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 […]
Late in September, I started bringing the kids back home after their summer holiday. That’s the houseplant kids, kids. This is always a good time to do it, to avoid them being stressed from the sudden change in conditions, especially from an early-fall chill like we’ve had in October 2018. And the first thing I […]
Beware! This is a picture of a crime scene. It’s a dumb cane plant (Dieffenbachia), being killed slowly by a combination of too much neglect and too much “love.” How can that be, you ask? Look at the tell-tale signs. Naked stems The first clue is that “palm tree” effect that happens when lower leaves die off […]
While waiting for a meeting to begin at the Toronto Botanical Garden this week, something clucked at me for not doing something last fall. No, not a chicken. It was a pot of paperwhite Narcissus. Forcing bulbs is so easy. Yet fall can be so busy that even easy things can be neglected. Not this fall, I hope. Perhaps if I […]
One of our favourite east-end nurseries, Valleyview Gardens, has sadly moved out of town. Driving to their old location on Kennedy Ave, with my flasher on, waiting to turn into the parking lot, I saw to my horror it had been boarded up. Eek! What happened to one of our favourite garden places? Pulling into […]
My reputation as Helen the Houseplant Killer might be at risk. I keep discovering plants that resist my planticidal tendencies. Like the one above, which arrived as a gift from our son three years ago. It still lives! Not only that, if it lives longer, it might qualify as a killer itself, or at least as a […]
The trailing houseplant with the unpleasant common name “wandering jew” (such as Tradescantia zebrina in this post) has wandered in and out of my home over a lifetime of killing houseplants. If you’re curious how it came to earn this name, my go-to houseplant expert Mr. Subjunctive at Plants are the Strangest People gives you […]
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 […]
It may sound hyperbolic, but it’s true. This book has changed my interior landscape. For the better. Since getting my review copy of Tara Heibel and Tassy de Give’s book Rooted in Design last spring, houseplants have been popping up at home all over the place. And, if you read this blog, you know how bad […]
Certain plants. Hostas. Daylilies. They inspire the collecting FEVAH. I never thought I would get as potty about hostas as my sister Helen; but now, inexorably, I am. I never thought I would get as potty as my father was about succulents. But now I am. Is there something about certain plants that invade your […]
In a tableau I might call “Pardon My Dust” (which you might not have noticed if I’d not pointed it out) I hope to show that even my most lowly terrarium creation in the brandy snifter can add something cool to a tabletop setting. A shocking months and months have passed since I received my […]
A gardener sometimes needs faith. And, often, persistence. Hoya carnosa in bloom. Celebrate, hoyoo, hoyay! After much anticipation, my barbecued hoya is blooming for the very first time. No one could be more pleased…or surprised. Perhaps if I’d read this from the International Hoya Association, that headline might have been written 30 years ago (albeit, […]