A noun. A verb. A blog.
Way back in winter 2019/20, I decided to turn some of my bigger planters from vegetables to flowers. Yes, I made a cutting garden in the Microgarden. With no regrets. Not one. When the Plague of 2020 had everyone else scrambling to buy up veggie seeds, I already had my seeds – for Zinnia, Calendula, Cosmos, and other long-blooming flowers […]
Last week, I took you on a walk in the woods. This week, it’s a walk on the really wild side: Fashionable Bloor Street. It isn’t my usual shopping precinct but happens to be close to my doctor’s office. It also happens to be a great place to window shop – and by that, I don’t mean […]
We’d come home exhausted after a day of loading and unloading furniture and boxes for our #1 Dot’s move to a nearby city (okay, it’s Hamilton). What was waiting for us on the porch but this beautiful arrangement. As I turned it round and round to choose “the front*” it occurred to me that a well-designed floral […]
Are you thinking, What a hot mess! when you look at my opening shot? Listen, kid, it’s late October. Everything in the garden was a tad weather-beaten when I cut the Pyracantha berries I knew would glow in an arrangement. But my theatre training tells me something about those raggedy edges and hail-pockmarked leaves. Like stage makeup: It won’t read from […]
Today’s cold snap reminds us. Winter is coming! The first frost for Toronto statistically falls around October 29th. But when overnight temps dip into the low single digits, like now, we know that anything could happen. So today, in honour of Cathy’s In a Vase on Monday (IAVOM) over on Rambling in the Garden, I took pity on some […]
Our guests were almost here for our first new-tradition of Thanksgiving brunch on Monday. Then I noticed the beautiful arrangement my Number One Dot had gifted me for my Big Birthday. Oops. It really needed retiring. Once the flowers were pulled from the vase, though, it was clear that some were up for a second round. The blue […]
A small garden. A small vase. A few minutes with the scissors. It’s amazing what can pass for bounty when you set your mind to it. Although I whine a lot about the Microgarden, it can often be counted on to produce a pretty nice bouquet, even in different seasons. This one, I gave to my […]
If you think of deadheading as a garden chore, it’s because you’re doing it too late! Doing it after the flowers fade gives you all the work and none of the benefits. In many cases, cutting flowers to enjoy indoors is actually a form of deadheading. Yes! And it often gives you exactly the benefit you want from […]
If you’re a creative person (as gardeners often are) it’s easy to get hung up on perfection. Rather than appreciating the garden that is, you compare it with the garden that exists only in your mind – your dreams. And you grumble. I love your garden, people might tell you. While, grumbler that you are, you give them […]
Last night, I was presenting at the Newmarket Garden Club – a demonstration on making simple flower arrangements using materials from your (in this case, mostly my) garden. It was a fun 50 minutes, during which I did five designs. The materials weren’t all from my garden. It’s the mini Microgarden, after all. There were five kinds […]
A bouquet of tulips from my garden, in light from my window Call this post: I’m going to show you pictures of these tulips until you beg me to stop. Tulips are amazing in a vase. They continue to grow and change for days. One day, the morning light caught the bouquet I’d picked last […]
Hopefully, the wreath I end up making will be as beautiful as this one by Sarah Nixon By sheer serendipity, the day after posting my story about Sarah Nixon and My Luscious Backyard, an email landed in my inbox announcing Sarah’s December 5th workshop on making a foraged wreath. I jumped at the chance. So […]