of life thing again.

Back home, the gardens seemed to have grown six inches taller today, and things are eagerly waiting to be planted, including the new treasures we brought home today. Now I’m blissfully tired, being serenaded by spring peepers, and ready to sleep—without thunderstorms tonight, please!

The smell of dirt

The great Canadian writer and thinker Margaret Atwood remarked that "In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt." I’m happy to declare that when I finally slouched my aching bones into the house, I smelled of dirt, sweat, Naturally Nancy’s protective cream, and probably a bit of residual sunscreen. I was also intensely tired but happy.

Every now and again, we have to declare a mental health day. Given events of earlier in the week, and that I have to go away tomorrow to give a talk, today seemed like a good day to do that. As soon as I could, I was outside ready to grub in the dirt. My dearly beloved arrived home with the Tacoma’s box filled with bags of lovely, rich, fragrant mushroom compost from the organic mushroom growers down the Valley. He then proceeded to put a couple near each garden bed for me so that I wouldn’t have to wrestle with them myself. I sort of overdid it yesterday, digging in the manure heap for the well decomposed black muck that the gardens love, then digging up things, moving stuff, hauling around piles of dirt and manure and weeds.

Two days of warmth and the gardens have shaken themselves off and remembered what they’re meant to do. I could almost HEAR things growing; the unfurling leaves of the horse chestnut report that we will have at least 9 blossoms on that dear young tree this year . The mayapples have poked their alien looking noses up out of the soil and in another day will be opening their umbrella like leaves. Which reminds me—I will need to take the axe and the hacksaw to the Darmera peltata, because it desperately needs dividing and is lurching up out of the soil, its thick rhizomes like elephants trunks. I’ll save that for Sunday, perhaps.

Mungus was my able assistant this afternoon, fussing to go out until I relented and put his harness on him. He’s perfectly happen on the harness so long as he can see me—if I get out of his sight, he sits and cries tragically. He contented himself with digging those giant feet in fresh soil, rolling upside down in the grass, and laying flat pretending to be a tiger stalking the hummingbirds. They were too busy arguing over the feeders and the flowers to pay him any mind, supremely confident in their dazzling speed.

I’m not a fan of some common annuals—I like them in other gardens but don’t want them in mine. Impatiens are a case in point—except for New Guinea impatiens, particularly this delicate yellow darling. It and its sister are going into the shade garden where they’ll look quite lovely, I think.

The next photo is a bit of a monumental task, half accomplished already though. This bed was badly weedy with those blasted creeping bluebells (Campanula rapunculoides) and finally I decided the only thing for it was to dig things up, remove the bluebells, and replant. In the progress, I’m also raising the bed about six inches where I don’t have plants that need digging up. First a layer of newspapers, then the old wet hay we used to bank the house through the winter; follow that with a generous helping of well rotted horse manure, and top that off with a couple of inches of soil. I can plant shallow-rooted perennials into it now—well, in a week after some rain and settling—and come fall, it’ll be ready for bulbs too. But it’s slow work and my old aching muscles are well and truly tired! But happy. Long Suffering Spouse doesn’t do bed building/raising although he’d shovel piles of manure for me if I asked. But I can do it. My experience with hiring someone to help turned out rather less happily than I had expected, so whatever I can do is what will get done. He can edge the beds that need edging and I’ll be thrilled with that.

Mungus and I did some moving of plants this evening; I tucked in the tree peony, the Coppertina Ninebark, and the Lime Glow juniper, plus some perennials. I scored a Harvest Moon Echinacea this afternoon over town while in search of annuals for my talk tomorrow, so that will go in with Jade, Green Envy, and another Sunset Echinacea. It would be lovely if they’d all flower at the same time, wouldn’t it? Now I just need a white one again—I find them less hardy than the standard purple coneflowers, but the new Big Sky plants have come back just fine for me.

This little bed has a lot of plants in it, and while most of them are still young, they put on a great show. Stars include Cimicifuga ‘Black Negligee’, Bromus ‘Skinner’s Gold’, Geranium ‘Hocus Pocus’, a variety of pulmonaria, some fall flowering asters, ‘David’ phlox, and ‘El Desperado’ daylily. But there are also blue star (Amsonia), several euphorbia, some pinks of various shapes, a couple of bellflowers, and I expect Raspberry Wine Monarda to put on a great show this summer.

And just a little while ago, we were treated to the first celestial pyrotechnic display of the season. A nice little thundershow, mostly lightning, mostly a few miles off, not enough rain to wash the birdseed off the deck where Long Suffering Spouse spilled it earlier. It’s been a good day. Tomorrow, I wonder what we'll bring home in the trunk? There are always new plants to find....

RIP Quincy, 26 Sept 1998 -23 May 2007

The gods of irony are infinitely cruel at times. When I wrote about our cat children several days ago, I observed that I didn’t have a good current picture of Quincy, the biggest mackeral tabby who can’t stand his brother, Rowdy. There will be no chance to take a photo of him now, as we buried him a couple of hours ago down in the woods. He was hit by a vehicle at suppertime when he bolted across the road.

This too is bitterly ironic. We keep all the younger cats in the house except for occasional visits out in the back yard for several of them. Mungus goes out on a harness, Spunky has no desire to ever go out, and Nibs gets reminded that he doesn’t have any extra legs to spare since playing chicken with a car several years ago. Tigger and Thistle don’t cross the road, and Rowdy and Quincy have always done the stop, look and listen routine. They would go down into the ditch if they heard a car coming. So what caused Quincy to bolt tonight, we’ll never know.

Lowell went into uberprotective mode when he saw what had happened (we saw cars slow down near the house and he went to see what was going on.) He wouldn’t let me go outside, and he went up to deal with the situation. In the past when we’ve lost a cat, I’ve been the one to deal with it, but this time I simply sat down in my office and cried. The poor man who hit Quincy was also in tears; he tried to stop but it happened too fast. At least it was quick—probably a broken back.

There will be some who will say that we shouldn’t let any of our cats out. That’s why five of them don’t go outdoors except with us—only the four oldest cats in the household went out unsupervised. When Quincy and Rowdy and his four brothers and sisters were born in my closet, we lived in another place, in a farm house that was even further from the road. We let them all go outdoors back then, and when we moved here, it was next to impossible to teach them to stay inside. It’s hard enough to keep Simon, Toby and Mungus from bolting out the door when we open it. I’ve already berated myself with ‘what ifs?’ for the last several hours. But I also know that Quincy had a very good life here, that he was loved and pampered and cared for from the moment he was born, and he’s loved now too. I haven’t decided what I will plant in the memory garden for him—a quince would be appropriate in some ways, but I think it will probably be a native tree, because he loved the pasture and the woodlands around our place so much. There’s a big clump of red trillium growing near where we buried him, and it’s peaceful there. He’ll like that.

When we came back up out of the woods, I put the harness on Mungus and we went out in the back yard; me to grub in the garden and he to eat grass and watch birds. I was busy digging creeping bellflower out of the columbines and beebalm, and watching the birds at the various feeders. The ducks that frequent our pond came in to land, and the redwinged blackbirds were up at the feeder with juncos and finches all competing. The Bay is flat calm tonight and the peepers started at sundown, just after we came back indoors. The cats KNOW something is wrong—they always do, and in their wise feline ways they offer comfort.

I think it’s been four years since we lost Tommy Tiger the Crabby Tabby to the road after a raccoon chased him late one night. The next day, we were sitting on the back deck after we’d buried him, feeling very miserable, with Quincy laying nearby. Rowdy came parading across the meadow and the lawn with a great big field mouse. He came up on the deck, marched across to Quincy, and dropped the mouse in front of him. These two ALWAYS fought and glared at each other. Not this day. Quincy said, “thanks”, scooped up the mouse and went off somewhere with it for supper, and Rowdy climbed up on the picnic table to be admired, purring his low, steady purr. And we smiled through our tears, and rejoiced in the love of cats. So it goes tonight, too.

Welcome to our water gardens....

…that’s what my longsuffering spouse told me he wanted to put on a sign outside our property, when he got up yesterday morning. I simply didn’t get up yesterday morning, being sick with a relapse of the flu. Small wonder, given the weather and having gotten soaked four times on Saturday.

We have had monsoons of rain. Saturday was one of those drownpour days, and I had to go to Truro to meet my friend Wild Flora, visit Jane of Woodlands and Meadows Perennials, and give a talk at the Truro Tulip Festival. We got good and soaked at the farmers market, then again unloading and loading my car for the talk. Then I was getting sort of dried off as I drove east toward Antigonish and The Willow Garden, but got soaked again at West River Greenhouses in Pictou county.

The wall of water stopped outside of Pictou, and it was just like a wall—one second it was raining, the next second the pavement was DRY. And while it didn’t get really sunny, it was at least pleasant to Antigonish, where I first stopped at Pleasant Valley Nurseries before going on to Bill and Sharon’s wonderful garden a few miles outside the town.

You know, you can get a lot of plants into a small car if you try. I had a 5 foot tall catalpa in the front seat, a yellow azalea and a Kerria shrub in the back seat, assorted perennials filling the trunk and the other part of the back seat…everything from a ‘Chocolate Stars’ corydalis to a fern leaf Peony (Paeonia tenuifolia ‘Rubra Plena’) to wild bergamot (thank you, Flora!) some merrybells (Uvularia), a 'Destined to See' daylily, a ‘Jade’ Echinacea and white Asclepias incarnata. My tastes are nothing if not eclectic!

When did I get wet again? When I got home of course—the heavens opened as I was moving my new treasures to the greenhouse. We were having some weather coming in off the bay, as so often happens (here's what it looks like in our back yard on a clear, if soggy, Monday afternoon.) Already was feeling miserable with fever and aches, so this about finished me off. Hence I decided to stay in bed much of yesterday!

The sun came out today for a while, but as so often happens after a big rain, it was cool again. No matter. I took more cold medicine and sallied off to work on a project for one of my clients, then retired to putter in the greenhouse potting up containers. At least it was semi-warm in there, and no wind either. While the sun was out, I did take a few photos.


I love poppies. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but they are just so delightful, all of them. This is one of the Icelandic poppies (Papaver nudicaule) and while I don’t know its cultivar name, these are winners in my book, blooming their little hearts out well into late summer. I have a few small alpine poppies too, and just got a brilliant yellow Celandine poppy to add to the collection.



The Yellow Bird magnolia isn’t mine; it belongs to Gerry Frail, owner of Gerry’s Nursery in Centreville, another of my favourite places to leave grocery money—whoops, I mean disposable income. I have to content myself with Stellata and Susan (my two magnolias—not Betty as I wrote earlier!) and maybe next year I’ll succumb to the urge for a yellow magnolia too!

Rhodochiton is one of my favourite annual vines, and it overwinters nicely indoors too. It has a more rude name besides purple bell vine, and I bet you can’t guess what it is!


These little anemones are so sweet—I’ve been wanting some for years, and I hope they’ll settle in and stay with us but in the meantime, I’m enjoying their delicate flowers and foliage very much.

And here we have a mystery: I’m not sure if these are species tulips or an allium, because I’ve lost their label after planting them last fall (surprise surprise surprise) and didn’t try smelling them with my stuffy, achy nose. But aren’t they cute?

Despite the wet, things seem to be doing well, although of course we continue to be about two weeks behind the Valley floor—and about on the same level as Antigonish. I noticed tonight my PJM rhododendron is showing colour, and Ramapo is also starting to flirt a bit. And the grass on the lawn is decidedly growing, though the pasture seems slow. But we’ve now had enough rain for a few days—could we PLEASE have some sun and warmth again? Otherwise, we’ll be growing mushrooms everywhere….

In praise of felines

I sometimes wonder what makes us prefer one animal over another—for those of us who love animals. For those who don’t, well, frankly I’m always deeply suspicious of such people. It's okay to prefer some animals over others--I like some dogs in particular but all cats in general, and heartily dislike goats, monkeys and miniature horses. But I've met people who don't like animals, and i wonder what they do like--and how they treat other people.

I distinctly remember being less than five years old when I discovered I was crazy about horses. Probably my love for cats blossomed at the same time. My grandmother DeLong always had several cats—usually Tabby in colour, and named (according to gender) Babes or Tommy. I was 12 before I convinced my parents that we needed a cat at home, but it wasn’t until I went off to college that my father decided he really liked cats. A lot. (he always pretended to be allergic to them, to not like them, etc etc. Big softy that he was, he adopted a little kitten that showed up at the door one time, and that was the end of the ‘dislike’ of cats.)

Sitting here in the kitchen right now, there are four of our herd hanging out with me. Two have just gone out to take the evening air, but they’ll be back pounding on the back door with their soggy wet paddypaws in about five minutes. Two are asleep upstairs, pretending to supervise my longsuffering spouse (who also loves cats) as he plays on his computer. One is in the basement being a fierce hunting tiger, but when he gets bored he’ll arrive up here to tell me about his brave ventures stalking whatever he was stalking, be it spiders or shadows or actual voles.

I’m ably assisted in my work wherever on the property I am. Outdoors, the four senior cats act as garden consultants, and sometimes, garden rototillers. I could care less about a little disturbed soil or some little parcels in the beds. It all decomposes, after all. Tigger especially loves to assist me by sitting as close as he can as I dig in the garden, his Cummins diesel purr thrumming in pure happiness. Rowdy and Quincy (not currently in the photos as I need a new one) glare at each other territorially, despite the fact that there are hundreds of acres around us including our smallholding for them to roam on. Miss Thistle hurtles around the yard, her taillessness not detracting one iota from her speed. (she was run over by an ambulance as a 3 month old kitten—the paramedics got her fixed up and then called me asking did I know of anyone who could foster a kitten? As if….) The younger catchildren, who aren’t allowed outside without supervision, variously pose in windows editorializing about what I’m doing outdoors, or catching up their beauty sleep.

In the office, there are always helpers. Sometimes it’s Hugh E. Mungus, watching bird television. Most often Spunky Boomerang, who thinks I’m his mama because I rescued him when he and his sister were abandoned on the roadside as tiny kittens, is nearby. His perch of preference is on the desk, either in the corner where he can lay, meatloaf style, and watch for signs that it might be naptime for us, or else behind my computer peeking out at me. Simon Q hurtles in from time to time, attacks the dangerous mat on the floor because it moved—didn’t you see that, Mum?—gets into a rumble with his brother, Toby Soprano, and flashes out of the room at just under the speed of a cheetah.

My grandmother, when she was lost in the fogs of dementia in her last days, brightened up when I mentioned that my love of cats came from her. It was as if a curtain lifted from her eyes. “I was always good to cats, and they was always good to me,” she told me, a stranger to her whereas once I’d been a cherished grandchild, but we shared that connectivity for a moment before the fog descended again.

I should like that to be my epitaph. Because cats are always, always good to me. Even cats whose owners tell me, “he’s not friendly” or “she will bite” or, “he NEVER comes to strangers” appear where I am and sit with me, teaching me their wisdom with their perfect stances and their wise glowing jewellike eyes. And I am a better person for being with cats.

So I’ve added the catchildren of our family to the sidebar of the blog, as does my fellow gardener, blogger and catlover Yolanda Elizabet of Bliss. My blogging buddies are rather like cats, too—I learn so very much from all of them, and am a better gardener—and probably writer, and person too—for their friendships and acquaintances.

A Flower Fix

Days like today—cold, wet, dreary, with a hint of snow mixed in to the rain—are the days that separate the true gardeners from the newbies, according to one nursery operator I frequent. She grinned when I strolled out of one of her greenhouses today, clutching a variety of annuals that I NEEDED.

Yes, needed. Other hardcore gardeners are smiling and nodding, because we know what that need is like, don’t we? We’re transfixed by the blue of a Loddon Loyalist Anchusa. We see that the yellow tree peony is well developed and has two flower buds forming nicely. We learn that the daylilies are fieldgrown from root divisions, not tissue culture, and that Destined to See is not expensive. We see annuals that we’ve never tried before. Our friendly neighbourhood nursery operator has overwintered the Silver Sand plant that we killed by forgetting to water it for three weeks. And so it goes…we come home with a trunkload of plants. Again.

Well. I was feeling a bit behind the eightball because some of my blogging friends have been putting up glorious photos of their gardens in bloom. Ours has lots of growth happening, (including the appearance of the yellow trillium, YIPPEE!) and some bulbs and early perennial blossoms, but by and large, we’re like the late-blooming cousin—we’re late blooming. So I’m presenting a modest show of flowers that I like, mostly annuals, that are waiting patiently in my living room to be put into container plantings and set out in the greenhouse to harden off. And as a bonus, I’ll explain why this plant attracts me so much.




Gerbera daisies: these are going outdoors as soon as it warms up, but meanwhile, they’ll entertain me here in my office. Their colours are so hard to describe sometimes, and so delicious…it’s hard to pick just one.



Lantana. It smells unpleasant. It’s toxic. And yet its flowers besot butterflies and hummingbirds alike. I love it because it comes in a range of colours, most of which start one colour and fade to another. That’s hard to tell with this yellow one, but I have a gorgeous red that is orange and yellow in the centre. Excellent in containers.



Salvia ‘Black and Blue’. This is a stunner. It really IS this blue—maybe even a little darker, as I had to use the flash indoors to take these photos—and the stems are black. The foliage is glossy, and it’s just a way cool annual.



Calocephaplus ‘Silver Sand’. I first saw this last spring and immediately had to have one. It’s a native of Tasmania and Australia, apparently, and also goes by Button Bush, and has small yellow flowers. I don’t care if it ever flowers—I just love its silver-green foliage. Last year it lived in a terracotta planter with Black Mondo Grass and a white flowered thunbergia, and more people asked if it was real. I’m going to look after it very, very carefully this winter!



Streptocarpus. Den Haan’s nursery in Middleton has a whole raft of these in jeweltones. I stopped dead when I saw them, and said to myself, “You can only have ONE!’ These deep, royal purple was the one that insisted it needed to come with me. Others pleaded, but I was firm.



Agastache: You have to love a plant called Hummingbird Mint, don’t you? I do. I’m especially besotted by the salmonorange-pink cultivar I overwintered (but it isn’t in flower yet) so I content myself with this one. Hummingbirds DO adore it—I have a number of these plants strategically placed around the garden, in planters and planted out. It makes me happy to smell it, too—lightly citrus and mint, sort of reminiscent of bee balm but lighter.



Agyranthemum. Daisies of all sorts delight me, but many of them verge on the ho-hum. Not this beauty. Your eyes do not deceive you—not only is it bicoloured, it’s stripy. Like a candycane. What could I do but pick it up? It’s a bit leggy, but I’ll whack it back after I use it in my talk tomorrow, and let it bush out some more.



Evolvolus. Blue Haze. Isn’t it sweet? Blue, blue flowers, the size of quarters, all summer. It’s a relative of morning glories, and a charmer—I found it two years ago and grow it indoors as well as out. Don’t let it dry out, because it sulks and wilts, but otherwise it’s a steadfast performer, and much beloved in my containers.



Calla. This is my first time growing calla lilies, and I’m going to put them in a container and see how they do. I may also add a ranunculus to the mix, just because I think the juxtaposition of foliage textures and flower complexity will be stunning.

Did I mention I’m going off on a jaunt tomorrow, too? Wonder what I’ll find that has to come home with me….

The top gardening aids I can’t be without

We all have things we can't possibly live without in our gardens. Here are some of my favourites, although with all the deadlines I have, there's not much time to use them right now....


A ho-mi digger. I wrote last year about my digger, purchased at Lee Valley Tools, and how it came to an unfortunate end when my longsuffering spouse ran over it. Being a good guy, he did succumb to my broad hints and purchased me a new one this spring. We’re going to paint its handle bright fluorescent blue or orange, so that I won’t lose it anywhere again.

Good garden gloves. My favourites were given to me by Wendy Rittenhouse, of the venerable garden supply company, two years ago at Canada Blooms. I still have them—both of them! They’re made by West County, and they’re excellent—still holding together nicely after nearly three garden seasons of hard, hard treatment. I’m going to order their waterproof ones now, as I’m so impressed with the quality.

Footwear. I’m hard on footwear in the garden, and while it’s a bit early and wet at times, my favourite shoes for the garden are my brilliant turquoise blue Crocs. Yup. After having them recommended to me a number of times by fellow gardeners, I tried em…and I love them. In fact, I regularly wash them and wear them out in public as comfortable footwear.

Seedling waterer: Another marvelous offering from the marvelous people at Lee Valley. When I use it in my talks, everyone has the same reaction…. “ooooooooo…gotta get one.” It’s a rubber bulb that holds only 12 ounces of water, and you squeeze gently to put the water out through a brass rose with fine misting abilities. Works beautifully on seedlings, doesn’t knock them down or overwater them. I wish the bulb was a bit bigger, but that’s only because I have a LOT of seedlings now. Excellent, must have tool.

Camper’s Edge: From the brilliant people at Trail Blazer Tools, this could be called the Gardener’s Edge too. It’s a combination of knife and saw, both of which fold politely into the handle. I started using this when I’m dividing perennials, because the saw cuts neatly through roots, and then the knife is perfect for dividing sections of perennials into smaller clumps. Trail Blazer makes a lot of awesome tools, and as I get to know the tools better, I’ll let you know more about the rest of them.

Seaboost. I know I’ve been talking about this for a few years. I’ll keep talking about it, too. It’s an awesome organic fertilizer, either liquid seaweed fertilizer or dried seaweed meal, and I use it ALL the time, indoors and out. The liquid can either be watered in or mixed into a spray bottle and used as a foliar feed. Joe also sells horticultural vinegar, neem oil and diatomaceous earth, all of which are ideal tools in the organic gardener’s problem solving arsenal.

Organic weedkilling brew. I forget where I learned about this, but it’s something I use all the time, especially in walkways or along the edges of gardens (where I want to kill off grass and weeds.) It’s a simple mixture to make, but as with chemical herbicides, bear in mind that it will kill ornamental plants as well as weeds, so be careful where you use it.

The recipe? Mix together one cup of salt into one gallon of vinegar and add a tablespoon of dish detergent or baby shampoo (I guess this acts as an emulsifier, but I’m no chemist). Pour or spray it on offending weeds in walkways, driveways, along edges of gardens, etc. A friend of mine used apple cider vinegar she got from a farmer, and sprayed half her yard with that and half with a glypsosate based weedkiller. The vinegared weeds were dying the next day, where glyphosate takes up to several weeks to do its thing.

Plants. Oh yes, plants. All kinds of them…

And what garden gear can YOU not possibly be without???

The freelance sailor sails again...

Gosh, I have to be one of the luckiest people around. I really LOVE what I do as a freelance writer. I get to tell stories about some truly interesting people, places, activities, and of course gardening and gardeners are included in that category. Today, however, while I am busy writing out some notes for an assignment, let me regale readers with my further adventures aboard the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Matthew. I arranged earlier in the week to go back aboard Matthew for a whole day, to trail along behind the hydrographers and other staff and the officers and crew, just observing how they go about their merry days, as I have assignment to write about their work. So I got the call first thing yesterday morning, and by 0830 I was at the wharf waiting for my taxi--the Fast Rescue Craft--to arrive and pick me up. The Matthew was waiting near the Split for us (out beyond the dancing water of the riptide, of course), and I was greeted by the chief scientist Mike Lamplugh and the captain Roy Lockyer. (Seen here with the quartermaster who is steering the vessel)


What a great day I had. I'm so fiercely proud of the men and women of both the Coast Guard (the real coast guard, the men and women who crew the ships, not the brass!) and the scientists who work with them; whether habitat biologists from Bedford Institute of Oceanography, or hydrographers from the Canadian Hydrographic Service, or geophysicists and others from the Geological Survey of Canada (Now part of NRCan) Lots of acronyms, of course!

The Matthew runs like a finely tuned machine; her officers and crew conduct this graceful choreography with the scientists conducting their research; the bridge officers hold the ship on a steady course while the multibeam arrays probes the bottom of the upper Bay of Fundy, scoping out the depths and the sea bottom's composition, all to create mindboggingly detailed maps and charts.

The engineers keep the ship, her engines, the launches and the FRC all humming and healthy, the deck crew operate the winches and such to deploy various pieces of way-cool science gear, the cooks feed us all like we're royalty (a good cook is worth his weight in gold on a ship, believe me, and the Matthew's cooks, Stephen & Greg, are outstanding! )

All this makes it possible for the team of researchers to do their thing; using state of the art, multi-million dollar equipment like the multibeam and a bank of computers and networks that would be the envy of most people, and the two launches, the Pipit and the Plover, that go in close to shore to scan the sea floor where Matthew cannot go...


Most of us have absolutely no inkling of an idea what our coast guard does, or what the scientists who explore our oceans do--as one scientist told me several years ago, "the sea floor is not made of concrete". It's alive and pulsating with various types of sand, silt, cobbles, gravel, and bedrock, and accordingly vast and wonderful types of ocean life; each with its own role to play in that 'circle of life'. And there are marvels and mysteries most of us will never see.

So the hydrographers and other scientists on Matthew do their work, and they create stunningly detailed high resolution pictures of the bottom with which they can create maps and charts for mariners and others to use--and to teach us more about the marvels that are the oceans surrounding our country.



I'm always a bit wistful to take my leave from a CCG ship, whether it's from a brief visit aboard the marvelous Matthew or from the incredible Hudson where I've spent weeks, or even after spending more than a week doing fisheries patrol and search and rescue aboard the good ship Cygnus...but as we raced away from the Matthew in the FRC last night, en route back to the wharf, I whispered a quiet "see you later" to the ship and her people...with any luck I'll sail with her again, maybe to the Labrador sometime soon...and then there's my quest to get aboard Sable Island...a story for another day.

Fair winds and following seas, folks...

Plant-lust in May

Four days of really warm, summery weather, and the gardens have exploded in earnest. On the Valley floor, Amelanchier has started flowering, with its lovely white blooms and coppery new foliage. We’re behind here, but the tulips have popped open in the last day or two, surrounded by seas of daffodils. These tulips are a species, I don’t remember which one without looking up. Aren’t they happy?

It’s always dangerous to go to garden centres at this time of year…plants beckon seductively to us, suggesting that we can’t possibly live without them in our gardens, and what are we to do with such tempting comments?

To be fair, it started out innocently, as these things always do, as a totally altruistic trip to Baldwin Nurseries to take some of last year’s big black pots down to Rob for his recycling pleasures. I also had planned to drop in and see my friend Catherine and then to finish out my jaunt with hubby’s truck by getting some bags of mushroom compost from the organic mushroom plant.

Well. Coming down the Mines Road towards Rob’s nursery, I met a tractor trailer coming UP the hill. Hmmmm. Whatever would a tractor trailer be doing out here? Especially one with a big shiny trailer, rather than a log loading boom and log trailer. Sure enough, when I pulled into the nursery, I saw them, lined up like leafy and flowery soldiers. A shipment of new stock. Shrubs—pieris, rhodos, japonica, flowering almond, some chamaecyparis…and oh my goodness, isn’t that a Betty magnolia? A whole slew of them?



Ulp. What’s a girl to do?

Yup.... Magnolia stellata Betty. It was love at first sight. And the price was excellent—Rob’s prices always are fair, and his quality awesome (I can say this because I don’t expect him to have time to read anything until about November, so he won’t get a swelled head…) so it was a case of “I need this and I’m having it and I don’t care if it’s in the inventory yet and can I lay it down in the back of the truck?”

Of course I brought one home. And have planted it already too. I haven’t yet planted the Acer japonicum seedlings he gave me to cold test, nor the Stained Glass hosta I also HAD to have…but Anne is in pride of place in the front garden, where she’ll get some protection from some of our winds. I resisted the flowering almond; AND the Cornus kousa AND the purple beech (til next time, when it and an Acer rubrum and a Quercus rubra (red maple and red oak, respectively) and a Japanese tamarack and whatever else catches my eye get in the truck bed.

After that it was off to see Catherine, where we lamented the appetites of deer-vermin, celebrated the efficacy of cider vinegar as a herbicide (with salt and detergent), conspired about plantings for the year…and Catherine had an extra Dorothy Perkins that was in the wrong spot and did I want to take it home with me?

Well, sure—Dorothy is a favourite in Nova Scotian rural gardens, and I didn’t have one. I had a rose that was supposedly Super Dorothy, but it had been on a rootstock, and after three years, I realized I was getting rootstock, some wild and not that interesting canes that never flowered, and out it went. Catherine and I both agree that buying bud-and-graft roses is essentially a waste of time in Nova Scotia’s climates, and roses grown on their own roots rule.

Gardeners have a love of sharing plants with other people. I have given away lots of extra perennial pieces for a plant sale coming up, and have started potting up some things to take to friends around the province next week. Including—don’t laugh—nettles. Yes, nettles. I’m very partial to them because they’re a larval food plant for the red emporer butterfly, and for other creatures too. Plus in the compost heap they’re highly nutritious. Another gardener who shares my enthusiams for nettles wrote to ask if I knew where in the city she might find some…so of course I volunteered to bring some in. Only those of us who really do appreciate native plants in all their myriad variety—well, okay most of their myriad variety—don’t get me started on buttercups or ground ivy!—understand the importance of having plants that others would call ‘weeds’ in our gardens.

Granted, Anne isn’t a native plant. I’m not a purist, because I’m too fickle hearted—I love plants of all kinds. I rationalize, however, as addicts do—sure Anne is native—somewhere, just not here!

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

This just in.....

I was up to my ears in dirt, grubbing happily away in the front garden, hauling out buttercups and talking to Tigger, when I heard a certain, distinctive sound.

Bzooom. Bzoom.

A big fat joyous bumblebee had trundled past me earlier in the afternoon, but this was a different sound.

And there he was...the first male hummingbird of the season. He stopped and hovered a few yards from my face, as if to say, "Well??? Where the heck IS it. I'm HUNGRY!"

I got two feeders out fast, and he has now forgiven me for being slow off the mark.

The swallows arrived back today, with a whirl and twitter and aerial ballet that made me flop back in the grass and grin in bliss.

Mind you...the blackflies also arrived tonight, at least one did, while I was tenderly tucking some Virginia bluebells into the shade garden, hauling out wood anemone by the rootfuls, and celebrating the profusion of red trillium--and the white is back!--all in this one happy locale.

It is a very good thing to have spring...even if it gets cool again, we know the good weather is coming.

Glimpses of spring

The weather has warmed up significantly in the Valley, and even up here it made it to 57 degrees F (it was near 80 in the Valley). Too windy for me to do much given my still crappy cold, but I puttered a bit and had a look at the growth happening. Some things I saw decidedly cheered me, starting with a burst of scilla.

The shrubs and trees are all nicely budding: in no particularly order, I saw nice new buds on the Amelanchier, (shadbush, chuckly pear, serviceberry), the Ilex verticillata (all three Canada Holly, whether male or female we don’t know yet), the Aronia melanocarpa (black chokeberry), the Katsura (Cercidiphyllum) both Chaenomeles shrubs (quince/japonica), the amur maple (Acer ginnala) and, to my husband’s great cheer, Crataegus ‘Paul’s Scarlet’ hawthorn. He was really worried about that young tree after the depredations of the white tussock moth last summer. I kept telling him that it would be fine. And it is, just as the horse chestnut and red buckeye, his two pride and joys, are doing. The wee Caragana, or Siberian pea shrub that I bought two years ago for three dollars at the high school yard sale has put on impressive growth, although it will need staking as it’s still sylphlike enough to lean hardover in some of our gentle gales of wind. The evergreens of various types are doing fine, a little windburn on a couple of them (no surprise there!) and they’re all such lovely colours right now.


And then there are the perennials. I’ve already exulted about one of the Meconopsis crowns. Well, turns out there are four crowns happening on that one plant, and another one nearby has at least two crowns. I discovered another plant tonight in another location, and THIS one surprised me, as I let it flower last year without disbudding it. Now, it’s anyone’s guess as to whether it’s the blue one or the purple one, because I can’t exactly remember which was where in that spot, and photos don’t help, as they were surrounded by a sea of blue corydalis. So we’ll wait and see what happens.

Some of the plants that have challenged me in the past cause amusement with other gardeners. Take geums, for example. They’ve given me fits over the years, but it’s because they need good drainage in the winter. What do you know but I got several of them through in my special bed for unique and problem child plants—and the two fascinating herbaceous potentillas: ‘Arc en Ciel’ and another one, I think it’s Fireball but not sure, also came through with flying colours. Also poking up through with intriguing red foliage is Polemonium ‘Stairway to Heaven’. I really like this plant. If it never flowered I wouldn’t care, so long as I could enjoy its foliage, which reminds me of a Nishiki willow; green and white tinged with pink on new growth. Delightful!

A number of red trillium are up, which initially surprised me, because it seemed early for their foliage to be poking up. Not sure about the white or yellow species yet, because…ahem…I’m not entirely sure where they are. Labels don’t always stay where they’re put, especially here where we have such freeze and thaw cycles and wet ground and so on. I have a general idea where they are, and it seems to me they’re also later than the red ones. Lots of plants are slow in the spruce shade garden, but they generally come along, from hostas to gentians to bloodroot to mayapples to a variety of ferns.

Another plant I was curious about is the golden Japanese forest grass, Hakonechloa ‘Aurea’. It’s come through with flying colours, which leads me to think I should try the all gold form this year too. Bromus ‘Skinner’s Gold’ is up and looking great, and so is the variegated yucca I planted in Marilyn’s memorial garden (for my son, who when he was a toddler gave ‘yuckies’ as kisses to his grandparents). The yucca is a bit windburnt but I probably pulled the mulch away from it too early. Some other grasses like Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’are sending up shoots, but it’s plenty early for many of the later-flowering species, and I don’t worry about any of them except the Japanese blood grass, which may not have liked the winter wet. We’ll see. If it croaked…there are always other plants.

What’s NOT up yet are the new echinaceas, but I’m not worrying about them. A quick visit to the well established E. purpurea clumps shows that they’re not up either—they tend to be slow up here, so I’m not sounding any alarm bells. Daylilies are up, hostas are not, but the big filipendula is poking through and SO is the ornamental rhubarb I got last year in Shelburne at Spencer’s.

And now for something completely different...

The phone was flashing when I came downstairs this morning. I hit the voice mail, and heard the voice of one Richard Smith, captain of the Canadian Coast Guard ship Matthew. He and the Matthew and a team of scientists from NRCan and the Canadian Hydrographic Service were out in the Minas Channel, doing ocean floor mapping using some very cool equipment. They had to put a scientist ashore in Scotts Bay this afternoon, and did I want to come out for a few hours visit?

Did I? You bet. I’ve never sailed on the Matthew, but I’ve sailed with Capt. Smith when he had the Hudson and had a great time. The Matthew does hydrographic survey and oceanographic work all around Atlantic Canada (and is named after the ship John Cabot used to explore the new world back in 1497). No doubt Cabot would have been speechless at THIS Matthew, with her two huge diesel engines, her arrays of gear for surveying the sea bed, her radars and radios and computers…even the gear used to create fresh water from salt.

So I scooted down to the wharf after lunch, and pretty soon the Matthew’s Fast Rescue Craft (FRC) came rocketing in to pick me up. Kindly, they brought me both a mustang survival suit and a hard hat (de rigeur on FRC excursions), and after a brief pause to don the suit (best done laying down on the wharf—I wonder what the people up on the roadside thought of some strange woman wrestling into a brilliant orange suit?) I scrambled down the ladder and into the FRC, and we headed out to meet the Matthew.

Well. Have I mentioned that we live in the land of the world’s highest tides? Tides that thunder down through the Basin, around the basalt sea stacks of Cape Split at a speed of around 8 knots? With whirlpools and ‘dancing water’ and wild waves turning every which way in the strange currents. When my better half was a fisherman, I was out in his Cape Islander more than a few times experiencing the awesome power of the riptides. Today, we didn’t go through the rips, of course, not in a small zodiac with two 50 hp outboards—we went out around, and the crew handling the FRC did a brilliant job. It was fun—like riding a bucking horse, or whitewater rafting, or as I teasingly told Capt. Smith, like driving on the back roads of Hants County (where he hails from). We bounced across a few waves, but it was safe, and I just sat back on the bow seat and felt the water dance around us and was happy.

Three hours is too short a time to really get a sense of what scientists are doing, and these scientists are certainly at the top of their game. I’ll have to talk further with a couple of them to understand more about what they’re up to, but that’s fine. I know that ultimately they’ll create better, safer charts for fishermen and other ships, for pleasure boaters and more; and they’re also getting a better sense of the underwater habitats of all kinds of fish, shellfish and other creatures.

Everytime I go out on a ship, I realize just how much we all don’t know about the waters that cover so much of our earth—and that so many of us live near. With scientists such as these, we are learning a little more. The current team on board the Matthew are working in various spots around the Bay of Fundy, hopefully seaming together data from other sessions up in this area, to make a clearer picture. One scientist showed me scars on the ocean floor made by icebergs—over 10,000 years ago. And those scars are still there! Gives some sense of perspective to our own lives…and to what damage we humans might do to our oceans.

Headed back home in my water taxi after enjoying supper in the mess with Captain Smith, and at some point during the afternoon, the sun finally decided to come out and the wind calmed. There are two main water behaviours out around the Split--either dancing water or (excuse me, but this is the term) "flat-ass calm." That's how the waters were as we came past Cape Split, the tide seeping back out towards low water. It’s been a few years since I’ve been out by the Split from the water, so had to snap a few photos of it as we zipped by…

And then, to finish off what was a marvelous day…the hepaticas are finally in bloom. Only about a month behind other gardeners, and several weeks behind regular scheduling here, but hey…at least they’re out. Maybe spring has remembered us.

The presents (not presence) of spring

Cinco de Mayo, and you’d think that we’d be able to have some decent weather wouldn’t you? NOT. Another cold, dreary, wet, windy, dreary, depressingly unspringlike day here on the mountain—well, throughout the region, actually. It’s enough to make a person sneeze…yup. I made it through the winter without a cold. Made it through the winter without the flu, or Norwalk, or any of those other winter calamities. But now…I’m sneezing, sniffly, feverish and mopy. Oh well…maybe it’s a good thing that it IS cold and yucky out. No reason to go out grubbing in the garden, right?

Well…I have been out looking in the garden. Next posting I’ll do a bit of a report card on what’s growing on. But mostly I’m taking my comfort from visiting a couple of nurseries and picking up a few new plants to test out here. Taking photos in nurseries is a good way for me to remember what I saw where, and what I really CAN’T live without. Plus it brightens up blog entries on a cold May evening.

After the Saltscapes Expo, where Blomidon Nurseries did some plant décor, I KNEW I’d have to go get Juniperus horizontalis ‘Limeglow’. I was tempted by this low growing shrub last summer when it was radiant lime-green/gold at the nursery, but decided to wait. The Kingstec crew used it to great effect at their Wine and Trees event, and that further tempted me. So the other night when I was picking out presents for my mother’s birthday, I gave in and bought a Limeglow for the back evergreen garden. It’s three different colours right now, green, bronze-red and gold. Really. I’m not making this up. I’ll take a photo tomorrow and prove it. Meanwhile, go look at the entry in the Missouri Botanical Garden website to see for yourself. The photo isn’t great, but the description backs me up.

As readers of my newsletter know, I was visiting Briar Patch Farm and Nursery yesterday for the first time this season. This is a lovely nursery, a bit of a drive for me, so normally I combine it with doing several other things the same time. Lee and John have fascinating stock always, and it’s well worth spending an hour or more browsing through the greenhouses display areas and gardens (and stopping to ‘talk’ with the geese!) just to get a look at everything. A number of plants caught my eye; the Proven Winners Colour Choice shrub Coppertina really IS as copper coloured as the press hype makes it out to be. What is it about copper/bronze foliage that gets me? I don’t know, but I like it, so I’ll have to have it—soon as I figure out WHERE to put it, of course.

Two years ago Captain Dick Steele gave me a pieris to test in our garden. It might be getting a little too much shade, but it’s protected from the wind most of the time. I don’t think there will be flowers this year, so I may need to go back and get THIS beauty to go along with it.

Pieris Valley Fire. Oh, my. And it smells heavenly. Some people think pieris is overwhelming, but I find it intoxicatingly delightful. We always have a good mix of fragrant shrubs, perennials and annuals in our gardens, as I think that fragrance is a crucial part of gardening. And since pieris wafts its delightful scent at a time when a lot of other things aren’t yet blooming, it’s especially welcome.

When I was in Dartmouth at Lakeland Plant World on Tuesday, I spied several plants from my ‘must have these’ list. Several woodland phlox (Phlox divaricata), which I love for their luminous blue-mauve flowers and sweet fragrance wanted to come with me, and did. But what excited me most were three Euphorbia. ‘Efanthia’ is a Proven Winners variety and an amygdaloides variety with evergreen foliage. Excalibur has red-edged foliage and a striking pale yellow midrib through its leaves, and apparently has great fall colour. And then there’s ‘Bonfire’, which I’ve been obsessing over since I spied it—the foliage stays burgundy all summer, and there are these flaming yellow flowers and bracts to crown it.
It’s a type of polychroma or cushion spurge, so it will remain politely in place in the garden.

It seems that I’m a person of many contradictions. I love heritage plants—am growing a host of them from seed in the living room, including tomatoes!—but also embrace new and interesting hybrids. We have a nice collection of native plants on our property, but also try things that certainly aren’t native. From funky new euphorbias to oldfashioned pansies like the antique shades at the beginning of this entry, they brighten our days. That’s the wonder of gardening—there truly are plants for every taste, (especially for those with a multiplicity of tastes) and so we can all bloom where we’re planted—and grow things that bring us joy.

To my mind, that’s what gardening is all about.

Top garden centres in NS, repeat

If you're looking for that post on my favourite garden centres, it's back in April...but I'll repost the link here to keep it current. Am still building the master list, but it's slow going in between work that pays the bills.