A noun. A verb. A blog.
Coming to a neighbourhood near you this garden season are a whole new crop of volunteer garden and wildlife enthusiasts who have been recruited by the David Suzuki organization to take on garden projects to revitalize nature and wildlife in the city of Toronto. I’m excited to say that I am one of the new […]
Hellebores (Helleborus spp) are fabulous, long-blooming spring flowers for a dry-shade garden like mine. Although I’m hoping to incorporate more native plants in my garden, this gorgeous Eurasian will likely stay – not only for its months-long show of flowers, but as an early-spring pollen and nectar source for pollinators. In fact, an interesting tidbit […]
[Update: Thrilled to announce that this post won Gold for Best Digital Writing at the 2018 GWA Media Awards from the Association for Garden Communicators. It was an unexpected honour, especially since the competition was very worthy.] I’d wanted to tell you a cool thing about ants and aphids. These are Norway maple aphids (Periphyllus lyropictus), one of 4,000+ aphid species. (Who […]
An almost-wordless Wednesday post from my photo archives – in the days when I could shoot these things freehand, simply by breathing out and holding my breath. My hands aren’t quite as steady without a tripod today. Blame the heavy lens. No idea what the bee species is, but it was really getting into the […]
My adventures in urban wild bee hospitality have appeared on the blog before. Right now, other than some passive carpenter bee action on our shed, I’m out of the bee hotel business. But I’d like to get back into it. Over my garden travels, I’ve been collecting bee hotel pictures for inspiration. Hoping these inspire you, […]
Before I left for Minneapolis, this little guy caused me some excitement. I always turn over the leaves of the common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) looking for potential babies. Every once and a while, like this time, a Monarch makes me an expectant parent (or expectant foster parent). But, sad to say, when I got back […]
Helenium autumnale – that’s Helen’s flower, to you. Not sneezeweed. Geez. Enough about me. Let’s talk about Helenium. I don’t know what variety this is (perhaps its short stature points to ‘Ruby Dwarf’ aka ‘Rubinzwerg’), but I wish it were growing in my garden. Despite what they say about the need for full sun and moist soil, […]
Wow, wow, WOW! The pre-sunset “golden hour” lights up butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) Stopped in my tracks on the streets of East York. That’s the only way to describe my reaction to this plant just after 7 pm on Wednesday evening, and thank the photo gods for my iPhone. Capturing the last of the sunlight […]
A great idea for a DIY bee hotel, from St Fagans National History Museum in Wales Remember that hose the car ran over – and sprang a leak? It could have new life as a home for solitary bees. Look at the example above from St Fagans, the National History Museum in South Wales. St […]
There are 23,000 species in the Compositae or, much more fun to say, Asteraceae family – including coneflowers (Echinacea), sunflowers (Helianthus), and, of course, Asters. Many of them are inspiring pollinators to do the happy dance right now. This little fellow is as happy as a bee in cosmos; Cosmos bipinnatus, to be precise. It […]
Getting to know many bloggers in California has introduced me to the concept of lawn controversy: the fact that there is a strong and vocal movement against having lawns altogether. One of my first posts about lawns here got a heated comment from Twitter friend and California blogger Billy Goodnick. He described it as unleashing […]
Helen insists on saying, “Lo and bee-hold!” I however, would not stoop so low. Sarah here. I’ve been talking this morning to Damian Grounds of HelpSaveBees about how much we like seeing the bees diving into our funnel-shaped flowers. By coinky-dink, Helen was at that moment in the process of photographing bumblebums in a nearby […]