blossom by blossom

Curiosity and temperatures in the double digits led me out into the backyard today, where I discovered the above beauties: snow crocus, daffodil shoots. Yay, spring!

asters

These asters were a Thursday morning indulgent purchase from Sobeys. I always suspect that the cashiers and other various employees at high-end supermarkets can sense that I am a fraud, that I am much more accustomed to purchasing milk and eggs from a bargain grocer. The wide-eyed near swoon over the store's cleanliness, the guilt in my eyes as I watch someone else bag my groceries, the barely contained wince at the prices as they pop up on the register screen - all of these betray me. I can hardly help myself on even my best days. As my eyes go to the Bottega Veneta flapper dress in Vogue, so do they have little trouble smiling on the autumnal displays and sparkling rows of fresh produce at Sobeys. Chrysanthemums, gourds, haystacks. I won't weep over the dying garden if fall will linger a while!

Asters make me think of Walter Bishop. Aster, Astrid.

that sounds like a personal problem, part II

My sunflowers refuse to stand at attention.

(One of our industrious backyard spiders has spun a web connecting the tallest flower to the garage, as though in an effort to help me out.)

Also of note - I picked up some bulbs today at the supermarket. King Alfred daffodil, Violet Queen snow crocus, ranunculus specialty mixture. Further research tells me this latter is poisonous, which means it may not make the cut. Fall shall be upon us soon, and I don't really have a game plan just yet..

hey, sunflower

are you a good witch or a bad witch?

A recent purchase, and one of the coolest books I own:

I will warn, though, that it is something of a tease, offering up all sorts of uses for mandrake, when it turns out that the entire plant is poisonous, especially to children. Nevertheless, Gardener's Magic and Other Old Wives' Lore is chock-full of information and advice of dubious practical value, including, but not confined to, the following:

Never take a house with an established garden in which parsley is not growing, or you will never see the year out. The trouble for the previous owner may have been, of course, the fact that it takes an honest man to grow parsley; or he may have been aware that he who grows it well will have no sons and only barren daughters. All round, it seems safer for a man to make his wife sow it; and indeed there is another saying that where it grows well it is the man of the house who wears the trousers. (32)

Before picking or digging up, the plant should always be 'saluted' and told for what purpose it is needed, and if possible for whom, thus pacifying it and ensuring its cooperation. (33)

The (mandrake) root does go down exceedingly deep, certainly as much as five feet. The Greeks believed that you might even, if you fell into the hole when you had dug it up, tumble straight down to Hades. (37)

Both Bartholomew and the good Bishop Vincent of Beauvais testified that a decoction of heliotrope, drunk with the invocation of powerful enough spirits, had the power to give invisibility at will. (43)

Gardener's Magic and Other Old Wives' Lore was preceded by Old Wives' Lore for Gardeners, another title I'll have to snatch up some time in the near future. I'm thinking the 2012 garden might have something of a theme to it. Now, if I could only remember where I put my broom and pointy hat...

balls.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the loathsome squash vine borer...

...or, as I briefly considered titling this post, "MOTHERF*@KER!" Imagine my surprise when I dug up a zucchini plant whose stem seemed to have rotted and discovered one of these fellows pulsing cheerfully away, a silent, slimy death knell. He and his buddies have found their way into the roots of my zucchini plants and rendered them unable to take up water, which is the real reason for their recent wilted look and not, in fact, the extreme humidity we have been facing around these parts. They've all since been dug up and laid to rest in one of the yard waste bins. Disappointing, but the show must grow on.

small victories: cherry tomatoes

Garden salad, natch.