Profligate Nature

This morning, I swept the maple flowers from our back deck (again).  I am constantly amazed by just how much organic matter this tree produces and then ditches.  We're talking several pounds of plant bits.  Give a tree some air and water and see what it'll do.  It's incredible.  

And, let's be honest, a little irritating.  I have no doubt that our neighbours find it more so.  There really is a lot of gunk falling from the trees at the moment.  It can look like a light rain if the wind is just right.  Soon the tree-dropping season will turn into the tree-leafing season which won't be too long before the seed-dropping season.  That's the most wonderful time of the year.  I loves them helicopters, and Chutney the cat can't get enough of them, either.

Seeds

We went to the seed store today to get plot supplies.  It's been absolutely stunning weather here for a few days and the time to get seeds in the ground is most definitely now.  We might have gone a little overboard, but seeds are cheap and there were so many appealing ones.  

We've got "North Holland Bloodred Redmate" and "Tokyo long white bunching" onions, arugula, "Long White Icicle" and "Early Scarlet Globe" radish, "Improved Tendergreen Bush" beans, some fresh mesclun mix and an optimistic "Early One" broccoli.  No beets or peas or potatoes this year, most likely.  They didn't have seed potatoes of the kind we like best.  We've never had luck with peas (or anything that needs staking, actually ... it's just not our way).  The beets I may miss, but I think this year, I'll just buy lots at the market and let them use their garden space.  We'll plant radishes instead.

 The lettuce we planted a while ago has come up in a few sad sprouts but the onions are non-starters.  Too bad. 

 

I am not sure when we'll take the time to put these seeds in.  Soon, I hope.

What Valley?

The lily of the valley is putting out buds.  I took a picture which looks like a doctored photo.  It's not.  That (single) set of buds is the real deal.  

  

Envy

I'm suffering from lungwort envy.  Everyone else's is tall and blooming.  Mine isn't.  Mine is pretty much as it was when last we discussed it.  A couple of leaves in a couple of places.   I think I won't be seeing any flowers from it this year.  

Popping In

I can't let a full week go by without adding something.  Lots of things are blooming.  The side looks great (I think).  I am busy and not up to much gardening.  I am ashamed of leaving things to slide.  I do not wish to document my negligence.  However, a week is a long time for me to leave this blog unwritten.  

In front, there is a pair of yellow tulips.   They are true yellow with a few brushes of red right at the edges.  The sweary one calls these "mustard and ketchup".   I don't remember these tulips from previous years, but they really must have existed in the past.  I certainly didn't put them in new last fall.

In the side, the wonderful old-style tulips right at the south end are all out.  I think there are more this year than there were last year.  This makes me tremendously happy.  I love these.  I wish I could remember their name.  I did plant them, I think, in an early year. 

The tulips I planted last fall are out now.  The "blue" (amiable blue) aren't blue at all.  Note the difference between the blueberry-juice colour of the tulips and the actual blue of the house.  I'm not complaining (much).  It's a wonderful colour.  It's deeper than shows up in pictures.  

The other tulips were Cairo and billed as gold.  I think that's a reasonable description of that colour.  I also think that they work well with the house colours.   I should remember all of those bits of red and keep these flowers away from pinks.  

I am happy with the tulips.  There is a variety.  They're lasting well.  After the first theft, they seem to be sticking it out.  It's a good time to be looking at the garden.  I wish I had more time and inclination to make it nicer.  

C & E?

Many years ago, before we moved to Halifax, we thought maybe it was time to give up on the Christmas cactus for good.  It hadn't bloomed in some time, we were planning to move, and it's not a small plant; not easy to transport.  But it comes from a cutting from my great-grandmother's plant which sat in a bay window in her house and grew to fill the entire space.  It's got sentimental claims, if nothing else.  

That was the occasion  on which I learned that threats do work on houseplants.  The cactus, threatened with destruction, sent forth a stream of bright blossoms (although it was Easter, not Christmas).   It got a reprieve.  Instead of trying to move it, we entrusted it to the care of some friends.   The next time we went through Hamilton we picked up the cactus and brought it home with us.  It has bloomed reliably every year since I made those cruel threats.

It has lived up to its name, too.  It started blooming at Christmas time, and in fact put forth an absolutely dazzling display this year. 

I don't know what to make of this new blossom, but it's very pretty.   It's been coming on slowly but between yesterday

and today it's burst out into a lovely triple-barrelled display.  It's neither C nor E, so I guess this cactus has some other religious affiliation.   I wonder what it is?

Passage of weeds

After my last few posts, one might imagine that everything out right now is pink.  However, the weeds are not.  The dandelions are up and starting to flower (must tackle them seriously at the plot).  They're not at anything like their peak.  I think I've seen a couple of proper dandelion clocks, but basically they are just starting to make some lawns yellow.  In the bit of waste land on the way to work, the coltsfoot are over and now a sort of bamboo-like bush is growing.  I don't know what it is, but it grows like gangbusters. 

Flowering

The shrubs in the back yard are starting to bud out.  They could be so pretty, but I don't treat them right and I do resent the way they suck any possibility of light out of that little patch.  Ah, well.  If I squint at them just right with the blue of the house behind them they sort of look like cherry blossoms.  

Clash

I remember now about these tulips.  Last year they were out at the same time as the orange-gold bulb irises and they clashed horribly.  

These white-rimmed pink ones, between the bulb iris patches, will presumably also clash with the golden orange irises when they emerge.  

These guys, next to the daffodils, are lovely, but not exactly perfectly matched side by side. Two of them have more orange than the other two.  Generally, I am in favour of pink and orange as a vibrant colour combo, but I think I might have to be a little bit more careful about tulip bulb positioning in the future.

I should remember this and move some bulbs next year.  Or cut them right away so that they don't have a chance to interfere with their neighbours.  But that does go against my philosophy.  

Spring: Officially Here

Actually, spring has been here officially since last Thursday, May 7.  That was the opening day for the Halifax Public Gardens (on Spring Garden Road ... we take these things seriously, you know).  

We walked through the gardens on our way to work on Thursday and that was pleasant even though they still had a lot of work left to do.  There were many empty beds.  There were also magnificent tulips, dramatic fritillaries (with the hats) and eye-poppingly bright alliums.  

On Sunday, we re-visited the gardens and found that they'd put in tulips.  Some of the previously empty beds now had new tulips on the cusp of opening.  Now I know:  They don't leave the bulbs in for the winter and risk uneven grids or that "missing tooth" look in the formal beds.  They wait for spring and then transplant them. 

 Anyway, the opening of the gardens is a wonderful confirmation of what the trees, grass, and budding flowers are trying to tell us:  SPRING HAS SPRUNG!

Splash of colour

The tulips, in various shades of bright pink, really bring the flower garden together.  They make it sing.   Even in the washed-out pictures I took this morning, I think that splash of red makes a world of difference.  

I am very much looking forward to meeting these tulips which aren't yet out.   I don't know what colour(s) they'll be, but so far it's exciting.

I am hoping against hope that all the tulips make it through mother's day unmolested and unstolen. 

Springing Tree

I keep meaning to say that the maple tree is in full bud.  It's beautiful, but I must admit that I am dreading the coming fall of the flowers.  It means a lot of sweeping for us.  

The budding of the tree in front is just beginning.  

Tickled pink

After weeks of me thinking that the tulips would be blooming "soon", the first tulips finally opened today.  Hooray.

Pink

Just a quick one to mention that the hyacinth in the front yard has flowered.  It is pink.  The day after it first came out, I found it plopped face down in the dirt.  Maybe it's something about the temperature?  It has since righted itself, but it is generally downward-looking.  Its blue buddies are fallen on the pavement.

Shrub love

I have never really been responsible for shrubs before, and the ones we have growing in various spots in our garden are not well-pruned and showered with affection.  They are occasionally hacked at, root and twig.  

I have killed at least two of them.

However, I must admit that it pleases me to see that some of them aren't dead (yet).  The white-rimmed shrub is coming along nicely with plenty of new growth.  

The shrubs on the front side of the house (destined to have mint planted beneath them) are both obligingly putting out new leaves.

I like the way the spring green and the red branches look against our blue walls.

Even the sad skeletal shrub next to the rhododendron is putting out a new speck of green here and there.  It's probably on its last legs.  I think it gets icy gutter run-off when systems aren't working perfectly.

Drifting Snowdrops

The snowdrops are dramatically spread out in time.  There are some just barely pushing out of the earth.  There are some still unopened, but looking like they might yet bloom soon.

And then, there are some that are past blooming and are now bearing fruit.  

I love how very berry-like the fruit is.

I also love the thought of there being snowdrop seeds within.  You can go right ahead and propagate yourselves, little plants.  I don't mind.

Showing up

Another plant I've recently started to see popping out of the dirt in the front is the lily of the valley.  There are little red horns coming up in the place I would expect to find it, based on pictures from last year.  

There are some horns which are less red, and I wonder if they belong to the wayward calla lily or if it's another stage of the lily of the valley.  

Either way, I am glad to see these making their way up and I look forward to finding out what they are.

Weeds, maybe

I was pulling up weeds yesterday morning when my old optimism came to call.  

I remembered that when I was cleaning up last fall, the marigolds were spewing seeds about the garden willy-nilly.  It would not be crazy for those seeds to be emerging about now.  So, halfway through the weeding, I stopped pulling up things that looked like this:

The marigolds that I grew from seed last year had much longer first leaves before the true leaves came in, but it's a pretty good match.  Good enough for me to wait a little while before I yank 'em, anyway.  

I kept ripping out anything that looked like clover.

I kept ripping out anything that looked like wild carrot.

I kept ripping out these little guys which start with three bluish leaves. 

I kept ripping out these little guys (which are the ones I initially mistook for alyssum).  They're everywhere.  

I also tore up every maple I could find and things that were definitely grass.  I left things that might be baby bulbs.  

The Dirt on the Plot

We went to the plot this afternoon to work in all that soil we got at the seed store yesterday.  The nice can-do woman (whose name might be Heather or Susan or neither and I can't remember for the life of me) was there with a couple of companions.  They were digging down about a foot of soil from their plot and piling it onto a big tarpaulin.  Once they'd dug it all out, they produced 7 or so garbage bags filled with kelp, dumped them into the plot and spread it all out as evenly as possible.  Then they shovelled all of the removed soil back on top.  They raked the top layer even and they were done.  Amazing.  The whole operation was done smoothly and quickly.  

In the meantime, the sweary one and I used the local flat-bottomed spade (like a trenching shovel) and our own pitchfork walked from home (not as bad as I thought it would be) to turn over the soil in the top foot of our plot, working in the new black earth and seaweed mulch we picked up yesterday.  The sweary one finished off with the local rake (much more effective than it looked like it would be) and now our plot looks (and probably is) ready to take seeds.

We planted a couple of short rows of lettuce (having turned over the patch where we planted seeds on Monday) and three short rows of spring onions.  I am not at all certain about the age of these seeds, so I think I'll do the viability test with them.  If they're duff, I'll get new packages some time this week.

Seed store

We went to the seed store yesterday, mostly to pick up some good rich earth to put into our plot.  We also picked up some plants.  

There is a yellow daylily.

There is a coreopsis (also yellow).

There is a hosta.

There is a white delphinium.

There is a bright pink primula which goes very well with the colour of the house, I think.  

Most of the work we will be doing today will be to work that good rich soil down at the plot, but I hope to get these guys into the ground in various positions in our flower garden, too.  

Disappointment

The daffodils are so lovely right now that they are being stolen.  

Look at that!  Someone took a knife to it.  It wasn't some child passing by whose parents didn't arrive in time to tell it not to pick the flowers.  This was a deliberate theft.  It's such a disappointment.  It leaves me completely bummed out to find fewer stalks in the morning than there were the previous day.  

As they are, the flowers can be enjoyed by everyone, and that of course includes the woman who bought and paid for the bulbs, planted them, nourished them, pulled away the weeds nearby and did all that she could to make them nice.  Once they've been cut they start to die and they can't be enjoyed by anyone any more.  

I must say I'm very misanthropic at the moment.

Further intrigue

I mentioned in passing that there is another mystery plant, by the hostas.

I have started to wonder if it could possibly be the brunnera, somehow transplanted through all that destructive digging I did last year.  I can't quite bring myself to believe it, even though I think the leaves are a pretty good match to the pictures I have from the plant last year.  It looks like the brunnera, but a) the brunnera looks like it has leaves that come out of the stem in pairs and this guy comes up in singles

.... and b) I planted the brunnera in the sunny patch in front of the rhododendron and this guy is up behind the hostas.  There was nothing there last year (as this crappy picture shows). 

Of course, any of my speculations should be taken with a grain of salt.  For some time yesterday, I managed to convince myself that the polka-dotted leaves which are exactly like those belonging to pulmonaria, (such as it is photographed online, anyway) were the calla lily I planted last year.  You may say I'm a dreamer.  

Colours

I am happy with the variety of daffodils we have out at the moment.  There are more on the way, but I already like the white and yellow and variations in between.  

I also very much like the way that the grape hyacinths and daffodils are out at the same time.  That's good colour interaction in my book.  

Plus,  I think both compliment the new colour of the house well.  I'd hate to find a lot of clashing between the garden and the house.  

Bye-ya!

The hyacinths in the side are starting their decline.  Yesterday, they were leaning into the sidewalk and house like insouciant youth.  Today (which is much colder) they are a little bit more upright, like their grape hyacinth friends.  I love the way the grape hyacinths look like 18th-century wigs.  Sadly, not even the grape hyacinths looking so good can stop the inevitable decline of the hyacinths.

In stark contrast, the hyacinth in the front yard is still barely out of the ground, let alone in bloom or declining.

Maybe I should get more hyacinths for next year, too.  

Beautiful Fritillaries

The fritillaries are starting their serious blooming.  I think I'll get more for next year.  They are very nice.  I wish, though, that they were all coloured.  The first to bloom, while elegant enough, is a bit dull:

...compared to what it could be: