A noun. A verb. A blog.
It’s Charlie Brown’s cry of guilty anguish as he puts the last ornament on his Christmas tree, promptly causing it to keel over. It is not a happy moment. And it’s precisely how I feel when I kill a plant. There are many ways to kill plants. A lot of them have to do with […]
I have tomatoes growing on two plants on my deck. Now. In October. They are actually growing leaves and forming tomatoes and flowers and it is October 21st. Both plants are the cherry variety. One of these plants, ‘Gardener’s Delight‘, I grew from seed, sown in April. The other plant was a rescued tomato plant. […]
Fall is the time potted annuals can start to look their absolute best. No longer are they getting fried in their pots during the day, and rescued just in time with the garden hose, the way they usually are in the heat of summer. If plants have managed to hang in there during a scorching […]
I’m looking out my back window now at the morning glories on the fence. These are the old fashioned kind (possibly a heritage variety: ‘Grandpa Ott’), mostly in deep blue but with the occasional pink and white, all barred or starred in a deeper shade with a bright white throat. How pretty, you say. And […]
This is a phrase that my dad used to say a lot, as in: “Don’t worry about me, I’m as tough as old boots.” And this descriptor popped into my head while walking through my fall garden this morning. I realized I have a few plants that should be placed in this new category. Plants […]
Oh, how I enjoyed my nasturtiums (Tropaeolum majus) yesterday. How lovely they were, so many flowers, so many peppery leaves. How perfectly lovely it was to think of adding the leaves to a salad while I was tidying them up with my deadheading snips. I must remember to do just that, I thought. Nasturtium leaves […]
Plantaholism has a positive side effect. When it leads to a superfluity of plants (as we know it does), it can make one seem very generous. Take the wonderful ‘William Baffin’ Explorer rose seen here. Please. No, actually, you’re too late. After languishing for years with sporadic blooms (mostly on my neighbour’s side of the […]
Meet the bane of my existence right now: a forest of Norway maple seedlings. The conditions must have been so right for maple seed germination this year. In all my years gardening under Norway maples (Acer platanoides), I’ve never seen such an abundance. A veritable pro-leaferation! If they were worth money, I’d be a gazillionaire. […]
A big pile of work, a billion Norway maple seedlings – sometimes things conspire against you and enjoyment of your garden. That doesn’t mean you can’t pause for a little adoration of a few special sparkles. And speaking of sparkles: Tulipa tarda – everyone should have these species tulips in their garden! First come lots of […]
This being the torture season, or the season where we look for signs that winter is in fact over, where we look for green things poking up out of the ground with buds on them or with – better still – FLOWERS on them, green things are at a premium. Was that sentence long enough, you ask? […]
Annoying. I can’t do this right now. Not because I’m too busy, but because I’ve been nasally challenged for the entire month of January. Felled by a virus at the beginning of the month and still drooping now because of it. Thing is I have my own little potted garden miracle that has been happening […]
Not everyone has your passion for dead leaves. – Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility What is it about Canadians and dead leaves? The spurning of them, I mean. To my utter horror, I’ve just discovered that my new downstairs neighbour has carefully raked and stuffed into plastic garbage bags every single decaying leaf in the […]