A noun. A verb. A blog.
Thank you to the academy for this recognition. What can I say? I’m one of the best at putting things off, neglecting, and just plain forgetting things. Thank you also to my plants that died, or threatened to almost die. I couldn’t have done it without them. I had an “Augh, I’ve killed it!!” moment […]
It can be tempting to get out there on the first fine spring day and do some tidying. Resist the urge! You have very little to lose and much to gain from waiting. That blanket of dead foliage and tree leaves is protecting emerging plants from cold snaps – like the one we expect this […]
For the last few months I’ve been battling scale on an large indoor-wintering abutilon, or Flowering Maple. I’d been occasionally picking the scale off by hand, or with a microfiber cloth, (which works quite well) and I was (sort of) keeping them at bay. I’m a pretty experienced scale squisher, and I thought I had […]
At last! Sunday gave us a day that was springy enough to let us work outside. An afternoon of liberating my pent-up gardener accomplished a lot. But. No matter how eager I was, here are three things I didn’t do to clean up the garden. I didn’t get carried away April 2 in Toronto is a touch early for any drastic garden task […]
Ignore the unplanted pots. Notice only the giant ferns. Please. This picture isn’t here for any particular “pride of urnership“, but to illustrate my two wacking great ‘Kimberly Queen’ Australian sword ferns (Nephrolepsis obliterata). Both, you might have read, have spent the last few winters indoors. In the urns. In my living room. It has […]
Little did I think when I photographed this four-leafed clover six months ago that today I would be the proud owner of a leaf shredder. Lucky me! After pining over more expensive models, I stumbled across the Flowtron Leaf-Eater online at HomeDepot.ca. It was $199, plus tax. Shipping cost would be the make-or-break item. It […]
Linda from Crafty Gardener has alerted us to a new way to revisit some of our blogging blasts from the past – to introduce them to new readers and because some things are just worth repeating. This great idea comes from Happy To Design, who hosts links to reprises from bloggers everywhere. This post, written […]
Sarah’s plants Go To (Winter) Plant Jail, without passing Go and unfortunately without collecting $200 Is there frost in the forecast? Yep! That means the onset of the Annual Frenzied Midnight Annual/Houseplant Rescue. As per usual, I was out in the dark last night about midnight digging in near freezing soil with my bare hands. […]
The unvarnished truth: My front garden, complete with hose and bald patches, doing its best to pose for its “before” picture at right. That headline almost said “Taking stock of the carnage.” After summer’s heat and drought, my garden – especially the front garden – usually does look like a battlefield by September. (To my […]
With shade gardening, there’s a difference between plants that are shade lovers and shade tolerant. Hostas, for example, are often considered shade lovers. Some do require shade to produce their best leaf colour. Yet, most hostas are simply tolerant of shade. And here is my baby corkscrew hazel (Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’), which does best in […]
My name is Helen, and I am a composter. In fact, I was once the Compost Queen, the kind of girl who stole grass clippings — that had been bagged and left on curbs for the garbage truck. Few things heat up and speed up a compost pile quite like a layer of grass clippings. […]
Poor cultural practices – the things you do when you garden – can be a hazard to your trees. People kill trees all the time, quite innocently, simply by saying: Honey, let’s put a cute little raised bed around the tree. All the active tissue in a tree trunk exists very near the surface under […]