Dog Day

Dogs have an easy life.

They lick each other's faces.

Sam smiles for the camera.

Sophie gets some air.

Highlights From The Spring 2008

Hepatica

Redbud

Trillium

Wake Robins

Epimedium

This is Spring

The wind is driving in from the east. Fresh budding lace doily leaves on the Cut Leaf Birch flail and are pushed by the wind. The finches dart from inner branches to feeder and back. There's no sun. The rain pelts and stops and pelts and stops.

But all the protected corners of the garden grow steadily. The anemones and wood poppies; the trilliums; and finally, after four years, the chocolate vine!

Fall Blizzard Dec./07

Here are some pictures taken during and after the blizzard.

What to Do While Waiting For Winter

It's the last third of Fall. I've covered the beds with fallen leaves, shored up the rose bushes and other tenders with leaves and dirt and filled the bird feeders. There they are - finally exposed for all to see - the branches of my garden. Because I dream about pruning, I've waited for this moment all year.

I know I'm projecting my life onto my garden. There are many things I'd like to prune that I won't get to this year - a little less tv, encourage my reading to grow in a different direction, bake more cookies. Instead I shift focus to the brown, grey, red and yellow stalks that shelter my garden and its wildlife.

Gardening wisdom has it that one doesn't prune in either Fall or Spring. Spring is wrong for the obvious reason that sap is flowing and buds are bursting and if your plant is the type that puts out water spouts, you'll be inundated. Fall is wrong because with all the leaves falling, irritant spores are everywhere and you don't want to leave a wound open that would draw in disease.

I'm left with the months that now pass for Winter in Toronto - December, January, February (before the witchhazel blooms).

I have plans. I want to remove the lower branches of all my major deciduous trees. The yellow birch on the front lawn, the tulip tree on the side front lawn, and the Kentucky coffee tree in the back are all due for having their three lowest branches pruned.

Shrubs can be more difficult. The doublefile viburnums are prone to water spouting, so I must be judicious, though I'd like to create space underneath them. The roses can be pruned or tied so the canes don't wave around or get weighted down by snow. It's best to avoid pruning both the witch hazel and the oakleaf hydrangea. I wouldn't dream of touching either. I want them to grow much bigger.

Lastly, the wisteria can be pruned back by as much as 90% of new growth, but not this year. I'm trying to regrow it after Sophie ate through the oldest stems in 2005.

Long ago I gave up pruning my clematis.

There's my plan. Now I sit back and wait for frost to slow everything down.

How Warm Will It Go?

First week of March and we are pounded by the fat wet clumping snowflakes that signal spring snow. Ten days later and the temperature's heading for 9C.

Yesterday the mourning doves returned, followed hard on their heels by the crows. The snow is melting to rivers while the grates are still hidden by ice bergs.

What will spring bring?

Stay tuned for photos of the witch hazel which is about to bloom.

Snowy Day

Curtains of thick white snow are falling heavily. Each flake is a plummeting moth.

The sky is simply a deeper white than the ground. I'm in an old fashioned snow globe. Out of nowhere, there's sheet of lightning, followed by a boom of thunder held down by the clouds. It was awesome. I don't think I've seen that ever before.

Poem

On the cusp of sorrow the pink
chrysanthemums fade to sour milk.
A struggling tree's sodden and
mildewing bark peels away.
There is no sanctuary. Weeds
threaten the labryinth.

The loss of you
is like falling in burdock.
A thousand sharp prickles
that won't release from my coat.
I'll wear it through to Spring, still
picking at the barbs.

Come next Fall, I'll retrieve
the coat from its Summer place
and there you'll be still valiantly
clinging to collar or cuff.

I'll pull you out. Secure you
in my pocket. Feel
your sting when I reach
for a tissue to wipe my tears.

Stupid Birds

Oh no. The mourning doves are back and building another nest. Three or four times this summer they've built a nest in either of the thirty foot blue spruce trees across from my window.

Each time, they build, they lay eggs, they sit. And then the crows come. Or sometimes the blue jays. Anyway, a flock of birds with much squawking and flapping descends. They shatter the nest, they shatter the eggs. The doves sit helplessly on the hydro wire and watch.

And then, like today, they rebuild.

I don't know if can watch this unfold again.

All The Roadrunning

For a guitar aficionado such as me, last night's Mark Knopfler and EmmyLou Harris concert was a treat. Knopfler led a five guitarist band through two hours of his signature rock roots sound.

EmmyLou has become the vocal heart of roots Americana. She and Knopfler are touring their new colaboration. The songs are soulful and complicated.

As well, each performer had dips into their own well of songs.

I adored Knopfler's playing style, especially when he brought out that steel guitar.

But the highlight for me was EmmyLou's 30 year old Boulder to Birmingham. At the first chords, the grey haired woman in front of me pulled off her glasses and put her hand over her eyes. I tried not to watch her shoulders heave. By the time EmmyLou got to the line "the canyon was on fire", I too was lost.

Thirty years were gone. I was sitting on a lumpy green corduroy couch, in a familiar old wood paneled livingroom washed by the memory of young love that burned too hot and was gone too soon. The pain lingering and the determination of - what - recapturing or rebuilding. I didn't know then.

All I know now is that life is a bedrock built of experience and time is an ever moving river and, for me, music is the hook that draws me down to touch memory.

Blue Jay Way

Directly out my window are two 40 year old blue spruce trees. The city carefully maintains them. This year they are brimming with pinecones, both brown and green.

There's a pair of mourning doves nesting in them. They tried low on one tree and had their effort torn down by some squirrels. Now they are rebuilding higher on the second tree. They are stupid birds, but I wish them luck.

With the ripening of the pinecones, have come the Blue Jays. For a week, every day at lunch, I saw one working his way through the branches.

I'm not usually thinking about the trees at other times of day, but one evening I was telling hubby about the jay. At the moment when we were both looking at the spruces, trying to imagine the bird, along flew first one, then two and finally five Blue Jays, squawking louder than sea gulls.

A hopeful sight in the downtown heart of this city.

Do You Know Where Your Asters Are?

With two weeks left until the garden show preview, this was a week of heavy weeding.
Everything unnameable has been yanked.

Hidden among the spirea and in certain corners of the garden I found those long weedy stems and narrow pointed leaves. My neighbour has a large clump bordering the sidewalk. I walk by and want to remove those reedy semi-leafless stalks.

They are not phlox. I have been stumped before and so pulled them. Then when Fall comes I'm wondering where all those outstanding shimmery purple blossoms have gone. An aster is wildflower, they can't be killed.

But, oh yes, they can be mistakenly pulled. But not this year.

White in the Garden

Deutzia Columbine
Doublefile Viburnum

Spotted Wake Robins

Mertensia

New Bed

Here are the before and after pics of the new bed dug on the north side of the house.

Parkas and Capris

What a cold Victoria Day weekend!
Dining out on Sunday night, every woman who entered the restaurant was wearing Capris and a parka. It was darn cold!

Beloved Hubby dug out another patch of grass this weekend and behold - a new flower bed was created. It's on the north side of the house, so gets diffuse sun. I've filled it with Solomon's Seal, Columbines and Meadow Rue. I also moved a small shrub, Laceleaf Viburum. It gives that side of the house a complete look.

Gains and Losses

Jack-in-the-pulpits in profusion! Tiny specimens sprout within the shadow of established plants. Epimedium galore! A miniature maidenhair fern is setting out a substantial miniature crown. Columbines are rampant. I must remove half of them - after they bloom.

The tiny Japanese poppy has flowered. Some other as yet nameless surprises are poking up.

The Diablo Ninebark is a glorious dark fountain in the garden's centre.

I have to decide whether to get rid of the strawberries or let them take over everywhere.

Now the bad news - my wisteria is dead. ::sob:: Three years of lovely growth over my pergola. Hardy hanging blooms right from year one. I watch. I wait. I scratch bits of bark and note the green underneath. But nothing grows. Hubby expresses concern. We follow the trunk down to its roots and see that there it is split right up the middle. Can it be wrapped? I don't know. But I'm pricing new ones.

Locust in Bloom

Let me just draw your attention to the late-budding locust trees. Upon dark wood, mustard yellow foliage pushes out, looking, from the ground, like small downy feathers; in eye-catching harmony with all the surrounding Spring green.

Spring Rain

Off our second floor bedroom is a deck. Really it's the flat roof of the garage, but with a nice wooden floor, we think of it as a deck, though it's proved to windy to enjoy for long.

But rain is another matter.

There is an aluminum roof over the deck - brown and white - an untarnished awning. When it rains, I enjoy nothing more than to sit on my bed in the half-light and listen to the rain pound the awning. Even a gentle fall produces a steady resonant drumming.

There is a clothesline out there. When we first moved in, I was inclined to remove it, but at the first rain, I saw that birds, mostly white-throated sparrows sought its refuge.

And there they were today. Thunder, lightning, a driving duo of rain and hail, and four anxious sparrows staying dry.