A noun. A verb. A blog.
Now that the crazy humidity has eased off, I could actually go out and look in the garden – to discover that, next door, M.’s blood red poppies have popped open. In June of last year, I obsessively photographed their every move. But just look at them. Who could blame me? Oriental poppies (Papaver orientale) […]
You don’t like dancing with crazy Ted, he’s always jumping on your head? But, oooooooo, you love onions? Join the club. Now is the time the popsicle-like flowers of Alliums come into their own. I captured the display above on a small street in the Junction. All the neighbours seem to have shared in the […]
Last evening, I was down the street admiring “my” pink poppies. These are the poppies I killed by trying to transplant at the wrong time a few hot summers ago. Luckily, like most of the things in the Microgarden, I had given a few away. So there are some growing in the front garden of […]
The cornu is definitely copious when it comes to irises in June. Even my Microgarden tends to feature a good flush of the intermediate purple irises (above) that came with the house – and which, over the years, have overflown to neighbours’ gardens up and down the street. Albeit, for silly me, the flush of […]
Helen and I say we come from “a long line of gardeners” and it’s true: our bragging rights. Our grandmother Ethel Espley won the cup in 1964 for having the best garden in her town in Wales. But did this have one iota of effect on me at the time? Did I think it was […]
Too bad this invention doesn’t exist, as this post about garden plants whose smells I love would be a lot easier. How to describe smells? Almost impossible. I suppose there should be some way of doing it, like the way wine experts use descriptive terms to describe the flavour of wine. When I read those […]
Now is the season for all good gardeners to come to the aid of their nosiness. I love garden tours. What great ideas there are for the stealing! Well, not really stealing — but the cost of the tour is usually very reasonable; often as little at $10. Mark your calendar for these dates, and […]
When you find a shrub that will grow in fairly consistent shade, and has interesting foliage, and will flower, and on top of it all will flower fragrantly, you need to crow about it. Hence this homage to Daphne ‘Carol Mackie.’ I was first introduced to ‘Carol Mackie’ in a fantastic garden during the Riverdale […]
We have a decent crop of gardeners on our street, from ingenious T. up at the top, with his backyard pond surrounded in ferns and flowers, all the way down to G. & W. at the corner, making something lovely from a virgin plot. Last weekend at a garage sale, neighbours S. & B. said, […]
For some years now, Toronto’s meadows, ravines, valleys and now, it seems, gardens have been increasingly blighted with a green pestilence: Dog-strangling vine (Vincetoxicum rossicum). You can see it growing in eerie symmetry on the slopes by the Don Valley Parkway, to about a foot in height. Then, it starts to twine; with each other, […]
It was quite a crowd last Sunday when arborist Todd Irvine and LEAF organizer Susan Gulley got us together to fall in love with trees. I learned plenty about the East Danforth treescape. And now I’m trying to see how it all fits in with my own garden. My own garden, if you’ve read one […]
Yesterday, I want on a fabulous Toronto Tree Tour, sponsored by LEAF, and the Toronto Public Space Committee, this one of the trees of Danforth East. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to talk about all I learned just now. So more on this soon. However, I did want to quickly post a pic of […]