A noun. A verb. A blog.
I’m thankful there are still stars in the sky. You’re apt to forget about stars when you live immersed in the light pollution of a city. This Thanksgiving, Sarah’s family and mine celebrated together at her one-room schoolhouse in the country. Urban glare is starting to creep in at the corners of her sky, but […]
Do garden sneaks arrive in the night wearing slippers? You could have sworn it was there when you went to bed last night. A beautiful—and pricey—metal obelisk for a clematis to scramble up. This morning: only a empty space where the garden designer installed it. Obelisk? Gone, baby, gone. You had planned on watering the […]
Gardens are always a work in progress, in my case one that always involves rocks. 1. Grown more flowering annuals from seed, like zinnias and tithonia, (Mexican Sunflowers), and actual sunflowers. One of my favourite things about gardening is being able to make bouquets for the house, and my cutting garden wasn’t up to […]
When you get an email on Wednesday evening from a Fine Gardening Magazine* editor saying she’ll be in town and she likes your blog and would love to meet you and see your gardens, what do you do? Do you rub your hands together as you survey your perfect borders? Or do you do what […]
If you’ve consulted Baldrick’s Dictionary, you know the definition of Irony. It’s like goldy or bronzy, only it’s made out of iron. I pass these neat examples of irony on my way to my Ryerson class every week. The wonderful coraline railing is on Granby Street, and the archway is between Carleton and Granby. Here […]
It’s that time again, when walking through certain Toronto neighbourhoods fills your nose with the scent of the black locust tree. These trees are all around the city, originally planted because their hard wood was useful for farm implements. They have a bad-mannered habit of spreading themselves around. You can see them, for example, sprouting […]
You can add texture to your garden in many ways. Here, we have a tulip with fringed petals, one of the many forms (or textures) available in hybrid tulips today. Imagine having two tulip varieties blooming together in the same colour, but with different textures – simple but dramatic. Or try contrast. I don’t know […]
Well he didn’t actually come back: was captured more like it. Fisher, my indoor cat, had been gone most of the week. He’d never been outside, but somehow got out of the house five nights ago. I’ve no idea how; didn’t even know he was gone till next morning. First step was calling and calling, […]
Yes, weedsday; you read that right. Norway maples, Acer platanoides, Toronto’s most dominant (in so many senses) street tree. You can’t garden in Toronto, especially its east end, without grappling with these non-native giants; trees that are as voracious as they are fecund. But, gee, they have pretty flowers. They’re all chartreuse and fluffy-y. From […]
[UPDATE, June 25, 2011 and Nov. 29, 2011: Sadly Reeves has gone, both from the Danforth and from the original Reeves Woodbridge home, due to financial difficulties. It’s too bad, because the east end could use another convenient garden centre that stocks unusual trees and shrubs. We would have wished them better parking, and we’ll […]
Who gives haircuts to all those Piet Oudolfian grasses at the Toronto Botanical Garden? In large part, it’s done by teams of volunteers. And you could be among them. On Tuesday morning before class, I saw a team of about six people busily at work in the entry garden at the TBG. Sandra Pella, the […]
Only two Toronto neighbourhoods with garden-themed names come to my mind. One is Rosedale, north of Bloor Street edged on the east by the forested slopes of the Don Valley. Its winding streets are lined with grand, historic mansions. Rosedale got its name from the profusion of wild roses that once grew on the hillsides […]