A noun. A verb. A blog.
My completed fragrant-ish wreath (and a great reflection of the new kindergarten wing across the street) A couple of weeks ago, Twitter started it all with a link to this post by Shannan at Flower Patch Farmgirl. In it, she tells how she dried orange slices to make an orange garland. Cute! It reminded me […]
Why, it’s silver thistle (Carlina acaulis). Here’s how I found out. Wish my photo gave you a better idea of its metallic sheen. Don’t know about you, but when it comes to knowing how to identify unknown plants (or bugs or plant diseases or…), I love to play detective. I photograph a lot of plants, and […]
Dried oregano from my community garden You don’t need fancy equipment to dry herbs. All you need is a clean paper bag. Harvest your herbs, pop them inside. Roll the bag’s top closed to keep the dust out. And wait. Then do as I do. Move the bag back and forth on the kitchen countertop […]
My naked bales did grow the cool ink cap mushrooms called Tippler’s Bane. Don’t eat them if you’re drinking alcohol! I’m a failure – or, a bailure – at straw bale gardening. It was a failure months in the making when, from all I’d read, I’d anticipated easy-peasiness. Sadly, not so here. Read my bale […]
Vegetable gardening books are on the menu for this week’s Idea File You’ve come to the right place if you want a good how-to book on growing vegetables. And as yesterday was International Women’s Day, and as this week a friend shared with me these dismaying statistics about the dearth of women authors, I thought […]
My first pair of Ethel gloves held up well, though no longer quite as clean I’m picky about garden gloves, when I do wear them. Usually, I’ve bought the Grip Gloves, a coated knit glove by Canadian glovemaker Watson Gloves, from Lee Valley Tools, Canadian Tire or, lately, from Mark’s Work Wearhouse. Cheap and cheerful, at […]
British writers Mark Diacono and Lia Leendertz When you have less, you want more. Especially when you have less time or, in my case, less space and sun in which to grow vegetables at home. So I was excited to receive The Speedy Vegetable Garden, a new Timber Press book about veggies for the impatient […]
The Bloor Street Transformation Project included granite planters and about 130 London plane trees Overspilling with colour, the new granite planters on chi-chi Bloor Street are hard to miss. But did you also notice the trees? These pix from September were meant for a post I’d wanted to call a Bloor Street Garden Tour (it […]
This post could have been called, “Andrew Keys broke up my marriage.” It was a long marriage, too; 25 years. Of course, my partner was prickly: a climbing rose (Rosa ‘New Dawn’). And the break-up is only starting, thanks to Keys’ book, Why Grow That When You Can Grow This? 255 Extraordinary Alternatives to Everyday […]
Some people live to garden. But, for many of us, gardening is only part of the pleasure of living. We want a nice garden, but we don’t want to be a slave to it. We want to spend some time simply enjoying the fruits of our labour… and with a lot less labour. If that’s […]
Last summer, I was thrilled to visit the queen of all things handmade, Lorene Edwards Forkner, to see real-life versions of projects that would appear in her then-upcoming book, Handmade Garden Projects from Timber Press. Stick around to learn how you could win a copy in Toronto Gardens’ first-ever giveaway. If you’ve read my disaster with concrete […]
Clematis alpina ‘Pamela Jackman’ is in the Group or Type 1 or C (oops!) A pruning group. (Sometimes, a proofreader would be handy, too.) Clematis are usually classed as Type A, B or C (aka Group 1, 2 or 3), each with different pruning requirements. I know what the requirements are. Trouble is, I can never […]