This weekend, May 24 and 25, Doors Open Toronto 2008 gives you free access to a number of spaces in the city. The theme this year is Sacred Spaces, Sacred Circles, so churches and other spiritual edifices are highlighted. All gardeners know that gardens are amongst the most sacred of earth’s spaces. Some of the […]
Garden Centres – East of Eliza
Although it’s safe to plant out many perennials as soon as the ground can we worked in spring, Victoria Day weekend is Toronto’s traditional “safe” planting day. So it’s natural that today a friend asked me where I get my plants. Not that I have room for more plants, of course. I gave her four […]
Towers of flowers
I’d intended to write on another subject tonight. But, at the moment, my living room is filled to overflowing with the scent from a massive bouquet of lilacs. So guess what is top of mind. Sarah’s little schoolhouse in the country sits in a near-forest of lilacs that bloom later than ours. In two weeks, […]
Angelique, or the Wandering Tulip
Tulipa ‘Angelique’ is a beauty – one of the first “peony-flowered” varieties on the market. I planted half a dozen of them in my garden a few years ago from bulbs purchased through the Beach Garden Society. And this one is really plumped-up and gorgeous. Trouble is, this one isn’t in my garden anymore. It’s […]
Squirrel Pie, and other temptations
Ah, the anticipation of springtime. Waiting for the blooms to unfold after a long and trying winter. I look out over my domain at the sea of green and notice the garden is punctuated… by spikes; yes, once again, spiky stems of snapped-off tulips. Alas, lopped in their prime, before the buds burst into bloom. […]
The Invincible and Irrepressibly Cheerful Pansy
Every year around March I go on a search for blue pansies. They are the first annual flowers that appear in the garden shops and local markets, and they are a certain sign that winter is over. I always grab some of these as soon as they appear, and put them in a pot outside […]
The showiness of the long-distance hyacinth
Okay, it’s a laboured title, but an apt one. Someone gave me these pink hyacinths in a pot of three when our daughter Lucy was born, 21 years ago. I let them ripen and dry, and thought little more of them. Later that year, we bought a house – the one we still inhabit. The previous […]
Open and shut case
People think of flowers as just there. If someone asked you to draw a tulip, you’d probably draw a fluted cup on a stick. But really they are animated things, moving with the sunlight – opening wide, closing tight, leaning left and right. Tulipa tarda is one of my faves, and deserves to be planted […]
Two, two, two months in one!
Talk about time travel. Yesterday while walking around the city, I moved from April to May in a single day. In the morning, I was strolling along in mid-April at the edge of the Bluffs, and arrested by a blanket of blue coming up in one garden. Scilla siberica, bluebells, even the rather nasty-sounding “squills.” […]
Crimes against Nature
Sarah launched our blog way back in Ought-Six with a wonderful rant about leaves. It remains true that not everyone has our passion for dead leaves. Every spring, Canadians… urban Canadians… continue to spend a great deal of time and energy raking up leaves and giving them away. Then they go to the garden centre […]
The Big Black Monolith: or Curbside Idiocy
In our neighbourhood this week we all took a collective gulp when these massive recycling bins appeared out of the blue sky on our lawns. They’re BIG. They’re HUUUUUGE. I immediately thought of the opening scene in 2001 A Space Odyssey, when the apes confronted the Big Black Monolith. “What IS it? Why is it […]
Double digits!
Yes, we have spring weather! In the middle of April. At least, we do temporarily, as it is threatening to transition right into summer, with 21˚C predicted this week. On the weekend, I gingerly scrumpled the leaves on top of the garden, and found some of my favorite spring things. Here is one: Lathyrus vernus, […]