The White (Spring) Garden

There are no colours in the garden that I don't like, although I'm not much on pastels. I do love white flowers for their purity of colour and the way they shine on cloudy days, in early evenings, but I've never done an 'all white' planting (or an all-one colour planting) in my garden. That's about to change. 

The wonderful people at the Netherlands Flower Bulb Information Centre sent me a lovely box of "hot white bulbs" which they call one of the trends for this year. I've thought about the bulbs now for a few days and have decided that it will be fun to do a small dedicated area all in white; bulbs are transitory, and as they fade, other perennials and shrubs will be coming into play. So depending on the weather, I might get these into the ground this weekend. Or not. If I only get that part of the garden prepared for them, that will be a good start.
Included in the mixture are 'Top White' Hyacinths. The smell of hyacinths can be a little overwhelming, which is why I only force one or two indoors during the winter, but I love the scent mingling on the spring air outside.
I have 'Thalia' narcissus already, and love them dearly. Actually I never met a narcissus or daffodil I didn't adore, and my last gardening column for the Halifax Herald was on narcissus. The nice thing about daffs is that they're deer and squirrel resistant because the bulbs are toxic, and they tend to multiply and live for years on end. To me, they're like sunflowers--I challenge anyone to look at a daffodil without smiling widely.


I got very excited when I saw these Tulipa turkestanica species tulips in the box; not only are they multiflowering, they tend to live for a few years. I planted some several years ago, and then promptly forgot what they were, but as soon as I saw the photo in the bulb sampler box, I recognized them from photos I had taken and left unlabeled. Hurray for solved mysteries!


These double white tulips are called 'Mount Tacoma', and I will enjoy them immensely. This past spring I had deep wine double tulips called 'Uncle Tom', and although I said that this WILL be an all white planting, I'm deeply, deeply tempted to toss a half dozen 'Uncle Tom' tulips into the mix just for contrast.


Muscari, or grape hyacinths, make me very happy too, and I'll be glad to add more white ones to the garden. I have numerous blue, bicolour blue, and even double-flowered blue muscari now, which politely multiply each year, but you can never have too many of them.


From the Allium family come A. neapolitanum, which will flower a little later than most of the bulbs. I've become very fond of alliums in the past couple years and plan to add more of the large ones, such as Star of Persia, but love the smaller-flowered species too.


Here's another case where I usually mix colours together; I love my snowy white crocus, but think they work even better with a purple or gold variety near them to set them off; particularly as we so often have snowfalls while the crocus are blooming. The variety included in the sampler is 'Jeanne d'Arc'.


Another narcissus in the sampler, this one is 'Petrel'. Again, they make me smile. I'm planning to plant about 100 new daffodils this fall, and skip the tulips (aside from a few species tulips and maybe those Uncle Toms. That's my story, anyway!)


The sampler didn't include any galanthus, but I'll be adding some anyway. Snowdrops make me utterly and completely happy when I see their little shoots emerging from the frozen, often snow-laden earth. Every year I add a few more, and though I'm still years from having nearly as many as I'd like to have, they're multiplying nicely.

Have you ever done an all-one-colour garden planting? How did you like it?

Pumpkin peeps and punkin puns

The Annapolis Valley is known for a number of things, including being the Apple Capital of Nova Scotia, if arguably the country. Charles Prescott is the father of apple growing in our lush valley, as he brought scions and saplings of apples from his native Britain when he settled here in the early nineteenth century. One of the apples he introduced to our province is the Gravenstein, an early season apple that is awesome for pies or fresh eating, and is actually one of the foods in the Slow Food Foundation Ark of Taste.




But we're not talking about apples this time; today, I'm focusing partly on pumpkins. Another great Nova Scotia, Howard Dill, (from Nancy Bond's hometown of Windsor, and recently passed away) developed the giant pumpkin known as Dill's Atlantic Giant, which has been a record breaking gourd for years. There's an art and science--and obsession--to growing giant pumpkins, and there are several festivals celebrating pumpkins of all sizes at this time of year. Kentville, also in the Valley, has a pumpkin people festival every October, and there are dozens, if not hundreds of pumpkin people posing in vignettes all around the town and surrounding area.


I get an enormous charge out of these sculptures, which are put up both by community organizers and by ordinary homeowners. This parade of musicians is down at the community sports park in Kentville.


To market, to market?


Guess this guy must be playing the Orange (Squash) Blossom Special? Or maybe some Punk(in) rock?
Okay, I'll stop with the pun-kins now.


A few cool nights has begun the flush of colour in deciduous trees and shrubs. This is the current view from the Lookoff on a clear October afternoon.


Sumac is one of my favourite small trees/large shrubs. This native exasperates some people, because of its suckering tendencies, but I love it for its graceful shape, for its bird-friendliness, and for the incredible display of colours it puts on in autumn. This is the hybrid 'Laciniata', even more lovely with its filigreed leaves. 

I'm quite a fool for oaks at the best of time, but they show off their best charms in autumn, turning flamboyant colours before turning a deep bronze. They hang on to the trees for a long time before the winds finally force them to relinquish their grip on life. 

Ferns are not without their beauty at this time of year. I THINK this is a sensitive fern, but I could be quite wrong about that. I find that if I don't take my field guide into the woods at least once a year, I get rusty on some of the native ferns because I don't have them in my garden. The ground around it is covered with bunchberries, not yet turning colour, and also with the mainland version of partridgeberries (Mitchella repens) which are NOT to be confused with that gastronomic delight known as the Newfoundland partridgeberry. (Vaccinium vitis-idaea) Those of you not hailing from the Rock-of-my-Heart might know that particular fruit as lingonberry, by the way.

The wild raspberries are turning some lovely shades of carmin and soft peach. 

Hmmm, this doesn't appear to be either a plant nor a pumpkin. What's this doing in the post? 

This is the rare Tomatoby, not so much a plant as a supervisor of Bloomingwriter. Toby felt sad for me that my tomato harvest this year was even less than usual, but he was pleased that I'd put the tomatoes on the windowledge for him to rest his chin on. Hey, I was obviously put here on earth to serve the needs of cats, so I'm happy to accommodate him. As long as he doesn't knock them on the floor. Then they won't be tomatoes anymore. 

They'll be squash. 

A Light On for October

Suddenly, we're into definite autumn, as October has sneaked into play while I've been mulling over work, upcoming surgery, and other exasperations. The month blew in with a little presentation of wind and rain, mostly wind, to further irritate the already weather-beleaguered garden and gardener. 

Despite the vagaries of weather, there are still some wonderful floral and foliar surprises to be found here at Sunflower Hill. The sunflowers are done, but the Sweet Autumn clematis has come into bloom. 

All the helenium is doing fabulously. I have this perennial in several sizes, from the more compact types that grow only 1-2 feet tall to the towering yellow variety in the back garden that is five feet and more in height. 

This luscious, deep red one is my absolute favourite, however. And there's some Spirea 'Crispa' in flower near it, with magenta blooms that add a nice contrast. 

Another star performer this year has been the catmint, which is still blooming pretty well nonstop since it began in late spring. It's not a hugely showy plant, but I love its grey-green foliage and the lavender-like flowers, and it's become a large clump this year. Probably because the late lamented Tigger isn't around to chew it down to the roots. I'd sooner have Tigger here...still miss him deeply, especially when I'm working in the garden. 

My favourite tall phlox, David, just keeps right on blooming, even though some clumps had many of their flowers blown OFF this weekend. There are other phloxes still flowering, but the pure white flowers and awesome scent of this one makes it the winner in my books. 

Speaking of Davids, my favourite solo musician has released his new single, and it's promising to be a terrific hit. It's called 'Light On' and you can listen to it at his official website or purchase it from iTunes. There will be a video for it in coming weeks, and his new album will drop on 18 November. I love the new single because to my mind it's all about hope, and that's something we need, at this time of year and this particular year in general. Despite that, the song does make me soggy at times, especially when I see tribute videos such as this one. Have the tissues handy if you do go look at it. 
Back to the plants, now! This is a Canadian bred miscanthus, 'Huron Sunrise'; Rob Baldwin gave it to me several years ago and it's turning into a handsome clumping showpiece of this time of year. Other miscanthus varieties aren't always so well behaved; I have one that will need dividing and moving to a larger spot come spring, as it's getting a bit overexuberant for where it's located. 

Echinacea 'Green Envy' continues to put out new flowers, even though the weekend gale beat down some of its stems rather harshly. I've been so, SO thrilled with this coneflower's performance in the past two seasons; it seems hardier and more vigourous than most of the Big Sky series, so that bodes very well for becoming more and more popular. 

Although the butterflies and hummingbirds have departed for warmer climates, sunny mornings such as this see the bees out in full force. 

Our various sedums are coming on nicely, with Autumn Joy showing off its richly coloured flowers. 

I grow sedums as much for the foliage as for the flowers, as they make such a terrific colour display. These would include 'Frosty Morn', 'Angelina', a tricolour variety and the original spruce-blue sedum from which 'Angelina' is a sport (if I remember correctly).


Purple flame grass is another perennial grass I grow mostly for its foliage, though its just-emerging flowerheads are an added bonus too. This one has also remained politely clumping. 

The barberries are beginning their foliar fireworks in earnest. This is 'Nana Aurea', showing even better autumn colour than it did last year. 

'Coppertina' Ninebark is showing off handsomely as well. Last week a gardener asked me if I'd had any mildew in my Coppertina, and I said I hadn't; have any of you had this problem? 

Limelight PG hydrangea never disappoints me, and this year her flowerheads are enormous, and the plant's growth incredibly vigourous. I can see some pruning in the works for next spring, lest she block my office window completely. 


Simon Q Snark has the right idea; October is the time for starting to huddle in warm slippers, basking by the wood stove and dreaming of lovely days and cool nights and gardening adventures yet to be explored. That keeps a light on in my heart at the best and worst of times.

September, harbinger of autumn

Before anything else, pretty pictures or words, let me say a huge, heartfelt 'THANK YOU' to all of you who have posted get-well wishes to me in recent days. It's been a challenging summer at many levels, and I'm fed up with being sick all the time. Yet I also recognize others have it way, way worse than I do, so to paraphrase an old poem, "God forgive me when I whine...I ain't dead yet, the world is mine."


September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt,
evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret.
- Alexander Theroux, 1981

I read these words on a calendar or in an almanac one time, and thought about how true in some ways it is, at least in this gardener’s musings. It seems especially poignant to me this year, as we race towards the oncoming of autumn in just a few hours time.

Orange-flowers may have meant the flowers of the orange tree to M. Theroux,(I love texts that can be construed in several ways) but to me they mean orange-coloured flowers, of which there are more than a few in our garden. The last of the daylilies are winding down, after a remarkable display that has been going on for at least six weeks, but the school-bus orange of Stella d’Oro still remains. A host of Rudbeckia, Helenium and helianthus are doing their thing in riotous shades of orange around the garden, and Ligularia ‘Desdemona’ brings visitors to a complete halt, with her huge burgundy-backed leaves and very orange flowers. Even the wildflowers are into orange, with touch-me-nots (Impatiens) hanging with their little bonnet-like blossoms open for bees and any errant hummingbirds that might be around. I know I wax on and on about ice plant flowers, but they just please me so immensely, and I love the orange ones contrasted with the blue of the plumbago--a sure cheering sight on a watercolour autumn day, when rain is hinted and the sun is weary.


Swallows means several things to us. The tree and barn swallows fledged their young some time ago, and while they were here earlier in the week, I think they have departed. They brought great joy to us as we watched their aerial ballets and breakdances (the children were a bit clumsy by times.) Last year’s fledgings and flight-training was hilarious, happening on a particularly windy day. The swallowchildren would flutter around for a while, then all land in a row on the ridge of the house, where no exhortations could move them until they were ready to move. This year, flight practice days were cool and calm, and the little ones landed only to start their incessant demands for food. “Feed me!” their imperious little voices proclaimed, and the parents did.

Swallows too meant swallowing those lumps in the throat that come on wistful moments when we realize that summer is slipping through our grasp all too quickly. Wasn’t it only last week that it was April and we were grumping about the cruelest month, waiting for bulbs and lilacs and all sorts of other floral festivals? We celebrated the arrival of each and every species, from snowdrops and crocus to daffs and tulips, forsythia and lilacs and on and on. Then came the big flood of perennials and we were drenched in colour, texture, scent and sounds of our garden. Now suddenly the evenings are shortened as the sun’s journey takes less and less time with us; and even though we know we will have many golden autumn days to savour, we also feel a definite spasm of …


Regret. We berate ourselves about what we didn’t accomplish. There are too many weeds, too few flowers, too many things left to do before the closing down of summer is completed. We didn’t visit other gardens as often as we wanted to. We didn’t stop to enjoy our own often enough, perhaps. We didn’t plant that dozen new trees, build that wall, or simply wander around of an early morning with coffee cup in one hand, savouring the marvels of a perfect rose or the dance of the hummingbirds or even the lumbering bouncing flight of a pollen-and-nectar-laden bumblebee. Or maybe we did all these things, but still grieve at the passing of our favourite part of the gardening year.

Still, September and autumn come laden with gifts and hope. The clear, sunwashed days give way to crisp nights ideal for sleeping, and not so many humid-hung days when even reading causes a sweat. In our garden, at least, the floral fireworks continue almost unabated, and while there are orange-flowers galore, they are tempered by other shades, roses and purples and blues, sparkling white and fiery red and yes, the much maligned magenta so despised by some and so embraced by others. It’s true that the swallow-children and other young birds have packed up and headed out—a few hummers still around, and there will be stragglers yet. But also, we will have an abundance of birds throughout the autumn and winter to delight us and the fans of ‘Bird television’ (also known as the cat-children).


And there is planting yet to do, whether dividing perennials or tucking fall-flowering annuals into containers, or planting the hundreds of bulbs we just couldn’t resist purchasing. So I won’t throw in the trowel just yet, nor wallow in too much autumn-nostalgia. Just a little...

Is anyone else feeling that twinge of sorrow for summer's passing? Or are you ready for a break from it all?

Emerging from the silence--sort of

Hi. I'm LeggomyEggo, bloomingwriter's horse. Bet you were wondering what the heck happened to her. Sudden silence after a burst of activity. No, she didn't run off to join a rock band. Or move to Missouri. (She did say that she's thinkin', though, if the Harperites get in here, and McCain gets in down in our beloved neighbour's country...she might have to head for Australia. Or Finland)

Enough about politics. It's not my strong suit. I prefer the arts, but there ain't no flies on me on most world affairs. Wait. There ARE flies on me. Just a minute here. Let me join my donkey in a fly removing roll.

Now, where were we? Oh yes, my human. She's still here. She's just sick. Been sick for almost two weeks. She had some sort of scope done to look inside her innards and while that didn't show one thing that the doctor was looking for, it set her off to have colic again. No, that's not what humans call it. It's got some long name like diverick-u-ouchis. Or something like that. She had to go to the vet anyway. No, that was the human hospital. My mistake. What do you expect, I'm a horse!

Anyway, she's still sick and she's really cranky (just ask her longsuffering spouse) and so I asked if she'd like me to do a blog post for a change. I had to get one of the cats to type for me, though. My hoofs don't work a keyboard so well. So here are some pictures of plants that are blooming around the garden. I'm going to try to remember what she told me, but she's sleeping again so we won't wake her. She gets even MORE cranky when she's woken up. Just ask the cats.


Much of the garden is still soggy and weed-ridden (and that's causing a cranky writer too) but there are still plenty of nice plants in bloom. I don't try to eat the garden. The donkey does, but she's dumb as a barrel of hair. Anyway, this is ice plants. I don't know why they're called that because they're not cold and they're not made of ice. But they are pretty.

This is called blue leadwort. I guess you can see why. She likes blue flowers. She likes me too, a lot. Oh, yes, the flowers. This is a ground cover, though it's not very big yet. Its leaves turn really pretty colours in autumn. Which is almost here. I should start growing my winter coat soon.


Bloomingwriter calls this a pincushion flower, but I don't see any pins sticking out of it. It's had lots of bees on it this summer, and some pretty butterflies. But no pins.


This is called hummingbird mint, and if I were a hummingbird I'd really, really like it myself, because it smells really good, like lemon and peppermints. I like peppermints a lot. Especially the pink ones. Oh. Right, the hummingbirds have left, probably before the big wind and rain event we had a few days ago. So it's just bees and so on that are visiting the flowers now.

Oh look, more blue flowers. This is a gentian, but I don't know which one it was, and when I asked bloomingwriter, she just went back in the house and back to bed looking grumpy. And the cats don't know how to do a google search. They're pretty crafty, but not that much yet.


And this is called sneezeweed, though it didn't make ME sneeze when I inspected it. There's a lot of it in bloom around the yard now, in different colours, reds, oranges, yellows, bronzes. I like this one best. Would look nice against my bridle, don't you think?

Well, this has been fun, but not as much fun as running around the pasture. So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go do just that for a while.

Bloomingwriter will be back soon!

(the above masterpiece was a collaboration between Leggo the horse and Mungus, Simon and Spunky, all of whom spend a great deal of time with their 'mother' especially when she's sick, and like to 'help' whenever possible.)

Well, Maybe there's hope for me yet!

Before we get to the main attraction of this particular and momentous post, permit me a little weather-related tantrum, please.

Okay. We've had enough rain this summer to supply the entire frakkin' province and a few states besides that. So what do we get this weekend?
The end of Post-Tropical-Used-To-Be-Hurricane Hanna. Featuring, you guessed it, more rain.
There's a lake forming in the yard. We have silage rather than grass. Water splashes up when you walk across the grass towards the garden. The weeds are....profound.
On the other hand, it's pretty easy to PULL the weeds.


This is the Bay leading up to the rain event we're currently experiencing. We're only getting rain at this point, no wind to speak of, so everything is just getting well-washed. Yeah. Right.


So yesterday I was doing some pre-Post-Tropical-Used-To-Be-Hurricane Hanna cleanup in the garden, because I figure the rain and wind are going to do a serious number on all this insanely lush growth...and what do I find, casually growing in among all the pink and pink hollyhocks?


Yes. It is a yellow hollyhock. It's the yellow species one, not a hybrid, not a double, not the most yellow.

But I'll take my victories where I gets em!