Northern Exposure Gardening

January Skies

2012-01-24T07:22:00.000-08:00

Yes, I haven't posted in a while. However, I plan to make this a great year for garden documentation and photography, eventually culminating in a photo book for myself to forever remember 2012 in my garden. I suppose my next tasks need to be buying seeds, buying some seed-starting mix, and gathering all the little pots from the shed.

What can I say about the yard? Snow, snow and more snow. Oh, and cold. If you try to keep up with the activity of the aurora borealis, you may have read about the massive sun storms going on since January 19th. I follow this forecasting website from Alaska. The forecast for northern lights is tonight is in the "extreme" range. I hear that the intensity of the sun storm is even causing havoc for satellites, precision GPS, high-altitude polar flights, and potentially for the international space station. Fortunately, we get to see some spectacular northern lights in return for all this solar violence. The lights should be visible as far south as New York City and North Dakota.

My significant challenge in taking photos of the northern lights is finding company. Not too many folks enjoy standing around outside in -25C, at night. Maybe I need to find the ice-fishing crowd and interest them in SLR cameras. Hmmm.

A November Butterfly?

2011-11-29T08:46:00.000-08:00

We left town for a few days this past week, noticing a butterfly sitting on the concrete floor of the partially-heated garage before we left. When we came back three days later, it was still sitting on the floor, though moving only minimally. Puzzled as to why there was a butterfly in our garage while we have a thick layer of snow outside, I decided to feed the butterfly a bit of fruit. It started moving a bit more, enjoying the pears and pineapple. Who knew a Saskatchewan butterfly would enjoy tropical fruit? Last night, I moved it into the kitchen for the kids to watch. My four-year old drew a picture of it, complete with a large smiley face. It now is feasting on Ceres mango juice, lemon, and bananas.

Online searching found that it is a Compton tortoiseshell butterfly and it is known to overwinter as an adult in a protected space. I am wondering what they usually eat over the winter? If it survives past watching our Christmas decorating in the next few days, we'll have to figure out where it can spend the rest of the winter. Perhaps hidden away in the summer shoes on the top shelf of the garage? Hmmm.

Before the Colors are Covered in Snow...

2011-10-30T16:21:00.000-07:00

We had snow for a day this past week, followed by a quick melt. The inevitable blanket will be coming soon. We hauled away the outdoor pots of annuals and stored the pots indoors (the cold/moisture is hard on them in winter). There is no need to wrap any shrubs this year, as we did away with the only remaining globe cedar (great decision!). Everything else should hold its own without too much coddling, as it should be.

Resident-lawnmower-man used his leaf sucking power tool to collect the leaves in the yard and produced a nice heap of leaf mulch. I got him to spread the mulch on the areas of the raised beds where the new lily and tulip bulbs are planted. I think that's a reasonable amount of coddling (because I like my flower bulbs a lot). With the addition of some snow, I am hopeful about their survival this winter. I plan to have a great mass of annuals (poppies, cosmos, zinnias) grow in this open space currently planted with bulbs, so that the annuals disguise the dying foliage of the bulb flowers.

Otherwise in outdoor activity, I have been excited about photographing the northern lights. With the aid of this website: http://www.gi.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast, you can get a day or two of notice about great auroral activity for the northern hemisphere. Outside of the technical photographic elements, there is a challenge of finding a spot without any lights where you can run to safety in the case of wild animals, and staying warm while standing by your tripod. In the case of scary animals, I have made mental plans on how I might use my tripod as a weapon. It's always good to have a plan.
One of my September northern lights photographs, taken near La Ronge:

Someone actually called the police to investigate on the night we took this photo. Apparently showing up at a beach at midnight seems suspicious. The police didn't think a couple of people with tripods and cameras looked suspicious at all, however.

Birds: Dazed and Confused

2011-10-27T19:33:00.000-07:00

Or perhaps, I could have titled this "Birds: Drunk and Disorderly." We had a hard frost about 10 days ago and the mountain ash tree's berries have increased their sugars, and are now fermenting. The birds gorge themselves on these tasty (to them, anyhow) berries and fall out of the tree. Several have also flown into our windows, with one fatality and several temporarily dazed individuals. I have asked RLM to get some decals for our large windows, but the larger problem of the week is that the birds are drunk! No drinking and flying, and the skies would be a safer place.

Fall Bulb Weekend!!

2011-09-30T22:18:00.000-07:00

My fall order of bulbs/corms/roots arrived today in the mail from Botanus, a mail order company from British Columbia. The post office staff were nice enough to bring the heavy box around to the loading dock, seeing that I probably wouldn't be able to haul it off to my car. That's right, I purchased only a "few" bulbs (though I believe I was not setting any records this year).
One of my favourite perennials: Bergenia's fall colors are starting to show:

I purchased quite a few daffodils, though I've had little success with them since the spring of 2009. I'm hoping the sheer bulk of them will produce at least a few blooms nice months (doesn't that seem like forever?) from now. My order also included some garlic for the herb/vegetable plot, as I found it an excellent deterrent for aphids this year.
Aster dumosus "Alert", a fall-blooming aster:

I am pacing myself with the bulb planting, having planted the minor bulbs today, avoiding the inevitable blistering of the palms thus far. My dear garden friend offered me the use of her electric bulb auger, but I rather enjoyed expending a few calories only to enjoy my supper even more. I used the small handheld bulb planter today, and will probably use the long-handled foot-driven one over the weekend.
Crocuses, Narcissi, Puschkinia, Tulips, and Iris danfordiae go into the flowerbed adjacent the driveway:

A dwarf columbine is reblooming for fall:

I need to take some more cuttings of plants I want to save, and a few lucky others get to move right on into the house. The short-lived herbs (parsley, cilantro) aren't worth bringing in, but I have already got seedlings for new plants started indoors under lights.
The rosemary was brought in for the winter, as it is a long-lived woody herb:

Otherwise, the composting worms got hauled out in the sunlight as I dug the composted product out of the bottom of the plastic bin. The flowerbeds are going to love this. I didn't bother with sorting through the finished compost to save all the worms, since few worms live at the bottom anyhow. They were mostly near the top, where most of the food was located. I have two of these worm bins and they almost have the capacity to hold most of our kitchen's compostable waste over the winter. Excess waste goes to the big pile outside, but I don't use that pile for compost in the garden, as we also throw our weeds in there. I do however get the occasional tomato, pepper, or squash growing out of this worm-compost material.
Worm bin and black composted organic material for the flower beds:

The outer bin collects the compost tea that seeps out of the moist material inside. It's a great liquid fertilizer and I threw most of it around my big rose bush. I highly recommend worm-composting and freely give my worms away to any interested gardener (not that you have to be a gardener, but really, who else would raise a colony of worms in their house?).

New Perennials and Shrubs

2011-09-10T06:27:00.000-07:00

Don't you love shopping for new things in the garden? Even if there aren't some glaring bare spots, it's always great to learn about new plants and just try out new things to keep the variety of plants interesting. In northern zones, the challenge is to find shrubs and perennials that will survive the winter. I was pretty pretty cautious in this year's new additions.

Among the annuals, this is a double-flowered morning glory, which only started blooming two weeks ago:

I had RLM pick up some Viburnum in Saskatoon in the past month, based on previous successes with our existing compact Viburnum trilobum, the highbush cranberry. It forms a nice dense ball of foliage and when it is mature, grows red berries in fall. The berries aren't great for eating, but birds feed on the berries in winter and the red clusters are attractive. I highly recommend this shrub. The fact that Viburnum trilobum is a native shrub in this area should also be a good clue that it is well-adjusted and happy here.
Compact variety of Viburnum trilobum (large shrubs on the left), with a pink-flowered Potentilla at center foreground:

Potentilla are common little shrubs, though the newer colors (pink, apricot, white) are nice and they bloom over a long period of time in the later half of summer. They are low-maintenance, with only minimal trimming needed in spring.

I have high hopes for newly planted Viburnum dentatum "Northern Burgundy":

I also got a Viburnum dentatum "Blue Muffin", which should fill out the back of the raised bed.

I bought my first ever Cimifuga recently, adding the hardy Cimifuga simplex "Brunette" to the large raised bed. It is tiny and hasn't quite developed its full color and the cluster of white flower spikes, but I will wait for that. In the meanwhile, I need to get rid of some of Siberian iris, which is blocking the view of this lovely perennial. However, digging those monster iris clumps out is too much like work!
Cimifuga simplex "Brunette":

My young Cimifuga simplex "Brunette":

I've posted photos of this new mum before, but it so lovely that I will post it again.
The "Morden Fiesta" Chrysanthemum:

As any cold-climate gardener may be aware, many great plants have come out of Morden, Manitoba's agricultural research station. The Morden mums come in a few colors and are said to be hardy to zone 4. We'll see if they survive the winter here. I'm believing they will.

Prompting another garden job, I grew weary of the drooping branches of the mountain ash, looking far too shaggy as it brushed against the perennials below.
Scraggly mountain ash tree:

We pruned the lower branches, which looks far better. It would look even nicer if we cut off some of the protruding upper branches too, but those tools are buried too far away in the shed and I'll leave it for another year. Here's a tip for anyone wanting to plant this tree -- it would be great over a lawn, but any soil or mulch underneath will end up growing hundreds of ash trees from all the fallen berries. It's a nuisance growing over the flower bed.

Fixing Invasion of the Groundcover

2011-09-01T09:21:00.000-07:00

I just love strawberry plants. The runners and the new little plants they make seem like such great bonuses! I would love to have a huge patch of them! Mine all lived through the winter this past year, thanks to the snow that insulated them. I'm pinning down a few runners from each plant to make new ones, though I will probably end up moving the new plants to new locations this fall or next spring.
Strawberry plant - day neutral type:

This next photo shows one of the year's most frustrating garden problems. We have a nice bank covered in a creeping sedum. It was invaded with a grass, which spread rapidly underground, moving rapidly over broad areas. Pulling it out by hand became futile and we finally resorted to glyphosate (Roundup), which RLM applied with a hockey stick to the tips of the grasses. This resulted in death to the grass and spared the sedum. I think I will now transplant little islands of sedum back into the dead grass patches, without pulling the dead grass out (which would leave loose soil ready to grow more weeds). Hopefully this will fill in next year.
Bank of sedum:

If Roundup ever becomes unavailable, I think I would need one of those garden-blowtorches, which would seem to be the other option for non-selective killing of a patch of noxious plants. It seems a bit ridiculous, but sometimes a spreading weed can make you lose your patience!
Double-flowered pink morning glory - very showy:

I am trying out a new direct-seeded annual each year, learning about their growth habits and successes in our climate. This next pink flower is a mauve-colored California poppy (which is technically not a poppy), which I direct seeded in some drier soil in a very sunny location. It is doing well. Next year, cosmos and zinnias!
California poppy:

Otherwise in the garden, I broke our only lawn sprinkler. I am contemplating a trip to the city, but the only highway south apparently has a bridge out-of-order due to a crack in a girder. This is a bit of a problem...we shall see.

Raised Bed Renovation

2011-08-22T08:56:00.000-07:00

After getting tired at looking at the scruffy, dry and brown remains of the mass of annual poppies in the center raised bed, I spent a significant amount of sweat and energy on transforming the bed this weekend. The poppies were pulled (thank goodness for a semi-rural property, where I literally toss plant matter into the adjacent bushes).
Center raised bed in July 2011, with poppies in place:

Perennials from around the yard were moved into the empty space. Several lilies were moved from their overcrowded and poorly visible locations to more prominent and sunny spots around the raised bed. Several small spireas and large siberian iris divisions were also added to create a nicely symmetrical and hopefully successful perennial bed. I will be adding tulip or daffodil bulbs in September, and maybe direct seeding with cosmos in spring.
Newly renovated bed, planted with divided and moved perennials:

Morden Mum -- a new plant in my center raised bed and part of the plan for more late summer color:

Clematis manschurica, a fragrant, low-climbing white clematis I started from seed:

Martha Washington geranium (Pelargonium) plant, grown from cuttings:

The above geranium produces such lovely flowers, but the Martha Washingtons seem a little less hardy than the common pelargoniums. My plants have been afflicted by some caterpillars that have been munching holes in the leaves and leaving droppings/eggs all over the place. I wonder if I would do better just growing these as houseplants, or in a greenhouse (if I had one).

Gentiana dahurica, a late-summer blooming gentian which has seeded itself to make a large patch of these lovely blue flowers that grow moderately tall but lean over lazily to sprawl around the flower bed:

Hardy geranium, "Rozanne":

In the other raised bed, I have been adding a top layer of peat and removing some volunteer plants, creating the appearance that the gardener is actually doing something around here...

Oriental hybrid lily, "Acapulco" - like all the Oriental lilies, it has a beautiful scent and I breathed deeply while taking the photo:

The alpine bed -- looking green, but that is including several weeds at the moment, as I am frustrated at the poplar shoots and other rapacious weeds:

I have even contemplated installing a large, spreading juniper (like Andorra) and letting it cover the whole thing. I do like the foreground Mugo Pine, though.

Late Summer Flower Color

2011-08-19T18:08:00.000-07:00

I did some work in the garden today, only to run inside when the rain started to soak my clothes. While the plants enjoyed the rain, the ever-rising local lake probably didn't need the extra water. All the beaches and low-lying land around here is covered in water and the flooding is likely to last another few weeks!
"Lime Bicolour" petunia I grew from seed this year -- I recall that this was an over-priced annual seed, but it claimed to be an exciting new hybrid, so...

Scabiosa caucasica are blooming now - nice to have the color, though the foliage on these can look a little weedy and messy:

Highbush cranberry (Viburnum trilobum) compact variety shrub now has pretty red berries developing on it. It took about 5 years for this shrub to finally produce the berries:

Aconitum napellus (Monkshood) produces impressive strong stems of blue flowers for August. I really must divide this one next year to spread the color around:

I made my annual tulip order yesterday, only to have the kind people from Botanus email me and ask if I intended to duplicate one of the items I made on an order a few months ago. I pretended not to be going senile and replied that I do need plenty of a particular daffodil. Therefore, yes, there should be a duplicate. It should be a big bulb-planting fall once my boxes of bulbs arrive! I aim for planting as soon as they arrive, by the end of September.
Sweet peas in my hanging basket -- such a sweet scent!

Strawberrries Saved, Rural Roots

2011-08-16T17:59:00.000-07:00

Finally, we have started to harvest the strawberries I so carefully planted last year. Up till a few weeks ago, some animal had been spiriting them away in the night, leaving us with nothing despite seeing many pink berries ripening on the plants. I solved the problem with some fine netting from Lee Valley Tools, which conveniently came to us in the mail. I suspect the squirrel, mostly because he stood and yelled squirrel-obscenities from the top of the fence as I covered the strawberries with the netting.
Netted strawberry plants:

Last month, we received a copy of Rural Roots magazine, a glossy publication exploring the lives of rural western Canada, including articles on gardening and nature. I enjoyed learning about all aspects of bison in the last issue, with everything from raising them to marketing them and selling the meat to high end restaurants. It was also of note because it included an educational article on raised beds, with an illustrative picture from my garden! It was funny, because it reminded me of all the reasons that raised beds are so great, including many points I hadn't thought about. Raised beds are great for northern Saskatchewan, where we have almost no soil and need to contain the soil and compost that we bring in.

Rural Roots Magazine:
http://ruralrootsmagazine.ca/ Check out the link. I think my farm-dwelling Saskatchewan in-laws would love this magazine.

Zone 1 Cherry Harvest!

2011-08-04T16:47:00.000-07:00

It was a good year for cherries in the north. Tart cherries, that is, and don't call them "sour" either, because the cold-climate cherry enthusiasts think "tart" sounds nicer. We planted our Carmine Jewel cherries about five years ago and this is the first year with a substantial cherry harvest. That being said, we only have 4 trees and the two in the shade of larger trees don't bear very much and one got major damage in the severe winter of 2009. Carmine Jewel is intended to be a zone 2 tree, so any cherries I get here are a bonus.
A nice little tree full of cherries:

Tart cherries are superior to sweet cherries in baked goods and I would certainly try growing these cherries again, even in a warmer climate.
The greater yield came with slightly smaller cherries this year:

Container zucchini is producing a fat one:

Nasturtium "Cobra" - a red-flowered nasturtium with unique purple-tinged leaves:

Have you eaten any nasturtium flowers yet? They make great additions to salads and have a spicy peppery-flavour. They are very simple to start from seed. I start mine indoors and plant out in June.
My mutant "Black Plum" heirloom tomato:

I don't remember where I got this tomato seed, but there has got to be something wrong with my plant. Though the leaves look healthy and it is making flowers, it seems to be determined to stay under 4 inches tall, producing dense curly foliage that looks more like creeping ground-cover than the description of a 6 foot tall indeterminate plant. What is the world is happening here?
Creeping tomato?

Blast of Annuals, Full Out Perennials

2011-07-16T18:16:00.001-07:00

I am counting down the plants that have finished blooms, like fireworks finished their show. It's frightening to see that most of them have or are blooming now, with few left to go!
Perennial bed, rock walls:

At this time of year, there is little soil to be seen, with plants pushing up against each other. This keeps weeds down, at the very least.

I grew these container annuals from seed and the color combination worked out better than I had imagined - White osteospermums and "Blue Morn" hybrid petunias:

The sloped bed rock garden is planted with a succession of perennials, with masses of Dianthus deltoides (pink flowers) and common thyme (lilac-colored flowers) forming a haze of color:

The lilies are starting their showy blooms - this one is the Asiatic lily "Lollypop", a nice bicolor bloom:

One of the many variations of color on the biennial Dianthus barbatus (Sweet Williams) that have strewn their progeny around my flower beds:

Winds and rain try to pull the delphiniums down, but they still tower over the perennial beds (and I need to get out there with more stakes):

The show of flower colors and excitement about our recent fantastic feast on swiss chard has led me to impulse purchases of seeds online. Oh no! That's supposed to be a gardener's winter activity. Perhaps I need to go and do more weeding instead...

We had a couple do some of their wedding photos in the yard today. Congratulations to them! It was the best excuse for some frantic lawn-mowing and edge trimming this morning.

Naturalizing Flowers and Beginners Zucchini

2011-07-12T19:23:00.000-07:00

Resident-lawnmower-man sawed down the winter-ravaged globe cedar a few weeks ago and left me with a stump. I was thinking about a blog-reader's comments and remembered that their roots are mostly a fibrous mat, so I got out there with a serrated plant knife and a spade and got the stump out. This left a bit of a hole in the driveway perennial border and not much to fill it with. Fortunately, we got out of town and picked up some peat moss, which will lighten the cow manure I already dumped in the hole. I planted a new little peony and a new Rozanne hardy geranium and filled in the rest with transplants from around the yard.
Here are the results:

I added some spiral vertical supports and the metal obelisk to support some clematis vines that previously grew on the sides of the cedar. I'm still not sure what else to do with them, as the Clematis mandschurica is mostly dangling in the breeze off the top of the spiral support posts.

This plant was hanging around in the border, but I don't know what it is. If it is a weed, it's being well-treated with fertilizer, cow manure, and regular watering.
Mystery plant:

I like to try new tomato varieties and felt the need to also grow an heirloom variety this year. "Black Plum" got set back by some cold weather in the first week of June (when I should have kept it indoors), but is now appearing to thrive, though with the most compact and congested growth habit I have ever seen in a tomato. It barely rises over the height of the side of the container, yet is starting to make flower buds.
"Black Plum" heirloom tomato:

Here's one I really like - the container zucchini! It is producing finger-sized zucchinis at this very moment. Now if only the pumpkin plants would do the same. I think the seed came from Thompson & Morgan, who has a selection of vegetables intended for containers. I still want to get "Tom Thumb" lettuce, but it was sold out this spring.
Container zucchini:

Among the group of self-seeding naturalizing annuals/biennials in the yard, the Sweet Williams are well-loved. They were absent in last year's garden because the severe winter in 2009 killed off the 1 year old plants, but the seedlings of 2010 are now flowering in a colorful, sweetly-scented show. I love plants that don't need to be planted, but just show up on their own. You can easily start these by spreading some seeds in the garden.
Sweet Williams (Dianthus barbatus):

Raised beds -- Blue delphiniums blooming at the back:

The annual corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas) started blooming last week. I am amazed how thick they come up, having seeded themselves freely. I hoed many plants into oblivion all spring and early summer, but they still are packed in their raised bed. I have a mix of colors and enjoy spotting my favourites with the white picotee edges.
Corn poppies:

Boreal Cabin Flora and Fauna

2011-07-03T18:21:00.000-07:00

Our family headed out to our cabin on Lac La Ronge for a night this weekend. The weather was nice and the mosquitoes were thick at night. If there is any good reason to have an indoor toilet, it is to avoid needing to opening the door at night and letting in the mosquitoes. Unfortunately, we only have an outdoor toilet (and spent half the night killing mosquitoes). However, we do have a dog who is more than happy to escort people to the outhouse.
Morning on the lake:

We live amid the Canadian boreal forest, the flora and fauna of which I have tried to learn a bit about. I really can't name many of the trees, but I find the flowers and berries not to hard to identify (and I'm sure that there will be an iphone app for that soon too).
Corydalis sempervirens:

There's a good reason that C. sempervirens may be familiar to some gardeners. Dicentra (bleeding hearts) and several other varieties of Corydalis are kept in perennial gardens and are all members of the Family Fumariaceae, the fumitories. One other corydalis that might grow in a northern garden is golden corydalis (zone 3), though the lovely blue and purple-flowered corydalis are listed for zone 5 and are unlikely to thrive.
Our only form of mosquito control at the moment, found sleeping on our screen door:

The solitary screen-bat disappeared by morning, fortunately, because we had to remove the screen. Some animal (bear?) had shredded the bottom half of it last fall, probably in an effort to raid our cabin for imagined food. We also noticed high-pitched squeaking coming from the space between the brick chimney and the exterior wall. The space is entirely outside the cabin, so it is okay that a colony of bats has decided to live there. We would just like them to eat MORE mosquitoes. In case anyone worries, there have been no rabies cases in the north so we aren't particularly concerned about that either (vs. my father who was bitten by a rabid bat several years ago in southern BC). We also felt sorry for Kona in the middle of the night and brought her inside to escape the mosquitoes.
Kona, the husky-malamute:

For the first time, I saw a beaver swimming in the lake outside our cabin. You might say that I musn't get out on the lake very much. That is true, since I have a garden to tend to and I like my hot showers in my house. I wouldn't have noticed the beaver, except that I heard a tremendous splash from inside the cabin, like someone dropped a large stone in the water. Then, I noticed a brown head swimming away from the concentric circles of disturbed lake water. He slapped the water a few more times, but speedily swam away before I got outside with my camera. Next time, loud beaver.

Out with the Old

2011-06-30T13:23:00.000-07:00

I hate globe cedars (Thuja occidentalis). Thus, ours finally was removed from the yard when RLM decided that the half-dead shrub was beyond redemption. We had to wrap that tree in burlap every winter and it still had terrible brown winter kill on it. Even the clematis growing up its side didn't improve its appearance. In the end, the mass of brown had to go.

Now what to do with the stump? Either he gets some machinery in do dig it up, or I plant things around it to disguise it.
A lonely "Mount Hood" white daffodil that is blooming in today's rain:

On the other hand, the background shrubs in this photo are doing fairly well and are attractive with their clusters of white blooms that look like those of a white hydrangea. These are a compact variety of highbush cranberry (Viburnum trilobum):

The dome-shaped perennial in the center foreground (with some pink flowers) is Geranium macrorrhizum, a good creeping groundcover with a pine-like scent.
Asters in the center raised bed:

This poor pumpkin suffered cold damage when I brought it outside, but has recovered enough to grow and produce some flowers. As of yet, it is only producing male flowers. Later in the season, it should produce female ones from which we can get some pumpkins. I am trying to grow them in large pots, letting them trail down onto the ground. Hopefully this works!

Lastly, the cotton seed-carrying fluff of the poplar trees has created the appearance of snow blowing past our window with every summer breeze. I shudder thinking of all the seedlings we are going to have to deal with. The cotton is particularly heavy this year; I have never recalled it being this thick before.

Aquilegias All Over

2011-06-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

The blooms shifted from tulips to Aquilegias while I was away from the province this past few weeks. I've tried several types of Aquilegias and now have a bit of variety, as far as columbines go. There are tall plants and short plants, upwards/outwards/downwards-facing flowers, long or short "spurs" on the base of the flower, double-layer flowers, and one ones with unique colors or shapes of foliage. Of course, there are many different color combinations of the flowers themselves.
Japanese Fan columbine (Aquilegia flabellata nana alba), with its slightly eery whitish-grey flowers:

A blue "Songbird" series Aquilegias, one of the showiest in my opinion:

Aquilegia "Blackcurrant Ice", a dwarf form that is less than 10 inches tall and has unique coloring:

I fell for "Blackcurrant Ice" after some catalog called it rare and highly desirable. That's probably not true, but went out and I got myself one right away. It looks a lot like this one in Thompson & Morgan's seed catalog. My original "Blackcurrant Ice" and an Aquilegia glandulosa (blue flower) plants died two years ago, but I knew they set seed and I left all the seedlings to make an Aquilegia groundcover:

Aquilegia glandulosa is also called the Siberian columbine. It is another dwarf and has outwards to downwards-facing flowers.
Aquilegia glandulosa:

Aquilegia do set seed and multiply rather easily, so I deadhead mine promptly if I don't want any more in some flower beds. Like most perennials, they only bloom in their second year, so plant some now to enjoy flowers next year. The are very easy to grow.
White "Clementine" series columbine, named as such because of their clematis-like flowers:

Pink "Clementine" columbine:

Unknown type columbine, with downwards-facing flowers:

Transplanting Day, A Procrastination

2011-06-08T15:06:00.000-07:00

Gardening was a welcome diversion from the monotony of studying today. Thus, there were some productive bursts of gardening between the flipping of pages. I am excited to see that I will have my first peony blooms soon. I've had peony plants for about four years now, without blooms. I managed to kill one (planted in a bad spot) but finally my remaining peony has buds. Peonies aren't particularly hard to grow, and are quite hardy to this province. Someday, I will dedicate more of my gardening space to peonies.
My peony is now visited by red ants, thought they don't harm the plant:

Primula saxatilis, a nicely naturalizing primula in a partly-shady part of the raised bed:

I let this primula go to seed and spread its progeny around. In large groups, it makes a nice show with its shades of lilac flowers.
The alpine garden at midday:

I keep meaning to take some pictures when the lighting is really nice, like in the early morning. This raised bed (below) is in full shade by evening, so morning pictures would be best. However, that will require getting up at 4:30 am. Sunrise this morning was as 4:23 am. At this time of year, the broken window shades in the bedroom window are pretty noticeable, with a full three hours of bright sunlight before it's time to get up. At least that's better than going to work in the morning in the dark and then going to home for supper in the dark, during winter.
This raised bed has taller shrubs (dogwood, highbush cranberry, Saskatoons) and delphiniums at the back of it, against the gravel lane. The Saskatoon berry bushes have white blooms right now:

There are still some open spots in this bed, where plants died out in 2009. Thankfully, with a yard this big, there are plenty of perennials to be divided and perennial seedlings left over to fill in the gaps. I spent some time moving tall perennials to the back and short ones to the front. I try to create complementary textures too, like a balance of fine leaves with broad ones, or tall grassy foliage (irises) with low and broad plants (hostas, Alchemilla). I'm sure my garden could make room for some new plants, though. I'm looking for some tall, part-shade loving perennials with moderate water requirements. Ah, that will require studying some other books...another diversion.

Tiny Vegetable Plot

2011-06-07T09:28:00.000-07:00

My tiny vegetable garden is having some successes, and some failures too. My yard is mostly perennial flowers and shrubs and lawn, with only this tiny raised bed dedicated to edibles. I do have tomatoes and some vines in pots elsewhere, though it's clear that I am no vegetable farmer. My green onions look great, though these are actually last years onions. They overwintered and continue to grow this spring. I now leave a few plants in the ground in the fall and have never failed to have a nice bunch of green onions in the spring:

The tiny vegetable garden, in which my green beans STILL have not come up. I'm beginning to suspect my seeds were too old. Spinach is looking great, though:

This seems to be an eye-burningly-bright picture, but it illustrates my (edible) rhubarb as an ornamental feature of my raised flower bed. It actually gets more light here than my previous rhubarb locations and seems to be growing well with its large helping of cow manure this spring. I'm hoping for some nice red rhubarb stalks for summer eating.

Double late tulip "Angelique" is just starting to bloom:

This peony-like flower looks beautiful and like any "late" tulip, does very well in our climate. I buy mine from Botanus, because I like how they clearly label all the tulip varieties so that I can know exactly what I am buying. No, I don't get paid to advertise for them, but I get so annoyed at the companies that sell "beautiful pink tulips", without telling you what type of tulip they are (tall, short, naturalizing, early season, late season, etc.). The late varieties will not get damaged by spring frosts and therefore seem to do well here.

Name That Mushroom!

2011-06-03T16:02:00.000-07:00

I was digging out some large and lush dandelions growing from below the thinning layer of bark mulch yesterday -- when I saw a pattern among the bark that drew my eye:

I have no experience with mushrooms, but this looks like a morel to me. However, it also looks like the false morel, Verpa bohemica. Northern Saskatchewan is a popular hunting ground for wild mushrooms, including pine mushrooms, morels, and chanterelles. The Saskatchewan government Agriculture website states that there are two mushrooms that look like morels, but are NOT morels, so I'll be careful and not eat them.
Lewisia cotyledon "Regenbogen" (Rainbow) in the alpine/rock garden:

Pulsatilla vulgaris has gone to seed, leaving these pretty fuzzy seedheads:

While in Saskatoon this past week, I browsed through Garden Architecture & Design. It is a very pretty place in summer, with plants artfully arranged among garden furniture, pots, and statuary. I brought home this little friend, which matches the rustic look of our yard. RLM (resident-lawnmower-man) saw it and shook his head, muttering something about silly gardeners.

The junior gardeners love my choice of statuary, so RLM will have to live with it. I enjoy browsing nice garden places as if they were spa experiences. However, instead of coming out with manicured nails and massaged hands, I add to the garden's beauty.

Too Much Color

2011-06-02T15:27:00.001-07:00

My drive back from a quick trip to Saskatoon this week was accompanied by the audiobook version of Michael Pollan's "Second Nature: A Gardener's Education". After some chapters on the author's early experiences in gardening and the clash of culture vs. nature, there was a chapter on the history of roses (not a complete history by any means, but a few tidbits of interest). As I drove into Prince Albert, I found my car steering towards John's Garden Center, where hardy roses are likely to be found. Not much later, I walked out with "Prairie Celebration", a sub-zero Parkland hardy rose out of Morden, Manitoba. It is a shockingly bright pink, but at the time I felt less interested in pale pastels. I'm not sure it blends with the existing colors, as it is quite a showy color. Thinking about it more, I wonder if I should have bought three, and made a nice cluster of hot pink roses?
New rose "Prairie Celebration" is the hot pink flower on the right:

Blue Forget-Me-Not which now is naturalized in masses in my flower beds:

Pink Forget-Me-Not to complement the blue:

As a rule, roses for La Ronge (zone 1b) need to be one of the Parkland (Morden) roses or an Explorer rose (named after Canadian explorers, eg. John Cabot, William Baffin, etc.). For some reason, John's also had a significant number of hybrid tea roses, but I turned up my nose at those more tender roses and moved on to the hardy ones. "Prairie Celebration" is one of the newer Parkland roses, introduced in 2003. I read online that there is also a new one this year called "Prairie Snowdrift", which is white. That one wasn't available at my local garden center.
My pink Lily of the Valley spreads very slowly in my shady patch under an ash tree

I assume that its bad reputation for spreading aggressively probably comes from milder climate zones. I have waited years for this bunch to become more than a few lonely leaves. It is a great idea for planting under deciduous trees.
My first daffodils of the year:

Lots of Northern Blooms

2011-05-27T09:42:00.000-07:00

We've had some nice sunny weather and mild biting bug levels this week. The raised beds are finally looking more green than brown, and the flowering bulbs are showing themselves. I had these grape hyacinths marked as daffodils, but they look great there nonetheless:

Primula auricula in the shaded flowerbed, a dainty yet striking hardy perennial flower:

I planted up my Escheverias in their concrete pot last night. I remade my monochromatic container planting of last year from the leaf cuttings of last summer's plants:

A wild shrub just behind our house produced these interesting flowers. It looks like a wild berry by the foliage (we have various wild Ribes and Rubus shrubs around here), but I'm not sure what it is:

My Fritillaria meleagris is still showing its artsy checkered flowers. This plant nevered flowered after 2009's horrendous winter, but clearly is still alive and well.

My rugosa rose suffered major damage in the winter of 2009 and now seems to be producing only new growth from near the ground. If it looks embarrassingly unattractive at the end of this season, I might think of replacing it.

Dryas octopetala "Alpine Carpet" is one the nicest plants in the alpine bed. It has glossy evergreen leaves, and creeps slowly, forming a nice low mat between the rocks:

We took a little drive around some newer properties in town last night. One large and very attractive house was for sale, with a yard consisting of dirt, weeds, and rocks interspersed with junk. Resident-lawnmower-man pointed out how some modest landscaping could add a significant value to the house, and why hadn't the homeowner thought of this? Sometimes I feel that "landscaping deficiency" is a new epidemic. I wonder if more and more younger folks just have no interest in landscaping their yards or spending time in the upkeep of a yard. Only marginally better are the houses with only a lawn that extends from road to the house, with nary a shrub or perennial or flower bed of any sort in sight. I could understand that older folks might not have the ability to maintain a yard, but I know that a lot of these places are inhabited by young people in our town. RLM is hoping that landscaping is somehow infectious, and that our yard is inspiring other folks to enhance their own properties. I'd even donate divided perennials to anyone who wants them! Here's to a beautiful town this summer.

Garlic Grows Here!

2011-05-20T12:46:00.000-07:00

We just got back from our visit to the southern parts of the province. I could detect our northward travel with my eyes closed: the splatting noise of insects hitting the windshield got both more frequent and louder. The windshield was covered in yellow and brown goo by the time we got back to La Ronge. Ahhhh, welcome to summer, northern residents!

Large raised perennial bed:

Alpine garden, with white flowers of Cerastium alpinum (foreground) and Erigeron compositus:

In another hardiness experiment, I planted hardneck garlic in the vegetable raised bed last fall. This was new to me, and I wasn't entirely sure how to do it, but I must have done something right. There are two garlic plants sticking boldly out of the soil, which is so exciting! It is a variety called "Music". I can't even recall why I picked this type of garlic, if indeed there was a reason. I received a few whole garlic bulbs and broke these into single cloves, careful to leave a bit of the base plate attached to each clove. I planted them in my vegetable raised bed, which is some soil contained by a rectangle of 10" high lumber.
White Pulsatilla vulgaris growing in part shade:

I am also quite pleased that most of my strawberries overwintered well. They were planted in the vegetable raised bed and covered with a bit of leaf mulch for the winter. They only came up and showed some leaves this week, reassuring me that they are still here. Previously, I had only been aware of the everbearing and June-bearing strawberries. The new day-neutral types were recommended by several sources, including the University of Saskatchewan gardenline. I'm hoping for a great crop this year.
Strawberry "Hecker", purchased last year at Dutch Growers in Saskatoon:

Foxgloves

2011-05-09T11:25:00.001-07:00

I found myself daydreaming about the foxglove, a lovely flower that is ubiquitous in the English landscape and appears from time to time in my garden. It's an easy plant to grow from seed, and can propagate itself from seed in the garden quite nicely. Looking back, I've grown three types, Digitalis purpurea (common foxglove), Digitalis grandiflora (perennial foxglove), and Digitalis mertonensis (strawberry foxglove). D. grandiflora is perennial and hardy, D. mertonensis is a short-lived perennial (a tetrapolid cross between D. grandiflora and D. purpurea) and D. purpurea is a biennial. Biennials grow foliage in the first year, and flower and set seed in the second year. The biennials die after setting seed. All should be planted in the ground in northern climates, as they will not survive the winter in a pot in zone 3 or colder.
Digitalis grandiflora in the rock garden:

Digitalis also one of those plants we are warned about as being poisonous, due to its content of chemicals that act on the heart. For the same reason, it is one of the most medically famous plants. The plant contains chemicals used in the heart drug digoxin (Lanoxin), a medication used for certain heart diseases (usually atrial fibrillation or heart failure), acting to slow and strengthen the heart beat. Overdose of the drug can result in cardiac arrest. As such, it is a drug (and plant) you must be careful with. I'd imagine the next 20 years of medical research will probably replace this drug with something a little less risky and easier to manage.

An antidote, called Digifab or Digibind, can be given intravenously to mop up toxic levels of digoxin and allow it to exit the body harmlessly via the kidneys. The product monograph is fascinating -- Digifab is made when sheep are injected with a digoxin-derivative attached to a chemical from the keyhole limpet (tiny crustacean that clings to rocks and boat hulls). The sheep serum extract is digested with a bit of pineapple enzyme and the important bits are separated out with a little chromatography, and voila!
Digitalis mertonensis in the raised bed:

Foxglove use was documented in medieval times, as an agent used by witches, when the plant was sometimes called witchs' bells. In the 18th century, a physician (William Withering) noticed that an old woman concocting herbs was having some success in treating edema (likely due to heart failure), and he is credited for discovering that among her collected weeds, digitalis was the effective tonic.
Some self-seeded Digitalis purpurea:

The medicine digoxin is extracted from Digitalis lanata, the wooly foxglove. Apparently, it is cheaper to extract the digoxin from the plant than it is to synthesize the chemical. Presumably, there are medicinal Digitalis farms in existence somewhere.

I have some Digitalis purpurea plants that will flower this year in my perennial beds, but in the interest of trying new and different plants, I would like to try some others. There is a good selection on this American mail order website, which I have ordered from before. I had no idea there were so many kinds! Digitalis are so easy to grow from seed, that I feel wasteful spending good money for them as plants at the nursery.

On the topic of other beautiful flowering plants - here are some pics from another blog, of National Primrose Society Show prize-winning flowers. Amazing.

Tiny Spring Bulbs & Flowers

2011-05-07T12:01:00.000-07:00

The lawn is still brown, the lake is still frozen, and the shrubs have yet to grow any leaves. The broad landscape looks dismal on this rainy day, unless you look closely. On a small scale, there is beauty in the tiny flowers of the early spring bulbs. I only have a few of these, but enjoy them nonetheless. All the tiny spring bulbs should be planted in clusters, for maximal effect. I'm hoping my bulbs rapidly divide and bulk up their clusters, so that they can be appreciated from afar (and not just my flower-seeking camera).
Scilla siberica:

Tulipa humilis violacea will be opening soon:

I have these tiny pink botanical tulips planted on my rock garden slope, which they appreciate for its good drainage. These are not picky or demanding little tulips, and have survived the worst winters here.
Fritilaria meleagris has emerged from the soil:

While the rest of Canada's daffodils are probably long past, mine will probably bloom at the end of May. I suppose there are not many other gardeners waiting longer for spring blooms than us here in zone 1b. Beyond this zone, I don't know how many bulb would even survive! Any Siberian gardeners out there?

First Blooms in the Alpine Garden

2011-05-02T13:02:00.000-07:00

This is a small post for a small plant: Draba polytricha has bloomed in the alpine garden. This entire plant is about the size (and shape) of a golf-ball. It is a tight little bun of a plant and clearly very hardy, as it lived through two winters so far, including the terrible one of 2009. It looks like a hairy little grey-green bun the rest of the year and probably will look really cool many years from now, as it expands into its rocky crevice.

This photo reminds me that I need to get a useful tripod for my heavy camera and moderately heavy new lens. Unfortunately, I don't exactly know what to get. These little alpine plants require getting pretty low and close. Any photographers have some good ideas?

Amazing Seedlings - Zucchini Video

2011-04-30T18:34:00.000-07:00

The junior gardener #1 remarked that "that plant grows really fast", after watching this time lapse video of a zucchini (courgette to those east of the Atlantic) seedling I have under lights, growing indoors.

Even without time lapse, any of the curcurbit vegetable family (cucumber, squash, etc.) seem to have phenomenal growth as seedlings, and start out quite large. This is why I chose it for the time lapse photos! Kids love this kind of stuff.

You may see a few frames that include a fungus gnat, which looks like a small fruit fly. They are not too big of a problem (nothing like aphids on your indoor plants), and are easily caught by yellow sticky-paper traps that you can purchase in the gardening section of your local hardware store. Alas, I have been negligent in putting out more traps...

Otherwise, I spread a bit more cow manure around the yard. It makes for a lovely weekend casual activity to be followed by tea and phone calls to family. For added challenge, do it while wearing your nice clothes and keep your fingernails clean, while waving to passing neighbours. Be sure to ask them how their spring manure-spreading is going.

First Flowers and the Veggies Installed

2011-04-27T20:48:00.000-07:00

My official first flowers of 2011 are those of Pulsatilla vulgaris, which is not the usual first flower, but welcome nonetheless. These flowers started showing colors on Easter weekend, but waited for today's calm sunny weather to really open up. They are traditionally known for being an Easter-blooming flower, and are very hardy. They get larger and and have more flowers every year, making a spectacular show as a mature plant.
Pulsatilla vulgaris in the sloped rock garden:

They also can be easily propagated. I make sure that several seed heads get spread around the flower bed in late summer, producing new plants all over this flower bed. I also have deep red and white versions of this same perennial flower, though they aren't blooming yet.

We got the vegetable garden seeded today, with the warm dry weather drawing us outside. It felt great to spread the crumbly composted cow manure as a top-dressing in the raised bed for the vegetables. Hopefully the vegetables reward this effort. This is probably the earliest we have planted the vegetable garden, but only cooler-weather veggies went in today, with the beans waiting till later (and tomatoes/pumpkins/zucchini growing indoors). The junior gardener #1 helped put in swiss chard and beets, then left to lounge in the shade and adjust her accessories while the lettuce, carrots, dill, pak choi, snow peas, and spinach were sown. The cute cartoon characters on a packet of giant sunflowers appealed to junior gardener, so a separate weedy patch was cleared for those. I can't wait till she sees those plants grow bigger than her! Go vegetables!

Perennials from Under the Ice

2011-04-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

I'm still waiting for the emergence of my primulas from the lump of ice that sits in the shade under the mountain ash tree. I saw this one poking through this morning, looking generally unchanged from its appearance late last fall.
Primula auricula:

I bought a few more P. auricula from Wrightman Alpines last year, providing companions to the beautiful purple-flowering ones I got from a primula-loving gardener in town. These petite perennial flowers are incredibly hardy, and are highly recommended even for Alaskan gardeners. They appreciate partial shade and moderate amounts of moisture. I find growing them from seed to be frustrating, though not impossible. I am looking forward to their exquisite show of blooms in the next few months.
Sempervivum (Hens and Chicks):

Sempervivum also does very well over the winter. I had one type die last winter, but regular snowcover seems to be adequate for most species of these perennial plants. They tend to take on vivid colors --like this deep red-- in cool weather. Come summer, they will be bright green. They are great for rock gardens, where they spread as the loose "chicks" roll away and root themselves wherever they land.

If you are photographically-inclined, you may be able to guess what new equipment I just picked up, considering today's photos. My brother fairly easily convinced me that I was in need of a macro lens, essentially to get really nice close-up pictures of plants and flowers. I will now be out with my 100mm Tokina macro lens, stalking the plants on a much, much closer level...

Planting Veggies and Ignoring the Snow

2011-04-17T16:05:00.000-07:00

There was a mini snowstorm here this afternoon, but the only lingering snow is in shaded heaps leftover from winter snow removal. We don't ever hope for a snow-free April here, but I do feel a little more justified in my disgust when it snows in May, or June...or July.
Does your police service include this kind of transportation?:

I was proud that I held back on planting my vegetables until this last week, hoping that they don't get too big before moving outside. Looking at my seed hoarde, I think that most of my indoor-start seeds are now in the soil (okay, technically, they are in a soil-less seed-starting mix). The remainder will be seeded directly outside. Come to think of it, now is the time to put out the poppy seeds.
Flower seedlings:

I start most seeds in little pots under the humidity dome on the right. That tray also has a heating mat underneath it, which helps some seeds germinate. Once they sprout, I transplant them into the other trays. I am not transplanting the tomatoes or pumpkins though, so those ones get their own pots from the start. I have three shelves, each with 4 fluorescent light tubes (half cool white and half aquarium/plant tubes). The top two shelves are partially heated by the lights hung underneath them, so the orchids on the top shelf are pretty happy.

I am growing a plum heirloom tomato and Tumbling tom cherry tomato this year. That should be nice for fresh-from-the-patio eating. I also have some Small Sugar pumpkin seeds sown and under the lights. They have a season of about 100-110 days, which is longer than our frost-free season, so they must be started indoors.
Tomatoes and other seeds awaiting germination:

Junction of land with the ice road on La Ronge lake (now includes puddles) and our dog:

Buds on a willow tree - sure sign of spring:

Northern Gardening: Pinehouse

2011-04-11T17:30:00.000-07:00

Seeing gardening spread is an exciting thing, especially in the Canadian north. The medical clinic at the northern community of Pinehouse has decided to do another vegetable garden this year, despite rumors of minimal success last year. The community is located northwest of La Ronge, in a similar climate zone (1b) in the northern boreal forest. It has a small grocery store, but of course, access to fresh fruits and vegetables is quite limited, as is the case for most northern communities. Consequently, the residents can get quite accustomed to diets lacking in healthy foods.
Pinehouse medical clinic:

Aerial view of Pinehouse. The large building on the right is the new rink:

A plot of private land is also said to be planned for community gardens and Grade 4 students will be growing vegetables this year as well. Harnessing the enthusiasm of kids is a great way to garden, with the benefit of having the kids experience the taste of fresh-grown vegetables. I know that one of our junior gardeners loves to eat onions straight from the garden, but never would touch them otherwise.
Boats on the shore of the lake - fishing is a big activity here:

There are already some purchased tomato plants ready to go in the clinic garden, soaking in light from the windowsill. I hope these tomatoes make it until they are ready to plant out in June, as they may need re-potting before then. I find that peppers and tomatoes have very large root systems and need relatively large pots.
Supplies - notice the bag of Fritos behind the peat pots on the left:

They also have some seeds for carrots, cucumbers, beans, and lettuce, as well as some onion sets. Those seeds should be planted outside in May, though the cucumbers could be started indoors over the next few weeks in order to get cucumbers earlier in the season. I will be anxious to see how this garden grows and inspires the community to grow their own food. Perhaps we will find some new crunchy fresh green snacks as alternatives to chips and colas!
The weather was great today, so people were outside walking and biking:

Houses along the shore in Pinehouse:

Hopefully I get to see some northern commmunity vegetable gardening in action this summer!

Flowers Sprouting!

2011-04-08T11:51:00.000-07:00

The little seeds are transforming from dull little shapes from paper packets into green sprouts of spring joy. I see the snow melting off the grass and soil, but tell myself not to get too excited. There WILL be more snow. Let's remember that our northern winter clings on with tenacity.

Indoors, however, the flower seeds are sprouting. I usually start each type of seeds in a single pot and then transplant each seedling to its own pot after germination. The lobelia seeds are very tiny, so clumps of those seedlings got transplanted to the new pots.
Lobelia seedlings:

The larger seeds could likely be easily started in their own pots without transplantation, provided that the germination rate is fairly high. I hate to plant a single seed in a whole bunch of pots only to have a handful actually sprout. I'm mostly growing annuals this year, reducing my need to go and buy them. I find them quite expensive, but growing my own from seed is really quite cheap and enhances my mental health anyhow. I'm even teaching the junior gardeners about talking to plants.

Outdoors, it is reassuring to see that the evergreen perennials are still green, and not mostly brown like they looked spring. Last winter was a wickedly cold one that killed many plants. Things look okay so far, with green creeping phlox, saxifraga, and a few other signs of life in the rock gardens.
Saxifraga in the rock garden (covered in snow until 3 days ago):

Bergenia cordifolia (evergreen perennial) under the ash tree:

Spring Seed Starting

2011-03-21T17:15:00.000-07:00

Finally, it is the first day of spring. Time for barbeque (while wearing a winter jacket) and shoveling the snow off the kids playground equipment. Of course, they still need to play outside while wearing snowsuits. Nevermind that I can't even get to my vegetable garden or raised beds due to a great deal of snow. I know that my crocuses haven't forgotten their spring duties.

Feeling the spirit of spring nonetheless, I pulled out the plastic trays, seed starting mix, and hundreds of little plastic pots. Actually, the project started with what looked more like a sewing project. I've used the moisture wicking fabric from Lee Valley for a few years now and really like how it makes watering the little seedlings quite easy. The stuff comes in large pieces so that you could cover big greenhouse benches with it, but I cut it to fit the black rectangular trays that I put under my grow lights.

Next, I reuse my plastic pots from previous years (washed out by Resident-LawnmowerMan last fall after he got tired of the heap of dirty pots that grew steadily in our garage). I fill these loosely with seed starting mix with an extra bag of perlite mixed in. If you can't find the finely-sieved seed starting mix, you can use potting soil, but it occasionally has big lumps and sticks and other aggravating debris.

I did plant some seeds today, though held myself back from planting the majority of them. I regularly plant the seeds far too early and end up with large plants that I have no room for, having expanded out of the basement to all available windowsills.
A few flower and herb seeds are sown and kept under the plastic humidity dome:

With the wicking mats below all the pots, I only need to water into the tray and don't need to water the pots from above. This has the dual benefit of avoiding dislodging the seeds and reducing the fungus problems that attack seedlings. Eventually, the fabric gets dirty and thins out, but it does last a few years before needing replacement. In warmer weather, it can also be hosed off and left to dry outside.

From Hot to Sooo Very Cold

2011-02-25T18:41:00.000-08:00

It has been unseasonably cold here, with windchills in the -40 degree range and colder. I imagine this cold would be intolerable while standing on a dog sled, as several intrepid racers have been doing here the last few days. A few racers dropped out of the race, presumably due to the very cold winds. Last night, we went to La Ronge's Patterson park, where the dogs get fed during the mandatory rest period and get checked over by vets. The littlest gardener got some pretty cold hands pretty quick though, and we had to head on home before seeing them run.

http://www.canadianchallenge.com/

Otherwise, we had the chance to visit the relatively hot weather of Arizona this past month. It's great to fellowship with the cactuses and the other winter-escaping Canadians. We laugh at the lack of sandals, sunhats and open outdoor pools there in February. The locals' excuse is "it's winter". It didn't feel like a winter to us! I did get to play with plants by pruning shrubs and planting a flat of ice plants for my mother. There actually was some frost-kill of some of the plants, and damage to some of the citrus trees in southern Arizona this winter. Weird weather happens everywhere!
Ice plants I planted under palm tree:

"Red Spike Ice Plant" (lame store tag didn't have Latin name):

I can't wait to see what things look like next year. These plants have an irrigation system to keep them alive over the roasting summer months.
A "less-prickly" cactus:

Night-time photography of a very large organ pipe cactus:

Growing Aphids

2010-11-30T10:11:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year where we recoil at the cold temperatures, knowing full well the worst is yet to come. I'm hoping I can grow a nice furry undercoat, like our outdoors-dwelling dog. That, or I'll be drinking more tea.
Shabby Chic is the "in style" for cedar trees this year, featuring burlap coats with nylon rope trim:

Every few days, I go down and check on the herb seedlings and other basements plants kept under fluorescent lights. I like to have some fresh herbs on hand for cooking over the winter time, but that has not been very successful so far.
Herbs under the lights:

I was not too surprised to see some aphids a few weeks ago, as I've been through this many times before. These little green imports came inside with the plants and cuttings brought in this fall. No matter how careful you are, preventing aphids on plants coming indoors is like preventing influenza from coming in through Canadian airports. These little infectious bugs are just too sneaky. I first saw them hanging out on the tips of the orchids and on the parsley and cilantro. They particularly love the herbs, but they leave the strong-smelling perlargonium cuttings alone. I've been squishing them and used up the last my insecticidal soap sprays. Now, I'm using some Sunlight dish soap diluted in water, which I hope will get the tiny ones that I can't see.
My attempt at a winter display at our front door (cedar boughs from BC, red dogwood twigs, and crabapples):

La Ronge and Wildlife

2010-11-02T18:04:00.000-07:00

Sorry. No plant pictures today, but I'm hoping to get the orchids to do something photographically interesting soon. It's the time of year that I purpose to neglect the orchids until they panic, pushing up stems of blossoms in order to perpetuate themselves in the case of imminent death. That's my approach to forcing orchids to bloom, in a nutshell.

We had snow last week and it's still hanging around. The slight warming over the weekend led to mud on all my pant-legs. I had to stop and take photos of this creature I saw on top the road on the way to work this morning. Apparently, the bald eagles (this one must be young, as most of the head feathers are brown) have not all traveled to warm southern locations yet.
Eagle in downtown La Ronge:

I saw him/her on the light across the street from Kosta's restaurant. The floatplane pilot said that it has been hanging around the area for a few days. (You can click on the picture to see it enlarged.)

Some houses in the Morin's Hill area of Lac La Ronge Indian reserve, here in La Ronge:

The edges of the lake and the bays are starting to freeze up. The trip in the floatplane today started with crunching as we broke through a layer of ice with the floats.

The bridge between Air Ronge (left) and La Ronge (right), with the Montreal River passing under the bridge and into Lac La Ronge:

Sun over Lac La Ronge this morning:

Poppy Seed Buns

2010-10-22T20:45:00.001-07:00

This past week, I made some poppy seed rolls from poppies grown in our flower bed. We clearly had eaten much of this roll before I got around to taking a picture of it. It just was that good. I decided to make this recipe because it used the most poppy seeds of the recipes I had found. We still have a few more cups of seeds in the freezer, thanks to resident-lawnmower-man's fastidious poppy-seed-picking in the last few years. P. somniferum makes a generous amount of seeds, and collection is quite easy. I find it interesting that different color flowers make different colors of seeds, all in shades of grey to black. Most of all, the taste of the seeds was fantastic! The other flowers may have the looks, but these ones pack the flavour too!

Latest Flowers - Still Time to Bloom!

2010-10-19T09:25:00.001-07:00

The season may be creeping ever so close to the first snow fall, but the flowers are still making an appearance in the perennial garden. Few leaves are left on the trees, and the bare red stems of the Siberian dogwoods are looking fantastic.
Morning sun on the yard:

The fall aster (A. dumosus "Alert") produces many flowers, though I give no thought to this plant in the rest of the year, neglecting it while the spring and summer flowers are putting on a show. Now, I wish I had a whole garden of bright fall asters.
Aster dumosus "Alert":

"Pink beauty" Potentilla still has some fresh blooms too:

I got this tiny primula from a friend, who grew them from seed she obtained in a Rock Garden Society seed exchange. I believe this is Primula scotica, though if you have a better idea, let me know. I know that it is winter hardy here (which rules out many varieties), as this is its second year and it has self-seeded to make several new plants for me. It usually produces flowers in clusters on stems held above the plant, but I can forgive it for hugging close to the ground in this cold.
Pretty little primula with farinose buds and stems:

I cut down my Martha Washington geranium (Pelargonium domesticum) and made this whole tray of cuttings for next year's plants. The original plant is in the pot on the left. I think I'll grow a bunch of these next year. Of course, that will depend on the success of my cuttings! My grandfather moved into a seniors' complex this past year and had to leave behind all his geraniums and and winters spent coddling geranium cuttings under lights. Hopefully I'll have a deck full of these beauties next year and Grandpa can check my blog posts for the pictures! The pot on the right contains cuttings from a pink "tulip geranium", a variety whose flowers look like clusters of tulip buds, as they never open. I dip the cuttings in Wilson's Root Stimulating gel before putting them in the sterile seed-starting mix mixed with additional perlite.
Geranium propagation:

Finally, these delphiniums appear to be a bit out of sync with the season, but possibly will produce a second set of flowers for me before they are dumped on with snow!

Buried the Bulbs

2010-10-01T15:01:00.001-07:00

"Burial mound" daffodil planting:

My bulbs came in the mail from Botanus earlier this week. I had picked the tried-and-true varieties, neglecting the fancy and expensive novelty bulbs that are likely to bring disappointment. While most of the bulbs did not appear nor flower this spring (due to terrible cold last winter), I still hold out some hope. I think I see some daffodil and muscari foliage in a few places and hope that they will flower again next year after taking a year's sabbatical. I poured half a bag of steer manure over each of the plantings, hoping it will insulate the underground investments.
Perennials among the colorful fall shrubs:

The shrub on the background left is a compact highbush cranberry (Virburnum trilobum). It took about 4 years to start making some berries. The major purpose of these berries is to look nice in winter, and maybe feed some birds. They certainly aren't very tasty.
Thick fog this morning - dock on Lac La Ronge:

The weather has been fairly warm in the last few days. This may be the reason why the blackflies are making a resurgence. During the two days of bulb planting, I've had several bites on the face, inhaled one, and swallowed several. Even the DEET-rich Muskol didn't help me, but left me with that special eau-de-northern Canada.

Views of the Prairies (aka "down south")

2010-09-27T20:19:00.000-07:00

I spent a few days down in Saskatoon this past weekend. While the purpose was mostly work-related, I did manage to pick up a few tulip and daffodil bulbs. Hopefully they fare better than last year's decimated bulb plantings.
Highway just north of Saskatoon:

Northerners do need to get out every once in a while to stock up on new shoes, gloves, and electronics to play with over the long, long winter. Actually, it was warm down in Saskatoon and the comfortable fall weather was appreciated.

My favourite views of the prairie are in the fall. I love the expansive golden fields and have been wanting to take some essential wheat field photos for many years. I had a leisurely drive and some nice weather on the drive back from Saskatoon, with my camera riding in the passenger seat.
Some other people had stopped on the road nearby as I was squatting to take this shot. I can only imagine what they thought I was doing in this field:

This one with the round bales one of the Saskatchewan shots I've had in my mind but needed to get in my camera. These things remind me of those giant cylinders of fiber-rich breakfast cereal we ate when we were kids. I think they were called Muffets. I recall that you couldn't break them up until it had sat in the bowl of milk for a few minutes.

Just in case you're not familiar with Saskatchewan, these are the usual views of the southern part of the province. It's quite a change from the forests on slabs of granite up here in the boreal forest of the north. Hopefully I'll get out and take some photos of the forest's colors soon.

Falling Towards Winter

2010-09-17T19:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday in the skies north of La Ronge:

We had a short period of wind that made our lights flicker wildly for a few minutes today. This was followed with a period of snow. Yeah, that stuff. "Ah, it's northern Saskatchewan", they tell me. I'm hoping someone remembered to pick the rest of the cherry tomatoes and bring them inside to finish their ripening process indoors. You know, the Saskatchewan way of ripening tomatoes! It always seems like we got such a short season of picking them ripe from the plant. At least the carrots will last in the ground for some time yet. I've also found that green onions left alone in the garden for winter will survive until spring, making for some nice little spring onions.

I've been meaning to go out and do one last blast of the glyphosate on the poplar shoots, but alas, work has kept me from the meaningful and important (read: gardening) activities of life. Instead, I took a flight to the small community of Southend, SK. This is their airstrip:

There's little room for pilot errors here. Either you fall off into the lake, or tumble down a little hill into brush and the lake. Most of the terrain north of La Ronge consists of thousands of tiny lakes in the glacier-etched depressions in the rocky shield. Just north-east of this town is Deep Bay, a 13 km wide meteor impact crater now located under Reindeer Lake. Take a look on Google earth, it's the obvious large round part of the lake at 56° N latitude in northeast Saskatchewan. It's quite deep and apparently has tall rocky ledges surrounding it, both of which are uncommon features in this area.
Check it out in the list of the 10 greatest major-impact craters on earth: http://green.yahoo.com/blog/environmentalgraffiti/15/10-greatest-major-impact-craters-on-earth.html

2010-09-12T17:13:00.000-07:00

The leaves are all turned to beautiful shades of yellow an red and we haven't seen any warm days in over a week now. It feels like soup, sweaters, and wool tights weather now. I realized with a sweat at 5:00 am last Thursday that I hadn't made my bulb order yet. I had pushed the thought from my mind until the last minute, not wanting to dwell on the massive bulb failure of this spring. Hopefully this winter's cold and snow sequences will not be as discoordinated as last year's, and my $150 is well-spent. I love ordering from Botanus, a BC company. I mainly stuck to reliable small bulbs like Muscari, Scilla siberica, and crocuses, but threw in a few others as a gamble with nature. This is the risky, living-on-the edge side of gardening. Who needs skydiving anyhow?

The "Blue Lake" long green beans are definitely the best performer in this year's vegetable patch:

They take up such a small footprint of soil and grow tall on the metal support (great Lee Valley purchase). They could probably use an even taller support structure, but this tomato trellis does a decent job and looks nice too.

The raised beds are finally looking full, after a summer of disappointment. The "voids of death" are slowly disappearing as I let seedling perennials go crazy.

I love when the evergreen perennial Bergenia cordifolia starts turning a few leaves red. It's a real eye-catcher:

A few perennials always re-bloom at this time of year. I love these delicate little Saxifraga blooms:

Succulents and Some Poppy Seeds

2010-08-31T09:10:00.000-07:00

I put together a pot of succulents in shades of grey this year. The cuttings came from plants I had growing under fluorescent lights over the winter. I believe these are Escheveria, or some close relative. They are certainly not winter hardy, but you can grow as many plants as you want from tip cuttings or even from a single leaf stuck in some potting soil. Dear resident-lawnmower-man bought me this concrete pot this spring.

The gray plants and gray pot look rather modern and edgy, which is not really my usual garden theme, though it was unique. The only problem is that the pot has no hole in the bottom, so I have to tip it on its side every time it rains. I do keep it next to the house, where it gets little rain, but it still manages to collect some rainwater, which would otherwise drown the plants. Maybe it has a future life as an indoor pot or under the covered deck.

Thalictrum rochebrunianum 'Lavender Mist' (Meadow Rue) is finishing its blooming season. These tall hardy perennials do self-seed quite a bit, so this year I made a point of removing spent blooms. I let some seedlings grow at the back of the beds, but these narrow, 4 to 6-foot-tall plants just look silly at the front of the beds.

The annual poppies (Papaver rhoeas) are still flowering around the edges of the dense thicket of poppies that arose from the generous puddle of seeds left from last year's plants. RLM collected a jar of seeds from these, knowing all the requests we've had from friends and family who would also like to grow them!

On the other hand, the annual breadseed poppies (P. somniferum) are long finished, with their seeds pods just drying up now. I ripped most of them out before this stage, as they turn brown after flowering and don't offer any attractive features in the foliage department. Besides, they do self-seed over-generously. I leave just enough to produce a few plants for next year, and hopefully still get a few lemon-poppy seed loaves.

It seems that some folks in British Columbia like these flowers so much that they grew 3 acres of them in Chilliwack, BC and then got in some hot water with the law this past month. One gets the feeling that these aren't just overly-exuberant garden-bloggers hoping to create a beautiful sea of poppy flowers to admire and photograph. Or perhaps, they were planning on making LOTS of lemon poppy-seed loaves.

However, the part that really made me laugh was the television reporter's comment at the end of the piece, saying that "this operation demonstrates that it is actually possible to grow poppies in Canada", as if that was a feat never before known to any Canadian. It is an annual flower! You could probably even grow two crops a year in southwestern BC (which I suspect, as that crop wasn't even as mature as my own flowers up here in the north). Anyone who can grow a petunia or potted geranium could easily grow a poppy. I would guess this reporter probably hasn't ever owned a houseplant (you know THOSE kind of people...). Only time will tell if large-scale poppy-growing becomes a new craze among Canadians.

Later Summer Perennials

2010-08-01T08:32:00.000-07:00

Just like the early back-to-school sales and early displays of winter coats, the late summer's offerings of flowers are here already. Although, I am sure that they are early this year.

Scabiosa caucasica (I have pale blue and these white ones) are in bloom this weekend:

These scabiosa have sprawling plants that sometimes are hard to distinguish from grassy weeds. They also do self-seed a bit. I don't really mind though, as these are in the back of the raised bed, which is by no means a formal flower garden.

I lost my established lupine plants over the past winter, but there were a few seedlings, some of which are making some late-season blooms. I have preserved all of the yellow lupine (Lupinus polyphyllus "Gallery Yellow") seedlings, transplanting them all about, and so hope to have lots of these pretty yellow spires in the garden next year.

A very reliable perennial in this area is Aconitum napellus, or monkshood. It can produce flowers in various shades of purple/blue/white, and all parts of the plant are deadly poisonous. It's a great replacement for the tall blue delphiniums, now that those flowers have gone to seed or been blown to pieces by summer storms.
Aconitum napellus:

In the forest around town, the wild blueberries are in peak season right now. There is nothing better than a generous handful of those berries on your bowl of cereal in the morning!

Day Neutral Strawberries and the Lonely Rose

2010-07-20T19:58:00.000-07:00

The Papaver rhoeas (Shirley poppies) are looking just fabulous, bringing lots of comments from passers-by. I just bought some seeds for double-flowered Shirley poppies in mix of colors and plan to spread these in other flower beds for next year.

While you may not be impressed by this rose bloom, it is probably one of the few ones in our town or region this year. I haven't heard of any living rose bushes around here after this past winter's severe cold. This rugosa rose was covered in a heavy layer of snow over the winter (shoveled off the driveway and dumped on the rose) and a few branches are still alive this year. I hope it will come back and flourish again next year.

Finally, I ate the first strawberry from the new plants I bought this spring. I later found out the other members of the family were terrified by the disappearance of the ripening berry, thinking the local marauding bear had eaten it. I reassured them that I was the berry eater, and that I heard a rumor that the conservation officers had dealt with the garden-raiding bear. This is a day-neutral strawberry of a variety called "Hecker". I got 6 plants from Dutch Growers in Saskatoon. I sought out this new type of strawberry after reading this Univ. of Saskatchewan article about day-neutral strawberries, which gave me hopes for bigger and better fruits than I have ever grown before. I should add that the strawberry was delicious.

Pushing the Hardiness Boundaries

2010-07-12T20:03:00.001-07:00

Staying alive in the north is part luck and skill, though I hope that most of the humans have got this skill mastered by now. This past year, most of our luck ran out as we had a terrible winter with sparse snow cover during the first cold spell (-30 to -40 C). It has been a year where I throw up my hands at the all the spots of bare earth where perennials and shrubs once lived. Thank goodness for other gardeners, whose similar stories of loss remind me that I am not alone. I am determined to have more luck next year, and will be raising a whole pile of annuals as well, just in case things don't turn out well.
You can see a few leaves left on my rose:

People have suggested that I should have covered some of my plants this last winter. However, there is no practical way to cover nearly a half acre of plants, so a loss of plants is inevitable some years. I think this past year was one freak year out of several decades, so I'm replanting some of the same plants I lost. The rose pictured above was covered in at least three feet of snow for most of the winter, since it is next to our driveway and all the snow shoveled off the driveway goes onto this flower bed. Snow is an excellent insulator. I lost a few junipers one winter after Resident-Lawnmower-Man accidentally thought the junipers were part of the driveway and he shoveled them clean.
Delphiniums (terribly hardy perennials) and annual poppies:

My other tips and tricks for keeping perennials alive in a cold climate:
(1) You can't grow perennials in a pot and keep them outside over winter. People in Vancouver can get away with such things, but we cannot. It is said that you subtract two zone numbers from your current hardiness zone to estimate what will survive in a pot over the winter. For example, if you lived in the Okanagan, BC in zone 6, you could grow zone 4 plants in pots. Here in zone 1, you just don't even bother.
(2) Deadhead spent flowers, but don't cut plants down in the fall. Having a few feet of growth left in the garden will insulate the soil and roots. Do your clean-up in the spring.
(3) Evergreen shrubs prone to winterkill/winterburn should be thoroughly watered in the fall and wrapped loosely with burlap to shield them from wind and sun. This applies to my much-maligned globe cedar (Thuja). Honestly, I'd rather not have shrubs that need clothes, but it's too big to move and besides, it's providing a climbing space for my clematis vines.
Fragrant blooms of Clematis mandschurica:

Do you have a psychological need to share your plant losses? Please do tell. It will make both of us feel better!

Fantastic Annuals and Delphinium Season

2010-07-09T09:21:00.001-07:00

I usually grow my own bedding plants for the pots, but was unable to this year, so I have a not-so-coordinating collection of potted plants. Here is the colorful bunch at my front door. I've got Thunbergia (Black-eyed susan vine) and blue morning glories climbing up a sphagnum-filled topiary frame, with chartreuse sweet potato vines overflowing around the bottom of the big pot. Sweet potato vines and Dichondra (silver or green kinds) are among my favourites for spilling over the edges of pots.

Here's the blue morning glory flower from that same planter. I love the size of this flower!

The self-seeded somniferum poppies are in bloom right now. This one appears to be expressing a bit of the fringed-edge petal trait, though I've never had those kind in my garden before. I'm planning on planting a great variety of them for next year, though.
Pink Papaver somniferum (color combination courtesy of the bees):

I lost track of this annual's name, since I planted it intentionally several years ago and it has self-seeded and returned ever since. I have since realized that it is Nemophila, likely "Baby Blue Eyes". It grows well in a rather dry and hot flowerbed in full sun, adjacent to the house.

The delphiniums are getting into full bloom this week:

Like all members of the buttercup family (includes Monkshood/Aconitum), all parts of Delphinium plants are poisonous. They contain alkaloids that cause weakness and paralysis. I'd hope this means they are left alone by deer in those places troubled by grazing animals. Our neighbourhood currently has a marauding bear. One neighbour was upset that it ate his long-awaited strawberries!

Papaver somniferum poppies in the foreground (unfortunately not thinned very well):

First Poppies and Pumpkin Dreams

2010-07-03T18:17:00.000-07:00

Both Papaver somniferum (breadseed poppies) and Papaver rhoeas (corn poppies) started to bloom in the last two days. These are both annuals and I love them for their beautiful flowers, yearly re-seeding, and easy growing requirements. Papaver rhoeas looks better over its longer blooming season and has more attractive foliage after blooming, compared with P. somniferum. However, P. somniferum makes a generous crop of seeds that are delicious in buns and loaves! To plant either of these in a cooler/northern zone, simply throw the seeds in your garden in April. No special fertilizer or watering is required.

Unfortunately, I didn't thin the P. somniferum very well this year, so many are quite tiny and crammed together like some kind of field crop. Thus, I am not showing you any pictures of those today. I promise to do better next year!

Papaver rhoeas in a lovely pink shade:

The most common P. rhoeas usually comes in a bright orangey-red, but I grew these from a combination of seeds I shamelessly stole from someone else's garden and a package of Cedric Morris mix from Thompson and Morgan.

Otherwise, I am trying to encourage the pumpkins into producing some baby pumpkins already. Thus far, I have only seen the male flowers, which drop off leaving only a dead-ended bare stem. Baby pumpkins started to appear in late July of 2009, so I suppose these aren't totally hopeless vines. I started these pumpkins indoors in the last week of April, as we have a short season and pumpkins need a bit of an indoor headstart here.
This is a flower bud on the pumpkin vine today:

Oh yes, and here is a new daylily I bought to replace the many that died over this past winter. No, it's not anything exotic (especially since it came from a big box store), but I'm hoping Purple d'Oro is a reliable workhorse like it's ubiquitous yellow relative, Stella.

Finally, here is the Alpine rock garden, looking okay now that I've angrily ripped out and sprayed Roundup on the multitude of poplar suckers appearing in and around this bed. Here's a tip for any gardener contemplating a new flower bed: Don't bother making one anywhere near a poplar tree. You will come to grief.

Lupinalooza and Rusty Roses

2010-06-27T20:15:00.000-07:00

I've noticed orange spots on the wild roses near our yard this year. In some places, it's so thick that it almost looks like town employees were going nuts with the orange spray paint. I'm not sure if this threatens the domestic roses, but it's a moot point as many (most?) domestic roses in town died over the past winter.
Wild roses:

I've decided to make the most of seedling perennials already in the yard to fill in the spaces in the flower beds. Buying new plants is too expensive, though exceptions can be made for daylilies, which I also need to replace. I can also justify using my seedlings for design reasons. Repeating the same element through a flower bed adds some cohesion to the bed, making it looks a bit less like a mismatched crazy quilt. In my case, I don't have a huge variety of seedlings, as I usually am fastidious about removing dead flowers before they go to seed. I do however, have a lot of yellow lupines (Lupinus polyphyllus Gallery Yellow) and from past experience, I know the seedlings look like the parent plant. I've found that large numbers of the same flowering plant creates an impressive show and looks quite spectacular. (Next year BETTER be spectacular).

Here's a new addition I did allow into the flower bed: a "Paul's Red" Rhubarb:

I notice that garden centers sell ornamental rhubarb, but why not just get the real thing and have your rhubarb pie too? I've given this one some compost and it seems to be doing well. I even think the red stalks look quite attractive among the other plants. My last rhubarb was a "Macdonald Red, but I was disappointed in its failure to acheive "true rhubarb red-ness". At least, my mother-in-law had much redder rhubarb, which is what probably made my old rhubarb die in shame. Well, that or slugs and poor weather.

While I've had it in my mind that Geranium pratense is borderline hardy in our zone, this "Black Beauty" made it though the winter quite well. I have several seedlings of this plant too, so a year a patience should show the results of my recent transplanting frenzy.

Finally, here is Aquilegia flabellata nana "Alba", the Japanese fan columbine with white flowers. However, it's not quite white, but a morbid shade of pale grey that I think is really unusual.

Wildflower and Siberian Irises in the Smoke

2010-06-25T04:59:00.000-07:00

The smoke from forest fires has been getting thicker all week, with even a few fires in and around town. The water bombers have been busy; we see them flying continuously over our house. We had our upstairs smoke alarm go off in the middle of the night, triggered only by the smoke that had wafted in through open windows. It was a brand new smoke alarm and quite a terrifying sound at night, but I suppose we are assured that it's effective. We'd better be careful making toast from now on. I'm hoping the weekend rain clears up the air so that our weather forecast doesn't call for conditions described as "smokey" anymore.
Aster alpinus "Goliath" blooming in a raised bed:

I noticed this wildflower growing in semi-shade among a grove of poplar trees. Its leaves resemble a tiny version of my Bergenia cordifolia, though the flower is unique. I have no idea what it is. Any ideas from the fine readers out there?
Unidentified wildflower:

The harsh winter cold wiped out several of the perennials, trees, and shrubs this year and certainly did some damage to the compact highbush cranberries (Viburnum trilobum) in the yard. This is remarkable, considering that their native counterparts live in a forest all around us, so they should be very hardy.
Two highbush cranberries, with the one on the right only showing a few live branches:

This siberian iris bloomed for the first time in the 4 years I've had it, possibly matching up to the identification tag "Caesar's brother". All the others I bought with it bloomed in a pretty pale blue and probably were wrongly labeled. This iris has been in this spot for three years and just bloomed for the first time this year. Irises, like peonies, require patience!
Siberian iris, "Caesar's brother":

The large raised bed nearly brings pain to my eyes this year, with all the bare spots from dead plants, but I am madly transplanting seedlings from deceased mature plants into the bare spots. At least the larger plants are making it look mostly green, now that July is almost here.

Garden Depression

2010-06-17T21:35:00.000-07:00

For the first time ever, I find the garden to be a depressing element in my life. Rather than neglecting the housework in favour of gardening, I am avoiding the yard because I fear to face it. There are still a few dead perennials out there that need digging up and so many bare spots that create a glaring ugliness in my eyes. Of course, that is accentuated in my own eyes, but still, this last winter was terrible. I saw that some neighbours had men come in and do some serious work in their yard today, including ripping out the rose bush (that is likely 20+ years old) that failed to endure the winter's cold. Even the wild pink ladyslipper orchids in the forest behind us are limping along, with half the plants producing no blooms at all this year.
My down-but-not-quite-yet-dead rugosa rose:

Adding insult to injury, green caterpillar/worms are eating the foliage from the aquilegia, the hideous and pinch-happy spruce beetles are out now, poplar suckers are trying to take over the flower beds, and a horsetail-like weed is also trying to test my endurance with the weeding tools. I suspect that horsetail weed is simply propagated by my weeding efforts.
The northern idea of hardy perennials for the flower garden: good old chives:

I have contemplated solutions to my garden woes. These include solutions to the weeds such a buying a fortune in bark mulch to cover every inch of bare soil. For the plantings, I imagine flower beds filled only with chives, annual poppies, delphiniums, and rhubarb. Those plants all seem to do well here. I've decided to fill in all the shady areas with some aggresively spreading perennial that will take over faster than the weeds. I've planted one area up with Lamiastrum. I have no idea if that will be hardy, but I suppose I'll find out. Maybe I'll add a mix of aggresive spreaders (suggestions welcome) and wait to see what plant wins out.

Aquilegia vulgaris "Clementine Formula Mixed" seeds produced this lovely flower:

I suppose we got some true zone 2 temperatures this past winter, but the snow got lost in its travels and never arrived on time to protect everything.

Some Modest Tulips

2010-06-09T19:14:00.001-07:00

The show of tulips was underwhelming this year. It made me lose hope in tulips, really. Perhaps I just need to dig out the old ones and install some new ones this fall, with a good helping of bulb fertilizer thrown in. Most (non-naturalizing) tulips get smaller and more pathetic after three years, so maybe now is their time to go. It was especially disappointing after not one single daffodil appeared this spring. Oh well. I've had a narcissus skip two years and appear the third, so I won't lose hope on the daffodils.

I like the tiny blue forget-me-nots which have self-seeded themselves around the bases of the tulips. I planted those in the fall of 2008 and am happy that they produced some future generations (they are biennial). In the absence of tulips, what else could provide me with great spring colors? Maybe more Aquilegia? Mine aren't blooming yet, but I think they will soon.

Here's a very hardy clematis, as its survival over this past winter proves:
Clematis macropetala -- a spring bloomer:

My friend Barbara gave me some of her Cypripedium parviflorum (Yellow lady's slipper) orchid this spring. She had "liberated" it from a ditch outside of town where machinery was bulldozing the native landscape to make way for new power lines a few years ago. I am enjoying the yellow flowers, though I am not quite happy with this photo. I have become a bit more of a photography critic now that I am learning the finer points with my new Nikon SLR. I wish I had a greater depth of field in this shot.

However, the no-see-ums were chewing away at my head and hands and the need for escape took priority over photographic perfection at one point. There was no way I was going to fiddle around getting the tripod positioned and all that stuff. I'd have been chewed up and carried away. I hate the bugs. Can you tell?

Tiny Little Flowers

2010-06-05T19:58:00.000-07:00

There was some light rain today, but not enough to keep us indoors. I ran out with the camera to capture three diminutive flowers blooming in the perennial bed along the driveway. All of these are growing in part-shade, under the mountain ash tree.

Firstly, I have been encouraging the painfully slow growth of this pink-flowered lily of the valley. Yes, I know. It is ridiculous that I keep its territory free of weeds and speak kind and encouraging words to this plant, which is widely known as invasive in many gardens. It has been in this location for three years now and I'm hoping for more exciting flower shows than this:
Convallaria rosea:

This tiny Primula frondosa plant could easily fit in the palm of your hand. It came from my friend Barbara, who fawns over primulas like darling children. This flower is rather cute:

From the same friend, I got this little Aquilegia glandulosa last year. Even with the flowers, the whole plant is less than 6 inches tall.

The other dwarf Aquilegia (Black Currant Ice) in this bed seemed to have died over winter. Speaking of which, it seems the bleeding hearts, hostas, Digitalis grandiflora, and sandcherries are also dead. I planted some perennial seeds under lights in the basement today, realizing that I'm going to need to fill a lot of empty spaces this year.

Blackfly, the Little Blackfly...

2010-06-03T11:33:00.000-07:00

The surviving flowers are doing their best to grown and bloom in our warm weather these past few days.
Some "Blue Diamond" double late tulips which have reached the end of their term in my garden, having miniaturized in their third blooming season:

I spent nearly all of yesterday sweating and grunting as I pried the dead shrubs and perennials out of the ground. Among the dead were the Alchemilla (lady's mantle), Penstemon ovatus, the daylilies, blue oat grass and blue fescue, Aruncus dioicus (goat's beard), lupines, spirea shrubs, Liatris spicata, Chelone (turtlehead), Pulmonaria, Brunnera, Heuchera (coral bells), Dianthus deltoides (pinks), Stachys byzantina (lamb's ears), possibly the Echinacea, and probably some others I have forgotten. As a further insult, the blackflies chewed away at my left ear as I toiled and now I have a painful and puffy red ear to remind me of why I want to move to southern BC. In, the back of my mind was the national film board video about the pesky blackfly (albeit, in northern Ontario). I think any 20+ year old Canadian is familiar with this oh-so-relevant tune from the NFB.

Here is a plant that was undeterred by winter, Saxifraga arendsii "Purple Robe":

I only noticed after I took the picture that there are some horsetail weeds growing in the foreground. Oops.
Also doing well is the Erigeron compositus, which I started from seed two years ago:

I'll bet this plant is called a weed in someone else's garden, but I find it cute and pretty and am presently enjoying it in mine.

Pulsatilla Color

2010-05-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

Pulsatilla vulgaris (pasqueflower) grows in my front sloped rock garden, and currently, it seems rather alone out there. Much of the phlox and dianthus appears to be dead, so I'm not sure what's going to give this bed some color this year.

I grow Pulsatilla in several shades of pink and purple, as well as in white. These plants seems to like well-drained soil and usually bloom earlier than this. They self-seed around a bit, but I welcome the seedlings and transplant them around the flowerbeds. These pink ones have been pointing their heads downward for the last week, possibly out of protest at the lack of sunny skies. I feel their pain.

Another Hardy Primula

2010-05-26T13:38:00.000-07:00

I have to post this picture of my Primula saxatilis, which did very well over this particularly harsh winter. It reseeds itself around a little bit, and considering the long-lived attractive show of lilac-colored flowers right now, I wouldn't mind it spreading around a bit further.

The wild pincherry trees are in bloom right now:

Veronica whitleyi is the most attractive Veronica in my yard. I love the dark blue flowers with contrasting white centers. It forms a very low mat (2" or less) that creeps along the ground in my alpine garden. I believe I got this plant from Wrightman's Alpines, a great source for these little plants.

Survivor: Winter in the Northern Garden

2010-05-24T20:41:00.000-07:00

I did more spring clean-up and weeding in the raised beds today, ripping out lots of more dead plant material. It seems that many plants succumbed or were severely damaged by the -30C weather we had last fall before we got any snow cover. Any plants remaining deserve an award for their survivorship despite such conditions. Primula auricula is one such hardy plant. The polyanthus and drumstick (denticulata) primulas never survived, though. The creeping phlox (Phlox subulata) was hit very hard, with very few live stems and flowers this spring. Usually, their pink flowers contrast nicely with the grape hyacinths, which have yet to start blooming.
Primula auricula in bloom:

It was a strange winter for the trees too. The mountain ash still hasn't dropped its dead leaves from last year, so the dead brown foliage is still hanging up there like dirty laundry amid this spring's new green leaves.
Dead junipers and the winter-savaged perennial flower bed:

Dryas octopetala among poppies in the alpine garden:

Most of the lilies are looking okay, as are the delphiniums and bergenia. Time will tell if the daylilies and hostas are going to come around this year. It's good that I got some gardening done today, because tomorrow's forecast includes mixed rain and snow! I'm wondering if a warm day will ever come or if the pumpkin seedlings will stay hiding indoors forever?

Wildlife en route

2010-05-23T12:22:00.001-07:00

Well, the garden is looking pretty dismal at the moment. All the flowers that have usually put on a show for May are either absent or greatly delayed. There are no signs of any daffodils, which is rather ominous, and may signal that all the bulbs froze and rotted. I hope not, but it is rather unusual that I don't see any sign of them.

So, as an alternative, here are some animals we spotted on our recent roadtrip:

Sandhill cranes, spotted south of La Ronge. These very tall birds made some strange noises, rather like something being strangled, as they flew away from us.

Raven in Banff national park (okay, so this is no elk or mountain sheep):

Mother bear and three cubs spotted south of La Ronge:

Penticton Japanese Garden

2010-05-18T12:43:00.000-07:00

The recent gap in garden posting is the result of a trip to green places in British Columbia. I am sad to be missing the early stages of my spring bulbs back in Saskatchewan, but am appreciating the spring blossoms in the Okanagan now, instead. The pink and white blossoms of the dogwood trees, deep pink-covered branches of the hawthornes, and majestic pink flower-spires of the horse chestnut trees are amazing here in May.

Pond at the Penticton-Ikeda Japanese garden, which is located on the beach at Okanagan lake.

Rhododendrons in bloom:

Rhododendrons and various shapes of evergreens along the pond:

Bearded irises and bamboo:

Species Tulips and Things that Fly

2010-04-28T21:08:00.000-07:00

The Tulipa tarda (Daystemon tulip) are coming up in thick bunches now, with seedlings spread all around them. These hardy little tulips come up early and flower before the large colorful hybrid tulips. I would love to have a carpet of them in spring. I love the fact that I can sprinkle their large bell-pepper-like seeds around to get even more of them.

While outside today, a water bomber passed overhead several times. They are extremely loud, so you always know when they're flying by, even from inside the house. We are under the flight path, so we are quite familiar with the comings and goings at the airport. I haven't heard of any fires, so I imagine they are just doing exercises at the moment.

I tried to identify the exact type of aircraft on the transport Canada website based on that number under the wing, but I couldn't find it. Maybe a Canadair? Besides this plane in the air, I spotted a bald eagle circling far above our house. Perhaps I will get some good photos of the birds when I get a new camera soon! It's time for a DSLR. My brother has convinced me about Nikon cameras, so I may be shooting the plants with a new shiny one this summer.

Can't see the view for the Snowplow...

2010-04-24T22:19:00.000-07:00

Like many other places in northern Canada today, we got dumped on. One foot of snow! Yes, can you believe it? I even passed the RCMP (Canadian police) truck pulling the official RCMP snowmobile on a trailer back to the station. I wonder if they were doing some business out on the snow machines today?

It seems our squirrel inhabitant of the bird house had to clear the walk this morning:

There is no playing with the kids' playset today:

First Bloom

2010-04-22T08:52:00.000-07:00

I was surprised to see my first bloom of the year in the alpine garden. It wasn't a spring bulb either, which usually brings me the first color of the year. This tiny little Draba polytricha is about the size of a walnut, with tiny little yellow flowers on its bun-shaped mound of hairy blue-grey foliage.

I finished cleaning up the dead growth out of the raised beds today, a project that takes about 6 to 8 hours altogether. As I was working, I heard some squawks and honks and rhythmic beating of wings, as a large V of Canada geese flew north above me. Welcome back, geese.

Squirrel Home

2010-04-17T17:25:00.000-07:00

We've been having a household debate regarding the new inhabitant in the backyard birdhouse. In the three years we've had that birdhouse, no bird has ever shown any interest in taking up residence. I imagine the birds don't appreciate that the birdhouse sits on the dog fence (and our dog eats birds).

Today, we noticed a squirrel in the birdhouse, with its head half-way poking out the door. It has been like this all day. I am concerned that it might be stuck in there, especially since it doesn't move when you walk near the birdhouse to look at it. Resident-lawnmower-man maintains that since it got in there, it can get back out. Then he admits, "but if there's a bad smell coming from it in a few days, then it wasn't able to get out". Besides, he says he wouldn't rescue the squirrel anyways, because "those things bite".

Late for a Very Important Date...

2010-04-15T09:37:00.000-07:00

It seems that most of the plants in our yard have missed their alarm clocks and slept in a bit. In most of the previous five years, the crocuses were blooming at this date. Today, I searched around and found only one tiny green tip of a crocus emerging from the soil. There are a few tips of Scilla emerging in sunny spots, and the reticulated irises, narcissus, and chionodoxa are nowhere to be found. Tulipa tarda is growing well, but a bit late. That bulb seems to thrive in harsh conditions.
Lonely crocus:

Tulipa humulis (a botanical/species tulip) is the earliest-growing bulb in the yard this year:

I am suspecting that I will have lost more perennials this winter than any year in the past five years, as many of the evergreen perennials look entirely dead this spring. The bergenias look beaten-up, but not yet defeated. My beloved Lewisias appear to have rotted into mushy puddles, and even some of the sedums look like blackened heaps of washed-up seaweed.
This Saxifraga "Purple Robe" looks great, however:

The junipers suffered terrible winter damage, with their tops all browned. I didn't cover these shrubs, though in retrospect, that would have been a good idea. It's just that they never needed extra protection for the previous four years. Who would have known we would have such a cold fall with so little snow? I hope that the bulbs made it, as there are lots of daffodils and tulips buried out there.
Brown junipers and a slightly damaged nest spruce:

You have to admire Primula auricula, which is admirably winter hardy:

I wish I had a carpet of those primulas. What a great spring show that would be!

Bring on the April Showers

2010-03-31T08:08:00.000-07:00

Snow, snow, go away...
The yard on March 28:

The yard today, on a cloudy and wet day:

The landscape has changed significantly in the past three days. The snow has been replaced by mud and rain. The lake ice is now topped with blue puddles for the first time this year. The snowmobiles may stop soon, or risk getting soaked.
First growth in rock garden, the tips of Tulipa humilis:

Kona the dog, waiting for the sun to come back:

Aha, it IS Winter

2010-03-18T11:46:00.001-07:00

Well, the last few weeks of optimism and bare earth has been buried by snow that fell last night. This probably isn't too bad, because things were starting to look a bit dry. Also, snowmobiling will go much smoother now. More snow and cold for the next week! There won't be any sprouting tips of crocuses or early tulips for a few more weeks yet, folks.

We had just unwrapped the shrub at the center of this photo!

Early Melting of Snow

2010-03-15T08:52:00.000-07:00

While many gardeners in this country have already seen their crocuses come and go, we are watching the snow melt (crocuses will appear in April). Actually, it has been an early melt this year, with daytime highs above freezing for more than a week. The snowmobilers are still roaring around on the lake, though cross-country skiing is losing ground, with patches of grass showing up on their trails.
The lake will be frozen for a while yet. A truck can be seen driving on the ice road in this picture:

It has been so nice that I couldn't resist letting the fresh air in, opening the deck doors and soaking in the sunshine. Unfortunately, since the snow started retreating from the lawn, I have felt itchy eyes and phlegm in my throat. I believe my body is protesting the snow mold, which hadn't bothered me before, but seems to be fairly common among long-time residents of this area. Somehow, I feel like I'd be much happier to be sneezing at something green and spewing out pollen at this colorless time of year.
Raised beds:

Patches of snow on the lawn and the sloped rock garden:

Alpine garden, starting to peek from beneath the snow:

Easy Direct Sown Annuals

2010-02-22T12:18:00.000-08:00

I am doing something different this spring. I will not be growing all my bedding plants and new perennials indoors under lights. I plan to be away for a bit of the spring season, so I can't take care of seedling plants and am going to rely on buying a few annuals and direct sowing the rest.
This year's (bigger) Thompson and Morgan catalog which is enticing me with its full-color pictures:

It is a challenge to select the right seeds for direct sowing in a northern short-season climate like ours, though. Our frost-free season is about 95 days and thus the flowers have to get everything done in a limited window of time. Direct-sowing is one of the easiest ways to get nice drifts of flowers. Simply throw the seed on the ground in spring time, scratch around in the dirt to mix things up a bit, and let nature take its course!

My biggest successes with direct-seeding (and self-sowing, for that matter) annuals, have been with poppies and cornflowers. The good old breadseed poppy (P. somniferum) and the corn poppy (P. rhoeas) do great after throwing some seed in the raised beds in April. My cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus) have self-seeded for a few years and their tall, brilliant blue flowers look amazing in contrast to the yellows and pinks. I have had sweetpeas grow okay and some Phacelia campanularia (California bluebell) grew well in a neglected and dry flowerbed. I am hesitant about distributing mass amounts of viola seeds, considering that Johnny-jump-ups are some of the most prolific "weeds" in my garden.
Mixed colors of Papver rhoeas (corn poppies) last year in my raised beds:

What's neat about direct-sown annuals is that the require so little effort, though the results often cannot be duplicated by putting a fortune into buying bedding plants. Some plants just don't transplant well and should only be direct sown. It's easy to be smug in July, standing next to your stunning flowerbed, knowing that you are reaping the results of your minimal efforts in the springtime.

So here are my ideas for direct-sown annuals to try in my short-season garden:

nasturtiums
calendula
California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) -- I like the new pink and pastel ones
cornflowers
Nigella/love-in-a-mist
mirabilis/four-o-clocks
sunflowers -- have done these before with success
nicotiana
sweet alyssum
snapdragons
clarkia
cosmos
cleome -- I have started these early indoors before and am not sure they'd flower in time otherwise
flax
sweet peas
corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas) -- these worked very well last year

Any comments and ideas would be appreciated!

Jack Frost and Tomatillos

2010-02-05T07:52:00.000-08:00

We're still in the middle of cold winter here, with lots of snow and solidly frozen lakes. I'd be willing to ship a parcel of nice clean snow to Vancouver for those Olympic events on the snow-deficient Cypress mountain. If you read this VANOC, just let me know. I think it's a little odd that a city with blooming daffodils at the time of the winter Olympics is hosting this event.
Currently, it's only -10 C here, with similar temperatures forecasted for the rest of the week. This might be "too warm" for the big dog sled race scheduled to start on Feb 10. Last week, we had some cooler temperatures, creating these patterns on the inside of our bedroom windows at sunrise:

Yesterday, I went to the local grocery store and found some tomatillos in the produce section. I had never seen them there before, so I bought them, purely for the novelty of having them. I don't recall the price listed on the sign, but I think it was more than what I paid for them. After getting home, I realized that the chekout girl never asked me about the tomatillos. Our local supermarket cashiers have difficulty telling pears from potatoes, so they usually ask what is in the produce bag. This girl obviously felt certain in her belief that these were Brussels sprouts, charging me $4.38/kg ($1.98/lb), as recorded on the receipt. Thus, I got my bag of tomatillos for 77 cents, which is probably a pretty good deal. Now I've got to find a recipe!
My "Brussels sprouts":

A Hungry Snow Angel

2010-01-19T11:39:00.000-08:00

I spotted this snow angel today as I rolled the trash bin out to the road. It clearly isn't human-sized, so I assume this was made by a bird. However, the whole imprint is quite large, being over two feet wide. I'd imagine a raven made this imprint, probably while it was checking out some potential food item on the ground. The only other birds I have seen recently are the cedar waxwings, who are partaking in the feast of berries still hanging on the mountain ash tree.

Google Trends of Gardening

2010-01-13T10:44:00.001-08:00

Yes, it's winter and I am feeling deprived of dirt and weeding and all things green and growing. In the absence of better things to do, I am getting curious about the statistics of "Garden Googling". Similar to the Google Flu-Watch program, whereby Google can track a flu outbreak by the location of people searching terms that describe flu symptoms, I decided to see who is searching for garden terms and when.

It can be fun to play with the online tools Google Trends or Google Insights for Search. They measure the popularity of particular Google searches, and Google insights for Search allows you to see search trends over time, including data for particular countries, regions, or cities.

I have been interested in the cyclical interest in gardening as I track the interest in my garden blog over the course of a year. Generally, spring is the time for garden excitement. While I should have been busy doing other useful things, I decided to study graphs of the searches for "gardening" around the globe and found some interesting results.

Canada +"gardening" -- Sharp peak consistently in May (higher than the US peak), with notable lows in December. Interpretation: Winter is harsh and the growing season is short. We all but forget gardening in midwinter, but then get instantly excited about gardening shortly after our igloos melt.

United States +"gardening" -- Rounded peak in April, with the December low not as deep as Canada's. Interpretation: American gardeners in the warm south keep up the interest year-round, while a more-prolonged period of increased interest in gardening searches occurs in spring.

Australia +"gardening" -- Gardening search popularity stays quite high year-round (at the same level as Canada's peak), with a bi-phasic pattern of small increases around April and September. Interpretation: I don't understand the southern hemisphere's garden season, but I wish I could visit these garden enthusiasts!

Interpreting "gardening" searches in countries where English is not the most common language is probably not too useful, explaining why there appears to be little garden interest in Japan and China.

The chart below shows that Australia and the United Kingdom are making the most searches for "gardening" as a proportion of all Google searches, averaged over time, for the period from 2004 to present. While those places certainly harbour many avid gardeners, I imagine their milder climates and year-round potential for gardening result in a greater number of searches over the course of a year.

So there you go. Information is power. I suppose these data explain why I can't find a decent selection of products in plant places at this time of year...

Cosy up to the Grow Lights!

2010-01-01T15:08:00.000-08:00

Happy New Years! It was a crisp -37C day when we woke up this morning. I don't bother feeling guilty about not walking the dog at these temperatures. Someday we'll get out on the lake for a good walk, but just not yet.

What a day this is to be contemplating cacti! My mother tucked a package of these giant saguaro seeds (Carnegiea gigantea) into one of my Christmas gifts. I'm foregoing the winter escape to Arizona this year, but perhaps I can grow a little bit of Arizona up here in the land of northern lights (see forecast) and sled dogs. The saguaro flower is the state flower of Arizona and the enormous succulent is an iconic feature of its deserts. The instructions say to plant the seeds in 1/8 inch deep very moist sandy soil and they will germinate in 3 to 10 days. We'll see how they do under the grow lights of my basement!

The Kaffir lime plant is 3 months old and looking good. I hope to get some tasty leaves for cooking out of this plant:

This "Red Robin" cherry tomato produced about 8 fruit before I hacked it down because of damaged leaves and unshapely form. In the past 11 days, it produced this new growth, including a cluster of flower buds. The biggest problem I have with growing cherry tomatoes under lights is that the plants get too tall. Secondly, they require a fairly big pot, which reduces the room for the plant under the lights. I have my lights set as high as can be accommodated by my shelf. Ideally, I'd like to find an extremely low plant with a nearly creeping habit.

Gingerbread Beach Body and Christmas Protea

2009-12-21T17:09:00.000-08:00

A unique seasonal bouquet arrived at our house today. It contained some flowers I don't think I've ever seen before, other than in pictures. Dusted with gold glitter, this arrangement appears to contain several protea flowers and some purplish foliage of unknown variety. I was impressed, for sure. I wonder where the protea came from, being a flower most associated with South Africa and a few other tropical locales. Some South African friends got me a package of protea seeds some time ago , though I haven't been bold enough to try and grow them (besides their apparent need for fire to aid germination). Anyhow, these are very cool flowers and I hope they open up to look even more spectacular.

I made a large batch of gingerbread cookies this last weekend, since I enjoy eating the soft and chewy type rather than the nearly-cardboard ones from the store. I made a few cookies that are beach-ready, including this beautiful lady:

We actually have very little snow for this time of year, though temperatures have been very cold this December and the lakes are well-frozen. People are driving trucks and snowmobiles all over the lakes now. RLM will have to haul his latest accumulation of stuff out to the cabin soon. I'm hoping will be NO MORE antler chandeliers.

Compost Worms "Recycling"

2009-12-10T07:45:00.000-08:00

Do worms eat your garbage? We find that we produce much less household garbage by recycling and composting, but recently, I tried a new paper product disposal method. I fed a Botanus catalog to my composting worms, who live in a plastic bin in our semi-heated garage. It seemed like a fitting completion of the garden cycle; from glossy catalog to fertile worm castings that will fertilize next year's flowers from the Botanus catalog. Dear resident lawnmower-man had concerns about the dyes hurting the worms (I didn't know he felt so fondly about them), but I reassured him that most printers are using vegetable-based dyes these days.
Vermicomposting bin, with perforated inner container inside a larger container that collects excess moisture as "compost tea":

October 19, 2009: Botanus catalog destined for worm box (staples were removed):

Worm box with catalog, which I buried about 5 cm below the surface:

December 7, 2009: I was planning to avoid adding more kitchen scraps to the bin during the experiment, but our houseguests had been using the box while we were away. This didn't seem to distract the worms from the catalog too much, and I am impressed that our houseguests got friendly with the compost worms!
Worm box, seven weeks later:

Remnants of catalog left as of December 7, 2009:

The remnants resembled a bit of wet paper towel. I'm sure there will be nothing left by New Years. I guess this goes to prove that the worms enjoy the garden catalogs too!

Back Home. They Didn't Compost Me Yet!

2009-12-07T13:32:00.000-08:00

Thankyou to you all who left messages while I was away there for a bit. I'd have loved to have been on a vacation or something great, but that's not always how life goes. It seems that some people can have a gallbladder out and be back to life as usual, and the other 0.1% goes on to several more surgeries, the ICU, implantation with medical devices, and probably months more of recovery. At least I'm still here to tell about it and I got a few nice get-well flower arrangements and plants that I appreciated. Oh yes, and it was fortunate that I didn't leave a mid-summer garden neglected and unappreciated.

Here's an orchid I received from a friend. Anyone know its name? Maybe a Laelia or laeliocatteleya? I have no idea, since it does not resemble any of my current orchids. It has single leaves on its pseudobulbs and very fragrant flowers held in a loose spray above the leaves.

And alas it is the season for these lovely red beauties. Again, another friend brought this one to our house.

I hope you all are having a good week and are looking forward to spending time with family for the holidays! We need to put up some decorations soon.

Away For a Bit

2009-11-07T08:43:00.000-08:00

I would love to be blogging about plants right now. I am doing not much more than admiring the houseplants at the moment.
When I least expected it, I had one of those rare, very bad complications to a simple medical procedure. Isn't it true that you always imagine the 0.5% of people never will include yourself? I hope to have my normal life back sometime soon, since my family and plants need me! If I look at in a hopeful way, at least it is winter here now, with snow on the ground and no gardening left to do. I even heard a group of snowmobiles roar by, using the skimpy layer of snow as an excuse to get out. As for myself, I will stay strong and not turn to compost any time soon.

A Dry and Crusty Fall

2009-10-22T15:06:00.000-07:00

Firstly, I would have posted last week had my computer not died and gone off to the computer repair shop. I'm borrowing RLM's laptop to do this post, but hope to have the old Apple back soon.

The snow from last weekend has melted and evaporated away, leaving all the perennials dead and crusty with a few hardy exceptions. The fall aster (Aster dumosus) and stonecrop look good yet. Also, the Gentiana septemfida is attempting a bloom, though nothing like its fabulous multi-bloom shows of previous years. Of course, I did divide it last fall, so I didn't expect much.
Gentiana septemfida:

With the early snowfall, I think the colors on the trees didn't develop as well as usual, and now the leaves are all dry and drab. Oh well. I'm dedicating my time now to the indoor plants, reviving my interest in the aquarium (mostly involves spending money on it), and spending quality time with the composting worms.

With inspiration from my aquarium-crazy brother, I've decided to upgrade the fluorescent lights on the aquarium. This got me to thinking about the lights on my plants. Why do the plants deserve any less than the pea-brained fish? Then again, I'm thinking of upgrading the aquarium lights to allow plants to grow in there, so really, it's all about the plants anyways. I'm looking at the power compact fluorescents, specifically the Coralife high output T5 65W 6700K bulbs and a fixture to hold them. Is there anyone out there using these for their plant setup? Let me know if you've heard of such a thing.

Snowman! Well, not quite yet.

2009-10-08T19:14:00.000-07:00

The two year old assistant gardener first noted the new white carpet outside this morning. Her perspective was definitely more positive than the comments from most of the adult prairie folk who are watching snow fall today. I was reminded by the assistant gardener that we must keep a carrot and hat on hand at all times for the accessorizing of snowmen. Noted.

This snowfall finally took the petals off my corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas), which had actually still been looking rather colorful and showy. Oh well. It is October and we're in northern Saskatchewan.

At least the onset of winter makes gardening a non-option for the upcoming months. No need to feel guilty for not accomplishing anything out there now! I was thinking of it like losing your job and hearing this message: "We're sorry, you did a good job this past summer and all, but...we have to let you go. We've moved production to Mexico. We couldn't keep going in the current local conditions. You can clear out your pots and say goodbye." Here's to the excitement of houseplants for the next seven months. Gosh, don't you love Canada?

First Snow!

2009-10-07T17:58:00.000-07:00

I first noticed the snow today on Facebook. It was only when a friend's status update mentioned the snow that I got up from the computer and looked out the window. My goodness, there were tiny white floating flakes falling from the sky! I think many areas of the prairies saw a little bit of the white stuff today. Besides snow in the sky, two fighter jets roared over our house today. They were flying north, though I can't imagine what exciting destination they were speeding off to.
Alpine garden, which looks remarkably attractive at this time of year:

I have noticed that few of the alpines go brown and ugly in fall, leaving this bed more attractive than the big perennial beds right now. The little succulents simply change to reddish shades as the weather cools.

The sloped bank of sedum turns red for fall and winter, coordinating well with the surrounding forest and its colorful deciduous trees. RLM cleaned up this bank by beheading the dead brown flowers with the weed whipper.

I did get some bark mulch from the local store before they cleared it out for the season. Unfortunately, I didn't benefit from any end-of-season sale prices, but at least I got some before we welcome the snow. I really appreciate how the mulch keeps the weeds down, as I hate crawling under the low branches of the mountain ash tree to pull weeds. I'd rather spread mulch once a year than get the tree droppings tangled in my hair on a regular basis.

I blogged earlier this year about this patch of perennial border that I have never really liked. I replaced a messy mass of dianthus and moved a peony from a hidden spot in the yard to the center of this area. The hostas look decidedly nicer in the fall than those other perennials that lose their aesthetic appeal after flowering (like the dianthus). I dragged the hostas, Brunnera, and Alchemilla mollis from other areas of the yard and then underplanted the area closest to the front with about 20 Anemone blanda bulblets.

Pumpkins and More Bulbs

2009-09-29T15:08:00.001-07:00

There's only two days left in September! Oh my. My Botanus (from British Columbia) order came in the mail last Friday and my first opportunity to plant them was today. I rushed out into the great windstorm, wearing several layers of clothing, and planted 75 daffodils, including Barrett Browning, Dutch Master, and Ice Follies. My palms are starting to blister from twisting my bulb planter around, but at least I didn't get rained on. Tomorrow I'll plant the tiny bulbs and hope for weather that's no worse than this.

I have found, by trial and error, that the daffodils only do well in the sandy soil (probably because it has better drainage) rather than the highly-organic mix of peat moss and compost. I had many bulbs that rotted last fall because they were planted in mostly peat moss. My daffodils are all planted in full sun to part (afternoon) shade.
Planted and labeled!

Mountain ash tree loaded down with berries:

Aster dumosus "Alert", blooming nicely this year:

Aren't these beautiful? I'm very proud of my two pumpkins, the first ones I have ever grown! I'm still figuring out how I'm going to eat them. It had better be sweet and delicious! They are a small sugar variety. I started them indoors a couple of months before planting out (in June), so that they could have a longer season than our weather allows.

An Extinct Blue Species - But I Have One!

2009-09-22T20:27:00.000-07:00

Okay, so here's one off-topic post. The Americans won't have any idea about this major shift in our confectionary colors, since they don't have Smarties as we know them (how unfortunate). In Canada however, March 2009 marked the end of the blue Smartie. I'm really not a junk food eater, but I occasionally enjoy these candy-covered milk chocolates. Resident-lawnmower-man picked up these ones from the bulk section of the CO-OP grocery store this week. Either their rate of Smartie turn-over is low, or RLM was just scraping the bottom of the barrel to get these older-style ones. Anyhow, I photographed this lone blue survivor for posterity. Tomorrow I may eat it. Goodbye "Brilliant Blue" artificial dye. Hello to a world with "no artificial colors" in our Smarties. From now on, the colors have to come from plants (there IS a plant connection here). The UK does have a natural blue substance (from cyanobacteria) to make their pale blue Smarties, but for some reason, it is not licensed for use in Canada (and Americans still have their M&Ms with all artificial dyes). I'm sure there are some researchers sitting in a lab somewhere, searching for solutions to our blue Smartie problem...

Bulb Planting and Miracle Fruit

2009-09-22T15:29:00.000-07:00

I am aiming to get my bulbs all planted before October, but that may be difficult as I haven't received my Botanus order yet. Hopefully the box is in the mail and I get time to plant the bulbs, allowing them time to take root before winter.
Morning glory - spotted this afternoon:

I planted 260 bulbs in the alpine garden this past week. They are all smaller plants, such as large-flowered crocuses, Allium roseum, small narcissus, Siberian squill, and Anemone blanda. I wasn't planning on planting the entire Veseys order in there, but I decided to focus on that garden and make it really nice rather than diluting the effect around the entire yard.
Alpine garden:

A Lewisia in the alpine garden, still blooming to illustrate why it is one of my favourite flowers:

I received my Miracle Fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum) a few days ago, from Flora Exotica in Montreal. It was shipped via Canada Post "Expedited Parcels" service, which got it here in six days. The online tracking showed that it was sent quickly all the way to Manitoba, and from there it seemed to go to La Ronge by horse and carriage. The plant was well-packed with air bags to cushion its ride and sealed in a Lego-toys box (they must recycle at this plant place). The toddler-gardener was sorely disappointed to find out the package wasn't intended for her, since it looked so promising.
Miracle fruit plant:

From what I read online, this African shrub can start producing berries when it is a foot tall. It also prefers acid soil and a warm and humid environment. We'll see how it does in the basement under fluorescent lights! I have great hopes for this plant and its taste-altering properties. I think that the marijuana growers of this country should re-focus their energies on this cool plant. It is totally legal, safe and fun to have at parties, besides being quite a conversation piece. Keep tuned to see how this project turns out!

Indoor Gardening Already; Pine Bonsai Update

2009-09-14T14:16:00.001-07:00

The dismal year in the vegetable garden (probably because I neglected to water it enough) and a renewed desire to eat tasty greens has caused me to return to basement gardening. I can easily grow enough sweet, tender lettuce for sandwiches in the basement. The time investment is minimal -- I remember to water the plants whenever I do laundry. Also, there are no bugs (other than the odd spider) and the temperature is pretty comfortable to work in. So far, my two buttercrunch seedlings haven't grown very large. Unfortunately for them, I got hungry. I'm thinking that I need to start more lettuce, ideally in a variety of shapes and colors. What I really need is enter a lottery to win a greenhouse. Anybody heard of such a thing? At least it sounds better than the legion's "meat draw".

Here are the two Jack Pine seedlings, destined to become my first bonsai conifers (the white bottle is just to demonstrate their size):

They were started at the same time (Feb/09) despite the dissimilar appearance. These were part of a mini bonsai kit I got last Christmas. These trees really should have some sort of change in climate for their winter. Perhaps I'll put them out in the partially heated garage, but in bigger pots so they don't totally dry out.

Continuing on with the fall's indoor gardening kick, here is my recent shipment of Kaffir lime seeds. I ordered these on ebay and they arrived with these handy instructions. I got tired of reading my Indian cookbooks and skipping recipes that called for the leaves of this plant. They give a limey flavour and are used like bay leaves. The green fruits are not edible.

Kaffir lime (Citrus hystrix) seeds planted, keeping company with my herbs:

Finally, the most exciting indoor garden news is a purchase of a miracle fruit plant. Have you seen these berries on TV? They are like LSD for your tastebuds. Miracle fruit parties are popping up everywhere. RLM mused that it would be really cool to have one of these plants, though I replied that plants native to Ghana probably wouldn't thrive here. After a quick internet search the other night though, I found a supplier in Montreal and ordered a plant for about $35 including shipping. Canada post sent me a tracking information email today, so I hope to get my plant soon. It has a few particular needs, like acid soil, but that's not too hard to manage. I'm so excited. I'll post as soon as I get my new plant.

Rather Blah Unless You Look Really Hard

2009-09-13T19:29:00.000-07:00

The nearly-fall garden is not particularly exciting. That's probably why I'd rather not post pictures of it, but I did anyhow. The orange berries of the mountain ash tree are pretty though, but I hate having to pull all the little ash tree seedlings near that tree.
Large raised bed:

Sloped flower bed under mountain ash tree:

Some of the area under the tree was covered with bark mulch two years ago, but that layer is getting rather thin and old and it desperately needs to be topped up. However, resident-lawnmower-man told me that "you already put mulch there [2 years ago], why would you need any more?". This is the same guy that asks why I buy the toddler-gardener new pants every 6 months or so, since "she already has those". I should be asking him, "Why do you want lunch today? Didn't you have some yesterday?". Hmmm.

Do you have an interest in primulas of northern Scotland? I got several Primula scotica from our local American Primrose Society member. I believe she grew the plants from seeds obtained from their society seed exchange.
Primula scotica:

The alpine garden is doing well. Some plants did so well that I dug them up and tossed them out of it, telling them never to come back. Like other Cerastiums, the alpine version can take over quite a large space in a small amount of time. I am now keeping only one Cerastium specimen in there, and that one had better behave.

On the other hand, some plants grew quite slowly, like this Draba polytricha. The whole plant never grew any bigger than the end of my thumb. I hope it makes a conspicuous bloom someday.
Draba polytricha:

Jovibarba rosettes filling the space between rocks:

I grew those jovibarba from seed last winter. A few little rosettes planted in that space grew into a nice little crust of those lovely succulents. None of them flowered yet.

We have pumpkins! Yes, two of them are living on a vine that is growing on the pile of dirt and weeds out back. See that dandelion? It alone could feed a family of four.

Some Two-Faced Spider

2009-09-10T19:57:00.001-07:00

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Here's a spider with a face to spare. Doesn't it look like someone tried to sew a face onto the back of this one? Really, I don't like spiders too much. I can't help but get immediate feelings of repulsion. Sorry, spider world. I admit to smushing the ones that invade my laundry pile and crawl towards me when I'm in the bathtub, but I leave the outdoor ones alone. I found this one next to the faucet for the garden hose.

The only gardening I've done recently consists of watering a few desperate plants in pots. I did notice that my pumpkins are now orange (yeah!). I spotted them while getting scallions for dinner last night. An unfortunate series of minor illnesses has been getting in the way of my gardening destiny. Let's hope for a long fall.

Pretty Pinks, Peculiar Pelargonium

2009-09-01T18:12:00.000-07:00

First, I'll tell the embarassing story of my week. I got my seed order from Stokes, which oddly came in a box this time. Rather unusual for a few packets of seed, don't you think? Then I pulled out this foil package a little smaller than a bag of breakfast cereal, labeled "Keystone Endive, product of Netherlands". I only wanted a few seeds to see if I could grow endive under lights, but instead I got 10,000 pelleted seeds! It wasn't the company's mistake. I should have wondered why the seeds were so expensive. I looked back at the website and found that the "quantity" box for certain vegetables had a "10" entered by default, and these particular seeds were sold by the 1,000. Thus, I have enough endive seeds to cover the whole area of our lawn. It's not worth the shipping amount to send them back, so I'll see if anyone I know might actually want them. They've got to REALLY like endive.

I don't recall having Lewisia blooming all summer like this before, but I'm not complaining!
Lewisia "Little Plum":

The Primula acaulis plants I put out in spring (I started them from seed) are getting their second wind. I give these plants a little more attention since they are close to the house. The regular removal of spent flowers is probably paying off.
Primula acaulis:

I have a few of these unusual zonal geraniums in pots this year. They are "tulip flowered", producing these pretty little closed buds that never open. I propagated a few of these plants from a cutting from my mother-in-law's plant. I quite like this flower and will definitely be saving some plants/cuttings over the winter.
Tulip flowered zonal geranium:

More Northern Forest Berries

2009-08-31T06:54:00.000-07:00

We went out to Freeman island on Lac La Ronge this past weekend, where I found yet another berry. This one was edible too! I believe this is the wild black currant (Ribes americanum). It has prickly stems, tasty black berries with red juice, no foul smell, and is about three feet (90 cm) tall. It was growing in a sunny area, with slight cover from evergreen trees. It was also in a very convenient spot right up next to our cabin (how's that for a great plant quality?).
Wild black currant:

Foliage of the wild black currant:

Right next to the wild black currants were some wild raspberries (Rubus idaeus var. strigosus). I think the good berries had already been eaten by the hungry bipeds (of the human variety).
Wild raspberries:

Altogether, I counted eight berries at the cabin site, the first five being edible: (1) Wild raspberry, (2) Wild black currant, (3) Saskatoon berries, (4) Lingonberries, (5) Wild blueberries, (6) Northern comandra, (7) Bunchberries, and (8) Bearberries. If we looked harder, we might have even found some highbush cranberries too. As far as I know, none of the non-edible berries on that list are particularly toxic or dangerous in small quantities. (Also, the non-edible ones don't taste very good.) There were several mushrooms growing out there too, but I'm not even going to begin to try to identify (or eat) those. That's a hobby too reckless for my tastes.

I posted pictures of the other northern berries last year:
http://zoneonegarden.blogspot.com/2008/09/northern-saskatchewan-wild-berries-and.html
Kona, the husky-malamute, enjoying life on the island:

She's usually not particularly fond of water but spent a fair bit of time wading in the water up to her knees this weekend. I didn't notice her eating any berries, but she did eat grass (and her dogfood). This is the first time we have ever let her run off-leash and she stayed close to us and the cabin the whole time. She was more than happy to escort us on trips to the outhouse. I think the dog may enjoy life at the cabin more than I do!

My Northern Climate Ice Plants

2009-08-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

Ice plants sound like something that should grow in our northern short-season garden, don't they? Actually, most of these plants are succulents associated with hot areas, yet I've had success with a few of them. The "ice" refers to the glistening appearance of salt crystals secreted by the leaves of these plants of largely African origin.
My alpine garden, with ice plant at center:

I have three types of iceplants, though the common name doesn't really distinguish between the great diversity of "ice plants". This year, I grew several Mesembryanthemum criniflorum from seed (bought from Thompson & Morgan). This was a bit difficult to do on my light shelf, because the plants are sprawling and limp and tend to rot if the foliage gets wet (when the plant sprawls into the drip-tray I keep under my pots). Outdoors though, they have a more upright and robust appearance.

These plants are naturalized along the California coast, and I have fond memories of running around barefoot on these when I was a kid. We loved the sensation; it was something like walking on tiny pickles. This plant won't survive the winter here, however. I wonder if I can keep some cuttings indoors though?
First flower of Mesembryanthemum- a bit deformed and squarish:

I was inspired to try these annual flowers after rooting some cuttings of an "ice plant" in Arizona last winter. I think one of the plants I saw in Arizona was actually Malephora crocea, the "Copper Ice Plant". It was very easy to root from cuttings and had beautiful flowers that opened when the sun was shining. My legacy in my parent's Arizona yard will be an expanse of ice plants, though I hear the rabbits are good at keeping them under control.

The two other (and perennial) plants are Delosperma nubigenum and Delosperma deleeuwiae. At first I was impressed with the dense mat of yellow flowers that D. nubigenum makes in June and July, though I'm even more happy with D. deleevwiae, because it spreads its purple blooms over the entire summer. Both have nice pebble-like succulent foliage that spreads to form a dense, shiny mat that looks good all year round.
Delosperma nubigeum in July of this year:

Delosperma deleeuwiae in late August:

I got the D. deleeuwiae from Wrightman's alpines, if you're looking to get one for yourself. D. nubigenum sails through our winters without any problems (its foliage just turns reddish), so I imagine that D. deleeuwiae might do the same.

More Tree Pests - Need Help

2009-08-24T12:39:00.000-07:00

Having had success in identifying pests through the blog in the past, I am requesting help yet again. My neighbours alerted me to the problem of the willow trees in our area. The leaves are turning brown and show areas of skeletonization and holes eaten through them.
Browning of leaves on willow tree in La Ronge:

There are tiny black insects under many leaves (not even 1 mm long) as well as what looks like tiny black flecks of excrement.
Tiny black insects on willow leaves (click to see closer view):

Today, I spotted a yellow-headed larva (or caterpillar, but I suspect a larva) with a green body crawling along one of the leaves. Between Google and me, I think this may be a sawfly larva.
Larva vs. caterpillar on willow tree:

Also, there are many 5-7 mm web-like silken cocoons on the upper surfaces of the leaves. Many contain what looks like a black grain of rice. I assume something must have matured in these little cocoons and already moved on, since I don't find anything alive and moving inside of them. An Australian website describing their own problem with a willow sawfly shows a picture with a similar-looking cocoon.
Cocoons of willow tree pest:

There are several winged insects flying about the tree, but I'm not sure which is pest or friend. Besides, I'm better at photographing the slow-moving critters.

In a likely-unrelated matter, the tart cherry trees didn't produce any fruit this year. They did have blossoms in spring followed by green fruit, but then the fruit just seemed to disappear off all four trees. I have no idea what happened. There doesn't appear to be any disease plaguing the trees. In previous years, we had pear slugs (which are also sawflies), but those never showed up this year.
Tart cherry "Carmine Jewel" with no fruit:

Gaudy Gladioli and Some Poison Blues

2009-08-22T20:26:00.000-07:00

I tried growing some Gladioli this year, at least so I could say I have grown them at least once. I bought a new type, from the "Glamini" series. They are supposed to be a shorter variety that theoretically does not need to be staked (mine are leaning after a rain). This one was supposed to be a red and pink type called "Emily". I can't find my order summary, but the plant I have growing certainly doesn' t look like Emily, as it is a horrible peach color (it probably is the one called "Zoe"). This color might look good in some tropical display along with some complementary cannas, but looks terrible next to my Rudbeckia. Truly horrible. I think the mail order company made a mistake on their labeling.

I've got some nice blooms on my Aconitum napellus (monkshood) this year. I dug this plant out of my sister-in-law's yard, so that I could admire it and keep it away from children that might try eating it. This is a nice plant for late-summer blooms, though the dark blue doesn't stand out from a distance like bright whites and yellows do.

Aconitum contains toxic alkaloids that are cardiotoxins and neurotoxins. These are found in all parts of the plant. It is interesting that it is used in homeopathy and traditional Chinese medicine. Canadian actor Andre Noble apparently died in 2004 after accidentally ingesting the plant while camping in Newfoundland. Plant toxins will cause symptoms in the cardiovascular, neuromuscular, and gastrointestinal systems, though death is almost always because of cardiac ventricular arrythmias or asystole ("flatline", a ceasing of electrical activity in the heart).

Orange Fluffy Fruits: Saskatoon Berry Rust

2009-08-18T19:09:00.000-07:00

I have been curious about these strange fruits on our Saskatoon berry bushes this year. Several fruits are covered in what looks like little orange tufts or horns. An orange powder transfers onto the surface of nearby fruit.

Searching the internet reveals that this is likely Saskatoon-Juniper rust. It is more likely with a delayed fruit in conditions with a cold wet spring. Well, everything is certainly late this year and the spring was definitely cold and wet. There is one juniper plant in the same raised bed, though from a distance, it looks okay. The information says that the juniper has galls in spring, which I may have not noticed. I could live without the juniper though, if that would help. For that matter, I don't even like the Saskatoon bushes.

Anyone have any recommendations? I hate to think that this problem will get worse next year, with fungus spores spreading far and wide.

Google Garden Tours

2009-08-18T18:11:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting use of technology: Google has a tricycle mounted with its all-seeing cameras, designed to record pedestrian-accessible areas for Google street view. The tricycle camera recorded images in the gardens of France's Chateau de Versailles last week and the images are to be posted by the end of the year. I noticed that people's faces and license plates are blurred out. Canada demanded the same before agreeing to allow Google's cameras into Canadian cities. No Canadian cities have had any street view pictures posted yet, but I hope they do soon. Saskatoon was unfortunately filmed in the early spring, when the city was covered in mud and slush and looking generally filthy.

I cruised around the Eiffel tower (on Google street view) this afternoon and noticed streets lined with trees covered in purple blooms. I assume Paris must have been photographed in springtime. This made me think about touring gardens with Google street view. Even if I don't get to all the great gardens of the world in my lifetime, I can take a peek at them them on the computer. At least I'm not burning plane fuel to get anywhere. Oh yes, and it's free.

View Larger Map

Roses and Lilies - Late and Beautiful

2009-08-13T11:02:00.008-07:00

Yes, it is possible to grow roses in our northern climate, though I only have two of them. Of course, they need to be particularly hardy rose types, like the Parkland and Explorer series. This very fragrant rugosa rose was in the yard when we moved here. It is a very large hardy shrub rose and it would be huge if I didn't prune it down every spring. I believe it is a "Hansa" rose, particularly after seeing this rose in Saskatchewan garden centers.

Probably "Hansa" hardy shrub rose:

When I first saw the foliage of this Geranium popping up from under the cedar shrub, I didn't know what it was. Now that it is flowering, I am wondering where it came from? I've never grown one of these! It's about 2 feet tall and is a lovely blue. I think I might keep it.
Unknown Geranium:

The Papaver rhoeas/Shirley poppies "Cedric Morris Mix" (from Thompson & Morgan) are so absolutely beautiful! This area of the raised bed was planted with foxgloves last year, so there are some seedlings growing under these poppies now, ready to flower next year along with these poppies. I'll be letting some of them go to seed for more color next year. I'm sure there will be lots of seed, so let me know if you want some! Beside them are the LA hybrid lilies, which are a bit late this year.

Shirley poppies:

This is the very pretty (but not fragrant) "Morden Blush" hardy rose. This winter I'll be covering it with something, since it really gets severe winter-kill in its exposed location in a raised bed. Of course, this doesn't stop it from flowering, but does probably reduce its size and make it flower much later than usual.
Morden Blush rose amid LA hybrid lilies:

Here is one of the last of the breadseed poppies. In a few weeks, we'll be collecting seed again.

I grew dahlias this year for the first time in my life. I realized that they like the locations that get the most water. These ones are "Tahiti Sunrise" and they did very well in a large container.

Saskatoon berries are hanging off the shrubs in our flower beds now. I have told RLM he needs to go out and pick them, or I'll let the birds have them all. I like to eat some fresh off the bush, but I'm not particularly fond of Saskatoon berry baked goods. Yes, you can kick me out of the province for saying that...

First daylily bloom of the year, "Double River Wye":

Some New Plants and Other Stuff

2009-08-08T15:04:00.000-07:00

I've got a few new plants blooming this year, which keeps things interesting and adds to the list of "plants that can grow here".

This odd blue-grey brush-like perennial flower is Eryngium alpinum, which was planted in 2007 and bloomed for the first time this year. It is almost 3 feet (90 cm) tall and fits in well in the middle of a raised bed.

While not a perennial, this little poppy in the alpine garden self-seeds and the two plants I started with last year left some lovely offspring that are blooming now in early August. This Papaver miyabeanum "Pacino" has a sulphur-colored flower and is known as the Japanese poppy.

Once again, I conclude that the Papaver rhoeas (corn poppies, Shirley poppies) give me a boost of garden-happiness. To keep some in a vase, I sealed the stems to prevent the latex from dripping out, a tip which I had read on the internet. I burned the bottom of the stem with the flame from a BBQ lighter for about 10 seconds. It worked better than I had imagined and the flowers looked great for about 3 days.
Papaver rhoeas as a cut flower:

Here is the view of the center raised bed from our house:

Center raised bed, with some lilies yet to bloom and Papaver rhoeas blooming on the right:

Digital Landscaping - The Seniors Center

2009-08-03T12:35:00.000-07:00

Do you like those makeover television programs? I'll admit I like to see bad hair and sloppy clothes get transformed, or be amazed by houses that are fixed up and decorated. My virtual landscaping program allows me to do the same for gardens, by just plugging in a photo of an existing space. Actually, the full program allows 3D assembly of houses too, so you could do an exterior renovation of your house while you're at it.

We pass the new seniors' social center nearly every day, as it is just down our street. Hopefully, it is not going to experience the same disappointment as the town's welcome sign, which lingered on for a long time un-landscaped, (though I did offer some stunning and ridiculous ideas with digital landscaping, as posted on my blog). Currently, the building is a nice blue, but very plain. Maybe next year we'll get to see some landscaping to brighten things up. In the meantime, here are my ideas. I think I designed quite a reasonable and low-maintenance landscape. If anyone responsible for this building reads this post, please feel free to use any or all of my ideas!
Seniors Center before the makeover:

Seniors Center after the makeover:

RLM doesn't think that they will cover those posts with brick, seeing no foundation for such a structure. Too bad. Maybe they could build trellises on them and train climbing roses up them? Yeah right. Maybe that's not quite realistic for La Ronge, where the landscaping standards are set pretty low. Besides, someone would have to maintain this.

The plantings in front of the deck include spirea and mugo pines. In the little triangle at the left is a "Diabolo" ninebark.

Along the right side of the building are a dogwood shrub, a gold-foliage ninebark, three highbush cranberry (Viburnum trilobum) shrubs, a bergenia, a dwarf balsam fir, and a mugo pine. In the center of the lawn is my one fanciful touch: a weeping Norway spruce. I just think that it is a really cool tree. At the right are two Lindens, which I think are a perfect tree, having nice leaves, bark, and shape.
A variety of shrub textures and colors:

Nice outdoor sitting area:

The pines and spruce are evergreen, while the dogwoods has pretty twig colors, so as to provide winter interest. The highbush cranberries provide food for the birds (and people, if so desired). Of course, all these plantings are hardy to our area.

If you have a space that could use a makeover, you can send a picture to me and I might post the results on the blog. I use Realtime Landscaping Pro 5, a PC program which is pretty simple to learn and use. It's an entertaining way to waste some time, at the very least!
Other digital landscaping projects on my blog can be found here:
http://zoneonegarden.blogspot.com/2009/07/digital-garden-renovation.html
http://zoneonegarden.blogspot.com/2007/10/3d-virtual-garden-design-hourglass.html
http://zoneonegarden.blogspot.com/2007/06/gardening-goes-high-tech.html

All for the Love of Poppies

2009-07-31T14:11:00.003-07:00

Annual poppies are one of my favourites in my big raised beds. They require little work to plant, as you simply need to spread the seed on the ground in spring (April or early May here). Ideally, you should thin them so they have the room to grow to full potential. My big breadseed poppies (Papaver somniferum) self-seed and surprise me each year when the genetic "deck of cards" is shuffled to yield more beautiful color combinations.

Of course, remember that the foliage looks terrible after bloom time, so either plant them near the back, or rip them up when they're done (they come out very easily). These poppies are easily distinguished from the others by their blue-green foliage that is reminiscent of the color and texture of broccoli stems or cabbage.

Papaver somniferum, pale pink with pale purple cross :

The new color crosses have all come from crosses between this pale pink poppy and the dark purple poppies, from which I started two years ago. I assume that there is no cross-species pollination, so that the P. somniferum does not cross with the P. nudicale, P. orientale or P. miyabeanum in my yard. If any botanically-wise people know better, please let me know.

This year, I noticed one new color combination that takes my breath away. It's rather hard to capture in a photograph, though. It has deep pink petals with just a stain of grapey-purple on its edges.

Other combinations have included a new coral-red flower with a deep purple cross and a pale lavender flower with a deep purple cross. I've tied strings on the stems of these flowers so I can spread their seed for next year. The rest of the seeds will be excellent in muffin and loaves!

This year, for the first time, I grew some annual Shirley poppies (Papaver rhoeas) as well. I bought and sowed some "Cedric Morris Mix" from Thompson and Morgan and some poppy seed I surreptitiously collected in 2008 at a public garden in BC. I am guessing that these were P. rhoeas as well.
Papaver rhoeas, red and white flower:

This red and white flower had finely divided leaves, unlike the pink one, which had broader leaves. Has anyone else noticed a difference in leaves between the colors of this poppy, or maybe it's not even a P. rhoeas?
Foliage of the pink poppy:

Papaver rhoeas, pink flower:

While they are not poppies, I would just like to thank my Sweet Williams (Dianthus barbatus) for looking so fabulous in my raised beds. As an added bonus, they are fragrant! Once a patch is established, these biennials do a great job of putting on a long-lasting show of blooms with a nice mix colors.

Vermicomposting Style and Life Lessons

2009-07-27T13:54:00.000-07:00

I really appreciated this video on how to create a "wormery" the UK's Telegraph website. This appears to be the same project we have going on in our garage, except we call it "the worm boxes". The British can make a plastic box of worms and dirt sound so much more sophisticated. This video demonstrates the assembly of a vermicompost box as a calm and beautiful activity, with Bach's Air on a G String playing softly in the background. The casually-dressed, attractive young man in the video gestures gracefully, while using his bare hands to add layers of material to the worm bin. I almost expected Nigella Lawson to appear at the end of the clip, wanting to sample some of the end product.

I love how the British esteem gardening so highly that their news media dedicates nearly the same attention to it as to international politics. The last time I looked, CNN's website did not have a "gardening" tab along with the finance, news, and sport sections.
On another note, I recently realized how lucky I was to have survived my childhood. My mother shared with me her perspectives on child-proofing a house, and how she believes that children should simply learn not to touch the plants. I don't want my plants messed with either, but being realistic and safe, I have made sure that I don't have any deadly plants around the house.

Interestingly, mother agrees that safety locks for the cleaning products are a good idea. Anyhow, she informed me that she kept "only a dieffenbachia and a philodendron" in the house when we were small. Only BOTH of them are poisonous! I don't recall having poison control's number plastered to our telephone. I think the key educational point here is that a person has to LIVE through an experience to take a lesson from it. It's a good thing I didn't eat the plants.

The Wave of Delphiniums has Started

2009-07-25T21:14:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos of the large raised bed with the blues and purples of the delphiniums just starting at the back of the bed. The breadseed poppies are also blooming now, but because I didn't thin them, many are small this year.

By the way, I'm having a terrible time with poplar suckers popping up in my raised bed. Glyphosate (Roundup) only seems to kill the few leaves onto which I drip the herbicide directly and the suckers just keep on growing. I'm going to eventually lose control over my raised bed if I can't get the suckers out. Any ideas? I can't pull all the huge cable-like roots out without pulling out my plants. Does Roundup even work for trees?
Large raised bed:

Large raised bed:

The alpine garden looks much nicer in late evening photographs. Maybe the rocks create too much glare in midday? I just removed the tallest perennial, a Scabiosa columbaria, because it wasn't small enough; its 18 inch height was towering over the dwarf and low-growing plants. Instead, I left the Scabiosa japonica "Pink Diamonds" plants that I grew from seed. Those are much shorter, though they have similar flowers.
Alpine Garden, showing lots of color:

Alpine garden, with a dense mat of the hardy succulent Delosperma nubigenum at the center and dwarf mugo pine at the back:

Alpine garden, with wooly thyme at the foreground and nest spruce at the left:

I bought this next plant from a local store at an end of the season sale. They were selling a bunch of stuff as annuals though I bet that they were actually perennials, even in our climate. I must have a good sense for plants, since the row of Salvia nemerosa "Marcus" did very well over the winter and are now creating a highly-visible punch of purple at the front of the center raised bed. They are my replacement for the catmint, which had just become weedy and invasive because of its self-seeding.

Zinnia "Uproar Rose" is in my half-barrel planters. It is one of those plants that makes me think "Wow, that's just too nice a flower for the little effort it took me to start that from seed a few months ago". Truly, it is easy to grow and looks spectacular.

Pumpkin Growing NOT at its Finest

2009-07-23T10:59:00.000-07:00

I know about as much about pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo) cultivation as I do about installing toilets. I can tell if the end result worked, but not much before that. Of course, this gives me a good reason to do some internet research on this topic. My husband (resident-lawnmower-man, or RLM) knew at least that pumpkins need a longer season that we have, so I started some pumpkin seeds indoors long before the last frosts. I am not aiming for prize-winning giant pumpkins, so I planted the small sugar pumpkin type. Pumpkins do take up a lot of space, so I didn't plant them in the small raised bed we use for vegetables.

Instead, the pumpkins inhabit this fantastic plot:

No, there aren't any deceased pets or enemies hidden under this mound. Lying here is an accumulation of soil, weeds, dead trees, and discarded plywood. I figured I'd make full use of this refuse pile by digging three holes in it, filling those with composted manure, and inserting the pumpkin plants. So far, the vines appear to be doing well and are well-watered by all the rain we have been getting.

I was getting concerned that there were flowers but no pumpkins, but then I remembered my cucumber experiences and that only the female flowers produce pumpkins and the male flowers don't accomplish much (Does this sound familiar to anyone? Of course this does not apply to any male gardeners).

I think this is a baby pumpkin, looking like a gnome head under a green hat. What stage are everyone else's pumpkins at this time of year? Am I going to have pumpkins this fall? If not, I didn't lose much, and the refuse pile gained a few orange flowers.