May Day harvest

I went home for a couple of days and madly gardened. And I harvested: Egyptian onions and rhubarb. Not in the same recipe, I think.

spring flowers

Spring flowers, scillas growing in the grass just down the road: I love them. I remember vast swathes covering the side of Mount Royal in Montreal. They are just little flowers, but a multitude of them is a wonderful sight. This next picture comes from Sussex, New Brunswick where I lived last spring. My grandfather, who taught me to garden, called them "squills".

high noon

I walked by the sundial in the garden at exactly noon, and the sundial was pretty accurate. It was in my grandfather's garden. As a child I was always checking the time and was disappointed when it was a cloudy day. It says the usual stuff like "Tempus fugit." Click it to enlarge it and see if you can read the dismal message around the edge.

vine

There are poles such as this in my garden. If I plant grape vines by them, how long will it take to produce this lovely effect? I have so many dreams for my garden - and so little time.

artichokes

I read that there was a commercial artichoke farm up the valley. I had to try it. I bought a mail order packet of seeds. There were 22. It was expensive. They said to treat them as annuals as they only over wintered in zone 7 and higher. But I know that they are really perennials, so if I mulch them well and cover them for the winter - could I do it? I made newspaper pots and set them out. This is my artichoke farm. I had to bring them back to the apartment so I could keep them moist. These are travelling artichokes. Stay tuned.

crocus

My first crocus. This gives you some idea of the soil with which I struggle. But stuff does grow, including croci, if the rabbits don't eat them.

grubbing

This morning, just before the start of spring, a friend and I cleaned out this daylily bed. The earth was warm and grubbing in the dirt felt so, so good. I would have kept at it all day, but I had to return to my apartment - 3 hours away, to work tomorrow. I count the days until I can get back to my garden.

desperately dreaming

An upper and and downer day: consolations and desolations and no pictures. So here is El Desperado, who will greet me next summer. Tomorrow is another day.

desperate farmer

Desperate to grow something - anything - I have started up my little sprout farm, beside the never-give-up poinsettia. Perhaps this weekend the snow will have melted and the storms will have abated and I really can begin to rake and walk over my land at home and plan my planting. I dream.

dreaming

 

I am dreaming of summer in my daylily field. I am just back, and while the ground is mostly bare, there is no sign of growth, no sign  of spring. I made a quick trip home to meet with my trusty carpenter and discuss the coming round of renovations. Now I am into an austerity programme to pay for it all!

grey day

Boxing Day, a grey cloudy day, it seems that we have hardly seen the sun for days, and I am recovering from the family Christmas. My solution to a grey day when I am down the Valley, is to stroll through the lush green of a local greenhouse. I took these photos a few weeks ago. I haven't found a greenhouse here for my green shot in the arm, and periodically I really do need such a fix.

November garden

Here are two shots of the garden in front of the community hall down home, which I took on Saturday. So we almost live n the banana belt. I drove back on Saturday afternoon
Last evening I was covenanted into this new-to-me congregation, but no pictures as I was otherwise involved.

Where were you on October 24?
Join us for another kick at the can on December 13 at 3:00 somewhere near you for a candlelight vigil. Our church bells will be rung 350 times.

paint job

A lovely warm sunny day with my garden waiting for me to come and play, but I was indoors sanding the last coat of plaster and putting up the primer. Then I zipped over the mountain and into town to buy the ceiling paint (green).Finally I had an hour to play in the garden. When I am in the daylily field Miss Johnston, the cat, always comes to accompany me. She's my garden gnome. Finally at the end of a long day I came out to play.

Happy Returns

Happy Returns is still bravely flowering in the daylily field. There are several others, too. They all seem to be yellow variations. Perhaps longevity comes with yellow. Each day I pick one for the house. I spent today forking and spading. Every time I get up now my body tells me all about it. I thought physical exercise was supposed to be good for me.

sumac

The sumac is turning such a lovely fiery red. I shouldn't even let it into my garden as it is so invasive. It had volunteered  itself into the path leading into the potager and I moved it out and put it closer to the cemetery fence. The cemetery has a serious no-nonsense link fence, perhaps to keep the denizens in. It is ugly and I plant anything that I can find to hide it from my view and begin to enclose the garden. I may regret these sumac. I am still pulling it out of the pathway and I fear that I can only keep them at bay.

On another note later this evening two dogs are arriving to spend the winter here. That should twist the cats' whiskers. Housesitters/ roomers/boarders will keep my house by the bay warm and friendly for a few months.And my job is moving closer to here so I shall be able to return more often. It will be a busy, happy place.

beans

Scarlet Runner Beans almondine for supper. I am sitting at home in Nova Scotia having just had internet installed, but I can only get dial up. It took well over a half hour to put up these pictures. My Hotmail account is impossibly slow and  doesn't always come up at all. Living in a rural area has some real disadvantages. We are second class citizens when it comes to communications. They are advertising a gizmo to connect your laptop to the internet if you have a cell phone. The ad in the shop said "Internet Everywhere". So I asked - well only if there is cell phone coverage - and it isn't here and nor do they care. Grumpy!

Polygonum cuspidatum

It is not really a bamboo, although many seem to think it is. It is Japanese Knotweed. It is a scourge, very invasive, but it is also quite lovely in its own way. It begins with a sprout in the spring and ends up ten feet high. I had read that in order to feng shui my property  to get either wealth, health or love, I cannot remember which, I should plant bamboo in the south east corner. I mentioned this to my neighbour on that side. She blanched. "You're not going to plant that knotweed!". No, because it isn't bamboo and would not provide me with filthy lucre and unbridled romance. There isn't even a place to plant any bamboo there at the moment, because sometime I want to put in a circular driveway there. I don't know if there is a strain of bamboo that would really grow in our northern climes. I suppose that wealth, health and love will have to come in the more conventional manner. Still a little bamboo would not hurt.

hollyhocks

Fall is coming on quite quickly. I have brought in my two potted plants from the apartment veranda so the frost won't kill them. But athough there have been warnings, it has not yet stuck. I look at the small things - the no-mind things: a couple of hollyhocks on my walk to work.

carrot patch

The server was down last evening - so here I am again. This is my carrot patch, except that alyssum and poppies have seeded themselves and are enjoying their day in the sun. Actually there are quite a few carrots growing among them. The volunteering flowers really don't seem to bother the carrots at all. All seem to live happily together. It's sort of like the neighbourhood. Perhaps we have learnt from the carrots. There is room for all. Some have deep roots and are hidden within, while others have their short colourful splash and, like the alyssum, others stay in the background and fill their space with little joys. I'm waxing botanical.

Echinacea

This wasn't a plant that I remember from our gardens at home. I think that I first encountered it some 25 years ago. Now I really appreciate it. This is the plant that outlasts a drought and stands up in the rain. This purple coneflower grows beside the front walk to my apartment. It thrives on neglect, and neglect is what it gets.