A noun. A verb. A blog.
Isn’t it splendid? This November display of scarlet pineapple sage (Salvia elegans) is massive As long as the hummingbirds are wearing their woollies – or are indoors in my dining room – there’s pineapple sage aplenty for their nectar-sipping needs. This Salvia elegans really only got going just before the weather threatened frost. I worried […]
Fall is a great time to spot the red berries of climbing nightshade (Solanum dulcamara) We always knew this as “deadly nightshade,” but that’s not the right name. Deadly this plant can be, but only if you eat the berries when they’re green before they ripen – not when they’re temptingly red like this. These […]
If you notice a white-haired gal walking down the street with a bouquet of leaves… that’s me. Leaves, from large to small: tulip tree (Liriodendron), Freeman maple (Acer x freemanii), and even that danged alien Norway maple (Acer platanoides).
Ignore the unplanted pots. Notice only the giant ferns. Please. This picture isn’t here for any particular “pride of urnership“, but to illustrate my two wacking great ‘Kimberly Queen’ Australian sword ferns (Nephrolepsis obliterata). Both, you might have read, have spent the last few winters indoors. In the urns. In my living room. It has […]
Cutleaf Japanese maple (Acer palmatum var. dissectum) Even at dusk. Even with a shaky phone camera. Even in November. The multilayered fall colour on this cutleaf Japanese maple is just otherworldly, like a picture by the Hubble space telescope. I wonder if it might be Acer palmatum ‘Seiryu’ which, according to the Missouri Botanical Garden, […]
The race is on, to beat the frost. It’s always a last ditch rescue mission for me, this late in November, when I’m madly trying to bring in every last plant from the cold. Most of my container plants have been hauled indoors, but I still have a few things growing in actual soil that […]
The “before” picture – a block of compressed coir Coir, which is the fibre from the husks of coconuts, is often recommended as a more environmentally friendly replacement for peat moss (whether it is or not is a topic for a different post). After yanking out some over-enthusiastic periwinkle, I had some bare soil that […]
Maize oui, it’s Waterlogue!
“The Fling” comes to Toronto, June 5-7, 2015 You might have seen garden bloggers mention it over (and over and over) the past few years and wondered, “What the heck is the Fling?” Well, it began in Austin TX back in 2008, with a few online garden blogging friends getting together. It was spring, hence […]
What or who is this cute little creature? It feels like it’s on the tip of my tongue. It isn’t the Little Prince’s fox, but…who? Any ideas?
Two chairs: Here, they’re sculptural (Bella Madrona garden) What’s a chair but a piece of art you can sit on? Two-by-two, chairs are the perfect couple – invitations to conversation and affordable, form-meets-function focal points for your garden. Take a seat – from three great gardens in Portland. Which is your fave? Café-casual. Cappuccino, anyone? […]
Hey garden, your slip is showing! A pet peeve: the use of landscape cloth as a weed barrier. Sure, it’s water-permeable, but it always seems to escape at the edges or, because it’s slippery, the mulch used to cover it slides off in the middle. It looks like the earth is coated in black plastic. […]