garden bloggers' bloom day

Carol, the delightful gardener and writer of May Dreams Garden, encouraged fellow garden bloggers to start a monthly report of what's in bloom in our gardens. This is a wonderful way of connecting with our fellow gardeners around the world, and I encourage every garden blogger to join the fun and show off what's bloomin' delightfully in your garden--be it petunias, portulaca, or pea blossoms!

My first Garden Bloggers Bloom Day photo report kicks off with Quaking Grass (Briza)


Corydalis elata is reliably hardy here where C. flexuosa hasn't been.


Diabolo ninebark in flower. Coppertina is finished flowering, (because it's a new plant this year) and so is Nugget.


I love this double cranesbill, but I don't know which one it is nor where I got it! I think it came from a friend, though.


The alpinum sea holly is just barely starting to flush blue, but I love it in this green stage too.


I don't care if they're common. I adore foxgloves. All foxgloves. They volunteer casually in our garden.


Sunrise Echinacea is just starting to open up and be beautiful.


a delectible gold-foliaged veronica, Aztec Gold (I think.)


A couple of the heucheras preparing to bloom too.


Lady's mantle is a must-have plant, and I adore it whether it's in bloom or not. The leaves are marvelous, holding water like a necklace of jewels.


I have a variety of maltese crosses and other campions/lychnis. This one really caught my eye because it's like a Ragged Robin gone even more ragged.


Honeybells or honey garlic aka Nectaroscordum siculum.


okey Dokey cranesbill in flower. another plant I love whether it's blooming or not.


Shrubby potentillas don't rock my world the way the perennials do, but this is a memory garden plant, and partial proceeds from sales of this went to support breast cancer victims last year.


A brand new-to-me Campanula and it's too late for me to go out and find its species. Very low growing, ideal alpine garden choice.


This might be 'Dusky Salmon' maltese cross, but it's got lost label syndrome...


I'm hoping someone can Id this weigela for me. The label said Bristol Ruby, but I don't think the gold-green leaves are right.


I'm very partial to masterworts. This one has variegated foliage but at the moment it's mostly green. The flowers are charming.


We have a LOT of Jacobs ladder in various colours. The white is particularly fragrant and looks awesome in early evening.


One of these days I will likely remove this shrub because it's big, messy and taking up room where a more choice and finicky shrub could be. But it does look like happy yellow butterflies.


I HOPE this coreopsis doesn't turn out to be a dud like Limerock Ruby. This is a new-to-me cultivar called Sunshine Cherry (aka Cherry Lemonade--can never have too many names for new plants...) I love the red wine flowers and the bright lime-greem-gold foliage.


My gas plant has white, rather than pink flowers but it smells divine and has bloomed faithfully though it's not a large plant.


I know I found this at West River Perennials last summer--and that it's a lychnis...but that's where the knowledge stops.


Another astrantia--this one is Ruby Wedding and it's rapidly becoming a favourite plant too.


Hah. It's 0019 hours in Nova Scotia--so even though it's not Sunday in the US or most of Canada--I'm posting my report and going to bed because after picking 30 boxes of strawberries, jamming a good pile of them, picking up my new shrubs that arrived from Ontario (more next time) and cleaing up a small garden bed...I'm whupped. Happy Garden Bloggers Bloom day, friends, and I'll look forward to your bloom day report.

The good, the bad, and the goutweed

Those of us who live by the ocean have to deal with fog by times. Now, I happen to like fog a lot of the time. It's soothing, it cools the air, it gently waters the yard, which is nice when rainfall is low. Those who haven't experienced fog often have no idea how thick it can get. Let me demonstrate. Here is the lower front garden on a soon to be stormy but not foggy day:

And here tis this afternoon. As we say in Newfoundland, 'she's right some jeezly t'ick, me byes!' (Hey, I was born on the Rock, so I talks quare by times. :-)


The brown patch in the lawn is where I nuked a sneaky little bout of goutweed with horticultural vinegar two days ago. And speaking of goutweed...I have a new goal in mind: to get nurseries in my province to stop selling goutweed (Aegopodium podegraria). It’s more ubiquitous and unpleasant than Harper conservatives. In fact, it’s best compared to being like a nasty computer virus—it spreads and spreads and spreads until it’s everywhere. And it’s harder to control than a computer virus, too. Right now it’s in bloom in the Annapolis Valley, so it’s very noticeable. Clouds of lovely, Queen-Anne’s-Lace-like flowers hovering a foot or so above the foliage, whether it’s the green or variegated variety. Unfortunately those flowers will go to seed and spread further.

Then of course there’s its other mode of spreading, by underground stems, or rhizomes. That’s where the plant really gets its foothold. Because you can mow it off, spray the tops with an organic or chemical herbicide, and that just causes it to put up new shoots.

Amazingly, this plant does have its fans. And perhaps it does have a place if you want to cover an area with it. You often see it around the foundations of houses (especially older ones), or around a concrete wellcap, or in other places where someone wanted to simply fill in an area with plant material. It is sold as a ground cover, after all. It will cover that area, all right—and leak into your perennial beds, your veggie plot, your pasture, your lawn if given half a chance.

The variegated type is less obnoxious and invasive than the all-green sort. Most variegated plants are less vigourous than their all-green relatives, because less chlorophyll is produced (in the green area) to nourish the plant. What happens, though is that the variegated will revert to being all green; then it takes off like a midsummer wildfire.
We are cursed with the all-green variety. In one area, I’ve had a bit of a laissez-faire attitude to it, because it’s under some trees and down in the ditch, and I simply try to control it on the other side where it wants to jump into the lawn. However, we also have it in another couple of parts of the yard—and in one place, it headed into the horse’s paddock.

I’ve declared war, now. I read in Mark Cullen’s latest book, A Sandbox of a Different Kind, that he considers himself a ‘small-O organic gardener’, because he is primarily organic but has resorted to glyphosate in a few situations. That was good enough for me. I tried the salt-vinegar approach first (mix 1 cup of salt into one gallon of vinegar along with a tsp of baby shampoo or dish detergent (to help it stick to the plants—spray or pour on weeds, but have a care NOT to spill on your good plants because they’ll be killed too.) That dampened its vigour slightly. I hit it with glyphosate. Then I got smart and got my Long Suffering Spouse to bushhog the whole area, mowing it right to the ground. Another course of glyphosate a week or so back got it looking very depressed. But it's currently my 'right some ugly' part of the yard.
Well, one of them--there are several but the fog gave way to rain so I decided to just entertain you with the goutweed.

Then two days ago, I tried the horticultural vinegar (20 percent acetic acid rather than 5)…and I THINK we’ve got the goutweed on the run in that area. Except that in desperation it's put up a whole bunch of new shoots, which I'm going to cut off at the soil level.


Stay tuned for further developments.

Now, to counteract the goutweed and the right some ugly part of the yard--the roses are doing spectacularly at present, and as of this morning there had been no balling in any of the light coloured ones. Here's Polareis, with Hansa behind it, and a bit of Thomas Lipton peeking out of the red-osier dogwood (six feet in the air).


In the ‘something completely different’ category, I’ve started a lens on Squidoo. Mostly this is just another way to network with other gardeners, and I’m not entirely sure I’ll keep it but it was recommended to me by a fellow freelance writer, so why not? You can drop in and visit the lens if you’re feeling bored.

potpourri again

Since we were in the area last week, after we left Catherine’s place, we dropped into Rob Baldwin’s because my Long Suffering Spouse hadn’t been there before. He was of course enchanted by all the blue spruces and other trees, and also Rob’s tractor collection. I was more interested in the coneflowers, and it seems that they are now arbitrarily mutating themselves. How do you like this one?


Rob drew our attention to a collection of beetles that were hanging out in the wild vetch and daisies, seemingly having a beetle-orgy. None of us have ever seen these before, but we also are not entomologists. Any one know what this beetle is? The females are about an inch long, bigger than the males, and metallic green with red and black legs.


Simon Q and Mungus always like to help unpack the groceries. Yes, the bags are en francais—we belong to Co-op Atlantic’s local store and all the bags are bilingual—but the cats are only interested in finding the kitty treats, in any language.

Saturday I headed off to Truro, River John, and Wallace Ridge. In Truro I stopped at the farmer’s market just at the same time as a substantial thunderstorm rolled in. Had a great visit with Lloyd Mapplebeck of Hillendale Perennials, and picked up a couple terrific plants: a double-blossomed tradescantia, a pink flowered catmint, ‘Candy Cat’ and a species goatsbeard with very fine cutleaf foliage. Then it was off to River John and a visit to Beach Lane Lavender’s second annual lavender festival.
Naturally, lavender farmers also have wonderful gardens--everything in full bloom too, from the flowering shrubs to the perennials.
Although the cool weather has meant bloomtime is about a week late, plenty of people turned out to enjoy music, walk the lavender field and pick bunches of lavender, enjoy a nice range of foods, and oh yes, buy some of the fabulous lavender products that Dave and Anita manufacture. My personal favourites are the hand cream, exfoliant scrub, milk bath, floral spray, and well, okay, just about everything else they make.


I’ve wanted to visit Thyme and Place Nursery in Wallace Ridge since I found out about the new business a few months ago. Saturday was the day to visit, and I’m glad I did. I got to meet the owners, Sonia and Allan, who moved to Canada from Britain last year and opened their business about a month later. They’re on the lovely Sunrise Trail, and not far from Jost Vineyards, as well as the communities of Pugwash and Tatamagouche, and their home is actually on a hill with the best view around. Their nursery includes a good range of perennials, annuals, shrubs and trees, (look at these gorgeous heathers!) as well as a unique and varied gift shop.


What really tickled me was the way Sonia was growing vegetables right in bags of potting medium. She told me this is a typical British way of doing veg gardening…in the greenhouse. She uses Jolly Farmer potting soil, from an organic company in New Brunswick, and the quality of the soil is obvious from the very happy tomatoes and salad greens she’s growing. Now that’s a way to avoid weeds, a lot of pests…I can see myself trying this too—in fact if the weather stays cool, I just might seed some mesclun mix in the greenhouse for myself!
I wish Sonia and Allan all the best—they’re being well supported by local customers, and they’re wonderfully helpful—as usual, I wish this nursery was a little closer to my home, but hey…visiting them again is a perfect excuse to go back to this lovely part of the province.

I mentioned that the weather here continues cool—and although I ended up in two thunderstorms on Saturday, we haven’t had any rain to speak of here. Not even the fog is coming with as much regularity as it usually does. I can tell because one of my explorer roses, Martin Frobisher, generally turns to balls of soggy Kleenex-like petals when it’s wet, and so far, he’s looking great. The garden is thriving, all in all, including the weeds…


But happily when I am out weeding or doing other garden activities—sometimes just walking around smelling the awesome fragrances—I always have my friend Tigger to supervise my efforts.

A rose is a rose is a ROSE

Take a walk with me at my friend Catherine's garden. Catherine loves roses, especially old-fashioned and hardy roses, and when we were there last week, most of them were in the peak of their bloom. I don't know how many shrubs she has, but it's at least several hundred, spread out across the rolling slope of her yard--and even up against the sawmill.


We had a hard winter in Nova Scotia, and it seemed to hit many usually-tough roses quite hard. Alexander MacKenzie, however, was not intimidated, being a hardy Canadian Explorer rose.


John Cabot, another Explorer, is listed as a climber because it easily reaches 8 feet when it's happy, and covers itself in blooms, as you can see. Catherine has bought many of her plants from CornHill Nursery in New Brunswick, and many others from Old Heirloom Roses in Hammonds Plains.


Cardinal Richelieu is a gallica hybrid, and while He only blooms once, his gorgeous roses and fine fragrance make this a must-have rose for collectors.


This is Jacqueline du Pre, named after the famous cellist who died too young from Multiple Sclerosis. Not only is this rose fragrant, but check out those burgundy stamens! I don't have this rose--yet.


Catherine calls Leda a 'painted damask' and that's a fine description for this gorgeous, fragrant, and flamboyant rose. Don't you just love how the flowers are tinted with other colours?


Voici Louis Jolliet, another Canadian Explorer rose from Agriculture Canada. This rose breeding program has introduced a number of very fine, hardy and disease-resistant roses for cold climate gardeners. They aren't all fragrant, which can be a drawback for some gardeners, but my philosophy is that I have plenty of fragrant roses so a few that aren't isn't an issue.


Moss roses are SO cool! This is probably William Lobb, the most commonly available moss rose, also known as old Velvet Moss rose. I have a reblooming moss rose from Cornhill Nursery, J H Kern, but it's a small plant and often gets overwhelmed by larger plants in our jungle-garden.


This charmer is called Golden Border--not a huge plant (I think it's new to Catherine's garden this year) but a lovely rose for those of us who are besotted by yellow roses. (My hand is up, here!)


Quadra is one of the more recent Canadian roses, and Bob at Cornhill calls it a jewel of a rose. I also love it, and Catherine has quite a few of them. Rob at Baldwin Nurseries is getting in a bunch of them shortly, so many more people can get to love Quadra too.


I love this! This is Seven Sisters, and you can see some of the various colours in the blossoms as they age. I would dearly love to try Seven Sisters in my garden; maybe next year (after I clear some more room!


Ah. This is probably my second favourite of the Morden, Manitoba line of roses: Morden Snowbeauty. She's a lovely rose, pristine white and graceful.


Last year, I threatened my Veilchanblau rose and it covered itself in blossoms. This year, I think I'll be living vicariously off Catherine's plant, because mine killed back quite hard and doesn't look like it's going to flower. Oh well.


I stopped dead when I saw this and said something to the effect of "what is it I have to have it!" This is Wasagaming, an under-utilized rose, but oh MY! Fragrant, lavender blossoms, a tough rugosa...it blooms for a long time and profusely, as you can see: this is a BIG plant well over six feet tall and ten feet wide, probably. Happily, there's a sucker coming to live at my house...it's almost as wonderful as Snow Pavement. I don't seem to have a closeup shot of the blossoms, but the massive shrub makes a statement, all right--"Take me home!"

These are only a few of the fantastic varieties at Catherine's garden; she also does it all organically, and she's pretty well decided to only grow plants that are on their own roots, because of our erratic winters. It may take a few more years for plants to get to a big size, but they don't suddenly turn into wild multifloras or common wild roses when they die back like bud-and-grafted plants do. Even planting the graft 6 inches deep or more is no guarantee around here--I've seen roses planted that deep heaved up in our freeze-and-thaw cycles. No slight to grafted roses for those who can grow them--but they're not worth the effort to some of us, when there are such great hardy roses available.

Too bad I can't upload the fragrance of the yard...but it's awesome! Mmmmm. Must go put my face in Hansa or Snow Pavement or Polareis here.

A grief observed--and a life celebrated

Today’s blog entry was supposed to be awash in colour, as I visited a friend’s rose garden on Wednesday and took enough photos of her yard that you should be able to smell the fragrance from them just as I could while I was there.

However…

…I was working my way through the second section of the Halifax Herald at noontime, ably assisted by Simon Q, who lays on the paper and rolls around purring and looking adoreable. As is my habit, I was casually flicking down through the obituaries when a familiar face caught my eye. Ladny Richmond has died, all too young at age 63, claimed by cancer.

Instant tears. Even now, hours later, my eyes well up at the thought of her being gone. The emotions flashed through me in a flood: incredulity, rage at the unfairness of it all, grievous heartwrenching sorrow for her husband JP, her daughter Jenny, her mother—yes, her mother, well into her eighties and still very vital—her cats, her friends, everyone actually who ever came in contact with this vital, caring woman. And guilt.

Guilt?

Yes. I saw Ladny a couple of months ago, in Wolfville, where she has lived for 25 years. She was with her mother, actually, at a coffee shop we all frequent. She seemed well, upbeat as ever—but even when she was dealing with surgery and chemotherapy a few years ago, she was upbeat. I didn’t know that things had turned for the worse with her disease. More on guilt in a bit, though.

In my life I have met some extraordinary people. Some of them are extraordinary in a quietly effective way. This is Ladny. We met in the early nineties when Wolfville was having its annual festival of cultures celebration. We quickly learned that we shared a love for cats—Ladny was instrumental in founding the Wolfville Area Animal Group, now called We’re All Animal Guardians, a society that helps with health care, adoption and other issues around stray, feral or otherwise abandoned kitties. As a student, I several times got kittens through WAAG—also fostered several, including one feral cat we could not tame (though we did manage to spay and vaccinate her) but who lived outside my flat for years, coming to be fed, but never allowing anyone to touch her. Ladny and JP always had a multitude of cats at their home, and she worked very hard to see that people who needed financial help with spaying, neutering or needling their pets received that help.

We were neighbours on Hillside Avenue for a time, but when I really grew to love and respect this woman was when I found out that she was a palliative care volunteer, something I did for a time before I moved over to the Canning area. Ladny had this quiet strength about her and this generousity of spirit that was genuine right to the last cell in her body; everything she did was about someone else, be it animal person or human person. She actually was the volunteer who visited with my aunt Joyce during her last months as she was dying with cancer, and every year on the date Joyce died, Ladny would call me and ask how my mother (Joyce’s twin) was doing. We would often talk on the phone, usually about cats but also about other things, as she was fascinated with the world around her.

Ladny has lived life always in according with her beliefs and principles. Even when she disagreed with someone, she did it with immense respect, and she held fast to the things she believed in regardless of what others said. I believe (because I know very little about such things) that a lot of that came from her adherence to the teachings and beliefs of both the Quakers and the Buddhists. She was a peaceful person in every sense of the world, a member of the Raging Grannies of Wolfville, and from the time Canada entered the conflict in Afghanistan, she was one of a handful who stood in a silent peace vigil every Saturday morning—not an anti-military vigil but a vigil for peace—that continues to this day.

When I was cleaning my office earlier this week, I found a card that she sent to me for my birthday last December. She knew I’d been having battles with depression, and she had put together a care package—articles about cats and gardening, several packages of seeds, a most wonderful card with cats on it—and one of her gently caring notes, “love from Ladny, JP and Paula”. She drew a little picture of a smiling cat’s face beside those words. I have the card in a frame now, on my wall, as a memory of her always.

I don’t know who wrote her obituary—probably JP and her mother—but they captured her well in a few words:

Ladny will be missed by hundreds of people, dogs, cats, crows, squirrels and others whom she had cared for during her 63 years in this life. She had devoted her last 25 years to the town of Wolfville, the Annapolis Valley, and the Buddhist and Quaker communities, keeping us conscious of the most important aspects of living, and giving selflessly of her large spirit of compassion.

Sunday the memorial service is at Acadia University’s Denton Hall, a place where concerts are usually held. I will be going, of course, and among the many people who will attend, there will be many tears but also laughter and happy memories. While we are all poorer for her passing, we are all richer for having shared even a snippet of this remarkable woman’s life and caring.

This makes three people in the past several months who I have cared about and have lost—and three people who I was always going to get together with for more than a quick conversation. Those nebulous promises don’t materialize, and then they are gone, and we are left behind, berating ourselves that we didn’t make time. There’s the guilt I mentioned earlier. Ladny wouldn’t want me to be guilty, but to learn from this. So I’m learning.

I’m making time now, remembering to take time to spend with those people who matter to me, to do the little things that may not shake the world but that are important nonetheless. And those of you who read this, you too take time—make time—for those in your lives who matter, and don’t put it off til next week or next month or next year. Please.

I have already planted a tree for Ladny—her given name is Lynda, (which I only ever heard her mother call her) so I planted a Linden tree; a tree that isn’t fancy or flamboyant, but is strong and durable and practical. That is—was—Ladny. I don’t have a photo of the tree, so instead, I’ve borrowed a rose from my friend Catherine’s garden that signifies Ladny’s outlook on life.

The rose’s name? “Hope for Humanity.”

The roses of Scotts Bay

The other day when I was at Baldwin’s Nursery in Falmouth, Rob asked me what ten roses I would recommend to others and couldn’t possibly do without. I told him a few right away, but had to go home and look around the garden and make some arbitrary decisions about the others. Here they are, in alphabetical order:

Alchemist.
Charles du Milles
Father Hugo
Hansa
Henry Hudson
Polareis
Robusta
Snow Pavement (and Pristine Pavement)
Souvenir du Philemon Cochet/ Sir Thomas Lipton
Topaz Jewel


Alchemist. My rose took a beating this winter and then I cut off the tallest cane, so I’m not expecting a whole lot of a show from Alchemist this season. However, even a few of its roses are enough to delight the eye and nose. I love how they change colours, incorporating apricot, yellow, pink and salmon into their full and fragrant blooms.


Charles deMills. This gallica only flowers once yearly, but it flowers so profusely, and with such decadently glorious rich fragrant quartered blooms…it’s allowed to do it all at once. It suckers exhuberantly but some winters has a lot of dieback too, at least here in our garden—maybe I should protect it a little bit.


I’ve mentioned Father Hugo’s rose as being a favourite because it flowers early and in great abundance: and when out of bloom, that pimpernellifolia foliage still looks great.


Hansa may be an old staple, and may sucker a little too much for some people, but there is something so decadent about standing on the back deck breathing in the fragrance of this rose. And I have lots of room for its suckers, which I simply plant here and there throughout the garden.


Henry Hudson is a modest Explorer rose from Agriculture Canada’s rose breeding line, white and reasonably fragrant—I grow it mostly in tribute to my favourite Canadian Coast Guard Ship, Hudson, ocean explorer that she is.

Polareis: Bob Osborne put me on to this robust rugosa a few years ago, and it’s never disappointed. It flowers its little head off, is nicely fragrant and the most interesting thing is that the flowers are white tinged with pink, like frosting.


Robusta: I love the clean look of single roses, whether they’re the tiny and to some, invasive, blossoms of Rosa multiflora, or large deep red beauties like Robusta. This rose has always been reliable although it probably would make a good climber if I had it in a different location than right in the middle of a border!


Snow Pavement (Schneekopf): If I could only have one rose, this would be it. Perfection is this rose; hardy as all get out, gorgeous flowers the colour of whipped cream with a little blackberry juice beaten in, (thank you Barbara Wilde, author of Growing Roses Organically, for that perfect description—and that perfect book!) Oh, and it’s fragrant as all get out too, and reblooms, and grows in shaded conditions, or in full sun….

I seem to have a thing for white roses—even though many of them are inclined to ball here, when the weather is foggy and wet for days on end—because they are always so fragrant. At least the ones I like are. Souvenir du Philomen Cochet, as I wrote recently, is a sport of Blanc Double du Coubert, but I like it even more especially when its blossoms are so packed with petals that it looks quartered. Sir Thomas Lipton is a robust grower, supposedly reaching four feet but easily hitting seven without pruning in one part of our yard—and I have a friend whose rose is even taller. Thorny, very thorny, but beautiful.


Topaz Jewel is a yellow rugosa hybrid. It’s just about the thorniest rose I’ve ever encountered—worse than Sir Thomas Lipton—but it’s this lovely soft yellow and softly fragrant, though the flowers shatter easily and aren’t much good for cutting. That’s okay, though. Ours is planted in Marilyn’s Memory Garden, along with a lovely Golden Wings single rose.

The thing about roses in our gardens: they have to be tough (preferably on their own roots rather than grafted) and they have to be prepared to be gardened organically. I prune the deadwood out, feed them some seameal, bone meal and the occasional banana peel and coffee grounds, along with mushroom compost, and that's IT. No sprays other than water if the aphids get overzealous. There's no black spot in these roses, and they are all at least five years old, which can be a challenge in this garden. We've lost a number of roses, most interestingly the Morden roses from Morden, Manitoba. My thought on this is that in Manitoba, winter gets cold, stays cold and provdes a lot of snow cover, whereas here, we all know about what the winter does. A fellow rose lover who has far, far more roses than I ever will had a number of losses or plants being killed right to the ground, this past winter; those 15 degree F days in January followed by a cold snap probably had a lot to do with that. So roses need to be able to cope with tough love up here, or else they get replaced with something that does.