Trimming The Tree

This summer will be nine years since we moved to this house. The Kentucky Coffee Tree was one of the first to be planted in the new garden. This Carolinian tree will live for a hundred years and grow up to one hundred feet in height. So, a branch veering off at only seven feet seemed wrong. At some point it would have to be pruned. Better to do it now when the scar will be small than later when a larger wound would have to be made.

It was a simple job involving only my husband and his sven saw. Here goes:

Winter Primula

You can't keep a determined plant down. One week of warmer January weather and out pops a primula. Hope it survives this weekend's cold snap.

What's Left Over

It's late fall. Even with this year's unseasonably warm afternoon temperatures edging towards 10C, Nature still follows its heart. Flowers shed their petals. Seed pods ripen and burst. The money plant's papery remains are one of the most unusual in the garden.

Only the hardiest leaves cling. This oak leaf hydrangea provides the last of the bright colours.

Less animals scurrying about at night gives the moss time to recover.

One last walk through the back garden begins here.

Here's the front corner, almost one colour, not green not brown not bare.

Every Garden Needs a Guardian

What's in Bloom?

After four years, Wisteria is having its best year covering half my pergola.


Doublefile Viburnum holds its lush branches out to offer these beautiful flowers.


Mertensia, Virginia Bluebells, peeps out from under the viburnum.


Here it is, the Chocolate Vine, Akebia quinata, that ate my fence. I had no idea this would happen. I'm still charmed by its delicate leaves and even more subtle flowers, but that could change if it starts to strangle my shrubs.


Here's a Chocolate Vine flower.


I thought my Kerria had died, so I moved it to a sunnier spot and voila!


I love the tiny ballet slippers of Solomon's Seal. Also, the plant reminds me of the old gardener, now passed, from whom I bought my first clump.


Soapwort. The sections that have seeded in my patio are even nicer than the main plant.


An early flowering White Clemaits climbing an old plum tree.

Full On Spring

Take a walk down the path to my garden.


Ferns begin to unfold.


Snakeroot reaches for the sun.


The bees seek out the earliest nectar.


Pasqueflower is bold and full.


Trillium for my Canadian home.

When The Sun Finally Warms Us

Two crows cawing and gamboling from one branch at the maple's peak to another until they find one that sways but doesn't bend under both their weights.

The red capped house finches flitting around the feeder for hours before one alights and then another and then they gorge.

Pistils lengthen, forcing the petals to reveal each gradation of colour.

It's the hunger season and I've got extra feeders.

Scattering Seeds

It's still too cold to do anything but putter in the garden, so putter I did. Where the leaves looked matted, I gently stirred them. The ground underneath had shrunk and there was a tidy air pocket for sprouting. I needn't have worried about plants smothering. As well, stiffer sprouts like Solomon's Seal and the Spring bulbs were already pushing through the blanket of leafy mulch. Plants know what to do. Best to just leave them to it.

Nonetheless, it's not Spring if seeds aren't scattered, so I picked the fluffy tops off the Asters, cracked the pods on the Turtleheads and ended up with a handful of seeds. I pressed these into gaps between the bulbs. Now I sit back and hope for a success or two.

Let's Get Started

The sun is absolutely shining. I am desperate to lift or at least shuffle around the layer of leaves protecting my beds and see what's happening under there.
Is it too early to lift the mulch? I think it might be. The frost is still in the ground and the forecast nighttime lows are still zero-ish. Darn.
Guess I can pick up the dog mess and hunt for greenery for another week.

Welcome Spring to the Garden

The Witch Hazel is in bloom. It's late but hugely uplifting after this cold, endless winter.

Feels Like Spring

Yesterday's raucous rocketing temperatures, eighteen Celcius, melted most of the remaining snow on my north-facing garden. I'm desperate for the sun to rise. I want to get out there and pick away at frozen mulch, not removing it but separating the leaves so that the Spring bulbs can think about nudging through to the sun.

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.