A noun. A verb. A blog.
As in life, so am I when it comes to garden ornamentation: a relativist. (Even in my relativism, I’m with my pal Petronius, who said: All things in moderation, including moderation.) Purists have it in for tchotchke, knickknacks or bric-a-brac in the garden. Let’s say, they have a low QQ (Quirk Quotient). As a relativist […]
Returning to Toronto after a road trip can awaken you to the constrained view of the sky from our little patches of urban heaven. This is especially so in the older parts of Toronto, such as our street, with their heavy canopies of green. (Though they’re a good thing, cooling our homes and gardens.) Office […]
If I had actually wanted the Clematis ‘Summer Snow’ to clamber along my north wall to mingle amongst the columbines, of course, it would have never happened. What a lucky accident that it never occurred to me to try. That way, there it is, looking bright and sparkly, like a well composed garden picture. And […]
Our neighbours G. and W. got a blank slate when they purchased their corner property: a sunny blank slate once their towering Norway maple was devoured by carpenter ants (not all of it, just enough to make removing it a better, safer idea). Look what a dramatic garden they’ve created in place of the old […]
Open Gardens Toronto is a fantastic program that lets us take an informal tour of our fellow gardeners’ spaces during the long weekday evenings of summer. (and on Weekends in fall) $25 gets you a pass for a full season, or you can pay $4 for each garden you view. Proceeds go to the Canadian […]
On a rainy Thursday this week, I popped over to one of the local open gardens, part of Open Gardens Toronto that Sarah wrote about back in April. These are pretty close to “real gardens by real people” all over the city. Check out the link for a garden near you. The one I visited […]
The miracle of digital SLR photography isn’t only that it helps me become a better photographer, through a 1,001 disposable mistakes. It is helping me become a better gardener, acting as a zoom lens for the mind, as well as the eye. The camera lets you get intimate with flowers and foliage and bark and […]
Looks like I’m talking magic again. No smoke, just mirrors. Mirrors are a way to fool the eye, making a small space seem larger, even outdoors. Here is my latest. Not some expensive glass globe. It’s an oversized plastic Christmas ornament snagged last season at Canadian Tire for $1.99. I’ve been saving it for the […]
You probably know of What Not To Wear, where some poor schmuck has her (or his) wardrobe made over from scratch. I just realized that one of WNTW’s tenets applies to gardening. More on that in a sec. My revelation came about because Sarah and I recently joined Blotanical, a great online directory of garden […]
If you haven’t been to the Toronto Botanical Garden since it was transformed with new gardens and a new name (formerly the Civic Garden Centre), you have one more reason to do so on Saturday. It’s the final day for their spring plant sale. Nice specimens for containers, or garden beds in sun or shade, […]
After writing a post about the mind-bogglingly expensive projects featured on Dirty Business, the landscaping show which follows the earth.inc designers around as they whip up tired gardens, I watched an episode that peeled back the curtain a little bit. I guess it falls into the category of: shoemaker’s children syndrome.* One highlight of Dirty […]
I have way more than one garden vice. Can’t stop buying plants, for example, although I know there’s no room. Call it gluttony. Fortunately, I compensate by killing a few. (A woman who can kill goutweed can kill anything!) I also fall prey to sloth, especially when it comes to weeding and particularly about mid-July, […]