November Potpourri: flowers and friends and other musings

Have I mentioned that despite my best efforts, I really don't like November. Yeah, I know, only every other breath. Today the sun is coming in and out from behind the heavy woollen blanket of clouds, and part of me thinks I 'should' go outside. The other part thinks staying in my office, blasting Bon Jovi and tidying up the chaos, is a better idea. So we'll go with plan B for the time being.

I call this time of year "The Fourth Gardening Season" because now that we're pretty much done outdoors, we turn to indoor gardening, growing houseplants, purchasing flowers to enjoy, and starting to catch up on that huge stack of unread books and magazines (and blogs!) that we've not had time for in recent months.

As a journalist, one of the things I do is review books, including books on gardening. I also review Canadian fiction, and sometimes history, nature, and science books. Occasionally I post a review here, especially if it's a book by an author I know and like, but there are so many books and only so much time to review them here. Happily for gardening enthusiasts, my dear friend Kylee of Our Little Acre has developed a second website reviewing gardening books, which goes by the delightful title "Gardening by the Book". I'm delighted that she's doing this, and wish her huge success with it. Kylee's a wonderful writer and one of those people I'm honoured to call friend across the many miles that separate us. So I hope you'll check out and refer regularly to her new book blog.


Another of my get-me-thru-November coping tricks includes surrounding myself with flowers, both fresh-cut and in flowering plants. They help drive away the greyness of the days, because it's pretty hard to look at a lovely, graceful flower and not smile. At least it is for me.

Cyclamen are among my favourite fall-winter blooms for my office, which is the coolest room in the house. Since these plants prefer cool house temperatures, they do very well for me, so long as I remember to watch the watering. Like African violets, they prefer to be watered from the bottom so as to keep the corm they grow out of from getting too wet and rotting. Besides their gorgeous flowers, cyclamen feature gorgeous green and silvery-green foliage, richly pattered, so they look splendid whether flowering or not.

I found this unusual plant several years ago and had to have it. It's called Ixora, and it flowers from midsummer until nearly Christmas for me. I had a bit of trouble with spider mites on it last year but got them under control mostly by daily misting of the plant, and it's busily blooming its head off again.

African violets can be exasperating to grow well, but when they're happy and blooming they're just so irresistible. Plus what can I do? I go into department or grocery stores, spy these plants quietly flowering and crying for help, and I have to bring them home. The biggest trouble we have with them is that they are like lint brushes, catching every single cat hair that comes near them.

This single, fuchsia-coloured violet reminds me that my next colour in the garden post will be about the colour fuchsia, or magenta. In looking through my photos, it seems to be a favourite, indoors and out, mostly because it's such a cheery, rich colour.

One more African violet. At the moment I only have three, but I also haven't been to any flower shops or dept stores, etc, in the past week or so. Who knows what will come home with me next time I venture out.

I love kalanchoes. Love, love, love them. Their brilliant flowers cheer me immediately, they are tough plants requiring little more than some light and occasional watering, they flower for months on end...what's NOT to love about them?

This bouquet was given to me by my dear friend (and floral designer extraordinaire) Neville MacKay, owner of My Mother's Bloomers in Halifax. Nearly three weeks later, the daisies and heath-relative (I don't remember its name and keep forgetting to ask Neville) have faded but the dendrobium orchids are still going strong. And I do mean strong!

Neville loves flowers, obviously, and brings in some amazing, unique and gorgeous varieties for his Halifax shop. Here he's holding a type of green dianthus, which were just-arrived when I last visited him. Neville has this ability to encourage anyone to do their own floral arranging and decorating, because he has a an enthusiastic, never condescending and positive attitude, telling people "You can do this!" He and I hope to be collaborating on a project together in the not-too-distant future. We've sort of put it out to the universe and whatever will be, will be.

In the meantime, looking forward to more blooms as the season turns from fall into winter, I planted a few amaryllis bulbs, which are just starting to get going with their growth. Come the Christmas season, I'll gussy them up a bit (Neville says 'tart them up') with a few sprigs of gold-sparkled curly willow, a bow or maybe some decorative stones in the pots that show the bulb, and voila: instant holiday-cheer.

With good friends, family, great books to read and a profusing of floral splendors...I'll make it through the season. If I win the lottery, though, we're heading for warmer climates for a week or two, that's for sure. Note to self: buy winning lottery ticket.

Colour in the Garden: Orange You Fond of orange?

Being as how NOvember is living up to its reputation as being a long, grey month (at least the cloudy days seem interminiable), I thought it was time to have fun with colour again. The colour du jour: Orange, in its various manifestations.
Orange: It’s a mixture of yellow and red, a secondary colour, named after the fruit by the same name. It’s a curious colour, because it’s been my experience that people either love it or hate it. I’m firmly in both camps. I wouldn’t paint my house that colour, or buy a burnt orange car (like my longsuffering did with a muscle car he had in his youth), and the only orange I willingly wear is blaze orange during the very occasional day during hunting season when I’m out riding my horse.


But in the garden!? Oh, jubilation. From the arrival of those yellow-orange crocus in spring (and that unique coral hyacinth, ‘Gypsy Queen), through the tulips and azaleas to the annuals and perennials that dance through the season, I have yet to find an orange I don’t like. Granted, I don't grow orange marigolds, dahlias or canna lilies, but only because I don't choose to grow those plants in any colour. There's only room for so much, after all. Even in my jungle.


I fell in love with Euphorbia 'Fireglow' the first time I saw it, down at Bayport Plant Farm, and had to have it. It does roam a bit but nothing like other rhizome-bearing plants. The bracts just get more and more spectacular in colour, and often we'll find a second production of flowers and bracts later in the season, possibly because I do let this plant spread in a controlled manner.


One of the new annuals I field tested this year was Proven Winners 'Flirtation Orange' diascia. It has been a fabulous annual, flowering its head off profusely all season. I remembered to shear it back a couple of times when it was getting a little scraggly, as they do, but this one stayed much more compact and floriferous than older cultivars. Plus I love the colour, of course. So in my books, we have a winner!


Because of course as with any colour, there are variations on the shade of orange. Amber, peach, pumpkin, carrot, coral, salmon, rust, vermillion…some have pink in them, some yellow, and all work amazingly with the opposite colour on the wheel, blue. The rich orange of this Mimulus aurantiacus, Orange monkey flower, with a blue lobelia hovering nearby, was a star all summer.


I love the colours blue and orange together;they bring out the best in each other, I find. Again, what I do in the garden I wouldn't necessarily do in putting clothing colours together, or painting my house, but the garden colours just work for me.


I was besotted by lantana years ago, and plant breeders just keep considerately creating more new, delicious colour variations. These plants aren't a problem here because they're only annuals; they don't selfseed, and the first real frost will take them out. But they are glorious while they're blooming, and butterflies flock to them despite the (to us) unpleasant smell of foliage and flowers.


The top one is Cherry Sunrise, and this is Tropical Fruit. I think.


Another plant that has entranced me in recent years is the Geum, with its blaze of yellow, scarlet, red, and orange flowers on various varieties. The plant at the top of this post is my favourite 'Cooky', while this 'Mango Lassy' comes in a close second. Both of my clumps have put up occasional sprigs of flowers since the main season passed, and 'Cooky' even obliged me with a few flowers as late as a couple of weeks ago.


This is a flower stalk from the well named 'Hummingbird Mint, Agastache 'Acapulco'. Everything about this plant makes me happy too--the way hummingbirds, bees and butterflies flock to it; the incredibly floriferous nature of the plant; the lovely lemony-minty fragrance, and oh yes, the fact that I overwinter the plant indoors so I'll have it up and blooming first thing in the spring.


As some of my readers know (I'm looking at you, Anna! ) I'm not crazy about petunias, but I love callibrachoas, or million-bells. They flower their heads off all summer, don't need deadheading, hummers love them, their colours are brilliant...is that enough reasons? This is 'Terra Cotta', which also comes now in a Super-Cal, a larger than callie, smaller than petunia, hybrid.


Meet 'Fireball' azalea, which stopped me dead in my tracks at a local nursery and demanded I bring it home with me. I can't argue with plants when they talk to me like that, and now it's out front near the echinacea collection, and with 'Kent Belle' Bellflower nearby to provide a punch of royal purple to the display.


Asiatic lilies have no fragrance, but they sure have brilliant colour. This is 'Cancun', which has been flowering carefree in our garden since the first year we moved to our house. I have another variety, currently without name, that is deep orange without spots, and another that is melon-orange; all of them are eyecatchingly lovely, especially planted near Purple ninebark (Diabolo) or deep blue delphinium.

That's probably enough for this post. Speaking of blue delphinium, there's a solitary, scraggly spike of sky blue delphinium blooming valiantly in the back yard, but it's too cold, grey and windy for this fair-weather gardener to go outside and photograph it today. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

From Imperfection, Beauty: Wabi-sabi in November

It's not a secret to anyone who knows me or who follows bloomingwriter that autumn is not my favourite season. The vanishing light does bad things to my moods although I do cheer myself with the thought that as soon as we make it past Solstice in December, the days will be lengthening again.

Usually autumn in Nova Scotia is a thing of wonder and glory, especially in September & October. This year, not so much, especially October. For many of us, what is usually a golden month felt uncomfortably like November, with a seemingly endless repetition of rain, cold, wind, dreariness, cloud, repeat as necessary. And now, abruptly, we're in November.And so many garden to-dos haven't yet been to-done.It could be cause for guilt, panic, frustration and I-give-up-itis. Could be, but isn't.


A couple of things happened that helped to adjust my attitude. A week or so back I was squishing my way around the yard, complaining about the mess and begrudging the disappearing of beauty & stressing over the to do list. Then I came indoors for coffee and took a few minutes to catch up on some blog reading. My friend Kylee at Our Little Acre had written a post about what the Japanese call wabi-sabi, and it pulled me up short. She was following an exercise challenge put out by fellow garden writer Debra Lee Baldwin at gardeninggonewild.com, also talking about this subject.


Wabi-sabi, Debra writes, is “the Japanese aesthetic that finds beauty in imperfection and transience. In seeking wabi-sabi, one cultivates an appreciation for the ordinary and becomes aware that age offers its own poignant beauty.”


Hmmmm. Beauty in imperfection and transience. That really resonated in my soul. We’re a culture that seems to seek perfection, though what defines perfection varies with each of us. I thought about this for a while, and went back outside to look at the garden again with more open and less critical eyes. There is a lot of beauty out there, when one takes time to look at things a little differently.
We can fixate on the fading roses (which indeed hold their own beauty) and while brooding about the dying blossoms fail to see the valiant late blooms still coming on.

Such blossoms are unexpected gifts that we sometimes forget to appreciate, just as we fail to appreciate friends, family, the daily blessings we have.


So you know what happened next, don't you? I turned off the critical gardener who sits on one shoulder, listing all the to-dos that need to get to-done. And went back out into the garden.


Turned off the eyes that are mourning the winding down of summer and opened the eyes that rejoice in late season flowers like widows tears.

Saw the dying foliage and denuded stems as just the prologue to a new chapter, not the end of the story.

Instead of being sad because the hummingbirds aren't here to enjoy their feeders, I was glad that the calibrachoa was still flowering its head off, seemingly unscathed by the frosts.

Seedheads of this exuberant clematis look like cheerleader pompoms or floral fireworks, celebrating the season's finale. The way they catch and reflect light when the sun deigns to find us makes me deliciously gleeful.

We’ve had some frost, but not enough to do in all the annuals, and some are still valiantly flowering, like the verbena and lobelia (yes, lobelia!) and alyssum and osteos. They may not be as profuse as they were in July, in most cases, but that means we can focus in more closely and celebrate one single flower or cluster as opposed to being overwhelmed by a wash of colour.


And suddenly, with a shift in my thinking about the garden, everything seems to be all right, even if the beds and borders aren’t perfectly tidied and weeded. They never are. But they’re beautiful anyway.


The bulbs that I don't get into the ground outdoors can do their bit to remind me that they are "another season's promise", in the words of the late great singer-songwriter Stan Rogers, by catching winter light and turning from promise to blossom.

I’m sure most of you are already quite able to celebrate the beauty in imperfection and transience, but if not, that’s my wish for you as we go forward into November. Regardless of the weather.

Happy Halloweening from the kitties!

see more Lolcats and funny pictures
If it's not one thing it's another. Been buried in work (which is good and fun and interesting and pays the bills) but also down-a-quart, healthwise. So I've been missing in action again. I told the catchildren they could do the post for Halloween but most of them weren't interested, being busy sleeping.

We don't get trick or treaters here now, because the local kids are all grown, & we're too rural for others to visit except from car. So we'll have a quiet evening of reading, whether online or actual books. And napping, in the case of the catchildren.


However, no Halloween is complete without a big black cat, so Rowdy Retread hopes everyone has a fun and safe day and evening. He isn't going trick or treating, but is good at supervising yard cleanups. And at having naps.

Mungus isn't so interested in candy treats, but he highly recommends pizza. Especially pizza that comes with a big box he can lay on afterwards for his post-pizza nap. (what's left of the pizza is in the fridge, incidentally).

I'll be back later with something more garden-related!

Gardening by colour: White spring bulbs

The weather here continues to be more like November than October: cold, wet, dreary, windy, rainy, repeat as necessary. It's been annoying because the great fall colour we often get has been somewhat beleaguered by excessive wind and rain, so that many leaves are just getting to their good colour when the wind shreds and sends them away. I've done nothing outside, but am declaring a day off indoors to catch up on much neglected matters, such as blogging and cleaning the house up.

Work took me out and around the other day and I landed in unexpectedly to visit a dear friend I hadn't seen in far too long. She was taking the opportunity of a decent (if cold) afternoon to clean up her containers, bring her houseplants in, and do other garden chores I've yet to touch. Naturally, we got on to the subject of planting bulbs and of colour and of other timely subjects.

Last year I received a box of white-flowering bulbs from the International Flowerbulb Centre, and managed to get most of them planted out before snow and surgery ended my gardening year. In talking to my friend, I remarked that while I love white flowers, I wasn't sure how much most gardeners would appreciate white bulbs after a winter spent buried in snow. We're really craving colour by March, aren't we? And we're not all into doing a white garden a la Sissinghurst, are we?
My friend pointed out, wisely, that white is an excellent colour for bringing out contrast and attention to other colours. And actually, it's pretty awesome by itself, just accompanied by sparkling green foliage, as with these 'Mount Hood' daffs.

When I got home, I got thinking about white bulbs in earnest, and went back through my photo libraries looking to see what I do have planted out there. Of course, the first harbinger of spring in our garden are the valiant white snowdrops (Galanthus, top photo) which are barely out of the ground before they're blooming. They are my favourite spring-flowering bulb, bar none. We do have some white crocus ('Snowbunting', second photo from top, named for my beloved snowbirds) but mostly I do prefer other colours in crocus. But I'm really partial to white or white-bicolour daffodils of all sizes and forms, including this double 'Sir Winston Churchill'.

'Thalia' is another favourite white daff, smaller than the standard types, and highly fragrant. In our garden it blooms with the forget-me-nots so we have this lovely sea of tiny, lacy blue flowers underpinning the wonderful daffs. Makes me very happy.

The last daff-family species to bloom in our garden are the 'Poeticus' narcissus, which don't come on til late May and into June. They're very fragrant and strikingly beautiful; they're also known as 'pheasant's eye' narcissus, and if you've ever fed pheasants in your yard and gotten close enough to watch them well, you can see the description fits well.

Normally, I DON'T plant white tulips. This is one situation where I really do want outbursts of colour. There are exceptions to that sort-of-rule, mostly having to do with form. These white parrot tulips have yet to reach their full glory, but I love the green and yellow feathering on the white, ruffled petals.

The double white 'Mt Tacoma' looks more like a peony than a tulip, but I do like its clean appearance. Behind it is perhaps my favourite of the viridiflora tulips, 'Spring Green'; again, that white-and-green combo just does it for me.

Muscari, or grape hyacinths, do very well in our garden, forming lovely clumps of fragrant, brilliant blue flowers. This white hybrid 'White Magic' appeals to me very much too, and I hope it multiplies as quickly as its relatives.

Lastly, we have the 'White Festival' hyacinth, which is amazingly fragrant. I planted these in the front garden near our main door and they sent out huge waves of fragrance this past spring. The fresh gold-green foliage of 'Aztec Gold' creeping veronica on one side of them, and the almost-black new growth of Actaea 'Black Negligee' made this little combination quite appealing.

I've found focusing on these white flowers has actually brightened up my weather-dreary day, bringing some much-appreciated light into my perspective. My plan is to focus on various colours over the next few blog posts, and maybe get some conversations going with more of you again. So it's over to you--do you like white spring bulbs? What do you plant?

The fruits of MY labours...

I've mentioned before that autumn isn't my best time of year, as the daylight shrinks and the garden winds down. Normally I do something to sort of prepare for the coming of winter, a yearly ritual like putting the garden to bed, filling the woodshed, and so on. It's amazing how it fortifies one's mind and soul.

This year is no exception, and thanks to my longsuffering spouse's generosity and loving support I've had a wonderful rejuvenating interlude. More about that soon, I promise. And now I'm really, really, REALLY busy with work. For which I'm extremely grateful to editors and other clients, believe me. But it's meant very much limiting my time with my blog and more importantly with visiting other friends' blogs. I figure the next two weeks are going to be insanely busy and then after that will return to the normal rhythm of work.

A couple of other little things are happening: I got a new, compact digital camera for work purposes (the kind with really good resolution that you can stick in your purse and just go with so I don't have to drag my DSLR everywhere I go) but also need to have the time to really work with it and get to know it. Unfortunately, the weather has been nothing short of hateful for the past week or so, at least when I've been home. Rain, fog, and drizzle, followed by fog, drizzle and rain. Not so conducive for good photos in the garden, at least not when it's also blowing a gale of wind.

So thank you for the concerned comments/emails/facebook PMs I've received in the past few days. All is well here, and more than well. I ask for everyone's patience. I'll visit and comment whenever possible, and post once I clear a few of the urgent deadlines off my desk. Meanwhile, let's all pause a moment to envy the art of perfect relaxation as done by Mungus.