On a busy street just east of the Don Valley near downtown Toronto there’s a tiny micro garden planted at the base of a 24/7 gas station sign. I saw a man there once in early spring, hovering over the space as if he was weeding or planting but generally it’s unattended most of if […]
Month: August 2017
Structure
I love how the petals of the Mandevilla vine come out in this pinwheel structure — reminds me of the whirl-a-gigs we had as kids. Structure
Favourite (almost) Fall Flowers
More than three weeks left in summer. Officially. But with days getting noticeably shorter and temperatures several degrees cooler than average (single digits when we got out of bed yesterday – Shileau came down the stairs with me but then just curled up on the couch!) it really is beginning to feel a lot like […]
Native vs Non Native gardening
I recently started following the Royal Horticultural Society on Twitter (@The_RHS); I’m not sure how this feed came to my attention, likely it was Twitter itself, that clever creature, that suggested it. It was a good suggestion. Even though it’s a British organization, and the information they share is abut British gardening and British plants […]
Sunday Surprise
I’m seriously serious about composting. Almost the first thing we did after buying our Prince Edward County property was build this huge compost bin. I think I had seen something like it on a BBC gardening show. I think we had fantasies of being able to drive the shovel of a small garden tractor into […]
Time to revel in Rudbeckia
When I first started gardening (eons ago, it seems) in my tiny Toronto backyard, one of the first flowers I bought was a Black Eyed Susan. It was lovely – small, hairy leaves with bright orange-yellow flowers in late summer. I planted it in an area that started out in full sun but gradually, as […]
Orange is the new Black
This lovely double orange daylily is a vigorous grower in moist soil but is easily kept in check in my un-watered garden. A neighbour gave me a few fans many years ago and now I have several large clumps in the garden. It blooms later than most every other daylily, helping provide vibrant colour in […]
of wasps in gardens…
I’ve noticed that often when someone says the word ‘wasp’ in a conversation or posts the word ‘wasp’ on social media, a general frenzy, almost hysteria, breaks out. Almost immediately stories will erupt about a friend of a friend or a second cousin or a neighbour being stung by a wasp, or by a whole […]