Garden Bloggers Bloom Day: Surprises indoors and out

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm quite pleased about this. Here I was thinking that all I'd have to offer in the way of blooms for this month's version of Garden Bloggers Bloom Day (created and still hosted by the delightful Carol of May Dreams Gardens!) would be the forsythia that I clipped last weekend, and which has obligingly popped into bloom. After all, we're still in the dreaded Farch, right?

Well, yes we ARE, but the weather seems to have gone into detente. As you saw in the previous post, we still have quite a bit of snow in some parts of the property, but otherwise, winter seems to be in retreat this week. I managed to get outside on Saturday and get quite a bit done in the places where there was no snow, before my joints screamed "Eeee-frakkin-nough!" and I had to go inside and recuperate.

This lower bed is one of my favourite parts of our garden. Not only is it a memory garden to beloved people lost to diseases, it's a pollinator garden from early spring until the last killing frost.

It's also home to the earliest bloomers in the garden. Hamamelis Diane is just stretching out her flower petals hesitantly at the moment, unconvinced that this time it's safe to do so. Under her strong, graceful limbs, Hellebore 'Ivory Prince' whispered this afternoon that it was probably safe to remove the evergreen mulch, at least for a couple of days.

This hellebore is doing very, very well thanks to the tutelage of several gardeners: Frances gave me wise tips a couple of years ago on how to cope with late winter/early spring when it comes to protecting hellebores from erratic weather. And Mr. McGregor's Daughter, (Barbara) did an excellent post on cleaning up your hellebores just the other day. I haven't taken the secateurs to mine yet, mostly because...I can't find my secateurs. Ooops. I hope they aren't in the bottom of the compost heap. I hate it when that happens.

Now, I know, I got a little excited on Friday night/Saturday morning, and told y'all about the first of the snowdrop flotilla putting in an appearance. Haven't started to count them yet, because there's still snow in part of that garden, and the other bed still has evergreen boughs over it because of my precious echinaceas and some new stuff I'm trialing. So we don't want to tickle the weather deities' feet too much. Or else I'll wake up to three feet of snow on top of everything again. And then I'll swear like a sailor. Trust me. I can do it.

But I will give you a sneak peek of what these double galanthus will look like in just a few days, if this weather continues. They are so small, yet so fragrant and so happy-making.

A further programming note; because I'm still really buried in work, I'm going to let the current 'Spotlight Saturday' blog stay as is for the rest of this week. There aren't enough hours in the day, and work takes precedence. But that's fine with me. I have snowdrops. And hellebores. And daylight savings time. It's all good, friends. It's all good.

Breaking News! Galanthus spotted in Scotts Bay snowyard!

Okay, I know I should build up to the big announcement, but since I'm bouncing gleefully like Tigger (at least, inside I am), I have to announce it to the world...we haz snowdrops! About 2 1/2 weeks earlier than last year, and before spring actually gets here. I am beaming like a proud parent, but of course, I didn't do anything. The plants do all the work. I just reap the joyous benefits.


Okay, let's back up a little bit, now that I've gotten that off my chest. Today was the 7th day of sunny skies in a row, and it was above freezing, not windy, and just...nice. I watched it most of the day from inside, where I was dealing with some projects, including the book one.

Late this afternoon, I went outside to walk around and stretch my legs a little, and to just have a bit of a look at the latewinter mess that is our yard. I hadn't looked too closely at the garden since going out a few days ago to cut twigs from shrubs for forcing indoors. Since there is still a LOT of snow in some parts of the yard, I figured it would just annoy me, especially since many of my blogging buds are celebrating snowdrops, and crocus, and daffodils and hellebores, and pulmonaria and ...snif...no, really, I'm just fine.
You have to click on these and expand them to get a sense of how much snow remains around our property. The first yard photo is the south side, my view from my office window. There are shrubs totally buried in some of that snowdrift, and I shudder to think how broken they'll be when they emerge. I lost a viburnum last year in this part of the yard, and while some plants weather such snow onslaughts well, I think this year it's time to put in a row of sturdy evergreens to catch and hold the snow from advancing further in future winters. Oh, yes, great plans I have. The spirit is willing, but the muscles are weak. Happily, Longsuffering Spouse is strong, and usually willing.

The above photo is part of the back yard, with the expanse of Scotts Bay and the Cape Split peninsula in the background. Our picnic table has been buried in snow for about six weeks, and is only just emerging in the past few days. But as you can see, the snow is dramatically melting, and is totally gone in some spots.

I walked around to the front yard and went to check on the bed where my echinaceas and a fwe other special plants live, and then I spied it. Shy, casual, not at all flamboyant, but gleaming like little oval pearls against the decomposing leaves and potential weeds around it. The first snowdrop. Well, the first two snowdrops. Happy dance ensued. Then I thought about the lower garden, where the flotillas of snowdrops show up eventually.

There's still a lot of snow in that lower garden, and I wasn't sure whether I'd find what I was looking for, but there they were. I was so excited that I neglected to take photos of the entire bed. I just put my small camera (my Canon Powershot SX200) on super macro, set it on the ground, and took a bunch of shots, hoping to get something usable. The bed was in total shade by this point but you get the point. The snowdrop celebration has begun.

I'm not ready to declare spring here, though. I know FARCH in Nova Scotia all too well, and she is a perfidious season. We routinely get clobbered with snowstorms throughout March, or ice storms, or rainstorms...but I do feel like we may have broken the back of winter. I'm just waiting for Longsuffering Spouse to come racing inside sometime in the next few days and tell me the Redwinged Blackbirds are back. That's one of my main harbingers of spring, along with my horse beginning to shed his winter coat. And yes, the return of the gallant Galanthus.

Because I'm so gleeful about the snowdrops--hey, I'm actually able to celebrate at the same time as many of my blogging companions around the continent and in northern Europe, instead of trailing along behind like the youngest sibling in a big family--we're going to wait until late Saturday to do the Saturday Spotlight post. I hope to spend at least part of Saturday out in the yard, cleaning up stuff. And grinning at Galanthus.

I hope everyone has something in their yards that make them as giddily joyful as my snowdrops do me. And that spring stretches her warming arms out to all of you this weekend.

Skywatch Friday: Six Days of Sun make winter fade...

I'm not one to be lulled into a false sense of security when it comes to winter weather. Nope, not me. Still and all, the sun finally remembered where we lived last Saturday, and although we've had some clouds in the sky since then, the sun has shone brilliantly DAILY for six days in a row. Amazing.

Hamamelis 'Diane' thinks that perhaps it's safe to venture out a little further, and is shyly revealing some of her fascinating petals.

The sure sign that spring may yet find us is the spectacular sunsets, which are almost halfway across their long march from one end of our property to the other. We watch the sunsets advance through the winter, (when we actually get to see them) and it's enormously satisfying to see these blazes of brilliance once again.

An acquaintance told me today that spring is actually on her way. I remain wary, but I'm loving the return of sunlight to our shores--and our sunsets. It seemed like the perfect way to celebrate Skywatch Friday.

Here's hoping that your sunsets are filling you with hope, too. Spring IS coming (yes, I know it's here already for some of you lucky peeps out west and south of us. I'm glad, really. Not jealous. Nope.)

A minor housekeeping answer to a question left by Catherine in my previous post. The guitar pick is one of rock musician and prolific pick-flinger David Cook's, which I caught at a concert in Kansas City two summers ago. I don't suspect there's an orchid named after him, but I thought a guitar pick would give you all some sense of how amazingly tiny this miniature orchid is. IT's name is Phalaenopsis Sogo Gotris 'Flora Ark'. Just in case you were wondering. I think I could become seriously addicted to mini phals, so I hope I don't see too many more on sale any time soon. Running out of places to put plants in my office, and Longsuffering Spouse isn't about to build me a conservatory. Not yet, anyway.

Wordless Wednesday: "Orchids-come-lately, there's new kids in town..."

The Orchid Show: "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."

Okay, I admit, I couldn't resist it. The Oscars are tonight, and yesterday I went to an orchid show at Acadia University, where some of the most beautiful flowers in the world were gussied up in their best and most colourful finery. Without a hairdresser, fashion designer, or plastic surgeon in sight.


More on these gorgeous plants tomorrow, after I see how my favourite movie--about ten foot tall blue cats and plants that glow in the dark--made out tonight.

Do you suppose I succumbed to the urge to bring any orchids home with me? Kylee knows the answer to this question, I'm sure.

Spotlight Saturday: Have you visited This blogger?

First of all, thank you so much for your good wishes and thoughts. My health issue is an ongoing one, annoying and incapacitating at times but not lifethreatening, for which I'm deeply grateful. I've reminded myself of that especially this week, as we across the gardening blogosphere have had thoughts and prayers focused on our dear blogging bud Katie, who is fighting a serious illness. We send her much love, virtual tulips and healing thoughts across the time zones, states, provinces, countries, continents. (#fightkatie!) The sun is out here in lovely Nova Scotia this morning, so I hope that when it wakes on the far West Coast, it streams in Katie's window and helps her healing.

Two of my favourite things in the world are plants, and the pollinators that help their life cycles, especially bees. A third favourite thing is botanical/nature art. I can't draw or paint. At ALL. But I have a huge appreciation for and love of good botanical themed artwork, from the time of Pierre-Joseph Redoute to the artists of today.


Through the wonderful world of the Internet, I've found some amazing garden artists who blog, and have been following a few of them faithfully over the past several years. One of my favourites, and this week's Spotlight on Saturday choice, is Valerie Littlewood of Pencil and Leaf. I don't remember exactly when I discovered her blog, or by which means--I always figure it's synchronicity when I tumble upon a new blog that really hits me in the heart--but I love her work and especially her current area of interest.


Lately, Valerie has been combining two of my favourite things in her recent work: bees and plants. It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of bees (one of my favourite twitter-peeps is @HelpSaveBees) , and it's even less of a secret to the wider world that bees of all kinds, both wild and domestic, bumble and honey, are in trouble due to a number of factors. So I figure anything that educates us more about these gentle, essential creatures and about what we can do to help save bees, is a very, very good thing. So I hope you'll buzz on over to Valerie's site, check out her paintings and sketches and her Flickr page of more of her work.

Skywatch Friday: Cheatin' with Summer Skies, Grateful for Gardening Friends...

A brief post for today, because I'm having an ill spell and am actually writing this in the middle of the night during the insomnia session that goes along. Since March came upon our shores, we haven't seen the sun, nor the moon for that matter. A full moon came and went but other than a lighter shade of pale in the clouds one night, we wouldn't have known. Such weather is tiresome, typical, and shared by others across the northern latitudes, so I thought a summer sunset might make us all feel better for this Skywatch Friday.


It's really hard for me to do my work-writing when I'm dealing with one of these illness sessions, so I do things that need doing but have been put off. Like tidying my paperwork and finding the top of my desk and tables in my office. One thing led to another, as so often happens, and I had some things to put in a special memory box of letters, cards, and other treasures. I spied my bundle of delightful treasures from last year's Gardening by Letter project, and had to look at them again, as I hadn't had them out for a while. I always seem to bring them out when I'm having a rough patch, as they arrived here last year while I was in the midst of some challenges, and they lifted my heart immeasurably then. They still do that now.

As I wrote last year, I've never met any of my gardening blogger friends face to face, and while I hope to get to Buffalo this year, we'll see how my other obligations go. However, when I talk of my gardening friends, I am often referring to friends such as these; people I've yet to meet, or haven't even talked to on the telephone, yet who I consider friends thanks to the joys of the Internet. You all give so much, and you have no idea how much you're a joy and encouragement across the miles. You're like a spring day in my heart. A real spring day, not these tiresome grey interminably cold with sideways-snow days.


And dearest Anna, thank you again for having hosted the Gardening By Letter project. Like this project, you're a priceless, joyful gift across the miles.

That's it for today, friends. Y'all come on back tomorrow, please, because it'll be time for the next Saturday Spotlight.

Wordless Wednesday: "The winter of our discontent made glorious summer" Purple hydrangea, Yarmouth NS

March comes in...wearing a Hockey Jersey!

While other parts of eastern North America got blasted with yet another snowstorm, we had a rare respite and were bombarded with rain over the past few days. Although we're far from spring's door, we can at least see some vision on the horizon.


Snowdrifts have dropped from being four or five feet in height in parts of the yard to being ONLY two or three feet deep. It's very wet throughout the yard, so I was reluctant to go beyond the immediate dooryard. However...


A couple of weeks ago, I thought I saw signs of colour in the flower buds on my small Arnold Promise hamamelis. Sure enough, here we go with the first flowers of the new gardening season.


They aren't the largest, or the showiest, flowers I've ever seen. But they're on their way, which means spring is on its way. I haven't yet squished down to the lower garden to see how 'Diane' is doing.

Did March come in like a lion or a lamb where you live? Here, it's been sort of a lion what with the wind overnight, and sort of lamblike with the mild temperatures and almost-sun this afternoon. So it's a lion-lamb...but it's also dressed in a Team Canada hockey jersey, with number 87 on the back.


Hometown boy makes VERY good.
Thank you, Sidney Crosby. Thank you, Vancouver. Well done, EVERYONE, all teams, all sports.

Okay, so how long til spring REALLY gets here?

Spotlight Saturday: Have you visited This blogger?

We have had some amazing participation in encouraging people to visit new, or new-to-them bloggers since we all began the conversation about encouraging our fellow bloggers about a month ago. There were some very good suggestions and actions made by people who left comments here, and once again, I thank you all for being such good blogger-neighbours around the world.

I took up Teza's method of promoting other bloggers, but I've found two problems in it for me. One has to do with my blog template, which has some flaw in its code so that titles of widgets etc on the sidebars often run into the widget, photo, etc. I can control that with some sidebar items, but with the 'Have you visited this blog?' photo/link on the right side, I can't make it any larger or space it better than it is. And being a chickenheart when it comes to template code...I don't dare tinker with that, or I'm apt to warp the whole thing into Tralfamadore, and I'm not ready to go there yet.

More importantly than that wee bit of tidiness quirks, my brain is somewhat cluttered with a lot going on right now, as you know from reading previous posts. And like I forget to take something out for supper some days, or where I've put my iPhone, or that I was supposed to finish writing a letter I drafted two weeks ago to a friend...I am afraid that I'll forget just who all I've put in that side 'visit' link, and put the same person in twice, or neglect to put up someone because I think I've already done so.

This is my solution. Once every couple of weeks, I'll do a 'Spotlight Saturday' post, introducing you to a fellow blogger who I've encountered and whose blog I really enjoy. That way you'll get to 'know' them a bit before you pop over to visit (and I KNOW you'll all visit because you're awesome that way) and I'll have a regular record of who I've spotlighted. And of course the blogger will get some new visitors and then go visit other bloggers and it will all be good.

Without further ado, let me introduce you to Ceara, who lives and gardens on the beautiful Gaspé peninsula in eastern Quebec. Ceara's garden is zone 4, so you can imagine the various climate challenges she has to deal with in her gardening adventures. She just started her blog a few weeks ago, but she visited here and left a comment about sea holly, so I returned to write a comment in answer, and was delighted with her blog. So please go visit.


One other thing you might be able to help with. Ceara wrote in her comment on my Eryngium post that she has been unable to get seed or plants of this genus to try in her garden. I've offered to send her E. planum seedlings, but I'm also curious: has anyone in a zone 4 garden been able to grow any of the Eryngiums? I've seen various zone reports on E. planum as being hardy to zone 4, others say zone 5, so I'm throwing it open to what Mr. Subjunctive always calls The Hive Mind: what say you, fellow gardeners? Can Ceara find happiness with one of the sea hollies in her Gaspé garden?

Oh, I'm sure you're wondering what the sunflowers have to do with this post. Not a whole lot. The bucket of sunflowers WERE at a market in Montreal that I visited in October during my visit, and I just thought we could all use some cheerful colour on what's another dreary weather weekend here.

One MORE thing. (sorry, I told you my brain sometimes is like swiss cheese.) If you haven't done already, please consider taking part in Jan's (Thanks for Today) Sustainable Living Giveaway challenge. She's extended the deadline and got some very cool prizes to give out (sadly, only in the USA, boo to companies who won't ship outside the US). But even without being eligible for prizes, I hope you'll take part in her challenge. There have been some very wonderful posts about living sustainably already, and that in itself is reward enough for many of us--if we find even one small way in which to make our lives more green, it's a very good thing.

Skywatch Friday: Still thinking about summer...

Thank you to all for the congrats and good wishes as I gallumph towards the deadline on my (second) book. I deeply appreciate them, and wish I could make more hours in the week for all the things I need to do and like to do. Although I'm missing the regularity of keeping up with people on Blotanical, and am sorry that Stuart's been having so many challenges in rebooting the site, there are deadlines that are glowering at me. So not having Blotanical to distract myself with supposedly means I can work that much more, right?

I'm actually (don't tell this to very many people) really glad that it's currently winter, because I can justify staying indoors for days on end working on articles, and profiles for the book, and sorting out photographs. This means I don't have to worry about the weeds overtaking the perennials or the shrubs needing pruning or where I'm going to put all the new plants I'm hoping to acquire this year.

That is, I don't have to worry about these things...YET.

But by the same token, I do look forward to the days of monarch chrysalises, and bees drunk on nectar, and yes, hummingbirds in search of the best of flowers to sip from, as shown in this photo for my Skywatch Friday offering. It's a hard call to make--so much to do, but only so much time in which to get it all done, and yet a longing to be able to dig in the dirt and rejoice over blooms and foliage and all the joys of fair weather. For now, I'll work like crazy, and enjoy the harbingers of spring that many of you are sharing. And sneak in to visit blogs on weekends.

Wordless Wednesday: "Days of Future Past"...Summer will come again

jodi's gotta-have plants: Eryngium, the holly of the sea

Although I haven't said a great deal about this, I signed a contract a few weeks ago to produce a book on great plants for Atlantic Canadian gardeners. Although I had been working on it intermittently for some time prior to signing the contract with my publisher, the work has begun in earnest as the manuscript is due in July. Thus I'm going to be somewhat spotty in blogging in the common weeks and months, and may on occasion offer up some archival articles. For today, however, let me share a bit from a conversation I had the other day with a friend who asked me which perennial I absolutely had to have in my garden. Naturally, I couldn't offer just one, so I rattled off about ten. In the top five, however, or even the top three, is Eryngium, also known as sea-holly.

What’s not to love about eryngiums? They have terrific texture and structure in their leaves, all spiny and bristling with fierceness. They have really cool flowerheads, cones of small flowers in shades of blue, silver, green and amythest, depending on the cultivar and species. And to really accent the flowers, sea hollies have these gorgeous ruffled bracts around the cones. You’ll see them described as looking like the ruffled collar of an Elizabethan costume, and that’s about the most apt description there is.


Sea hollies besotted me before I ever saw one for real—I came across a photo of one in a book on perennials. I think it was E. alpinum, or one of the others with really blue flowers, and I was instantly smitten.



We have a garden that I refer to as the sunset garden, because for much of the season, the colours red, gold, orange and yellow predominate. Daylilies, Asiatic and oriental lilies, rudbeckia, evening primrose, euphorbia ‘Fireglow’, a striking red rose, ‘Robusta’, the big yellow Macrocephala centaurea, and a host of jubilant red lettuce poppies hold court in this garden. What cools it slightly, or perhaps sets it off more, are a few things in cooler colours; Echinacea purpurea, Centaurea montana (purple-blue flowers), C. dealbata (pink flowers), blue lobelia (Lobelia syphilitica), Rosa ‘Souvenir de Philomen Cochet’ (a pristine white rugosa similar to Blanc de Coubert) and a wash of flat sea holly, Eryngium planum.

This faithfully, year after year, produces sprays of flowers, masses of them, shimmering blue, and lasting for a long, long time. They get quite tall, nearly four feet in some spots in the garden, so they make quite a presence. I leave them standing all fall and winter until they are finally worn down, seeds long gone (some back into the garden), and I wait eagerly for the next batch to begin. Occasionally I cut a few stems and bring them indoors to use as dried flowers, and they hold their colour for months on end.

There was a new cultivar released several years ago to great fanfare, E. planum 'Jade Frost.' The excitement with this plant was the variegated leaves, green edged in cream with pink highlights during spring and autumn, and of course the lovely blue flowers. I have one which was given to me last year by a nursery (I don't want to mention the nursery because they appear not to be carrying it this year), and it settled in well, but of course didn't flower. I can't tell if it's survived until the two feet of snow still covering it finally melts away. But I know Nan Ondra had this and had it bloom for her several years ago, so I'm optimistic.

One of the most famous of sea hollies is the delightfully named ‘Miss Willmott’s Ghost.’ Ellen Willmott was a Victorian or Edwardian (born 1858) British gardener with a reputedly eccentric and prickly personality. Her legacy includes a number of plants, but the most famous is Eryngium gigantium; Miss Willmott, in her younger years, would carry seeds of this plant in her pocket, and casually cast them in the gardens of friends and acquaintances. Being of a biennial habit, the plant would germinate and grow quietly, then suddenly in the second year it would erupt into an amazing plant, covered in ghostly silver-green flowers.

I've said this before, on a regular basis, but I'll say it again: If you get a chance to visit The Rock Garden at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College in mid-late summer, go. This marvelous garden includes a splendid expanse of Miss Willmott’s Ghost, which in autumn turns to a handsome tan colour.


One of the more unusual of the sea hollies goes by the equally unusual name of Rattlesnake Master, Eryngium yuccifolium. As you might suspect from the botanical species name, this has yucca-like foliage, and it puts up stalks a good five feet tall, festooned at the top with greenish grey cones (they're actually umbels, but you get the point). It's a native of the tallgrass prairies, and I saw it growing in its native environment in Missouri two years ago, but it also does fine in a well-drained location in my front garden. It's come back reliably for three years, but hasn't spread unduly. Not that I'd worry about seedlings of any member of this genus.



At a talk one day, I encountered an audience member who told me, with a sour expression, that sea holly was NOT a favourite of hers because it produced seedlings and kept increasing in numbers. I was about to suggest that she just mulch quite well around hers to reduce germination, when several other members of the audience offered to come relieve her of those dratted seedlings. Problem solved. You need to dig seedlings of Eryngium early in the season, however, careful not to break too much of their tap roots, and allow them to sulk for a year to recover. There could, however, never be too many eryngiums in my garden, as they make me intensely happy.

They also make my friends the bees intensely happy—all the sea hollies are regularly awash in bees, bumble and honey, and bee-mimics too. Talk about a ‘bee-loud glade!’ Well, not a glade, perhaps, but Yeats would no doubt appreciate the song of bees in our garden.

Winter flower by the seashore: Gardening Gone Wild Picture This Photo Contest

For months now, our friends at Gardening Gone Wild have been presenting the Picture This Photo Contest, which challenges bloggers to open their eyes to the wonder of the world around us, and to catch a little of that wonder with our cameras. Then share it with others.

I haven't entered before, partly because I'm in Canada and even if I had a winning shot, they couldn't ship plants here without going through enough security checks (phytosanitary certificates, etc) to put us in qualification for a G20 conference. But I wanted to participate just to show support for the folks at GGW and all the information they, and their guest judges, have given us over the past months.

So I'm offering up this little picture for the theme "Winter Light".

I went down to the wharf here in Scotts Bay a couple of weeks ago, on a day when the sun was out, it wasn't blowing 95 miles an hour, and it wasn't as cold as our priminister-bot's heart. It was getting close to sunset and the shadows were long, but I encountered this frozen stem of a Queen Anne's lace (Daucus carota) flowerhead while walking along the rocky shoreline above the water, and took its photo.

What I especially like about this photo is the glistening hints of rainbow in the crystals of snow behind the plant, and the echoes of light in the relatively calm waters of the Bay just behind this cliff. Plus although the seedhead is frigid, its seeds all but gone, there's a whisper of spring promise in the fact that the seeds ARE gone. Plants will bloom again here on this stony promontory.

It works for me. I hope you enjoy it, too.

Skywatch Friday: The Lookoff, Summer and Winter

For this Skywatch Friday, two views of basically the same marvelous area.

I live in this most amazingly beautiful place: Kings County, in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley. Actually, I live on the North Mountain, one of two ridges that form the sheltering backbones overlooking the Valley. From some parts of the North Mountain, you can see down into the Valley, and actually into three counties (maybe four).

This is part of the view from The Lookoff, a popular destination for visitors to our part of the world. I have to pass the Lookoff every time I go to town (Wolfville, Canning, New Minas, etc) and I never get tired of the view, winter....
...Or summer.

Stormy days are particularly interesting.

My own view is slightly different, facing the opposite direction to this, but no less beautiful. But that's a sky for another day.

I miss summer, have I mentioned that lately? Even a thunderstorm day would be more than welcome.