“Gardens are not made by singing ‘Oh, how beautiful,’ and sitting in the shade.”
Rudyard Kipling
I make no apologies for posting more photos of the garden. This is – after all – its very best time of the year…
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Tags: British Columbia, Gardens, Photo, Spring
Should you feel inclined to glance back over the archives to this blog, paying particular attention to the entries posted at the start of May each year, you will find a pattern; one post each year (at the very least) that looks remarkably similar to that posted the year before… and the year before that…
The reason for this somewhat repetitive annual ritual is simple: each year at around this time I venture forth into the garden and am brought up short by the beauties that nature has taken it upon herself to bestow upon us – quite regardless of the fact that – but a few weeks prior to the event – the whole thing looked a complete shambles.
All I can do each year is to exclaim – “Wow!” – and to scurry inside again to fetch a camera. I absolutely must take some photos – and absolutely must thereafter post them to this journal for the gentle readers’ delectation.
Enjoy!
Tags: British Columbia, Gardens, Photo, Spring
We really must be heading into spring, because it is time already to give our lawns their first cut of the year.
This always seems to come as bit of a rude shock (to me, anyway) particularly if the weather is not being at all spring-like. Yes – I am a very fair-weather gardener. I know that there are many others (no doubt gardening betters) who treat the whole business in the same manner that some people do fitness… the tougher and more hideous the conditions the more they seem to relish it.
”Let me at it!” they cry, as late winter storms sweep in. “I can’t wait to hit the wall!”
Peculiar behaviour if you ask me (and I am well aware that you did not!)
Anyway – where was I?
Ah – yes… The thing is that each day during the week I am obliged to trot up the road to our community postbox. This, naturally, entails passing by the gardens of our neighbours and – whereas the English have a fondness for hiding their gardens away behind high walls – here in Canada they like everyone to be able to gaze upon their efforts. It is as a result quite clear who has done the deed (in the lawn mowing sense) and who has not. I can let the early adopters get away with it but there comes a point at which weight of numbers makes clear the democratic will. The verdict? Time to cut the mustard (and the grass)…
Anyway – ‘tis done.
Now, of course, other and tougher questions arise. Should I lime the lawns again (yes!)? Should I fertilise (also yes) and if so with what combination of chemicals? Should I start to bag my clippings or let it mulch the lawn (not sure)? Should I take on the moss (noooooo!) or learn to love it and live with it (nods head furiously)? Should I be focusing so much on the grass when everything else in the garden is also wide awake and demanding attention (whistles a jaunty tune and pretends not to have heard the question)?
Oh well – at least it helps me to stay fit(ish)…
Roll on the summer – say I!
Tags: British Columbia, Gardens, Lawns, Spring
“Spring is nature’s way of saying, “Let’s party!”
Robin Williams
I was thinking just how lucky we are to have a spring garden. This is my favourite time of year and having a spring garden may well be a large part of that.
Then it occurred to me that I have been fortunate enough to have had – or have had access to – more than one spring garden over the years. “Mayhap” – I pondered to myself – “all gardens are spring gardens… or at least, coming hard on the heels of winter, that is the way they feel”.
Actually it matters not a jot and I thought that you – the gentle reader – might like to peruse some more images of nature’s bounty as it currently pertains in this neck of the woods.
Tags: British Columbia, Gardens, Photo, Spring
“Gardening is the slowest of the performing arts.”
Anonymous
Enforced inactivity (courtesy of the social isolation essential to the mitigation of the current pandemic) does have its upside. Sometimes it finally shakes one into commencing some project or other that one should have started years before.
Thus it is with our pond!
When we purchased our lovely home – nearly five years ago now – we observed that it had in the front garden (yard!) a small raised ornamental pond. As a water feature it distinctly lacked interest and its main function appeared to be to provide a breeding ground for mosquitoes and other biting things. We determined that we would get rid of it.
About a year after we purchased the property I bought a boat – the good ship ‘Dignity‘. In order that we might accommodate her (when not upon the saltchuck) in the driveway next to our house our landscape gardener friend from Saanichton carried out some groundworks to widen the ingress.
We asked him about our pond and he suggested that it should be no problem to demolish. As it happened he had with him his small backhoe loader – the sort of thing once known as a ‘digger’. He took a run at the pond in it and it simply bounced off – without leaving so much as a scratch mark. We decided that more serious firepower would be needed and resolved to temporarily park the problem in the bay marked ‘stuff for the future’.
Last year I decided that the future was now with us and that something must be done about the pond. Demolition proving too difficult a task we decided instead to turn the feature into a raised bed. This would mirror other existing such beds in our front garden.
I carefully siphoned the (revolting) water out of our water-feature. The next task was to punch a hole in the bottom of the pond at its lowest point to allow it to drain properly. Since the thing had proved immune to the backhoe the logical thing to do(!) was to attempt the job by hand – with a club hammer and cold chisel. The result – after several months of repeated hammerings – was a gratifying six-inch hole through to the earth below.
Thus it remained through the winter – until such point as we found ourselves isolated by the pandemic – at which time our thoughts (well, mine anyway) turned to gardening. I quickly discovered that I could order and pay for the necessary materials online. At the allotted time a week or so later a spotty youth in a dump truck approached the house in a gingerly fashion – as though it were a leper colony or somesuch – dumped the contents at the end of the driveway and accelerated away as quickly as possible.
Perfect!
It took but a short hour’s work to fill the bottom of the erstwhile pond with six inches of drain rock and to then top it up with fresh topsoil.
So – now we have a splendid new bed outside our kitchen window. All that remains to do is for us to figure out what to put in it. More on that later.
Tags: COVID-19, Gardens, Photo, projects, social isolation, Spring
“A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.”
May Sarton
This is the third year since I ‘retired’ that I have been teaching during the winter and early spring months. As before my efforts culminate in mid-April and I find myself with time (apparently) on my hands and must needs change gear and find a different rhythm for the weeks and summer months ahead.
It is also – as I have noted before – the time of year during which our garden awakes, stretches itself, yawns and starts to demand attention. There is usually a gap of about a month between the first plangent calls and the point at which I can no longer ignore them and must start to do something about them. There follows an unseemly scramble to catch up and to prepare the garden to receive admiring (hopefully) visitors throughout the bosky summer months.
I must – in short – get busy!
This is – of course – a considerable ‘advantage’ during these times of pandemic. Since I must needs devote much of my time and energy to our verdant (half) acre(s) it matters little to me that we are in social lock-down. The effect is the same either way!
Anyway – here be some images to ‘set the scene’…
I thought that in these times of danger and all-round ugliness it might be good to post something pretty instead.
For those of us who get up on the early side on work days one of the rare joys of the the clocks going forward is that we once again coincide in the mornings – for a brief period at least – with the rising sun. I can’t resist taking photographs:
Not to be outdone the moon has of late also been putting in unexpectedly powerful appearances:
Winter lingered so long in the lap of Spring that it occasioned a great deal of talk.
Bill Nye
It has, of late, been particularly wet here on the west coast coast of Canada. Not in the catastrophic flooding/exceptional weather kind of way that some other regions of the world have been suffering, but just a constant and relentless dampness from day to day. The aquifers are doubtless happy – as are the ducks – but as for the rest of us… not so much!
Further, even on days such as today – when the sun has decided to peep through the murk and the temperature has climbed to something approaching acceptability for human life – come eventide it will have again plummeted towards the red (or should that be blue) zone and the nights remain consistently chilly.
As a result our early spring flowers have been caught in two minds as to whether or not to grace us with their bloomin’ presence. The snowdrops have done their thing regardless – but then, that is what snowdrops do.
The daffodils and tulips – on the other hand – have poked their heads out, formed buds and then just stopped… unwilling to burst fully into bloom until the sun comes out in a more meaningful way to provide some proper spring warmth. My worry is that they will just eventually give up without ever bursting properly into flower.
The glorious magnolia featured in these photos is at the college at which I teach. Hopefully this will act as an exemplar to our own rather more timid flora.
A downside of disappearing to the UK (and to elsewhere in Europe) in the middle of springtime is – of course – that one’s little acreage here on Vancouver Island is still only just getting into its stride when it comes to the Glories of the Garden. We will vanish across the ocean and by the time we get back some of these beautiful shrubs and flowers will have been and gone for another year.
As least I got to take pictures of these ones:
Though not – of course – the (non-fruiting) cherry tree!
Paddy and Mick are out walking on a logging road in the depths of British Columbia. They see a sign nailed to a big Douglas Fir. It reads:
‘Tree Fellers Wanted’
“Ah!”, says Mick – “‘Tis a pity that Seamus isn’t with us. We could have gone for that job!”
I’ll probably get into trouble for that! Oh well…!
We have had the tree fellers in and they have been felling a tree (and lopping some branches). The tree was a little cherry tree at the back of our (croquet) lawn. It didn’t fruit but it did blossom gloriously each spring for all of a couple of days. The main problem can be seen in this photo of the view from our new deck:
That picture was taken at about this time of year two years ago. The tree had grown considerably in the interim and was seriously impacting our view toward Mount Baker.
As can be seen from this comparable shot – taken just this morning – we also had the experts nip out a few of the lower branches from one of those big Doug Firs:
The next step is to persuade our neighbours down the hill to trim back the cedars at the back of their garden, to give our lovely vista another couple of years of unimpeded viewing pleasure.
Since virtually every house in our neighbourhood has views that are not dissimilar to ours this sort of negotiation is quite common. One usually offers to pay the costs and since it makes little difference to the residence further down the slope, those concerned tend to be co-operative.
Let’s hope we also get lucky!
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