Letters Across the Pond: Sylvia's spring vacation

As so often happens, life got in the way in recent weeks and I neglected to put up the most recent letter from Sylvia in our Letters Across the Pond series. My apologies to all those who are following our conversation and of course to Sylvia, to whom I think I now owe 2 letters. But she's in good company with other friends I owe correspondence to. Something like the shoemaker's children going barefoot, the writer sometimes runs out of words...Anyway, enjoy!


 Dear Jodi,

Thank you for your last letter. I enjoyed the first picture of a trillium, I have ordered two, T. erectum. Thank you for all the comments that they are not difficult to grow. All I know is they are not easy to buy in the UK and expensive. I try not to acquired plants in the summer but I couldn’t resist, I will keep them really well watered for the summer and fingers crossed.

I am glad your garden is now growing but I can believe after a long sleep it ‘gallops’ away. May is always the month that I get panicky because I can’t keep up with everything that I want to do in the garden. I tell myself next year I will do more before May or I will make my beds and borders so they take less work and I will grow and plant less plants for containers. But the next year… by the end of May I give up and just do what I can!



Our soil is neutral so I don’t grow any rhododendrons but there are a few growing in my neighbours gardens as so I am thinking of giving one a try. I do like shrubs to give the garden some bulk, height and width it helps to divide the garden up and hides some of the views (good and bad).

I love your pictures, your garden is really beautiful – I am quite happy to overlook weeds, especially as some of them are so pretty if only they didn’t try to take over. I planted an amelanchier once but it died on me, I really must try again. Talking of dying our Robinia pseudoacacia ‘Frisia’ – is definitely gone, I read in the RHS magazine that this variety is dying around the country but they don’t know why. I think the main reason mine gave up is we had a mains water leak very close to its roots, they don’t like being wet!


I grew some yellow violets from seed last year, I wonder if it is the same species, I will try to find a photo or the seed packet. My first rose flowered this weekend, Rhapsody in Blue and I have lots of others just coming out. We do need some dry weather, we are still getting a mixture late April showers I think! Most of my roses are David Austin English roses and they big flowers don’t like the rain, it makes them very heavy and hand down. The photos of my garden were taken on 23 May and give you an idea of what is flowering now.


Your humming bird picture is amazing, I can only wonder at these tiny birds and hope that one day I will be lucky enough to see a sight like this. For now I am grateful for all the photos that you and our friends are showing.

I did promise to tell you about our holiday in North Wales and I started a letter just about that but decided to answer your letter first! We went to 5 different gardens and I took hundreds of photos but thought I would share with you the first two gardens we went to and find room for the others in future letters. That is if you would like to hear more?

We went to Snowdonia, National Park in North Wales which is approx a 5 hour (250 miles) journey from where I live. To give you some idea about 170 miles North and 80 miles north west from home. Wales is another country (I saw VP vegplotting.blogspot.com also referred to Wales as abroad) it really does feel like a different country, because a lot of the welsh people speak Welsh from birth. All the road signs are in Welsh and English and you hear Welsh spoken a lot. Of course it is part of the UK and the scenery is similar (lots of bluebells and ferns) until you get to the mountains. It is really for the mountain scenery that we go to Wales (it is nearer than Scotland) but it is the gardens that I would like write to you about.


The first garden we visited was Plas Newydd on Anglesey, Anglesey is an island at the northern tip of Wales joined to the main land by several bridges. We didn’t explore the woodland or the rhododendron gardens this time as we wanted to look around the house and it was beginning to rain. I did get time to look around the terrace garden, I think this was originally a summer garden when the Marquess and his family built it but the National Trust have planted it for spring, summer and autumn. I think this has improved since I was last here.


The top has a grotto terrace with a spring in and the water trickles down through a feature on each level to a pool. The NT has recently extended this to rill and fall down to the sea. This is the first of the three terraces, not counting the entrance in the first photo. I really liked this planting of Euphorbia and dark red polyanthus with Ajuga and other plants. The third photo shows this planting by the steps and you can see some of the summer flowering perennials at the back.


The views from this garden over the Menai Strait (the strip of sea between Anglesey and the main land), Wales and Snowdonia were beautiful. Having enjoyed our visit we went back across the bridge because we had one more visit planed for the day.

Our next visit was Crug Farm, home to the plant hunter Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones who regularly go plant hunting around the world with Dan Hinkley. This is a treasure trove of shade loving plants and they have a small garden attached. It is amazing what they have managed to get into this small garden, a lot of the plants have large leaves. I only bought one plant this time, Aruncos aethusifolius ‘Little Gem’, I have to restrict myself and there is almost too much choice, most of which I have never heard of.

Now this is only a brief glimpse of these garden and it is my view. I will try to share some of the other another time, the others were very different. The forecast, as I write this, is for a sunny weekend so I hope to get some (all!) of containers planted. I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Best wishes Sylvia

The galloping spring garden: Letters Across the Pond

Dear Sylvia:

We had an unusually warm spell of weather for a few days this week, and the gardens went from trotting along to a full exuberant gallop. Everything, from the bulbs to the weeds, shot up in growth and maturity. Not everything is awake yet; a few later things like various asclepias are still slumbering, and a couple of later-blooming gentians that are in shade are just starting to yawn and stretch. Likewise with the later-blooming perennial grasses; they're stirring and starting, but for the most part the garden is bustling.


While others around the continent are having their rhododendrons and azaleas wind down (or are long-finished), my first blooming one is 'PJM', a hardy rhodo with small, scented leaves. Like you, I'm a great believer in shrubs and we have a good many of them, incorporated around the garden.

As you can see, there are quite a few things in bloom now. Of course, we have scads of Myosotis, or forget-me-nots; they're the official flower of the Alzheimers Society and my father died of that horrid disease almost four years ago. They look lovely among the primulas and daffodils that are still doing nicely. 

This is an interesting primula I got the other day from Lloyd Mapplebeck, a nursery owner and horticulture professor in Truro, where I went to Agriculture College years ago. Lloyd always has a huge variety of interesting perennials, and more often than not there's a story behind them. This particular primula came to him through another plant enthusiast, and if I have my stories straight, it originated in an elderly woman's garden, growing alongside the common cowslip. I don't know that it has a name, but it's certainly lovely. 

I really do let the forget me nots seed and flower where-they-will. Here they make a nice sea of lacey blue near a Concorde barberry and my Stellata magnolia. And yes, there are a few dandelions in the mix, too. I haven't gotten them gentled down, but I justify them as being good for bees. 

One of my favourite natives is the amelanchier, variously called shadbush, serviceberry, chuckly pear, Indian pear, chuckleberry...I just call it gorgeous. It's one of the first showy flowers of the native woods, along with pin cherries, and its fabulous new foliage is always this glorious bronze colour. Mine is about 10 days to two weeks behind those in much of the province, but that's the mitigating coolness of the Minas basin at work. 

I didn't plant a lot of new tulips last year because I was heading into surgery, but these fringed tulips all came back quite nicely. I like the counterbalance of the blood red tulips with the pure white daffodils. In the background is Orange Emperor tulip, I think. 


Another plant from Lloyd, this one 'Vestal' anemone. What a unique and lovely plant this is, with its gorgeous double centre, so different from most anemones. Lloyd had a story about this plant and how he came to have it, but I didn't write it down, and I want to get it right. So I'll email him for the details again.



These yellow violets are native to many places, including parts of Nova Scotia up around Truro, but I have never seen them in the woods here. So when Lloyd told me he had collected seed and grown these, of course i had to have them. They'll do wonderfully in my woodland garden under the spruce trees.


When we first moved here, I began planting a garden under the big white spruce on the south-east side of the house; this garden is home to a host of natives as well as other plants. Another anemone (this one the enthusiastic A. nemerosa or wood anemone) is taking up a good deal of space in that garden, but there are also some lovely primula, the different trillium, ostrich ferns, astilbe, shooting stars, hosta, and the charmingly bizarre Mayapple, which look so odd when emerging from the ground. 

Around the front of the house is a small triangular bed I call my bright garden. It catches a lot of sun in the morning, and is right by the front door, so I put in lots of colour. Currently there are still bulbs blooming, but also springflowering perennials such as bellis and Arabis. Then there are the black- and gold-foliaged plants, but they're a story for another day. 



Finally, a treat for you; the hummingbirds arrived around May 11 with the scout-males, who bawled my hubby out til he found the feeders and got them filled and out. Now both sexes are here in full numbers, and we'll be filling feeders once or twice a day for most of the summer. We get a LOT of hummers because we do feed faithfully, both nectar and with plants they love. The feeders are in a sheltered  location so that's where the congregations appear and argue, squeak, chitter and whirl. They're quite fearless of me, who I guess they see as their bringer of foods. The other day, however, one got caught in the barn and was frantically trying to get out through the window, to no avail. I caught him and held him in my hands for a few seconds til I could get him outdoors and free. It was like holding a breath of living wind, his tiny heart beating so fast, yet he was quiescent in my hands til I opened them and set him loose in the wide world again. He zoomed to the birch tree for a bit and then joined the others in feasting. And my heart was happy. 

There's much more going on, but that's enough for today's epistle! I hope you're enjoying the warmth of a late spring garden and getting lots of work done. I'm falling behind here, but whatever gets done gets done. The rest, well, I'll hide the sins with mulch, no doubt!

cheers, jodi

Letters Across the Pond: Spring and Work Simplification

Note from jodi: Things are more than a little hectic with me right now, from talks to deadlines to a garden exploding in glee. Happily, Sylvia has come to my rescue and written a new letter, which I'm sharing with you. Please take the time to comment as we're enjoying doing this and hope our readers are enjoying it as well. It's fun to have a dialogue between a gardener in England and one in Nova Scotia.

Dear Jodi,

No not everyone writes at 4 in the morning! I do hope you enjoyed the show, even if it was work, I read a comment somewhere that you were reading blogs while having a quiet moment at the show. I can imagine that the show is really tiring so I'm not surprised that you were taking a break but it still made me chuckle. I also saw your comment on Melanie's Old Country Gardens blog that you write "to do lists", I am always writing lists. I have several on the go at the moment, the "must do now" and the "to do when I have time" lists. I am sure that you can guess that both are long. Spring is my favourite time of the year but the garden seems to need more work than I have time for and I only have a small garden. On my last letter Karen (An Artist's Garden) commented that "small gardens take a lot more work than bigger ones" I wonder if that is true, what do you think? I hope so because with your time constraints and your large garden, I can't imagine how you keep it looking so lovely. I am pleased your husband is helping out, if he helps with the weeding will he know which are weeds, I would worry!

One way of reducing the work is shrubs, though most of them still need pruning, though I see that you have been getting the snow to help you! I am sorry that your viburnums got damaged in the snow, I do wonder how you can protect them next year. I have a few shrubs and trees though not as many as I would like, I would also like to be able to plant several of one or two plants to cover an area but that wouldn't satisfy my plant lust. One plant I hope to get this year is a trillium, I have this perception that they are difficult to grow, possibly because they are expensive. It will be an easy job for me to count them, I wonder what your count will be, I hope it is more than last year. Counting flowers is not something I have ever done but I remember that your husband counted your snowdrops as well. It must be interesting to keep a record each year to compare.


Spring is moving on in my garden, I have lots of plants out in flower including, poppies and iris. My first poppy to flower is Patty's Plum, I love the colour of this poppy though it doesn't show up as well as some of the other colours. How I yearn for your blue poppy, our winters are not normally cold enough to grow it, I saw my first ones in flower while on holiday last June. This year I will have to make do with your pictures and any others I can see on blogs. Blogs are a lovely way to enjoy flowers we can't grow and to prolong the seasons. Your spring may be later but I am enjoying seeing all my favourite flowers again.


I have finished digging the last border in my back garden, by the willow circle. Most of this bed is in full sun - as an aside, I find planting in sun much harder than shade, most of the plants I like are shade lovers - I have put a tree peoania in. I do like tree peonies but they are expensive so this is my very first one, I love them as plants so the flowers will be an interest but not the main reason to grow them. The other plants I have put in are all plants that I have in pots, I seem to accumulate pots of plants with nowhere to put them. I have put in some very tall lilies that have been advertised a lot this year and I couldn't resist, they were not very expensive but I have had to spray them because we get a horrible red lily beetle that eats lilies and other related plants. The local cats have found this bed and making use of it!

The other pest I am having problems with this year is mice or a mouse! I lost a lot of my spring bulbs, that were in containers and now it has taken a fancy to some dahlia tubers I have just planted in pots. Hopefully the mouse trap will work, so far he/she has eaten the peanut butter butter and got away. I am not sure where these dahlia's will go yet but will keep them snug against the house walls until all chance of frost has gone and the nights are warmer, hopefully mid May.


Talking of May my next letter will mainly be about my holiday, we will be visiting lots of gardens but I will only be able to tell you a little about one or two. I enjoy visiting gardens and my husband enjoys the walk, but neither of us can resist bringing some plants back with us. Luckily (or unluckily) car room will restrict how many!

Must finish now, hope you have managed to get into your garden at some point in your busy life.

Best wishes Sylvia

Of Mayflowers and Catnames: Letters Across the Pond

Dear Sylvia:

Doesn't everyone write blog updates and letters at 4 in the morning? Probably not. But when I wake up from a sound sleep in a hotel room, sans cats and LSS, I know there's absolutely no point in going back to sleep any time soon. So since I'm behind in my correspondence with you, as well as with my blog posts, this seemed like a good time to catch my breath and catch you up with life in Nova Scotia. 

This weekend finds me, as I observed in my last post, in Halifax at the 5th annual Saltscapes Expo. This is a unique show for the province, put on by Saltscapes magazine, where I've been a writer for a number of years. Saltscapes is all about Atlantic Canada, and I've been privileged to write about a lot of topics over the years, including, of course, gardening. I'll post photos from the show at some point during the weekend. 

We're experiencing a true spring weekend. After two days of ridiculously prolific wind and rain, the sun pushed through the clouds, quelled the wind somewhat, and put temperatures into the high teens and low 20s celsius, (high 50s and low-mid 60s, for those of us still resisting metric 3o years after the fact). I can HEAR my garden growing from here, but happily, Longsuffering spouse is doing a great job on the basic cleanup. I don't know if I can cajole him into doing any weeding, but he'll edge beds if I ask him nicely. 

In working in the garden myself the other day, I discovered to my sorrow that several of my spring-flowering, fragrant viburnums had a lot of snow damage; broken limbs, some of them right to their main trunks. None of them are particularly large--two were put in last year--but I was very sad to see the damage. Having 5 or 6 feet of snow piled on top of you for weeks on end will do that, alas. I've pruned the breakage, took it inside, and put the twigs into a vase of warm water. Maybe they'll flower. Or not. I may move the two smaller shrubs, and you can be sure I'll protect them next year. The magnolia stellata nearby suffering a couple of small twig breaks, but nothing serious. Nor of course did the curly willow. It's all part of being a gardener, isn't it?


A couple of branches broke off my Pieris shrub too, and those I took inside several weeks ago and put into a vase. They've rewarded me rather nicely.

It's so nice to smell fragrant flowers again! Sure, I've had some cut flowers with lovely scents, like the tulips and lilies I've purchased to help get me through winter, but there's nothing nicer than smelling a sweet fragrance outside in the garden. One of our best spring fragrances, to my mind, is that of our provincial wildflower, the mayflower or trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens.) This ericaceous plant looks nondescript when it's out of bloom, with its leathery, hairy leaves and trailing habit. But then it flowers...



And suddenly, we know for sure that spring really has found our province. These dear plants make me absurdly happy. I can be found sitting on sun-warmed ground in places like my beloved Pine Grove, peering at the flowers, smelling them, taking their photos, and grinning a lot.

I don't pick mayflowers, and while I've been tempted to dig a cluster from the woods near our place, I haven't yet done so. I worry about them the way I do about the ladies slippers, not wanting to disturb them in their natural habitat. But I think this spring I'll wander down to the woodlot below our place, the same site we successfully rescued clumps of red trillium from, and see what I can find. I feel no guilt in rescuing plants from a ravaged woodlot that will likely never see replanting, and besides that, it's almost time to go counting trillium, a ritual of spring that LSS and I faithfully enjoy.


A footnote to today's post is actually directed mostly to your compatriat, James Alexander-Sinclair of Blackpitts. He wondered in his comment on my last post about Spunky Boomerang being saddled with such a name. Despite his questioning of my sanity, I can assure James and other cherished readers that Spunky chose his name himself. He was a wee kitten when we rescued him and his sister from the side of the road where someone had abandoned them, and barely escaped death when he darted across the road in front of a passing vehicle. He got blown into the ditch, and emerged wailing and complaining, went up into my arms and began to purr. And has never expressed a desire to go out-of-doors since. 

We had him and his sister for a few days before he told us his name. They do that, you know. His sister became MangoTango almost immediately, but he was coy for a few days. Then one night I heard LSS talking to someone. I went into his office and he had this little kitten sitting in his hand looking at him. "You're quite the spunky little fellow, aren't you?" he said to the kitten. He put the little fellow down, and he promptly got back up on the desk again. And again. And again. He still does this: climbs up on my desk, and if I put him down, he looks indignant and gets back up. Over and over. He returns...like a boomerang. 

And that's how he told us his name.

That's MY story, anyway. Spunky doesn't mind. He just doesn't like it when I go away. 

Time to wrap this up and get a few more hours of snoozing before I hit the ground running for another busy day of talking gardening with other plant-people. More soonly, and I hope your wonderful garden is savouring every moment of spring. 

cheers, jodi

Letters Across the Pond: Sylvia's Pocket Handkerchief garden

Dear Jodi,

As you say the response to our letters has been lovely, I really should start this Dear Jodi and friends. I intend to incorporate some of the questions and comments into my letters to you. This letter will be more about my garden which is so different from your, first and foremost in size. Think pocket handkerchief!


When we were looking to buy a property the demands of the family took precedence over a garden, so I spent the first few years thinking the garden was awful and not bothering too much. But a garden of any kind and size will "get me" eventually and I would have to start digging and planting. I will try to describe the garden as it was nearly 11 years ago and as it is now. I don't have any early pictures and even now, due to the size, the pictures don't show the whole garden.

Small gardens can be just as difficult to describe as large garden, especially when they go around the property, so have at least 4 separate areas. Add in paths, borders,shrubs and trees and there are a lot more.


The thing I hated most was the open plan, no walls, fence or hedges are allowed and because we were a corner plot we had front and one side open to all the dog walker. The dogs thought our grass was an extension of the field and who can blame them? The front garden had no path to the front door, though only a few feet between pavement and steps to the front door. It was nearly all grass on a steep slope, though not large walking from top to bottom (actually side to side) I could get out of breath! Mowing was difficult, not that I mow, add in the side and back garden and taking all the clippings to the tip it was a chore. The top side wasn't much better, though it had a nice rowan tree and a boxed forsythia. The previous owner had cut all the shrubs into boxes, it took years to grow the ones I kept into a more natural shape. This side slopes steeply to the bungalow which made mowing difficult, at the end is the drive and garage.


Turning down hill was a gate to the back garden, the gate was between the garage and an wall covered in ivy. The back garden had been terraced and had a couple of small borders around the grass. One side is the bungalow with two garage walls opposite, ours and next doors. The bottom side was a hedge of Laural above a steep wall and 7ft drop to the bungalow below. This left one narrow triangle on the bottom side of the garden with access from the front only, about 3ft to 7 feet wide, just gravel and empty, with nothing between us and the drop to next door, though this is less here.

Now let me take you around the garden nearly 11 years on, show you the changes and how I have come to see all the opportunities this garden offers. During the last year we have made some major changes so there is a lot of tidying and planting to do. Starting in the triangle area at the bottom of the garden, this is now open to the back garden and has three small compost bins, a fence and gate to the front garden. Through the gate and you will see we put in a path to the front door, not that you as a friend will ever use the front door! Below the path is the part of the garden that has changed the least, though we have added a wisteria on the house wall, see all those flower buds? Between us and the road is a Robinia tree and some shrubs giving some privacy. Over the path a river of grass invites us up the hill and around the corner, but first note the two borders on either side. The big border by the road is looking ragged now and needs to be re developed, it is manly perennials and sunny. The bed along the bungalow wall has awful very stony soil, I dug a lot of builders rubbish out of here. Despite the awful ground this bed seems to grow anything, it is warm and sheltered. I do hope that agapanthus will recover, it has been in a few years and this is the first year that it has lost its leaves.

Around the corner following the grass. Oh! I am not sure I want to show this to you, the ground is very steep so last year we put in a woodchip path and it looks very stark. I wanted a curved path but due to the length and width of the garden it really needed to be straight. Still it does terrace the slope a bit. Yes, that is a big compost bin but one day it will blend in more and I needed it. This area is mainly shaded by the bungalow, so I can grow woodland plants here, the rowan and conifer trees give it that feel. The primroses do look lonely on the bank by the path but they will have company soon, they remind me of all the hedgerows around here that are full of primroses now. The borders we have put in right around pavement edge do discourage the dogs, they rarely come in now. I think the owners have got better at keeping them off my plants. We do have a neighbour whose house looks out this way and he has been known to shout at anyone letting their dogs foul the garden!



Wheres the ivy wall? Well it nearly fell down. So my son helped me take it down, leaving 2 feet and he put in this lovely fence. Yes, it is in a different position, further into the side, giving me more back garden. Come through the gate, see the bit between the fence and the wall, this is going to be a vegetable bed. Do you like my new raised bed, its 9 feet by 3 feet and I must get some seed in very soon. Do you like my new path to the back door, all this area used to be grass but we put the gravel down last year. I mainly use this area for pots, though I do have 3 fruit bushes in front the low wall. I over winter and grow on plants in those two small plant houses, the ground is lower there so they are protected all around by walls.


One more piece to show you, mind the steps. This area is going to be nearly all garden beds, when I finish digging and planting, with gravel paths to move around and give the area some structure. That ? willow in its circle does dominate but it is lovely to look down on from the living room window and the birds like it. Do you see that my snowdrops under the willow are finished? I did enjoy the picture of your first snowdrop - the first one is so special. This garden is a mixture of sun and shady areas, with everything at the bottom being more moist so I can grow a variety of plants here. Did you notice my new fence, taking the hedge out (which was difficult to cut the other side due to the drop) has given me more garden as well as access to the compost bins on the side.


I hope you have enjoyed your tour, I hope you come to know this garden better especially the plants that I grow. I do like this garden now, it offers so many different planting environments, so many opportunities and challenges. I dream of a larger garden, but I don't manage to keep this one weeded and cared for all year, so for now I am happy here and it does have lovely views over the hills and cliffs.
All the pictures I took this weekend (5 April) but it was sunny and I had problems due to the shadows. We have had a long spell of sunny, dry weather but it is due to break today with some heavy rain. The garden is very dry so I will be glad of the rain but hope that at least some of the Easter weekend I will be able to get into the garden.

Best wishes Sylvia

Letters Across the Pond: Of Sandals and Snowdrops

Dear Sylvia: What do snowdrops and sandals possibly have in common? I'll tell you in a little bit. First, let me say again how glad I am that you suggested this correspondence. Judging by the response we have been getting to your first note, others are very glad too. 


Yes, that was my sandal-clad foot, stepping cautiously across some melting 'glacier' in our yard. We live in Scotts Bay, Kings County, which is technically part of the Annapolis Valley. However, a valley is formed between several hills or mountains, and ours is no exception; the Valley, the agricultural heartland of Nova Scotia, runs like a plough furrow between the North and South Mountains. The North Mountain runs like a dinosaur's backbone along the western coastline of Nova Scotia from just above Digby to its terminus at Blomidon/Scotts Bay. If you look at a map of my province, about half-way up the western coastline, you'll see a little comma of land curling out into the waters of the upper Bay of Fundy, home to the world's highest tides. Inside that bowl is Scotts Bay; the curve of the comma is Cape Blomidon (picture above), where sleeps the mighty M'kmaq god Glooscap (Kluskap).


Being on the Fundy, we're subject to fog and somewhat moderating temperatures, as with any marine climate. IN the summer, it's a blessing sometimes; the Valley may be sweltering with temperatures in the high 20s and low 30s C (80s-90s F) but we are often much cooler, if the fog is in. In the winter, we often get much more snow than other parts of the province, because we get so many 'flurries where winds blow on shore; we catch them from all directions, being technically an isthmus surrounded by water on three 'sides', and being on a hill to boot. My garden can be as much as three weeks behind those in the Valley. But there are also milder AND colder parts in the province. Our province is darn near an island, connected to the rest of the continent only by the Isthmus of Chignecto and the tidal dykelands which joins us to the neighbouring province of New Brunswick. A few years of global warming and we may well be an island too.  

TS Eliot called April the cruelest month, but for us that period runs from mid March until mid May, when spring usually decides to stay with us in earnest. Until that time, she flirts with gardeners, farmers and others. Today, the temperature has hit an astonishing 16 degrees C (about 62 degrees F) and I had been wandering around inside in my sandals. Longsuffering spouse cajoled me into coming outside and walking around the edge of the yard, but I had to walk on snow in a few places. Somehow, that didn't bother me a bit. 

You can probably see that we get a lot of wind; some spots in our acreage are showing bare ground, while in other places the snow is still several feet deep, the result of having been sculpted into huge drifts five feet deep and more. 

Our land is composed of clay, rock, and springs, all of which conspire together to produce some truly spectacular frost heaving. Here's Longsuffering Spouse inspecting the lawn chairs he built a few years ago. He decided to rope them all together and put them on our little back deck way at the back of the yard, near the pasture. They all stayed put, but the deck looks like it's going to launch into the Bay at any time. It'll flatten out as the frost in the ground subsides and things settle down. 


The past two months have been annoying for my Morgan horse, LeggoMyEggo. He has had to stay indoors when it's been icy, and it's been icy a LOT. He's very happy to be outside with his idiotdonkey, JennyManyLumps, and he was hoping I'd come out into the pasture and play Fierce Wild Horse tag with him. Not in sandals, thank you buddy. 

We are a long way from celebrating too many blossoms, although in the Valley there are plenty of crocus in bloom where snows have receded. Generally those spots are south-facing yards, of course. However, tippytoeing around the back yard, I did discover a few valiant shoots coming up in one garden that catches a lot of west light. 

And out front, in the garden with the best drainage, this tiny, valiant Galanthus greeted me. Most of the snowdrops are still buried under two feet and more of snow in the lower front garden, but I've been adding more snowdrops every fall, and this bed is now snow-free. 

You can imagine my joy at finding this tiny fellow, barely an inch tall. He was worth the snow in my shoes and the cold feet. And the winter. And the winter yet to come, because it is only late March. But spring blooms in my heart, and I know we'll make it through. 

cheers, jodi

PS (Tuesday morning, 31 March.) March is going out-like-a-Tasmanian-Devil, with a snowstorm/rainstorm/icestorm/yuckstorm swatting most of the province for the past two days. It's never boring, our weather!

Letters Across the Pond: Sylvia begins

A couple of weeks ago, everybody's favourite Non-blog-owning blogger Sylvia contacted me with an idea. Inspired by the exchange of letters between Carol of May Dreams Gardens, Dee of Red Dirt Ramblings, and Mary Ann the Idaho Gardener, she thought it would be fun if she and I did something similar, here on bloomingwriter. We have a slightly different angle; we both live on the Atlantic and on basically the same latitude. However, she's 'across the pond' in England, and I'm hanging off the Bay of Fundy (a very large 'inlet' from the Atlantic) in Nova Scotia, Canada, and we have rather different climates, temperatures, growing zones and other challenges. It's a good way to go exploring another part of the world, and hopefully you'll enjoy coming along on the trip.  

For those of you who don't know Sylvia, she does wonderful occasional guest posts at Tulips In the Woods and is a faithful commenter and supportive participant on Blotanical. I'll do my post sometime in the next day or so, as work has me on the road tomorrow, but for now, please give a warm welcome to my fellow horto-epistolary adventurer, Sylvia!

Dear Jodi,

Thank you for hosting our exchange of letters, I think it should be interesting and fun. I am glad that Carol of May Dream Gardens gave us the idea, thank you Carol. Though we live on a similar latitude and get similar day light hours our temperatures are very different, so I will start with telling you a bit about the area I live in and the effect this has on my garden.

Pic 1 coast

I live in west Dorset, which is in the south west of England, if you look at a map of England, we are just to the west of a central point by the sea. I have always lived in West Dorset, though I have lived in different places around the area, rural villages and small towns. I now live in a housing estate on the outskirts of a village. This picture was taken by my son while walking along the cliffs. I can’t see the sea from my house but I can see these cliffs.

The sea has a big effect on our climate, first because Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland. UK includes Northern Ireland) is an island. The sea moderates the temperature, giving us relatively mild winters for our proximity to the North Pole and keeping our summers cool. We also have a complex effect called the Gulf Stream which also moderates our temperatures, particularly in the west of the country. Because I live about 2 miles from the coast, my garden is milder than further inland. The nearer to sea the milder the winters. The sea also bring in mists, particularly in the summer, though these usually burn off by mid morning. The hills around also suffer from fogs, which can make driving fun!




We have a lot of hills around us, not big hills but small ones, separated from each other by valleys. They are usually quiet steep, you know it when you walk up them. As you know all gardens have micro climates and the number and variety of our hills increases this effect. Being in the west of England we get lots of rain, which is great for the garden - if not the gardener! My garden is half way up a hill, looking west wards, this means that the sun is slow to reach the garden in the morning but we get a good amount of sun during the day before it sets behind the hills across the valley from us.



Facing west we are also exposed to the westerly gales that come across the sea, perhaps you are sending them to us! It is interesting that you have had a colder winter then usual and so have we. This is my 11th winter in this garden and 6 months ago I would have said that my lowest winter temperature was -3C but this winter I recorded -9C in the garden. We have had two separate falls of snow that have settled on the ground and more frosts than I have had before in this garden. The picture was taken on 5 March, I was on my way to work, one snowy morning. This was taken through the car windows, while waiting my turn to go down a steep hill. It feels like we have had a proper winter nearer to those I experienced as a child, including the chilblains!


I am glad that for us spring is here. The days are warmer though we can still get frosts up until mid May. Spring is a long season for us, we have had the snowdrops, most of the crocus have finished flowering and now daffodils are everywhere. The magnolias have their white buds ready to open, the last few years we have had frosts in April browning all the magnolia flowers, so we are hoping for a good display this year. I couldn’t resist this picture taken in my garden, last weekend, just 2 weeks after the snow.

We have had a couple of weeks of sunshine and I have been able to do some gardening over the weekends. Now the days are so much longer and our clocks go back next weekend (29 March), I hope to spend an hour in the garden most evenings from next week. I have been sowing seeds for flowers and vegetables (on windowsills) besides developing some new areas of the garden, gradually we are reducing our lawn. I have a new tiny bed for vegetables, which I will tell you more about another time. Compared with yours my garden is small but I understand that things are on a smaller scale here compared to Canada, I am looking forward to reading more about where you live and your garden.

Best wishes

Sylvia