Fall can surprise you

Despite our best efforts, as gardeners and as just plain folks, we never know for sure what can happen in a season. There I was, walking west on Lake Shore in mid-October and a flutter among the hawthorns caught my eye. Could it be? Yes, it was! The little fella above, left behind by the […]

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A day to love plants that die well

If you find the chore of deadheading scary, don’t fear. For some plants, deadheading has been dead for a decade and more. Dutch plantsman Piet Oudolf woke us to the beauty of plants in all their stages, including the end of their lifecycle. In other words, dying and dead. Confession: I’d never absorbed the Oudolfian phrase, “plants that […]

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RBG’s Rock Garden rocks in October!

If you only think “spring bulbs” or “rock garden plants” when you think of the Rock Garden at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, you haven’t seen it lately. In the last couple years, it has undergone a major transformation. I can’t believe it took me so long to visit, but being carless is my excuse. Even […]

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Getting ready for the big chill

Today’s cold snap reminds us. Winter is coming! The first frost for Toronto statistically falls around October 29th. But when overnight temps dip into the low single digits, like now, we know that anything could happen. So today, in honour of Cathy’s In a Vase on Monday (IAVOM) over on Rambling in the Garden, I took pity on some […]

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Mums, the word at Allan Gardens

The trouble with digital cameras is that they can do everything for you except point and shoot. It’s almost too easy. But, hey, it’s never too late to climb out of that comfort zone. That’s why my friend E convinced me to join her at an advanced photography course offered by Parks and Rec. Our first challenge: going fully […]

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A last bit of fall colour

This quick Sunday post on the first snowy day of winter 2016-17 takes me back to the Montreal Botanical Garden and their bonsai collection. It was November, too, the last time I was in the green house there, and this colourful and shapely Ginkgo caught my eye. To me, Ginkgo biloba seemed an odd choice for […]

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November in Corktown Common

Before the rain began this morning, our walking group headed west for a change. The Distillery District would be our turnaround point, but I never made it that far. Corktown Common and a golden patch of flowering witch-hazel fixed me and my phone camera to the spot. Click the arrows above for the slideshow. What an excellent […]

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What’s missing from this picture?

As I admired the carpet of maple leaves in my yard (Norway maple leaves, she sighed resignedly), wondering if I had time to haul out my shredder, I noticed something. To be exact, I noticed something that wasn’t there. Can you see it? No tar spots. None. Not anywhere. We first wrote about the disfiguring fungal […]

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Pros and cons of fragrant sumac

While camping at The Pinery provincial park a few years ago, I took the green picture below, curious about the shrub. It had “leaves of three,” similar to poison ivy (formerly known as Rhus radicans, now Toxicodendron radicans syn. T. rydbergii) But those berries, if that’s what they were! Fuzzy, kind of like a staghorn sumac (Rhus typina). Turns out […]

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Colchicum-a-kama-sutra with me

SEO language be damned. I can never resist turning a blog title into a bad pun or a song by the Bonzo Dog Band. In this case, both. The other day, a friend posted on Facebook with a picture of what she thought was a crocus, all mixed up in its seasons. Ever since, Colchicum-a-kama-sutra has been playing on my […]

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Make a woven leaf wreath

Quick! Before all those beautiful fall leaves get crunchy or covered by snow! Run out and gather a handful of the prettiest leaves to make this wreath. I made a leaf wreath yesterday, inspired by online pal and brilliant contemporary basketmaking artist Kari Lønning. (Skip over to Kari’s Facebook page for examples of her work.) Here’s how I did […]

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Almost-wordless ex-aster appreciation

New-world asters aren’t Aster anymore. They are, among other things, Symphyotrichum as in Symphyotrichum novae-angliae or New England aster. Because these new-ish names are a bit of a mouthful, I prefer the term used (and perhaps created) by my friend Gail of Clay and Limestone: Ex-asters. It’s for Gail’s Wildflower Wednesday that I post this almost-wordless […]

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