back after a long time away

Not sure exactly why it's been such a long time since I made a blog entry.  Life kinda got in the way.  I taught a gardening class this winter, and it took so many hours of computer work to get ready for each session, that, on top of full-time work, I just didn't have time for anything else.  But I'm going to do my best to get back into it.

A few months ago, I took a picture of one of my pet peeves - winter tomatoes.  They are usually woody and  tasteless, but this is ridiculous - actual slivers of what appears to be wood sticking out of a tomato!

Those splinters would have choked any unsuspecting salad eater!  And it looks so pretty on the outside!  The lesson:  buy the more expensive heritage tomatoes that are becoming more popular in the stores, or just wait until summer.  Who are we to think we can have tomatoes in February anyways?

It has been a great year for bird sitings at the feeder on my deck.  Ravens, grossbeaks, redpolls, mourning doves, finches, sparrows, along with the peanut-loving bluejays and the nasty starlings that just sit and stuff themselves with suet and can go through an entire cake of it in one day.  Didn't see a single downy woodpecker, but a huge northern flicker dropped in once or twice.  Complicating matters this year was our new cat - young, energetic, and determined to make a meal out of as many pretty birds as possible.  He lurks on the chairs pushed under the bird feeding table and pops up at birds just trying to get breakfast, like he already had.  So I have come up with a great idea - I have pushed away all the chairs, so that he no longer has the advantage of surprise.

white-winged grossbeaks

The redpolls are really tame.  They arrive in a flock, and don't seem to be rattled by the approach of the cat or by me.

red poll peeking over the railing

So now I need to get outside and gather some more material for my next post.  And it will be sooner rather than later!

travels abroad

In July, my husband and I visited Switzerland and Italy.  Italy was much as I had expected - beautiful architecture, but bleak countryside (at least what I could see from the train.)  But Switzerland was green, mountainous, and full of beautiful plants.  Here are some pictures to prove it:

Zurich has a river running through the middle of the city, which drains into Lake Lucerne.  You can walk for miles in the shade of big plane trees.  The many churches all have clock towers.  The cobbled streets hold many beautiful fountains, with water cold and clean enough to drink. 

An edible garden in Lucerne.  Sage around the outside, swiss chard, mint,  peppers, and fennel in the middle.  These veggie gardens are every bit as pretty as flowers.

After visiting Castle Chillon, we walked 45 minutes along the shores of Lake Geneva to Montreaux.  Along the way were stuning flower beds, beautiful mansions, and mountains in the distance. 



Another view of the walking path to Montreaux.



A huge fountain in Geneva



Pollarded plane trees on the streets of Geneva.  The branches are cut to prevent the trees from reaching their full height.  In the summer when they leaf out, they form perfect balls of green leaves.  I'm sure they are not as pretty in the winter, when those monstrous knobby branches are revealed.



where the mushrooms grow

This is the Woodlands trail at Prince Edward Island National Park.  Today I intended to walk the 4-km trail briskly, to get some much-needed exercise, but I was totally distracted by the many kinds of mushrooms and other fungus along the way.  My brisk walk turned into a dawdle, but check out the beauties I found.

 Look closely under the cap to see what's eating it.

This bright yellow mushroom has a visitor - a slug is making a meal of it.

phantom webworms and a gall

Webworms - at least I think that's what they are - have invaded my poor sumacs.  The trees grew particularly well this year, even with the drought, and have produced a large number of new plants, which are growing into a thicket much more attractive than bare grass.  But the tips of each branch is disfigured by grey, curling, dead leaves bound together with webs.  I haven't seen any actual worms (caterpillars), but there are also long webby strings attached from one tree to another.

I snipped off all the affected tips, put them in a bucket, and covered them with a mix of dish soap and water. I hope that kills the little buggers.

Here is another interesting find:

I really don't know what this is - fungus, or a gall, which is a home for an insect in the process of growing into an adult. It's pale green with a rosy tinge near the base where it is attached to the sumac stem.  Kinda pretty in an otherworldly way.  I'll keep an eye on it and report back!

garden weeds

Weeds come in a remarkable variety of shapes and sizes.  But one thing is for sure.  We will never get rid of them all.  Their seeds can hide in the ground for many years, just waiting for us energetic gardeners to turn the soil and expose them to light so that they can germinate.  Many send out runners above ground (hawkweed) or below ground (sheep sorrel - the worst weed offender in my garden).  Others have roots so deep and persistant that they will produce a new plant from a tiny bit remaining in the ground.
Here are some of the weeds I deal with:

This is everybody's favourite - dandelion.  The plant itself lives for many years, and produces hundreds of seeds every year.  It blooms in spring, slows down in the summer, and then blooms and produces another crop of seeds in the fall.  It's best to pull this guy after a rain, when the ground is soft enough to get the whole long root.  Any root pieces left in the ground will produce a new plant, and a new headache for us.

This type of grass forms a clump which has courser, lighter-coloured leaves which stick out like a sore thumb.  The only remedy is to dig out the whole clump and re-seed with lawn seed.

Hawkweed makes up a huge percentage of my lawn.  It puts out runners which creep across the vegetable  garden and flower beds.  The yellow flowers and the seed heads look very much like dandelions.

Lamb's quarters, often afflicted by leaf miners, have more vitamin C and other nutrients than many of the vegetables we grow on purpose.

Another distiction - when is it a weed and when is it a wildflower?  This is jewelweed, which produces lovely orange spotted flowers that hummingbirds love.

Queen Anne's Lace, a wild relative of the carrot, brightens up a drainage pipe.  This plant is always alive with insects taking nectar from the flowers.  I always spare a few to pretty up a bare spot.

volunteers in the garden

Is it a volunteer or is it a weed?  When it's a plant in the wrong place, there is a fine line between the two. 
 A volunteer is a garden plant that has spread by seed or underground runner and has popped up in an unexpected place.  A weed is just that - unwanted and unloved.  With volunteers, I hesitate before I pull them out, because their effect can be unexpectedley lovely.

I never could have purposely planted this apple mint between the cracks of this retaining wall and had it flourish.  But that's exactly what it did on it's own.

This pumpkin is a volunteer that sprang from a seed from a volunteer pumpkin that appeared in my garden last year. Welcome back!

When putting together my containers, I ran out of purchased soil, and topped off this container with soil from the garden.  Out popped a tomato seed that had waited all winter in the cold ground. 



I planted one sumac a few years ago.  Now they are popping up all over the lawn.  I hope to have a mini forest soon.  They are easy to snip off if they become too many to be a good thing.





Volunteers are not always a good thing.  This is a sunberry seedling, full of flea beetle holes, but thriving.  Three years ago, I started sunberries indoors from seed, carefully planted them outside, and was rewarded with a bountiful harvest of black berries that tasted awful.  And I have been pulling out seedlings ever since.  





  



The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago

The next best time to plant a tree is today!  One of my norway maples died, and after wrestling with a hand saw to cut it down, I figured it was a perfect time to plant something a whole lot more fun and interesting.  Buying a tree in August means there is not a lot of selection left.  But I was happily surprized to find a bunch of Sunburst Thornless Honeylocust (Gleditsia triacanthos var. inermis 'Suncole').  These trees are quite graceful, and their branches droom artfully.  
Being August, the trees were not in the best shape, and with much hemming and hawing, I picked the least damaged specimine.  We stuffed the pot between the front seats, and the top branches hung out the back of the car.  Covered in plastic to reduce wear and tear, we got it home. 
Water well while still in the pot, so that the water leaks out the bottom.  Cut off any bushy growth at the base of the tree or anywhere you don't want a branch to form.  
Picking a location for a new tree isn't easy, because you know it will be something to look at for many years to come.  I picked a spot beside the stump of the old tree.  I marked out a circle about 3 feet in diameter, stripped off the soil, and started to dig.  With so little rain this year, the soil was like concrete.  The digging was a slow process.   
The hole should be as deep as the pot, and at least twice as wide.  Set the tree in the hole and lay a shovel across to determine if the depth is level with the base of the tree.  Then loosen the soil in the bottom of the hole, fill it half full of water, and let it drain.  Gently pop the roots out of the pot (this might take some doing), tuck the tree into the hole, and if it was pot bound, loosen the roots.  Set the tree so its best side is facing the way it will be seen.  Water the hole again, put half the soil back in the hole, tamp it down, water again, and add more soil.  Don't amend the soil with good stuff, because the roots will not want to travel away from the rich soil, and the tree won't become well established. 
Top off the planting with mulch to keep the soil moist.  Support the tree for the first year.  After I got it planted, I noticed that I missed trimming a dead branch.  Now that it's in the ground, it's too high to reach.  Since it has been so dry here, I make sure to give the tree a gallon of water every day.  It looks pretty scraggly, but I'm pleased with the result.