Monday, 29 April 2024 at home We’d had much rain overnight. I weeded vigorously. Skooter helped in his usual hindering way. When he rested, he chose a spot that was right on top of my target weeds. …and didn’t move while I weeded around his legs. Finally, he gave me some room. I dug out a lot of elephant garlic from under the Cox’s Orange Pippin apple tree, where it had flopped all over in the shade and was not at all attractive. I must have planted it when the tree was small and not much of a shade caster. The tree is blooming now. Then I sat in some light rain and cut the bulbs off of ..read more

Sunday, 28 April 2024 at home I am pleased to report that I have celery sprouting from the kitchen windowsill six packs. I have never grown it before and will have to read up on its idiosyncracies. And I have tomatoes and cucumbers, which I hope don’t get too leggy because it won’t be till around the 12th that I can move them into the greenhouse. The dogwood outside the kitchen window: The rhododendron in Allan’s garden is shedding its flowers. Last year my next door neighbour planted a bit of this golden sedum around an old stump in her back yard. I did some vigorous weeding despite bein ..read more

Friday, 26 April 2024 (mostly) at home During a Thursday of writing blog posts and reading, we had an unexpectedly dry day. We’d had a lot of very welcome rain yesterday and overnight. It was such a relief to not have to worry about watering. Allan took the opportunity to mow the lawn at the J Crew Cottage and to do a quick weeding of the front garden. J Crew Cottage front garden …and then, at my request, he dug up a big libertia that had reseeded in an awkward place by the front garden hose hanger. I spent the next couple of hours making three big square flats of assorted sizes of the plant ..read more

Thursday, 24 April 2024 at home I pruned an enormous pale pink Fuchsia magellanica with our tiny rechargeable chainsaw, cutting off some arching branches that had beautifully survived and leafed out after the cold winter but were now shading out some lilies and a metapanax that I want to show off. Although I loved the arching form, it could not be allowed. The area also has a rampant climbing rose which I don’t remember planting and which had to be cut back from swamping the metapanax and lilies. If it is the white one that I call Maxine’s rose (after the beloved late client from whom I got a ..read more

Wednesday, 24 April 2024 at home We had had rain overnight, what a relief! I ignored its perfection as reading weather because I have a lot of garden projects on my mind. I decided my plant (and garage) sale (which will be Memorial Day weekend along with the “World’s Longest Garage Sale”) needed a few more plants so I spent most of the afternoon potting up two colours of Geranium macrorrhizum, enjoying the pine-scented foliage, and assorted this and that starts that I got while doing a bit of weeding. I ended up doing this planting during a couple of hours of light, windless, not too cold and ..read more

Tuesday, 23 April 2024 at home Allan went boating, which will be tomorrow’s post. I spent the afternoon planting veg seeds in the fish totes, not my favourite thing. These: Between rows of mustard, chard, lettuce, and beetroot (one of my favourite veg to grow), I planted radishes from a number of old packs of seeds. I have a hard time throwing old seeds out, so it is an experiment to see if any of them germinate. I have only found success growing radishes in the fish totes; in the ground, they get worm-eaten. I have to fish up an old photo to illustrate the totes (there are seven of them) bec ..read more

Knappa on the Columbia ..read more

Monday, 22 April 2024 at home Whilst puttering, I noticed, not for the first time, how one of my pipe planters was overshadowed by a very successful lavender. I decided to move the concrete pipe. After all, a group of three is better design that a group of four. The photo is “during”, at which time I asked Allan for help pulling the pipe out of the ground. I took it to the driveway garden on my rollator… …and found a broken paver slab to put under it so weeds won’t grow through. It is an experiment to see if wodging it into a tight place with a rock will keep it from falling over. I was then ..read more

Sunday, 21 April 2024 at home Yesterday evening, Allan had got down and filled the rest of the green jugs that had been hanging on a pole in the garage. It had been so dry that the birdbaths in the front yard, which I have been forgetting to check, are empty. Today I did some weeding and deadheading and puttering in the garden and appreciated late blooming narcissi. I like big flat orange cups, but my favourite kind of narcissus has tiny cups. I bought this collection from Van Engelen and I think I will buy it again. How ironic that I, a working class hero, should be buying a collection w ..read more

Saturday, 20 April 2024 The dogwood outside the kitchen window is having its moment of glory. On the windowsill, a tomato is emerging already, after only five days! See far right by re-used Annie’s tag. I bravely took a garden walk from front to back with cane instead of rollator and filmed a rather vertiginous video for you. It is a very shaky video (sort of embarrassingly bad!), probably because I was more anxious than I even knew about walking with a cane instead of a rollator. Nevertheless, at least for anyone whose curiosity is strong enough to endure, it can sort of explain how the gar ..read more