Aloe

For those of you who remember my little aloe rescued from Judy's breakfast table, you will be happy to hear it did not die! It is having babies!!!

And it goes on...

Everyday is a new wonder. I have a new latest plant date! December 6. Today I planted tulips. It was beautiful weather with the temperature at +5. The tulips I planted are all mixed bulbs. The mix is made up of every tulip I had out in the garden this year and last. It should be interesting to see how they come up because when you are just looking at bulbs, there is no way to tell the flower colour. I am looking forward to what these patches might look like. There are a lot of them too. I planted about 100 of them today and if the weather holds through tomorrow, about that same amount will go in again. Then all my tulips will be in ground.

Still Planting...

I planted again today! I stopped by Judy's for coffee and when she heard that I had been able to dig the other day, she handed me a container of 'White Lion' Daffodils I had given her. So out into her yard I went. She has more snow than I do here but underneath it, the ground was not frozen. I was easily able to dig a hole and drop them in. New latest planting date for me and I think if the weather holds, my tulips may go in yet.

From the Realm of the Fantastical

The ground is not frozen and yes, that is a hole in it! Today I was working in the garden. It is definitely the latest date I have ever dug in the garden. We have snow left but not a lot of it and the weather has been beautiful. Just for fun, I kicked the dirt around a bit when I took the dogs out today. Sure enough, it was not frozen so I grabbed a shovel and tested it some more. Before I knew it, a hole was dug in front of the weeping caragana in the sideyard and I was popping in the bag of lily-of-the-valley root from Judy's backyard. It has just a good a shot at making it there as it does in the house and I always advocate planting in fall vs. spring if you can. In my zone, this gives things a much earlier start and with a short season, the earlier the start, the better. I am keeping my fingers crossed for them. Spring will tell.

Houseplants



I don't do houseplants. I have tried many times and for a few years in a row I was having quite good success. But it was work. I never think of my garden as work and when plants become work, their days are numbered in my house. There are a lot of reasons houseplants don't do well here. Plants don't like forced air heat and in our weather our heat runs 24/7. Plants need water and have no voice to remind me of that. Unlike dogs and cats, a plant won't walk by and poke me when the dish is empty. Plants need to be fed and unlike in my garden, where I can just keep digging in the compost I make, I have to think about what to feed houseplants. Knowing all this, I still try a houseplant once a year or so. This year's victim is the little aloe above. What is going to be the most surprising part of this story, I am sure, is that this little guy lived more than 6 months in a plastic bag with several siblings and absolutely no soil or water on Judy's breakfast table. Now that I have "rescued" it from that, planted it, remembered to water it for at least 6 weeks now and given it some sunlight... it should die before spring. Houseplants like me less than I like them.

And then there was snow...

When I worked in operations, nothing annoyed me more than Christmas. Every year, year after year after year, we would experience delayed shipments, no staff and general confusion. My thoughts were always... Christmas comes every year at the same time... how does it take so many people by surprise? Well, welcome to my garden where the same issue comes back to haunt me. Every year, year after year after year, Mother Nature decides when my gardening season is going to end. She always decides this around the same time. I couldn't set my clock by it but fall is always followed by winter. This year has been better than most for my garden timing. I only have 4 shrubs and a pile of bulbs that did not get into the ground. Now I am left with the decision to put it all in the shop for the long winter or dig in the snow to drop them in. I haven't decided yet. It will depend on the temperatures over the next few days. Regardless of what I do, winter has arrived in my zone 3 garden. Nothing to do but play with garden maps, read garden books and wait for spring. The season that never takes me by surprise. I am usually watching for the ground to thaw for weeks before it actually happens.

A Note on Maps

My garden maps have been an on-going problem. At the start, I made one dimensional bed outlines full of circles representing the plants as seen from a bird's eye view. I use my maps primarily in the spring when I am looking for specific plants or looking at something poking up through the soil that I cannot identify. Maps helps then. I found it was impossible for me to figure out exactly where something specific was with no markers or landmarks on the maps that showed me the plants in relation to other things like large rocks, bird baths or bridges. I also found that because I do not view the garden from a 'bird's eye', the maps did not work for me. I do not use maps to visualize my blooming garden. For that, I use my imagination, area sketches, cut out photographs and transparencies layered over the bed outlines. The transparencies work particularly well for placing shrubs or overlaying bulb plantings which for me, mostly means tulips. Over time, I have developed the map style above which works much better for me. I mark in permanent 'landmarks' in the bed and do only one bed per map. Since I do not use the maps to visualize or develop the garden views, a single bed is much more effective on a map for my purposes, making locating plants in the spring easier. Above is my boardwalk garden entry bed on the lowest level of that garden. It is complete to the point it will be complete in the fall. My maps are a winter project. I get the basics down and tidy them up over the winter. For example, I know what hosta variety is planted above as well as the name of the purple viola, but not off the top of my head. In the winter, I will look them up and complete the labeling. Tulips do not need an overlay on this map because there are very few perennials planted here. This bed is one of two beds in this garden that I fill with annuals in the spring. You can see how the overlay would be helpful if this bed was also full of perennials. Cleaning up my garden maps is one of my favourite winter projects. It is particularly helpful on a long, cold, windy winter day by reminding me that the snow will eventually melt. Then there is the added bonus of the extra time it buys me in the fall. I can spend endless hours tidying up my maps - time I never have in my fall garden schedule. I suppose I should get to planting those tulips now. The weather is turning cold here and Jack Frost is in danger of catching me unprepared. Unprepared is not a good winter strategy in Saskatchewan.

Zone 3: City vs. Country Gardens

I was in Judy's City garden today, which is only 30 minutes from my country garden, when I noticed that she has so much more blooming than I do right now. Her garden got the same frost mine did a week or so ago yet all of my Geranium frosted off and all of hers are alive and doing well. Her sideyard has always been very protected between her house and the neighbours so I was not surprised to see not one, but two, Clematis blooming there with more Geranium. Her Gladiolus are all starting to open and mine frosted off along with all of my Dahlia. She did lose her Dahlia to the frost. I think the biggest difference is the concrete. The City is so full of buildings and sidewalks and road that they hold all the heat so her garden is often a few degrees warmer than mine even if the City temperature at the airport, where they take the temperature reading, is the same as mine. All of the things blooming in her garden have not made me want to move back to the City but they have made me wonder if I couldn't create some protected areas here that would save some things from those early but light frosts that we can get in Saskatchewan. At the very least, I think I will spend some time thinking about that this winter.

Gardening by Spreadsheet

Surely Danielle and I are the only gardeners who think that creating a spreadsheet to keep track of our plants is fun.  We're definitely both collectors and organizers, and that seems to be how we garden too.

I fear I may have started it.  When Danielle was coming to visit in July, she sent me a list of all the dahlia tubers she was bringing to me along with the link to Sids Dahlia (sidsdahlias.com).  Now Sid has a great listing on his website and I copied and pasted it into a spreadsheet - complete with tiny thumbnails.  It seemed the easiest way to figure out where I was going to plant my new 27 tubers.

While Danielle was here visiting, we started a list of all the plant divisions she was going to take back home with her.  Since she also needed a lot of info so that she could plan her planting, a spreadsheet seemed in order.  We meticulously updated it every evening with details about zone and size and sun requirements.  It was a bonus for me because, with over a hundred perennials listed, it's a good start on my complete list - a winter project.

Since returning home, Danielle has been updating her spreadsheet with all her plants and also cataloguing her plants by picture files on Flickr.  Sounds like a great idea and I've been waiting for her to get hers done and work out the kinks before I start mine.  It'll be fun to bring my garden alive in the winter while sorting through all the pictures - but maybe it won't wait till winter.