A noun. A verb. A blog.
This is one reason why I wish I had an electric lawn mower: to chop autumn leaves into bite-sized, easily composted pieces. This is a trick you can use now. My rickety, ancient push mower (all I can justify for my narrow strip of grass, which soon might disappear completely) doesn’t have the ooomph required. […]
Black tar spot of maples (Rhytisma acerinum) is one of the few excuses I can accept for sending your leaves off in the yard waste truck. Toronto gardeners have likely noticed this unsightly fungal disease over the past few years. It manifests as dime- or quarter-sized black spots on leaves, hitting many kinds of maple […]
Linda from Crafty Gardener has alerted us to a new way to revisit some of our blogging blasts from the past – to introduce them to new readers and because some things are just worth repeating. This great idea comes from Happy To Design, who hosts links to reprises from bloggers everywhere. This post, written […]
When my son came across this circa-1928 image in the Toronto archives, I realized how much we take our urban forest for granted. This is a picture of the school across the street, taken from what is now our front lawn. And here is how the same scene looks about 80 years later… That tiny […]
The fall foliage I uploaded yesterday leaned strongly towards reds. Yet, sometimes yellow can make an equal statement. Especially a yellow intense enough to literally drag me down the street to investigate. Meet the Japanese katsura tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum), a tree that should be planted more often in Toronto. This picture is just as it […]
Purple barberry (Berberis) showing its little red pal how to really do red in fall. In full sun, berberis gets that glowing embers effect; purple, red, orange yellow. Amur maple (Acer tartaricum var. ginnala, formerly Acer ginnala), striking in red. Yes, must get myself one. Too bad the columnar form is harder to find. The […]
Sarah’s plants Go To (Winter) Plant Jail, without passing Go and unfortunately without collecting $200 Is there frost in the forecast? Yep! That means the onset of the Annual Frenzied Midnight Annual/Houseplant Rescue. As per usual, I was out in the dark last night about midnight digging in near freezing soil with my bare hands. […]
Frost hit my community garden plot over Thanksgiving weekend. And there is a frost warning in the city for tonight, about a week ahead of the statistical average for downtown Toronto – though right on target for the northern part of the city. Bring in those tender plants! With such a clearly demarcated end-of-season, it’s […]
Surprise! This dried-up, former grocery store potted Easter Lily (Lilium longiflorum) has borne unexpected fruit. Or flower. It was rescued from its way to the green bin in the front hall of ma belle-mère (mother-in-law) this summer and plopped into a spare corner of the back garden. Just in case. Ta da! It is now […]
Today’s oblique musical reference is about Euphorbia marginata, also known by evocative common names such as snow-on-the-mountain, smoke-on-the-prairie, ghost weed, or summer icicle. All refer to the frosty-edged bracts of this Poinsettia cousin, in “bloom” right now in sunny Toronto gardens. The “fire” in this icicle relates to the toxic milky sap, common to all […]
One, one, one li’l ‘Sungold’. Two, two, two ‘Bloody Butcher.’ Three, three, three li’l tomatoes. Well, you get the idea. Considering that this is how they looked when first planted two months ago and then this is how the Sungolds looked in mid-August, that’s worth singing about. And with the unprecedented dry spell of August-September […]
By September, I’m usually the Girl from Ipomoea, with a garden totally, er, beribboned and festooned (aka choked) with morning glories. Mine are not the ones pictured here. They’re the pretty but common Ipomoea tricolour, likely old-fashioned Grandpa Ott, the first seeds of which were probably sown about the time the foundations of our house […]