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.

surprise hosta!

Observe the wonders one discovers upon cleaning years of weeds and accumulated detritus from one's garden. This is a hosta (presumably planted by the previous homeowner) that flowered just recently. Bellissimo!

novelty

Just so you know, this whole put-seeds-or-green-in-the-ground-and-get-fresh-edibles thing has high potential for never getting old.

small victories: green pepper

Dear First Green Pepper,

I'm afraid I owe you an apology. Hand to the stars, I swear I followed this recipe for Vegetarian Korma to the letter! Okay, okay, I omitted the carrots, because they make the husband whine, and I left out the jalapeno peppers, because the kids don't like too much spice, but other than that, everything was by the book! Nevertheless, the end result was bland, and for that I am sorry. You deserved a debut worthy of all your shine and green. You have to admit, though: it did look pretty.

Alas, something had to have gone awry in the making of the dish to make it, flavour-wise, such a snore. It wasn't your fault, green pepper. It was bad korma. Bad korma, indeed.

small victories: zucchini

Note: I realized too late that the frost on the frozen store-bought bananas looks a bit like mould. You'll have to take my word that it is, in fact, not.

Yes, I shall call my first zucchini a small victory because it was an incorrect ratio of wet to dry ingredients that caused my interpretation of the Wednesday Baker's recipe for zucchini banana bread to turn out more like bread pudding even after 20 minutes of extra baking, and not any lacking on the part of this green giant. (Next time, self, strain the wet ingredients after food processing, or don't be lazy about it and just grate and mash as needed.) Fortunately, though the lolling loaf received an F from me for structural integrity, on the taste front it was gold stars across the board.

I did manage to wiggle out a satisfactory slice for photo-taking purposes.

A parting - albeit unrelated - bit of news: there were fireflies in the fairy garden tonight. I fell a little in love with at least one of them, which I guess means that my sense of wonder remains intact. Always good to know.

the tallest sunflower, or, you win some, you lose some

The garden, as I greeted it this afternoon:

The bad news first, then: The rain must have washed away my Tabasco sauce barrier, as my JFK tea hybrid rose, which seemed, after a weak beginning, to be regaining some healthy green in its one sprouting cane, is bereft of its bud. Bother.

The rest of it is sunshine.

These are my best growing sunflowers, and the one at the end is the tallest. (A fourth can be seen peeking out from behind the overachieving zucchini leaves. I staked it; we'll see what happens.) I'm hoping August will bring out the big golden flowers; how perfect will that be?

I can almost smell the zucchini bread baking!,

I go away for a week, and my baby (pepper) is nearly ready for harvesting upon my return. *sniff* They grow up so fast!

photo post: jardin botanique Montréal

More photos under the cut!

photo post: Royal Botanical Gardens

Traveling with toddlers is always something of a crap-shoot, a reality we experienced firsthand today when we entered the gardens in Burlington with two restless little ones in tow. This meant that we kept our touring time short, before finally leaving to check into the hotel and go to dinner. Another thing I should mention is this small piece of advice: if you go to RBG, do not go on a Saturday! Hendrie Park was overrun with wedding parties and their accompanying photographers, none of whom seemed to have much patience for us, despite the fact that we paid the $13 per person admittance fee which gave us access to all of the open grounds. (We intended to visit Laking Garden in addition to Hendrie Park, but it is temporarily closed due to accessibility issues.)

More photos after the jump!

I love the smell of mulch in the morning. And the afternoon.

Weeding? Sort of check.

Mulch? Check.

This latter item has me feeling slightly more confident that my going away for a few days will not mean I return to find a garden of weeds and dried out plants. (We will most likely have someone stop by to give the thirstier customers a drink while we're gone, as well.) It is a curious concept, this drive thru soil and mulch pick-up business. Drive right up and through is easier said than done when one's vehicle is beastly and minivan-shaped. Mulch is beautiful, though, right? It smells like a lush, warm forest. I want to work in a garden centre. I want to plant trees in British Columbia. Dang, I love mulch.

I've begun what I hope will be a life-long effort to make use of the compost bin we inherited when we bought our house. Sure, I have to traverse a great jungle filled with blood-suckers - (and now, having arrived in what seems to be a bumper crop, what we call around these here parts "June bugs") - to get to it, but you say it's green and good for the soil and plants? I'm in.

Finally, we are departing tomorrow on a road trip bound for Gatineau. The Royal Botanical Gardens and Montreal Botanical Gardens feature prominently on our itinerary. My laptop is tagging along with me, so I may post as we go, or the yellow monster that keeps me connected to the outside world may sit neglected in my bag for the whole six days. Time will tell.

baby green peppers!

zucchini flowers!

to do: some light reading

small victories: another strawberry

This, the second ripe strawberry of the season, differs from the first in that it was not trampled beneath the feet of my giant. We actually got to taste it! I felt it needed its own post. I washed it thoroughly and cut it into four pieces. It was the family strawberry, and it was delicious - quite possibly the best strawberry I have ever eaten.

While I'm talking eats here, I want to mention tonight's dinner: I tackled Smitten Kitchen's recipe for linguine with pea pesto. The peas were store-bought, but the basil garnish was garden fresh! (Small note: I used fettuccine in place of linguine, because that was what they had at the store that was fresh.)

I have a strong suspicion that peas may find a place on the 2012 To Grow list, as my son adores them.

epitome

Source: "Glorious Disrepair" Iekeliene Stange by Sonny Vandevelde for Karen #12 [Editorial] via Honestly...WTF