A noun. A verb. A blog.
Your forsythia shrub now is probably a fountain of gold. Or maybe it isn’t. Blooming season is when a less-than-forthcoming forsythia makes itself very plain. Wonder why? Forsythias always make this year’s flower buds last year. And most of the time when they don’t bloom it’s for two reasons related to pruning. Yours might not […]
Words are funny things. They come into the language, and change shape and meaning over time. Most of us know what it means to call someone ruthless. Fewer would describe someone as full of ruth. Ruth (pity and compassion) has slipped out of common usage. In the gardening world, we call houseplants tropicals, yet even […]
My original plant. The offshoot came from a Keiki that grew on its old flower stalk. 2009 hasn’t been my most stellar gardening year. I’ve been distracted and neglectful of my garden, both indoors and out, especially since P-Day: August 30th – The Day Izi, The Puppy, Entered My Life. Garden wise, sad to say, […]
As someone who has grown bigroot geranium (Geranium macrorhizzum) for many years, I’ve long admired one of its daintier hybrid offspring. While similar in frilled leaf form, Geranium x cantabrigiense ‘Biokovo’ makes tidier mats of foliage, and its flowers poke up their heads without the long, scrawny necks of my bigrooted friend. Then yesterday as […]
Walking around the neighbourhood on a grey November day, you can’t help but notice that the Callery pear (Pyrus calleryana) is the only light on the street. Look at that! The rest of the trees are denuded, but this fellow is still glowing. Because I remember when neighbours had one planted in their front yard, […]
Tree creatures. Walking in a park by the lake a few weeks ago I snapped this picture of a tree base that I instantly labelled, “Tree Feet”. Helen’s been writing a lot about trees lately and it has made me think about how I’ve felt about trees in my life. Trees were only one of […]
The native North American basswood (Tilia americana) was one of the first trees I learned to recognize from afar, way back in the sixth grade. See how the mature tree has a shape like the club in a suit of cards? The trunk flares out at the base, and the crown of leaves and branches […]
My wish list contains an oak tree. Not a Northern red oak (Quercus rubra) like this majestic beauty in the park nearby, but a scarlet oak (Quercus coccinea). Scarlet oaks grow on dry, sandy uplands. That sounds just like my garden! And the colour the leaves produce in fall is said to be an even […]
Rosa ‘New Dawn’ puts on its party dress for perhaps the last time this season. It’s mostly foliage now for this November Blooms Day 2009. Clockwise, from large photo: the tendrils of Sarah’s perennial sweet pea (Lathyrus latifolius), the sere leaves and drying flowers of ‘Annabelle’ hydrangea (Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’); Daphne ‘Carol Mackie’ with Japanese […]
All the trees on the street are usually bare before my next door Norway maple (Acer platanoides) drops its leaves. Look here; it’s still green, in this picture taken yesterday. It doesn’t matter if I rake. The day before the first big snow, this guy typically drops the whole shebang. Whomp! Then we’re shovelling up […]
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting a few things that got lost in the shuffle of the too-many-things-to-write-about growing season. One of them is Sweet Autumn Clematis (Clematis terniflora – also widely but erroneously known as C. ternifolia, it seems through a printer’s error shortly after its discovery in China; C. recta and […]
My ever-unrequited love affair with paperbark maple (Acer griseum) intensifies when seeing it in its fall regalia. Hates drought, they say. Well with the somewhat hefty price of this tree, that makes it too risky for my garden, sad to say. That doesn’t mean I can’t fantasize. Paperbark maple is one of the perfect (*or […]