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 […]
More massed media
Is there such a thing as too many pictures of Cosmos? Perhaps not if they come on the tail of a post about mass plantings. This long fenceful planted end to end with the hardy annual Cosmos bipinnatus makes me happy every time I walk past. Has 2009 been a particularly good year for cosmos? […]
Take it Outside! Your Houseplants’ Summer Vacation
Monstera Philodendron and Orange Abutilon spending the summer on my canopied deck. You’ve got overwintered geraniums and houseplants that have been cooped up indoors for months. You’ve noticed they’ve started packing their bags and are impatiently awaiting their summer vacation. They’re ready to burst through the screen door and start soaking up that gentle spring […]
Top 5 Underrated Annuals
Our gardening tastes always get more sophisticated the more we know, and gardeners, self included, always get excited about all the new annuals (and perennials) available in the garden centres. Sometimes we turn up our noses at all the old standby annuals that have been in people’s gardens forever. Perhaps we scorn them because we […]
Oh, the Irony: His Name is Achilles and he’s got an Achilles Heel?
This routine from the great English stand-up comedian Eddie Izzard went through my head when I had a rather ironic occurrence this morning. After posting just yesterday about my great idea with the plastic tub greenhouse, I discovered that, due to my own Achilles heel (a massive case of scatterbrained-ness), I forgot to bring my […]
Cracks in the sidewalk
Cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus) is a favourite of mine. Under the right conditions, they can be light and ethereal, with starry flowers that live up to their name – like white, pink, mauve and cerise constellations. Rotten things. “Right conditions” means that they grow better in sidewalk cracks than they do in my garden. When too […]
Smell-o-vision
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 […]
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 […]
It ain’t over till the fat lady sings
Fall is the time potted annuals can start to look their absolute best. No longer are they getting fried in their pots during the day, and rescued just in time with the garden hose, the way they usually are in online pharmacy buy super kamagra with best prices today in the USA the heat of […]
Here today and gone tomorrow, or Frost Happens
Oh, how I enjoyed my nasturtiums (Tropaeolum majus) yesterday. How lovely they were, so many flowers, so many peppery leaves. How perfectly lovely it was to think of adding the leaves to a salad while I was tidying them up with my deadheading snips. I must remember to do just that, I thought. Nasturtium leaves […]