Garden Bloggers Muse Day...of other muses

A little different post for this Garden Bloggers Muse Day, brought to us by the ever-talented and muse-inspired Carolyn of Sweet Home and Garden Chicago.

Let's see...who is responsible for this current unbearable lightness of being in my mind? Erato? Terpsichore? Polyhymnia? I'm not sure, though I have a theory which Muse has woken me up.

A long time ago, one of my cousins gave me an old guitar. I taught myself to play it. Not well, but adequate enough for college dorm parties, Scouting fireside singalongs, the occasional solo in church and so on. I bought myself a Yamaha guitar and passed the old one along to someone else who still has it as far as I know. I'm lefthanded, but I learned righthanded like most people. I dragged my Yamaha acoustic all over the place, through myriad moves, to many changes in my life, and always managed to find time to play it a little most days.

Then life got way, way way busy, and different. The guitar sat in my closet, ignored and unplayed. For weeks or months on end. Seven years ago, when I sold the car I had at the time to a young couple down the road, I gave the young woman my guitar, as she was learning to play and I just knew it was the right thing to do. I don't know if she still has it or not, but I'm sure if she doesn't, she's passed the old fellow along too.

A couple of months ago, I started feeling like I needed a challenge, something that would pull me out of the routine of work, work, work, work. The garden gives me tremendous pleasure, of course, but its sometimes a 'to-do' as opposed to a pleasure, and I feel guilty when I don't have an hour or two to spend in it. Guilt is not good. Guilt stifles creativity. Yoga has become a great pleasure, and something I can do for only a few moments if that's all I have for time. But it still wasn't exactly what I wanted.

Then it came to me, like a crashing crescendo. I wanted to start playing guitar again. Just for me. Just in this office, or out in the back yard. And take lessons. Call it an exercise in right-brain stimulation. Call it something that doesn't need a reason other than I want to do it.


Meet my new friend, Skittles. (I believe in naming guitars. They've got their own personalities, after all.) A Seagull S6 acoustic, made in Quebec. He sang to me in the music store on my third trip in to reconnoiter the possibility of buying a guitar after all these years. Well, to be precise, I had narrowed down the choice to two: a mid-range and decent Epiphone, and this guitar. I turned my back on them and asked the salesman to play exactly the same thing on both guitars, and not tell me which was which. He did, and I said, "The first one." And he told me I had good ears.

I took it home and played Cowboy Junkies Misguided Angel (one of the best. songs. ever.) for the first time in years. Then for good measure I learned to play Collective Soul's The World I Know that afternoon. Some of you will know exactly why that was the first song I had to learn. Followed by U2's I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. I'll pass on trying Within Temptation's Ice Queen, much as I love it, though.

What I didn't have was good callouses. Or long fingers. The callouses are coming, and I WILL learn a few bar chords this time no matter what. I start taking lessons next week. This is a pure self-indulgent thing to do, because like I said, this is just for me and to give my brain something else to think about. You can practice a guitar for ten or fifteen minutes at a time at any time of day or night and not feel guilty.

And sitting out in the garden, surrounded by the scent of roses and the hum of bees, practicing guitar? It's good for all aspects of this gardener's soul.

"...And the Rain Came Down" Garden Bloggers Muse Day.

It can never be said that I don't have rather eclectic tastes in music. From Alison Krauss to Albinoni, from Cowboy Junkies to Chopin, from the Tragically Hip to U2 to anything by Bach but especially the Goldberg variations, the only music I adamantly despise is urban/hiphop/rap. It's just not me. And I'm not crazy about bluegrass or real hurtme-twangy country music, but I do LOVE Steve Earle. And so it wasn't really a surprise that I sat up when his song "The Rain Came Down" popped into my head (rudely overriding a blissful moment I was having with Our Lady Peace) because REALLY...we're having monsoons here tonight. It's the weekend, after all. This seemed like the right snippet of lyrics to use as my entry for this Garden Bloggers Muse Day, brought to us by Carolyn of Sweet Home and Garden Chicago:

And the rain came down
Like an angel come down from above
And the rain came down
It'll wash you away and there ain't never enough

And the next song to go along with this should be Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind. Because we've had nuttin' but wind all week long. After a few days of it, I get really cranky, because it's a cool wind off the water and I don't wanna do anything outside as a result.


The weather hasn't deterred the hummers, who are incredibly brazen--and voracious. They come look in the windows at me when their feeders need filling--and that is twice daily right now. I guess they think I'm safe, as this one was hovering waiting for me to finish filling before he dived right in.


This morning saw me on the road to Truro, where it wasn't raining, to give a talk on container plantings. First stop, however, was the Farmers Market, where I had a chance to chat with Jane Blackburn of Woodlands and Meadows Perennial Nursery. Jane carries a host of native plants as well as some wonderfully unique perennials, and today I was tempted by some new to me succulents. And a dandy epimedium. And the cutest little primrose.


This Sempervivum is called 'Viking.'


And this is the well-named 'Icicle'.Speaking of which...while we didn't have a frost the past couple of nights, we came close. And tonight--I have the woodstove blasting to take the chill and damp off. It's enough to make one scream.


And this intriguing little number is Orostachys spinosa. I didn't know this plant, so I went off to have a look for info about it. Here's what Kristl Walek of Gardens North Nursery has to say about it:

In a genus of largely fleshy, spreading plants, O. spinosa is the odd man out. It is often mistaken for a Sempervivum, although it is decidedly more elegant; forming a low, spiny, grey, globose rosette which can be 10cm across at maturity. This normally takes a minimum of 5 years and at its peak, the plant is a wonder to behold and a perfect study in symmetry. The rosettes are evergreen and emerge from winter shrunken and tight, shimmering like grey-green metal. The rosette expands and opens as the season progresses and changes to soft grey-green.

After I was done at the market and giving my talk, it was time to beat it back to the Valley for another project that I was committed to. But there was time to stop into a couple of garden centres in Truro....where I was singularly unimpressed by the quality and selection of plants. Two of the garden centres were not surprisingly dull, but the third one, a satellite nursery of a large garden centre in another county, REALLY surprised me because it had next to nothing of interest, and what it did have, at least in the annual selections, was way, way overpriced. Maybe they're stressed by heating bills, but if no one is buying, then they might need to adjust their prices somewhat.


However, as always I was thrilled by what Jane had, and likewise what Lloyd Mapplebeck of Hillendale Perennials had on offer. Lloyd doesn't have a website, but he's an excellent plantperson and I always buy all kinds of treasures from him every year. He did say he's seeing a lot of customers from the Halifax area, because quite frankly, Halifax has very little in terms of decent plant centres either. What's there is mostly the same ol' same ol' that has been carried by the same centres for the past number of years. I never make a trip to the city to go through garden centres--but lots of people head OUT Of the city for Truro, for the Valley, for the South shore. It's an interesting conundrum.


I did scoop up some more lantanas, as I am totally besotted by their colours. I love this one's name: Landmark Sunrise Rose. There's another one right beside it, but its label went among the missing. In my greenhouse. I think the garden gnomes carried it off.


The one astonishing find I scored at the Co-op garden centre in Truro was this new-to-me osteospermum. I love love love osteos, and the past couple of years the breeders have trotted out some glorious new colours. This beauty is called 'Summertime Blueberry' and I bought four plants because the brilliantly rich porange (pinkpurple orange) just thrilled me. some of the flowers have more distinctive divisions in the colour, but I'll plant them out and then take more photos--when the rain finally stops and the sun comes back out....

Happy June Muse Day, Friends. I'm coming to visit, except for one: Where the Heck is Flowergardengirl gone to? She left a comment here but I can't raise her blog? Anyone know what's up?

Pieces of April...on a Morning in May

For this cool, windy first day of May, which also happens to be the date for the monthly Garden Bloggers Muse Day post, (and a big, warm Happy Birthday to Carolyn Gail, founder of GBMD and an inspiration with her youth and energy!) I traipsed outdoors to have a look around part of the garden.

As the wind chilled me to the point I decided to go back indoors and build a fire in the stove, an old song by Three Dog Night slid into my head. It appears that my MUSE is more MUSICAL than poetic this month. I give you first, Pieces of April...

We knew no time for sadness, that's a road we each had crossed
We were living a time meant for us, and even when it would rain
we would laugh it off.
I've got pieces of April, I keep them in a memory bouquet
I've got pieces of April, it's a morning in May

That sounds rather melancholy, which I'm really not--just very, very tired. My one day off turned more or less into three, although medical appointments etc don't really count as day off material, do they? I think it's good, sometimes to take a step back from things we're passionate about, whether that be gardening, blogging, reading gardening blogs, or yes, even working.


And I did take mental health time...from doing some gardening to riding my boisterous horse, who was pretty well behaved though he attempted a couple of moves that should only be made by Lipizzans or dressage horses. My knees aren't engineered to having him do piaffes (trot on the spot) or other airs above the ground! After all, it's not the flying through the air that hurts...it's that sudden thud at the end when gravity takes over and you're no longer above, but ON the ground.


My garden is definitely showing more pieces of April (or February or March) than of mornings in May. Things are certainly coming, and we've had some nice warm days, but then a cool day or two puts growth into stasis. Despite that, it's exciting to see new growth and awakenings each day. The pulmonarias always tickle me, because they're barely out of the ground before they're flowering.

The other song that ran through my head as I traipsed and shivered around the garden was "Someday my Prince will come...." in this case, Helleborus 'Ivory Prince'. The cool weather has slowed his approach, but slowly, slowly...it's starting to open. And the wait will be worth it, because we have multiple buds.



The only problem with both 'Pieces of April' and 'Someday my Prince' is that they're earworms (not to be confused with EARTHworms) that embed themselves in my mind and repeat over and over and over and over...I like them the first few times but after that feel like taking a vacuum cleaner to my brain. The cure for earworms is a trip either into my musical library or a visit to You Tube ((or iTunes) for a dose of GOOD music.....


Just goes to show you that a somewhat aging gardener who is passionate about Bach and Chopin can also appreciate rockers who are also emo enough to weep in public for their critically ill sibling. (and not discuss it, either. Just weep.)

Okay, maybe I AM a bit melancholy here...nothing that WARM sunlight and my Hellebore opening fully won't alleviate. We all have days like this, don't we?

Une Poisson d'Avril for Garden Bloggers Muse Day

We all know how TS Eliot begins his monumental poem The Waste Land; even those who don’t know the poem (or understand it, and don’t worry if you don’t!) know these oft quoted words:

April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain.

Given that we’ve all had a long, tiresome winter (some of us longer and more tiresome than others) but that we’ve finally made it out of Farch, I thought about rewriting Eliot’s poem. However, it is 434 lines long, an astonishing miasma of satire, allusions, prophesy, wistfulness and dread.

While words do come easily to me, especially when galloping on about plants or cats or books or gardens, I don’t feel quite up to that monumental a task.

So instead, submitted for your consideration, gentle readers, my offering for Garden Bloggers Muse Day, and also the day of Poisson d’Avril:

April is the foolish month, breeding
cattle out of great pumpkins, mixing
skunk cabbages and Indian artifacts, stirring
Daffogerbera roots with endless rain.

Happy Muse Day, all...if you want me, I'll be bottling up the latest precipitation and getting ready to sell it as blue poppy fertilizer.

The Attack of the Dreaded Farch

Carolyn Gail of Sweet Home and Garden Chicago started us off with Garden Bloggers Muse Day a while back, and I"ve been contemplating whether to post today or tomorrow. Since in most years this would be March 1st, I figure today is as good a time as any.

“April,” we are told by the great poet TS Eliot in his epic poem The Waste Land, “is the cruelest month, “breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.”

Much as I love Eliot, he’s all wet on this one. That’s because he never endured the interminable attack of the dreaded Farch in Nova Scotia.

Farch, you say? What the heck is a Farch?

Farch is what some people know better as the months of February and March. But because they are interminable, obnoxious, and downright unpleasant, I tend to roll them into one loooonnnnnggggg month and call it Farch. And I like it just about as much as I like goutweed (and people KNOW how much I detest that justly-maligned plant.) This year, of course, Farch is even longer, thanks to today being a Leap Day. Like Carol at May Dreams Garden says, it would be nicer to have that extra day at a nicer time of the year, although those of us in the southern Hemisphere probably think that an extra late-summer day is just fine.

We've had the full meal deal of winter weather tantrums in the past couple of months, that's for sure. I don’t mind the cold or the snow. It’s the grey. Grey skies, grey landscapes, grey pavement and heaps of grey snow, more grey skies. Days the sun is out, no matter if it’s 40 below, I’m okay with it. But I’m starting to get impatient to be grubbing in the dirt, bringing home new ‘groceries for the garden’ in the form of plants and more plants and accents and garden art and mushroom compost...pruning and cleaning up and making new beds and hardening off seedlings and doing all those other wonderful things that we do.

It's still too early to plant most seedlings indoors here, because they can't be transplanted outside until at least May, unless I decide to put something in the greenhouse for supplemental heat. I did sow a bunch of catgrass, to keep the cat-children from chewing on my houseplants. And while I didn't get that azalea I talked about, the orchid show is tomorrow and Sunday, and we do plan to trek into Halifax for a bit of that. So who knows what might get to come home with us?

And despite reading all kinds of other blogs, I'm just beginning to feel really bludgeoned by the weather. I want to see this sight in my own garden.


I'd even welcome seeing this, snow and all:


Of course, I’ve been pushing back the greys by keeping busy with work, reading all kinds of new books, browsing through catalogues and magazines and websites, and tending the plants here in the house. They tell me that spring will come, as they’ve started to wake up from their resting period and put on new growth. And if it weren't for all of you posting about your gardening adventures or plans, and taking part in the Garden Bloggers Geography Project, I'd be even more winter-beaten. Thanks to all of you who have done posts for the project, and I'll be doing a wrapup over the weekend.

Okay, you've talked me out of being gloomy. Maybe we’re only midway through Farch. But just writing about gardening makes me realize that soon it will be time to be outside getting ready for another season’s floral promises and memories. And tomatoes.

Garden Bloggers Muse Day Meets Wildflowers in Winter

Our blogging friend Carolyn of Sweet Home & Garden Chicago started Garden Blogger's Muse Day a while back, and it's been goin' great guns ever since. The idea is to post some garden-related poetry or prose (our own or something written by someone else we really like) on the first day of the month.

February is no excuse to be muse-less, either. Carolyn is basking in the radiant warmth of Florida, clearing up her winter woes, but she's posted her whimsies for the month right here; leave a comment to let her know when your post is up.

Because I've got so much going on right now, I'm sort of being a bit of a rascal, and combining my muse post with the Wildflowers in Winter Week 3 Post, which is on literary wildflowers, or on a book about wildflowers that we particularly like. Being as how I'm a bit of a bibliophile, with a lot of books about plants and gardening, I thought I'd share a bit of a cross-Canada look at books about wildflowers, plus one more. The book at the top of the post is from 1976, and is by Dietmar Aichele with illustrations by Marianne Golte-Bechtle and published by Cathay Books. It's one of the very first books about wild plants I got; actually, my father bought it for me and gave it to me while I was at Agricultural College studying botany (among other things), and to this day it's one of my favourites. It's a wildflower key, but different from other identification books, simple to use; I've chased down identifications for others using this book's key, even when I haven't been real familiar with the plant itself.


Traveling with Wildflowers from Newfoundland to Alaska is by Phyllis Joy Hammond and was published in 1998 by Newfoundland's own Breakwater Books. What a thrill it was to lug it with me last summer when we plant-hunters went to Newfoundland and the southern Labrador coast, and to actually see some of the places Phyllis wrote about, and the plants she painted in her delicious watercolours. This isn't a book of botany, but rather of travel and observation, and a lovely one to boot.


Of course I have books about the Flora of the Atlantic provinces, each with their dicotomous key of characteristics and plant names. But this tiny gem is one I picked up, like others, at a local used-book store, and it's another book of drawings/paintings, by Katherine Mackenzie and published in 1973 by Tundra books of Montreal. The paintings are very detailed and yet incredibly delicate, perhaps shrunken down to fit the book's tiny size (4 x 6 inches). The author includes interesting snippets of information about each plant, as in this entry about strawberry goosefoot, Chenopodium capitatum "In France, the berry is used to colour wine that has turned out to be too pale.'. Who knew?


From Western Producer Prairie Books (a probably long-defunct local publisher, I'm sure) came this delightful book, published in 1977. I've been to Edmonton and Winnipeg only in the Prairie provinces--and to a wildlife santuary outside Winnipeg called Oak Hammock Marsh--and while I did get to look at some wild flora, I didn't find this book until a few years ago in that same used book store here in NS. (One wonders how it ended up there.) I was fascinated by the huge span of plants included in this book; from alpine types that I recognize from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland to cacti that would never grow here except in a container indoors.


And now we've reached the West Coast, not to be confused with the Best Coast. In 1990, I went out to Chilliwack for a week or so, to visit my then-husband who was doing officer training in the Armed Forces. He had to work during the days, so I scooted all around the lower mainland, and even went to Vancouver Island, and got to explore woods and streams as well as museums and malls. This small book, published by Hancock House in 1986, was quite useful as I clambered up trails near Cultus Lake and Harrison Hot Springs, seeing lovely wild orchids but also familiar plants from both garden (such as western Bleeding-heart) and house (Piggy-back plant).

Some of the plants in each book are familiar to us as garden plants; some are purely to be enjoyed for their own selves in the wild. Looking through the books, I am taken away many miles. A painting of bog rosemary, and I'm standing on the wind-scoured Tablelands in Gros Morne National Park; one of mayflowers, and I smell their sweetness in the Port l'Hebert Pocket Wilderness near Liverpool, here in NS; Yellow violets remind me of the woodlands of the Ottawa Valley near the Quebec border, while I remember seeing much water smartweed in wet areas near farms outside of Winnipeg. And in each case, to derive from Wordsworth's delight at his wild daffodils, "and then, my heart with pleasure fills..." and dances with each wildflower's grace.

Garden Blogger's Muse Day: January 1

"Bare branches of each tree
on this chilly January morn
look so cold so forlorn.
Gray skies dip ever so low
left from yesterday's dusting of snow.

Yet in the heart of each tree
waiting for each who wait to see
new life as warm sun and breeze will blow,
like magic, unlock springs sap to flow,
buds, new leaves, then blooms will grow."
- Nelda Hartmann, January Morn



A couple of days late with this Garden Blogger's Muse Day posting, but no less heartfelt. Thanks to Carolyn Gail for having thought up this fun way to go through the gardening year!

Dec 1: Garden Bloggers Muse Day

From December to March, there are for many of us three gardens -
the garden outdoors,
the garden of pots and bowls in the house,
and the garden of the mind's eye.

- Katherine S. White

Well, We’re into December, and that means it’s time for another Garden Bloggers Muse Day, started by our friend Carolyn Gail at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago. The good news is, we’re out of NO-vember, and are into the countdown to solstice, and the longest night…after which the days start lengthening again.

To celebrate the changing of the calendar, the weather has had a bit of a snit, which I’ll post more about later. But watching the wind blast around the back garden, I thought of this quote and how true it is. We do, indeed have the garden outdoors, frozen as it may be and dreaming of what is to come. This of course reminds me all too clearly that I still don’t have all the bulbs in the ground…but we’ll have warmer days when I won’t need a chisel to get into the soil.

Then there are the pleasures of the indoor garden, where we exercise our green thumbs by splashing pots of colour around the house. My office is awash with flowering plants, the living room and kitchen and front porch boast a host of plants from a large jade (Crassula argentea) to a Norfolk Island pine (Araucaria heterophylla) to this apricot coloured Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera hybrids).


And perhaps most pleasurable, because it requires no effort, only dreaming by the fire, is that garden of the mind’s eye. Do you visit that garden as often as I do? Or maybe for you, as for me, it’s multiple gardens; memories and photos of our own gardens past, images of other gardens in near and far locales, and those found in blogs and books and magazines. Then there’s the most precious and exciting of gardens of the mind’s eye…the one to come. Naturally, I’ve started a bit of tentative planning for next year, and as the calendar days slip by, that garden to come will grow and flourish…and suddenly it will be spring, and time to put those plans into effect.

Just like the garden, though, I think we need a bit of a break from our labours. Hence winter is a good thing. I remind myself of that on those frozen days.

An Ode of Sorts to NOvember

As we turn our backs on the sugar-glut of October, with pumpkins sagging wearily like the wax candles spent inside them, I’m really fascinated to see what others will have to write about November for Garden Bloggers Muse Day.

I’ve struggled with NOvember for years, and previous postings have reflected my growing dread about the NO-month. The first time I recognized that I wasn’t alone in my dislike of November, I was in grade 11 English class—Ms. Willie van der Waal’s class in Hawkesbury, Ontario—more than 30 years ago. We were reading a poem by the British humourist and poet Thomas Hood (1799-1845) who waxed most eloquently on the month of November and all that is wrong with it, in his poem called, simply, “No!”

No sun--no moon!
No morn--no noon!
No dawn--no dusk--no proper time of day--
….
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member -
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds -
November!

Well, I felt like I had met a soul mate. NOvember CAN most assuredly be a depressing, dark, dreary, dank, dismal month, especially for anyone who suffers from seasonal malaises. The clocks go back, and suddenly it’s dark at suppertime. The flamboyant foliar eruptions are fading, with the crimsons and coppers and fuchsias and other richly joyous colours turning to shades of brown and grey before they whirl away to become compost in someone else’s yard. The garden is relinquishing the last of its gifts, be it carrots nestled in frost-crusted earth, or rebellious roses determined to give one last hurrah before winter.

Despite some of my moody moments, (I can’t help it—it’s the Celt blood in me!) I’m a glass-half-full kind of girl, rather than the glass-half-empty goomy-gus. I don’t HATE November, though some days I most assuredly do dread it. After all, there are many things to be grateful for in my world, including where I live, who I love, and a thousand other joys. It’s really only the dreary days that give me fits, and those only if there are a couple in a row. Paint the sky blue and hang a glowing sun in it, and I’m just fine, even if the wind is blowing everything sideways. And as my love for nature deepens and is honed, (and thanks in no small part to my camera that teaches me to see,) I have learned also that there are YES moments in NOvember. Oh, very much Yes.

Moments like the utter stillness during a walk in the woods, when a defiant leaf on an otherwise denuded alder shrub causes a smile…

Or when late afternoon sunlight light catches a meadow of plants and turns them all to gold…

Or when the mighty Bay of Fundy throws a slight weather tantrum to remind us that she is, after all, the queen of tides and temper…(here she is humbling the wharf in Scotts Bay, reminding mere mortals that she is infinite...)


And there are flowers to be enjoyed, from the candy-floss colours of kalanchoes to the swanning grace of cyclamens, or simply indulging, as I did earlier this week, in a bunch of cut flowers on a weekly basis. (they make great compost, after all, when they’re spent).



And yes…every day that passes in November brings us that much closer to winter solstice…At which time the days begin to length, and we’re on the upward curve again.

So we’ll nestle up by the stove, (ably assisted in this by the remarkably wise Simon Q Snark, who knows all the best nestling places) and we’ll read, and plan, and enjoy the days…even in this No-month.