9 May 2010 by pat.

Ugh! Didn’t get the hostas in the ground, and that may be a good thing. It rained Thursday afternoon, Friday, and yesterday, and there’s a frost warning for tonight. I hope the roots will be OK in their little plastic bags in the dark. Maybe tomorrow will be a planting day: it’s supposed to be sunny and 13. 

The one good thing is that all this rain should have pushed some of the nutrients from the compost down into the soil.

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7 May 2010 by pat.

Today started with a trip to Home Depot to get some hardware cloth. 1/4 inch square galvanized hardware cloth, to be exact.

I needed the hardware cloth to sift the compost that has been sitting at the bottom of my composter for a few years. It had lots of time to decompose, and it did it quite well. There were still some pieces of eggshell, some big hunks of bark, a few pebbles (must have come from previous garden waste, or the detritus at the bottom of flower pots) and the like. So in order to have just the good stuff, I needed to sift it through the hardware cloth.

Dump a few trowels’ worth on the hardware cloth (positioned above a bucket), and move it around with my gloved hands or the edge of the trowel until only the big bits are left on top. Discard big bits; repeat. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. I would have worn my iPod, except I wanted to be listening for migrators while I was doing it. Didn’t see any new birds.

Have a nice even layer of compost over everything in the big north bed in the back yard. Need to sift some more for the south bed, the triangle bed, and the front garden.

The north and south beds are the priorities, because I need to get the hostas in the ground tomorrow, so I’ve been doing prepwork. Yesterday I pulled daffodils and bluebells. I would have raked them out, but discovered that the elderberry has very shallow roots! I’m afraid I broke a couple of them. So I’ve got a few daffodil bulbs left in the ground, but I pulled their leaves off and I’m not sure if they’ll even sprout next year.

I’m almost all set for tomorrow. I found my permanent aluminum plant markers, and have written the names on them, and have drawn up a cheat sheet on a filing card so I remember where to plant things. I need to go to East End Gardens before I plant, though, and buy some blood meal to sprinkle around each hosta after planting, with the hopes that the squirrels won’t dig up the hostas because they smell like wet dog. Give them a chance to get established and for the squirrels to forget that the soil had been dug up.

On another note, when I was cleaning leaf and flower junk out of the water thingie, I discovered that a young European sparrow drowned today. The corners of its mouth were still quite yellow. I was surprised: I didn’t realize that sparrow families were that far along this year.

I’ll have to see if I can rig something up so a bird that falls in the pond can recover and fly off.

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4 May 2010 by pat.

It contains 10 hosta roots!

• Medio variegata
• Aureomarginata
• Albomarginata
• Hyacinthina
• Sieboldiana Elegans

(oooh! Had to get out my Lee Valley credit card magnifier to read the labels)

So what does this mean?

I need to come up with an arrangement and decide which ones are going in which bed.

Most of them will go in the right-handed bed, and a few in the left. The triangle I’m going to leave for herbs.

What are their colors and sizes?

Medio variegata: medium green leaf with a white flame down the centre. Can get up to 36″ around, about 18″ high.

Aureomarginata: heart-shaped glossy medium green leaves with yellow edges. Height of 18-28″, spread 36-48″.

Albomarginata: how’s your Latin? This one’s got white edges on deep green leaves, and can eventually spread to 36″ or more (about 18″ high).

Hyacinthina: Loosely grouped, heavily quilted non-lustrous bluish-green leaves. Really textural. It can grow up to 24″ tall and about 36″ in diameter.

Sieboldiana Elegans: Now this one can get big! up to 30″ tall and 48″ in diameter. Large, heart shaped thick bluish-grey leaves, heavily quilted. Slow grower. (Thank goodness. I’d hate to have to divide that every couple of years!)

I need to remove my daffodils and put down a good layer of compost, and scratch that into the soil a little. They recommend Sieboldiana Elegans as a background plant, so I’ll probably put one by the back of the water thingie, and the other near the north fence, about 4 feet from the elderberry — its chartreuse leaves should set off the blue-grey nicely.

In the north bed, I want to put two albomarginatas and one aureomarginata near the Sieboldiana, and one aureomarginata next to the one by the water thingie. I’ll combine the Medio variegata with one Hyacinthina where the scentimental rose is (dead looking), and that leaves me one Hyacinthina to put somewhere, which I’ll figure out once I get the others in the ground. I have to leave room for ferns, astilbe and bleeding hearts!

Ooooh, I’m really going to have to watch out for slugs now. I think it was Martin Galloway who called hostas a salad for slugs!

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29 April 2010 by pat.

Here we go. I spent the afternoon clearing the back yard of goutweed… it was all through the bed on the right side of the image. Required a lot of care to try to pull all the stolons without killing the daffodils (so few of them are in bloom that I’d like to enjoy them this one last time before I yank them in a couple of weeks).

When I get the astilbes, ferns, and hostas from Vesey’s, I’ll be filling things in. I’m also going to get a few plants from East End Gardens.There are three roses in this yard, and I’m not sure if they’ve really survived winter. I’ll give them a couple of weeks to prove themselves. If they’ve survived, I’ll move them to the front garden. If not… well, compost time.It looks like some of the roses in the front garden are also a bit slow or haven’t made it. I’ll have to give them some time to see how they do:

There’s a clump of grass growing in the lavender bed that I have to get rid of, and some perennials that materialized from nowhere in the raised bed that I’m not fond of and am thinking of destroying. Going to get rid of the pots of sedum (plant the sedum in the back yard). Might ditch the two half-barrels: after 14 years, they’re looking more than a little tired. The alliums should be flowering within a few weeks, by the looks of it.  What an early spring!

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22 April 2010 by pat.

Just went on Veseys‘ website and placed an order for

• 10 hostas
• 10 astilbes
• 2 bleeding hearts
• 10 ferns

for my shady backyard.I’m also buying 3 blue sea holly for the front garden: the blue will be a nice cool contrast to all the warm colors of the roses. I thought of buying some foxgloves, too, but I think I prefer the foxgloves at East End Garden Centre, so I’ve got to hop on my bike and make a trip over there.I’ve reconciled myself to pulling up the daffodils in the back yard: I’ve got lots of greenery, but only 4 flowers this year, and because there are so many of them, it’s difficult to (a) plant around them (b) get rid of the goutweed that has spread among them.

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5 April 2010 by pat.

It’s so early in the season, and yet, gardening is based on what the plants are doing, not what the calendar shows. The forsythia two yards away is yellow and almost in full bloom!

I’ve got most of the front garden cleaned up, all the roses and shrubs pruned, and started pruning in the back today. I’ll take pictures once I’ve got them both all cleaned up.One of my first tasks after that will be to move three of the roses to the front garden: it’s getting too shady in the back. I need to get some more shade-loving plants, like hostas, ferns, and astilbe (after I kill all the goutweed).

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12 October 2008 by pat.

It hasn’t been a good year for tomatoes: long, slow cool spring, lots of rain. Actually, wasn’t a good year for jalapenos, either. They just disappeared.

There just isn’t enough time for my heirloom San Marzano tomatoes to ripen before we get frost. I haven’t seen any turn red: I think they’ve been taken when they turn orange. It’s not the rodents, because they just eat things in situ, and the stem end of the tomato remains on the plant.So this weekend I decided it was time to harvest what is out there, and decide which ones I’m going to try to ripen indoors, and which ones I’ll turn into some green tomato recipe. I’ve got 8 lbs of them, so I have lots of room to experiment.My front garden didn’t develop many weeds this summer: the 4 tomato plants pretty much overran the garden. Pulling the plants out today has left my garden much emptier! I still have a few rosebuds that may bloom.Anybody have a favorite recipe for green paste tomatoes?

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12 May 2008 by pat.

I took a little walk to East End Garden centre yesterday to buy plants for the two planters (front living room window, front of porch) that are sitting completely empty. Bought some lovely plants (potato vines, double impatiens, petunias). Also saw some other plants that I couldn’t quite resist, because I had such luck last summer.

I bought 4 San Marzano tomato plants.If you know my house and its situation, you know that my back yard has become almost completely shaded over the last eleven years. So it’s definitely not a place to grow tomatoes.So I will be planting them in the front garden. Among the roses. Heck, flower and vegetable gardens were never separate things in the middle ages to Renaissance. The French called them potagers.Why not? Maybe the thorns will help protect them from raccoons and other thieves. If not, I bought another set of four plants to serve as centurions guarding the tomatoes.Jalapeno peppers.I chortle with glee. We’ll see if I’m successful. My front yard, although it gets more sun than my back yard, doesn’t get anywhere near as much sun as the allotment gardens at the base of Leslie Street get.Cross your fingers for me!

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6 April 2008 by pat.

Pruned:

• Honeysuckle vine (leaves were already budding out)
• Potentilla
• Euonymous

so I can paint the wrought-iron fence next weekend.Cut back the Japanese Anemones to the ground (they’re herbaceous, and will reappear from under the earth).Also grossly pruned the roses. Will do a fine pruning in a few weeks, when I see which canes survived the winter. I had a few really big hips on some of them, swollen with seeds. I saved a few, and brought them in the house to dry out. I may try planting the seeds to see what I get!

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26 April 2007 by pat.

Finally.Last weekend, I got most of the gardens cleaned up. Still have one bed to do. Got the pond set up for the summer (and the birds flocked to it immediately).Looks like most things made it through the winter, although I may have lost a few roses. Or maybe they’re just slow waking up. I won’t give up on Scentimental, Angel Face, and Love yet.The elderberry and saskatoon berry shrubs look like they will burst into flower within a few weeks.Heucheras don’t look happy, but we’ll see.King Alfred daffodils are open, and I’ve got about another 6 species of daffs to come, plus the Estella Rijnveldt tulips I planted in the fall.Migratory birds are starting to pass through. This week, I’ve seen both golden-crowned and ruby-crowned kinglets, a song sparrow, white-throated sparrows, and the goldfinches have returned. The dark-eyed juncos haven’t left yet, although I’ve heard they’ve started arriving in Nova Scotia, so some of them have moved on to summer homes.I really have to get my seeds started for the allotment garden!

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11 December 2006 by pat.

OK, so I planted a couple of dozen Estella Rijnveld tulips in my front garden today. I had to chip at the first 2″ of soil to get down below the frost.

It’s raining out right now, and we’re supposed to get more rain over the next few days, so I hope this gives them a chance to establish.I noticed that some of my daffodils have sprouted already: most are still below soil level (I inadvertently dug a few up) but some of them have tiny nubs of green breaking the surface of the soil. Good thing they’re frost-hardy.

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4 December 2006 by pat.

Time to admit it: summer and fall are over. We’ve had some light frosts (my Persian Shield plants are crispy dead). My roses are still blooming (see if I can grab a shot tomorrow) but we’re supposed to have temperatures in the negative zone for the next five days.

So today was “do things before they freeze” day.Emptied the pond, brought in the pump, emptied the hose and brought it in, turned the water off from inside the house and drained the pipe, and raked some more leaves (of course, there are many more I could rake).Also harvested some sage from two different sage plants I have. Brought some leaves indoors, washed, and put them on paper towel to dry off.Cut up a couple of leaves and made some sage butter to go with my egg noodles under my left-over stroganoff for dinner.Started wondering why sage also means wisdom and calm judgement… I’ll have to go to the reference library and look it up in the good old Oxford, I think.Anyways, here’s a picture of some sage: two varieties.

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2 November 2006 by pat.

So first, let’s look at the original photograph of the David Austin “Abraham Darby” rose:

As you can see, the open blossom is quite pinkish, and the two closed blossoms are yellower: more of a peach colour.

Black’s Photography offers the ability to upload a picture to their website (.jpg and maybe some other formats: it barfed on .tiff, which is my favorite format, due to being lossless). They offer a number of ways to use the picture: as a photo, on a mug, or a mouse pad, or a tee-shirt… or woven on a Jacquard loom. That sounded interesting to me, and I also like the idea that computer punch cards were based on the punch cards used by jacquard looms, and now the jacquard looms are creating digital images… round and round we go…

So I copied the picture up. And checked it out on the blanket/tapestry, and thought it looked pretty good! 3 weeks until delivery. I kept my fingers crossed, hoping it would arrive before the technical update session, when I was talking about digital photography for gardeners.

Alas, no such luck. The tech. update happened on Saturday; I got a call on Tuesday or Wednesday (I forget which: it was the last week of a software update), and wasn’t able to pick it up until Friday.

I think it turned out quite well, although the open rose isn’t quite as pink, and the buds aren’t quite as peachy. The color range is limited, after all: these are woven yarns.

It looks better from afar than from 12″ away: gets almost a high-pass-filter kind of look when examined up close.

I think the next time I do this (and I most likely will) I’ll choose something with more flowers, in bright contrasting colors, and smaller. A rose is truly overwhelming when it’s about 36 inches across. It would be better to reproduce an image at close to a 1:1 scale, instead of doing a huge macro like this.

I also positioned the large rose really close to the top edge of the blanket: it would be a good idea to leave some background to frame the image, I’d say about a 6″ margin all the way around.

Live and learn!

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9 September 2006 by pat.

Tonight, before sunset, the light outdoors was exquisite in the east end of Toronto.There was a clear sky to the west, where the sun was setting, and a bank of clouds arranged *just so* to the east. The light from the sun, setting in the west, bounced off the clouds in the east, and down to ground level.It illuminated everything the way we try to illuminate objects using gold reflectors.Sometimes, it just happens.Now it’s raining. Glad I captured a shot of the back garden in this wonderful reflected light.I was shooting toward the west: normally, that would mean that the plants would be in shadow. But because of the way the clouds reflected the light, there’s a warm cast and very few shadows.You can see that I had a slow shutter speed: the wind was already starting to pick up, and some branches and ferns were starting to move around in the breezes. But it’s pretty interesting light, considered that I was shooting into the direction of the sunset.

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19 June 2006 by pat.

My gardens look lovely — except for all the cotton from the local cottonwood tree! Most of my roses are in full bloom now: Angel Face has only opened one blossom, though, and Hans Christian Andersen (in the back yard) has lots of buds but no blooms.

Meanwhile, in the front yard, Ingrid Bergman is showing large beautiful roses; Lily Marlene is starting to open up; one magnificent Chicago Peace bloom is finishing; the Flame patio rose has a few flowers and many buds. Also, the astilbe is starting to get its white blossoms, and the foxgloves are in full glory. Gawd, it’s a beautiful season. The deep red clematis in the front is also in bloom.In the back, Abraham Darby and Brother Caedfile (both David Austin roses) are in lovely bloom and smelling beautiful; Scentimental has a half-dozen open flowers, too. Just waiting on Hans Christian.The elderberry is threatening to take over: one young green branch was broken over, however, so I’ve pruned it. May have to do a bit more pruning. It seems very happy in the backyard, and its pale green leaves contrast nicely with the sand cherry.The buddleia and Saskatoon berry are doing well, too.Just gotta get out there and trim back the last of the daffodil leaves, and uproot the darned goutweed that’s still sprouting out of nowhere.That’s it from this hot small garden for today!

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