'Tarda'

Of all the mini-botanical tulips I have grown over the years, none hold a candle to 'tarda'. They are very reliable, multiply extremely quickly and always add a spot of sunshine to my spring garden.

When I lived in the city, 'tarda' were always the first blooms in my garden every spring. Always.

Here, there are a lot of things that show up before 'tarda'. I think part of it is that the 'tarda' are under trees and not in the sun gardens while the 'chopin', forsythia and early red triumph tulips are in the sunshine all day from very early on in the season.

This year, I was excited to see that the 'thalia' daffodil were blooming at the same time as the 'tarda'. I am going to move a patch of the 'tarda' (they make very nice patches) out to the sun garden beside the 'thalia'. Of course, being in the sun might make 'tarda' bloom earlier but I am going to cross my fingers and go for it.

Forsythia

The first of my shrubs to bloom is always the forsythia. I have to admit, it kind of creeps me out. I think flowers coming from a bare branch, with no leaves, is just plain weird.

The forsythia I have here was planted long before I came along and it was huge the day I walked onto the property. It is so huge, that like almost everything else here, it was way overgrown.

I don't dislike it particularly. At least not enough to do anything about removing it. But every year, the yellow flowers take me by surprise. And every year, I think it looks just a little odd. This year, I am actually going to try pruning it. According to the book, I need to be thinking about that tomorrow!

Blue Gentian

This is truly one of my favourite flowers and the best of the gentians. It took me 3 years to find it after seeing it in another garden and well worth the wait. I have this small patch in my rock garden - very slow growing. This shade of blue isn't very common in flowers.

gentiana acaulis

I also have one of its cousins, crested gentian, which doesn't bloom till September. While more prolific, it's not nearly as striking.

Early Tulips Start

The early tulips are starting. This red is either 'Bastogne' or something that came in mixed red and yellow from either Judy or my sister. I will probably never know which. My tulips are all mixed up by now and are coming up everywhere. It is so awesome, I don't even care that I don't know what many of them are. Any that are particularly interesting, I can usually identify. I could probably pull out maps and figure it out as well but when the sun is shining is no time to pull out maps! That is a winter activity. Maybe winter will have me here renaming everything. Who knows? Something to look forward to anyway.

There are two patches of these so far. Both are in the sun gardens near but not next to each other, in the area that was planted last year. All three sets of tulips, Judy's mom's mixed (red and yellow), Deanna's red and yellow mix and my old 'Bastogne' were moved somewhere into that area last year. At least I think they were! But who is to say that the red in either of those mixes is not also 'Bastogne'?

No matter what they are, they sure are pretty and that is all that really matters in my garden. 

At least today that is all that really matters.

Curving Edges with Old Hose

If you've gardened for very long, you'll have a supply of old garden hoses that are past repairing. We always hang onto them because they're perfect for marking out new gardens.

Lay a hose on the ground randomly and it creates beautiful curves. Hammer a few long nails or stakes through it into the ground to hold it in place while you dig out the garden. Then pull it all up easily and store it for next time. Make sure to collect up all your nails.

For the centre garden in our backyard, I drew out a pattern on graph paper. We staked out a 2'x2' grid in the yard and translated my pattern onto the yard using pieces of old hose.

Narcissus 'Tahiti' was next

'Tahiti' is the first blooming and most reliable of my narcissus. Typically, it blooms after the 'tarda' mini botanical tulips start but this year they beat the 'tarda' out. 'Tahiti' was blooming a full three days before the 'tarda' opened.

I have other daffodil that are in bud and just coming up but these are the only ones that are blooming and this picture was taken today - almost a full week after they first opened wide.

Narcissus are moody in my garden. Sometimes they show up, other times they do not. I never know what to expect. A full, healthy, beautiful patch one year will completely disappear only to reappear a few years later as the tiny bulblets in the ground get big enough to produce a plant. That element of surprise can be wonderful or frustrating depending on the day.

Four years in, it seems I don't have to worry about that with 'Tahiti'. They are the first and only daffodil patch in my garden that consistently comes up, looks great and gets bigger. This year, the patch is large enough that I can divide it and start spreading these beauties throughout the garden. I love bulbs!


Why I will never be a Master Gardener

The first blooms of the season for me were these 'Chopin' Kaufmania botanical tulips. At least that is what is says on my receipt. When I look up 'Chopin' tulips, which I did just the other day, I find a lot of information about 'Chopin' gregii tulips. I also found Kaufmania spelled more than 6 different ways. I am not sure of the difference between gregii and Kaufmania and it turns out, I don't care!

Apparently, Kaufmania means they are a waterlily tulip, referring to the flower shape. Botanical means they are small. While the flowers are not huge, they are smaller than a typical tulip but are larger than any of my other botanicals. And they are definitely short and early.

 

I went looking for information out of interest. I found a lot of information. But here is the crux... I found the more complicated the answer became, the less interested I was in finding it out!

 

I am a gardener. All I need to know is colour, height and requirements to fit it into my garden plan. Anything more is extra information my brain is unwilling to hold. Bottom line, I absolutely love my 'Chopin' no matter what they technically are.

 

 

 

Blue and Lime

I love the colour combinations at this time of year. In the front especially, I have a lot of blue and lime, with some pink just starting to join in.

grape hyacinth and donkey tail spurge

Mom's lungwort

Peek-a-boo

The season has finally started for me and it started fast! I was still breaking up snow banks and spreading them into the sun today at the back deck. Just feet away in the lower boardwalk garden, the tarda are already poking through the leaf cover. Tarda are the most reliable mini-botanical tulips I have ever grown and they are always the first thing to poke through, usually the first thing to bloom. Some years, the crocus beat them to the punch. I haven't seen any crocus yet this year which might be a bad sign. Much to my delight, the Zurel are still a huge patch, despite dividing them three years in a row. And then there are all the unknown (until they bloom) tulips that seem to be everywhere! I spent the whole day out cleaning up the yard and came upon several interesting developments in my garden. The most perplexing of them was the pile of tulips bulbs I found sitting on top of the ground at the end of the boardwalk. Not quite under the dogwood but close enough to get lost if the dogwood were in leaf. Not sure how they got there. My best guess would be that a dog (yes, it would likely be that dog) dug them up or a squirrel moved them. I know that I did not just toss a handful of tulips bulbs on the ground as I walked by! I could tell that two of them were tarda so I planted them together in a spot where I thought a little patch of tarda would look good. It will only take them a year or two at most to become that little patch. The rest of them got planted in the cement pothead at the drive corner. Since they all had root and a shoot, I expect they will grow there just fine this year and once I know what they are, I can pop them in the garden somewhere. If I can resist the temptation to plant them for that long. If I can't resist, they will get plopped in a clump all together and I will cross my fingers that they are not clashing varieties.

The Red Scourge

Even before I was a gardener I loved lilies. Now I have lots of them! For the past 4 years, we've been devastated with red lily beetles and this year they are starting really early. It's pretty obvious from this picture that they just destroy the lily plants soon as they start growing. This is just the first stage, even worse is the larvae.

May Day in Nova Scotia

Things aren't as bleak here as they are in Saskatchewan right now. I'm running around in shorts and Danielle is shovelling - definitely one of the big differences between our two gardens!

I have a few early spring blooms to share with you.

Yesterday was spring

It took forever for spring to finally arrive in Saskatchwan this year. It was April 26 before I could see any real patches of ground not snow covered. By April 28 I was able to work in the yard with lots of open, already dry places I could easily reach. There were still some off-limits areas. The summer road was still snowed in through the bush, the compost did not have a path that would take you all the way there without stepping into snow, but it was all getting there. Was.

This morning I woke up to winter. Highway closures (several of them) and all this lovely, lovely snow!

If spring and summer are going to happen together in the span of 4 days, I guess our days of growing and harvesting are done. And I hadn't actually started the harvesting part in any earnest. This is the season I am starting my larger, fenced kitchen garden and I have already cut back the seed list based on the late snow arrival. Today was the day we were scheduled to move the fence for that garden. Now, it may have more flowers than originally planned. Snow or no snow, I am still putting that garden in this year!

As soon as all this finally leaves for more than a day....

Photo Credit

Not exactly "in lights", (yes, Linda, that is Sheldon you hear in your head) but my name is now in print. I have photo credit in the Spring 2013 issue of the Gardener magazine.

I was expecting to see my Hope for Humanity photo in their Hardy Roses Part 1 article. Much to my delight, they also printed my Alexander McKenzie, Morden Blush, John Davis and William Baffin. How exciting!



The Gathering

The deer are gathering at Russell Hill Road. It should be green. Instead, we had new snow yesterday. Melting today. What a cycle! Spring is coming... spring is coming... spring is coming.

A Sure Sign of Spring

Summer and Tuk had a raccoon treed in the Forest of the Damned last week. This is a sure sign of spring. It took us almost a half hour to convince them to go all the way back to the house. It was easy to get them to stop barking and jumping. Getting them to the shop wasn't that hard either. But convincing them to go all the way to the house was tough. Tuk kept stopping and looking longingly back. When we noticed the raccoon, we were on our way to town. When we came back, the dogs were at the house and the raccoon was gone. No blood. So I guess in the end, they did listen. Now just to determine where the raccoons are living. Although, it doesn't really matter. The dogs will convince them to move to a more peaceful residence quickly. I hope.

The Melt

 

Flood warnings are the order of the day here. We have a lot of snow. The drift is as high as my 6 ft. fence all along the nursery. We have been moving snow daily away from the house and out towards the garden and I am not sure we will get it all moved before it melts. Slowly it is melting. The afternoons are warmer now. Benedict is starting to come out from under his snow blanket and I can see more of the bench at the three sisters every day. There is going to be a week or so of wet snow that is cycling through freezing and thawing. It will be slippery but better than what is to come - the season of mud and molt.

Spring Shift

My husband Kelly has a rock puzzle to put together again this year as soon as the weather warms up. This will be his 3rd time rebuilding the dry stacked wall along our driveway. Spring in Nova Scotia means a cycle of freeze and thaw. Our roads are not the only thing impacted!

Like Mother, Like Daughter

 

Next up, MoeMoe and Nazareth, our Egyptian Mau pair. MoeMoe came to us a few years ago. She had a big wild streak and was really nervous, all the time. She calmed down over time and fit right in. A few months ago, her daughter, Nazareth made her way to us. Mom is the little one in the forefront and baby is the huge one in the background. Nazareth was less wild but still nervous around all of the dogs. She took less time to settle in and quickly became Queen of the castle. She rules all the other cats... except for Francis, of course. A favourite passtime for both is dog watching.

Pine Grosbeak

 

I normally don't share crappy photographs but this is a Pine Grosbeak and all the other shots I got were crappier! We have been here 10 years now and this is the first time we have seen them. We had two pairs of them stop for several days in February. It was all so exciting!

Jake

I decided to take a moment to introduce the animals that you might encounter in photographs of my garden. This is Jake. The most photogenic grey tabby to ever grace my garden. Jake is like a dog when I am in the garden. He follows me around and likes to interfere when I dig. He is not as easy as the dogs to discourage from that. The dogs listen. Jake doesn't. Jake came to us from the Regina Humane Society. I drove my son, Gordon, to get a cat and Jake caught my attention with a paw push to the shoulder. I couldn't get him out of my mind and after two days of trying to convince everyone I know that they needed a cat... I ended up deciding that maybe we needed a cat. I drove back into the city and brought him home. He has been a constant source of love and entertainment ever since.

One Brave Soul

 

My garden is a cat death trap at this time of year. Everyday, I have to go out and knock down the icicles from the roof edge. I never do that in the dark. I wait until the sun is up and I am less likely to land one in my eye! So every morning Hannah takes a chance.

 

She is the first one up and always wants to go out very shortly after she wakes.

Weeping in the Sideyard

We have a lot of caragana here. It forms long drifts of bush at several spots in our yard. Every evening walk in the fall is accompanied by the pop-pop-pop of its seed pods dropping. I have never been a fan.

The yellow flowers are... well... yellow. And not one of the nicer yellows that I can tolerate. But the weedy yellow of every wild thing that runs rampant in the fields. The music of the seed pods in fall does not make up for the mess they make everywhere! I usually grit my teeth through that and try to remember that the wildlife appreciates it and I appreciate the wildlife.

Then I met this weeping caragana and it turned my head. It sits in the sideyard, on the other side of the bridge from the bird sanctuary. In the summer it is a beautiful fall of green and yellow. Somehow the yellow seems happier in its branches. In winter it is a gangly nest of snow covered branches where no one lives. It makes me think of the Headless Horseman.

It always catches my eye when I pass close to it, in every season. It earns its place close to the house and, although I would never have planted it... I am glad it was here when I arrived.

Hoar Frost Mornings

 

February was full of beautiful hoar frost mornings. I have to get up early to see this frost because the sun is not a friend of frost. As soon as the sun is up, the frost is gone.

 

It may be because I lived in the city but I don't remember such beauty in winter when I was young. Everything was muddy, slushy or icy and slippery. Winter always seemed to be a hassle and I had no appreciation of the season. Although it has been impossible to find appreciation for -50C, there are a LOT of wonderful aspects of winter. Hoar frost is one. Vast views of clean, white, pure snow is another. The entertainment of watching the dogs create new paths through deep snow after a storm... I could go on and on.

The winter here is long. I grow tired of it before it is finished so there is always an anxious wait for spring to arrive. But that anticipation of spring at this time of year is part of what I now love about winter. Another is the down time from my garden and all the social activity that ramps up in the summer here. When you only get 4 months of good weather, you tend to jam pack as much activity as possible into it. Add to that the time consuming joys of a large garden to the schedule and you can see... the arrival of winter is usually welcome. What I have learned is that aside from the many natural and environmental reasons for winter, there is also a mental reason for me. I relax in winter in ways I cannot in the spring and summer. The warm seasons are too full of activity to spend any real stretches of time relaxing.

 

Those relaxation hours infuse new enthusiasm in me, for my garden. Taking an early morning walk through the chilly dusk, when the dogs are still sleeping and the wildlife is just waking up, makes me notice how everything is very still. So still, the quiet whirr of my camera focus reverberates through the trees. It is at these times that I wonder why it took so long for me to appreciate winter. I suppose it was that -50C thing!

 



Smells of spring

I can smell those lily-of-the-valley. At the height of spring, the bird sanctuary path is full of them, blooming all along the walk to the feeders. They smell sweet and always make me think of rain. Judy's June table had Iris as well - the burgundy kind. They smelled like licorice. We are not sure where they came from or what they are, other than stunning! There are places in our yard that have at least 3 feet of snow and the firepit is completely buried. Along with its chairs. But my mind has already turned to the garden. Just one more hurdle to get through. The season of mud and molt. Wish me luck and if I don't drown in hair or break my leg in the mud, I should have the start of a garden plan to share this weekend. Who said I wasn't optimistic??


THAT isn't on sale! a.k.a. Memories of Last Summer

Isn't he pretty??

 

At the end of perennial planting season, all of the temporary greenhouses here that set up in the spring, start to close up. One in particular puts all of their remaining perennials on sale for $4/each. Judy and I always go check. What remains is typically the very common but every once in awhile, we find a gem.

 

We were shopping for Judy's backyard shade garden and maybe looking for anything exciting that might have been hiding behind something taller when early season shoppers went through. I move quickly at this sale. Judy likes to linger. So it was no surprise when I hit the back rack before she even got half way down the row. What I spied from the door was really what I thought it was. A variegated Jacob's Ladder. There was a single one and he was full, healthy and gorgeous!

 

I hovered over him until Judy arrived and I said... you think he's on sale? We laughed. We are familiar with perennial sales. You get a lot of common plants, a lot of spreading plants, a lot of invasive plants for $4/each but you never get the knock-me-out-with-a-feather-I-can't-BELIEVE-we-found-that! plants for $4.

 

Up to the counter I go... where the very nice hippie-ish dude that runs the place always has a smile for us... and asked how much the variegated Jacob's Ladder was. He tells me he doesn't have a variegated Jacob's Ladder but all his perennials are $4. I tell him I am pretty sure he has the Jacob's Ladder so how much would it be if he had one? He laughed and said if I have one, you can have it for $4. Score!

 

That is when I discovered that I heart hippie dudes!!