A noun. A verb. A blog.
I’m thankful there are still stars in the sky. You’re apt to forget about stars when you live immersed in the light pollution of a city. This Thanksgiving, Sarah’s family and mine celebrated together at her one-room schoolhouse in the country. Urban glare is starting to creep in at the corners of her sky, but […]
A big bag of fresh-picked apples is sitting on my kitchen counter. And I mean a BIG bag. If we had a bushel basket, it would be full to overflowing. What kind did you pick?, I asked my daughter. Oh, lots, she replied. Jonagold, Northern Spy, Empire, some other kinds. It’ll be a […]
The characteristic blunt leaf of the Liriodendron A neighbour once asked me whether she should worry about tree roots invading her drains if she selected a “yellow poplar” through Toronto’s street tree program, as poplar roots are notorious for their water-seeking ways. I assured her that the yellow-poplar isn’t actually a poplar, but (along with […]
Can’t you imagine long conversations in this cosy spot? I love eating outdoors. There doesn’t seem to have been enough of that in summer 2010. My back yard is only big enough for a bit of garden and a dining table. A small dining table. So I’ll be putting on a sweater to squeeze the […]
Do garden sneaks arrive in the night wearing slippers? You could have sworn it was there when you went to bed last night. A beautiful—and pricey—metal obelisk for a clematis to scramble up. This morning: only a empty space where the garden designer installed it. Obelisk? Gone, baby, gone. You had planned on watering the […]
How charming to see a word as tricky as “chlorophyll” correctly written in learning-to-print letters! Even more charming to think that the knowledge came from a plant that children had grown themselves from seed, transplanted, tended and soon would taste. It’s all in a school-day’s work in Stonewall Gardens at Stonewall Jackson Elementary School on […]
This single, late tulip, “El Nino” positively glows in the sun. I probably need to be planting flower bulbs right now, but I’m not. The last few falls I haven’t planted any tulip bulbs, no crocuses, no nothing. I have my reasons (cough *excuses*), listed here: • My city garden is hard as heck to […]
Gardens are always a work in progress, in my case one that always involves rocks. 1. Grown more flowering annuals from seed, like zinnias and tithonia, (Mexican Sunflowers), and actual sunflowers. One of my favourite things about gardening is being able to make bouquets for the house, and my cutting garden wasn’t up to […]
What fun to attend a tomato tasting party! Vivian Reiss’s annual tomato tasting is held on her city rooftop garden in August. She grows 57 different kinds of heirlooms and sliced them up for visitors to taste the booty, and I was lucky to attend. Deciding on the best ones isn’t as easy as you’d […]
During a post-vacation check-up of my heat-challenged, newly planted Japanese maple this morning I spied this pixel-patterned egg mass. Aha! I exclaimed, summoning my vast store of entomological knowledge, Those are definitely the eggs of some kind of insect. No, I’m not an entomologist. But I can be a fairly good detective when it comes […]
Just listened to a radio interview with three of the fab women of Garden Rant. It’s not often that these far-flung garden writers get together so it was a great opportunity to hear them talk off the cuff on Mike Nowak’s garden show from Chicago. Torontonians and others can listen on the web. The gardening […]
You never know where you’ll find garden inspiration – perhaps on holiday in Reykjavik, Iceland. After a day of seeking out and being rather disappointed by the Reykjavik Botanical Garden, we headed to Reykjavik City Hall to look at the 3D map of Iceland. Almost by accident, we exited via the not-so-obvious front door, and […]