the planting season starts

It's only the end of February, but my gardening juices are flowing.  Yesterday I was shopping for grass seed for a Master Gardener assignment when I came upon these beauties.  5 callas for only $10!  Count me in.
When I got them home, they sure didn't look anything like the picture.  Knobby, brown, sad-looking lumps is what you get.

And it's hard to know which end is up.  If you look closely, one side is fairly smooth, while the other has more going on - lumps on top of lumps, which are the growing tips.  It's that end up.

Calla are big plants, and need space to grow.  I plant each one separately in a 6-inch pot.  Add damp potting soil to the pot, pack it down so that the level is 4 inches below the top, press the bulb into the soil, and fill the pot with soil.  Water so that soil is damp.

Callas are tropical plants, and need warmth. My callas go on top of the furnace, where they get bottom heat until they produce their first shoot.  Then I bring them out into a sunny window, where they grow and wait until there is no danger of frost (June 1-5 on PEI) and then they go outside.  The flowers are beautiful, and satisfying because they last a long time. The leaves are nice too - shiny dark green with white speckles.

After the pots spent three weeks on the furnace, I brought them out into the light when the shoots broke the surface.  This picture is 5 weeks after planting.  The interesting thing is that although they were planted at the same time and have been grown under the same conditions, the shoots are growing at very different rates.  I will keep tabs on the rate of growth for each colour of flower.

After spending a month in a sunny window, the rewards are flowing!  Here is the first calla to flower.

It's a beautiful thing!  The other plants are showing signs of flowers to come.  It is really fun to watch the progresss of this plant, and I look forward to the other colours that will pop up.

it's a marshmallow world in the winter....

We are having perfect snowy days with bright blue skies and fluffy gobs of snow that look like dabs of whipped cream. 

This flowering crab is flowering with cotton balls.

This garden chair has been upholstered with cold white fluff.  It's probably more comfortable now than it will be in summer!

singing the blues

The bluejays were riding out the storm yesterday and brightened up all that winter white.

the colours of winter

Winter might seem to be a lot of grey and white, but that background just helps the tiny dashes of colour to pop. These red rosehips and stems have been hiding in plain sight - the birds haven't found them yet.

The grey and white landscape can be good camouflague for those wanting to hide.

getting through the winter

We all have our ways of getting through the winter. When I'm not huddling inside waiting for the cold days to go by, I try to get out and do a bit of cross-country skiing, listening to the birds singing, and checking out the light sparkling off the snow. The animals around me seem to really know how to spend the winter in style.

This is Whitey, our third cat - the one we never planned for. He adopted us last summer, hanging around and being adorable. We tried to resist, but he bounced in and captured our hearts.

Here he is sitting up on the corner of the deck, right beside a piece of driftwood. Every morning, I put peanuts in the grooves of the wood for the bluejays. I guess Whitey is thinking he will grab himself some breakfast just when the birds are grabbing theirs!

This is a lovely downy woodpecker who visits the suet block every day. Here he seems to be playing with the snow, flicking it around just for the fun of it. We are sometimes lucky enough to see a beautiful flicker visiting the feeder. It's a larger woodpecker - brown, with a white belly spotted with black, and a red crest behind his head. But he is gone in a flash, and I have never had a chance to get a picture.

Here is a recipe for home-made suet that the woodpeckers, chicadees, and bluejays just love:

melt together: bacon fat, peanut butter and lard and then mix in cornmeal, whole wheat flour, peanuts, raisins, and sunflower seeds. Pour into the plastic suet containers saved from the ones you have purchased. Freeze till ready to use. I always think this is better for the birds than the bought stuff.

Gardening in the winter:

Check out this beautiful amaryllis! Even when the weather outside is frightful, you can still watch things grow and bloom. It makes me realize that spring is just around the corner.. Well, maybe the corner is far away, but we'll get there!

This is how Avery the cat chooses to get through winter: stretching out on a sunny windowsill, while the snow and cold is left outside.