A noun. A verb. A blog.
No matter how much I learn about the garden, there’s always more to know. To plug the (many!) gaps in my knowledge, I often designate my own “Year of the [Fill in the Blank]” to zoom in on a single subject. One was The Year of Ornamental Grasses. At the start, I knew almost zip. Except […]
I’m SO excited to discover this free eguide on helping our endangered wild bees, including the rusty-patched bumblebee. Written by bee scientist Sheila Colla, wildflower garden writer Lorraine Johnson, and illustrated by science illustrator Ann Sanderson, this little ebook gives you all the info and tools to create your own habitat for this endangered wild bee, and others. A wild […]
Days after I was moaning about seeing no butterflies in my garden, a big rain came – and soon afterwards came three butterflies. One was an Eastern Black Swallowtail, and I watched her lay eggs in a small pot of parsley. My first thought was: I’m gonna need a bigger parsley! Because, last year, I got […]
Have you noticed fewer butterflies in your garden in 2020? For me, the bees have been plentiful, including the native ones, but butterflies of any sort? Remarkably few. It’s probably not just in my garden, or just in Toronto. A garden friend in Washington, D.C., commented on the same thing. And another Facebook commenter noted that […]
This summer I talked to wild bee expert Sheila Colla, a scientist from York University, about wild bees and what we as gardeners can do to help them. One of the first things Sheila made clear was that wild bees are native bees and we must make a distinction between them and honeybees, which are not […]
When I sprinkled the seeds of this lovely ‘Dukat Leafy Dill’ from Renee’s Garden, I was hoping this would happen. ‘Dukat’ is said to be leafy, delicious and a little slower to bolt. I had room for them to fluff up between the Gladiolus corms in my second trough, which this year is more of a […]
I’m actually not here right now. I’m in Cape Breton on holiday. So just a quickie to say, like Mama Bear in Goldilocks: “Someone’s been eating my zinnias. Someone’s been eating my zinnias! Someone’s been eating my zinnias… and there he is!” The grasshoppers have been more plentiful than usual in my garden in 2018. Tell-tale signs […]
A post-Christmas celebration of some of Nature’s busiest creatures, bees and bumblebees (and wasps) in the great big Apidae family. Let’s recognize how essential pollinators like bees are to our planet. Please join me in a wish that human bee-ings do everything in our power to serve and protect them in 2018 and beyond. Click any image for the full-size slideshow.
Wherever I travel, my eyes are sharply on the lookout for housing. Housing for birds and bees and butterflies, that is. This summer, my little eye spied this big bee and, perhaps, butterfly condo in the Smithsonian Gardens in Washington, D.C.. With all those living options, it would be the perfect home for all kinds of solitary, […]
A wee bit of excitement here, as we both spotted a Monarch butterfly on the butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) that Sarah has been nurturing along over in the guerrilla garden. It’s a male (you can tell by the two black dots on the lower wings), but we hope he finds a girlfriend and they start raising […]
Holy smoke, that’s a big spider! Take a look the maple key in the picture below for scale. Fat and furry, it surprised me in the garden yesterday. Naturally, I wanted to know: friend or foe? Friend, as it turns out! It’s the bold jumping spider (Phidippus audax), and it’s more interested in stalking the bugs […]
Last year around this time (late April or early May) I noticed something strange about the leaves on shoots of my old, reliable ‘Annabelle’ hydrangeas. They looked glued together into a puffy, leaf-shaped balloon. What was wrong? In fact, they were “glued” or rather tightly stitched together at the edges. Turns out the culprit was the larva of […]