Back to Earth

I am finally back gardening! It was hard to set aside so many cherished activities the past couple of months as I waited for my neck to get better. The good news is that it is improving with physiotherapy. The bad news is that the reason it was vulnerable in the first place is that I have osteoarthritis in my neck. That was hard to accept (especially when I got the diagnosis a day before my birthday) but I suppose finding that out is a good thing as I am learning to be kinder to my neck and not to take it for granted. 

Back in April, I started a big project: revamping the shady garden at the side of our house. The pathway was already there. I created it myself six years ago (paver by paver and wheelbarrow-full of gravel at a time). I still love the pathway but I wasn't happy with the garden. It was especially hard not to like it as it's the view from our dining room window. This is what it looked like in early April.

I completely removed the not-so-great grass that bordered the narrow flower beds. It was a big job but Meeko helped (sort of).

I loved this photo of Meeko so much and the way he was looking at me over his back that I painted him in late April. Cutie pie.

Once the sod was removed, I added good soil, divided the perennials that were already there (bleeding hearts, astilbe, lady's mantle, masterwort, turtlehead, sidalcea, hostas) and rearranged things. I also removed a huge shrub that was past its prime. When I was doing all of this work in April and early May, I was kind of feeling like Superwoman. Well, guess what? I'm not. I'm human after all. An aging human, my neck reminded me in a not very subtle way. The garden waited for me while I adjusted my pride and learned to treat my neck better through improved posture and daily exercises. 

In the past two weeks, I was finally able to finish my garden project. I weeded, added a few new perennials (coral bells and a shasta daisy) and planted an annual passionfruit vine in a pretty obelisk that my husband Jocelyn gave me for my birthday. Some of the new additions need to fill out a little but now I absolutely love looking at this part of the garden! It feels peaceful and serene.

I am happy to announce that I have reopened my shop after having it closed for a month. Yay! I look forward to gardening and painting more in the weeks ahead and sharing my efforts here and on Instagram. Thanks so much for being here!

🌿 🌿 🌿 🌿 🌿

July Garden

We've had lots of rainy, stormy weather lately but this morning was glorious and can be summed up in two words: sunshine and bees.

It is so nice to see all of the activity and life in the garden at this point in the season. I feel weirdly proud that the bees like my garden and spend so much time in it. The bees aren't the only ones who are busy. I've been trying to garden every morning when the weather has cooperated. A couple of weeks ago, I figured out that if I spend two to three hours working in the garden each morning that, at the end of two weeks, I will have managed to work in each of my flower beds. So that's been my morning routine. I get up, make myself coffee and head outside. I paint inside in the afternoons when it's too hot to be outdoors.

All gardeners know that a weeded garden is only a theory. I am not foolishly expecting to have a perfect garden nor do I want one. I just want to feel less embarrassed about its state if we have visitors and to be able to to sit in a chair occasionally and admire it instead of feeling like I need to jump up and fix something right away.

This morning I pruned and weeded the back perennial bed. It's looking pretty full and lush. However, the end of the bed that extends beyond the right side of the photo is going to need work. It has become shadier and shadier in the past few years to the point that I've lost some of the plants. My oriental poppies are gone among others. It's hard to lose things but gardens tell us what they need and the right end of this particular bed is crying out for shade-loving plants. I may divide some astilbe and hostas from other parts of the garden and move them here this autumn.

Speaking of hostas, they are blooming in the front yard and were looking absolutely gorgeous this morning. These are 'Francee'.

Other favourites from my garden tour this morning include my Summer Snowflake viburnum (Viburnum plicatum) and a stunningly beautiful poppy.

The vegetable garden is also bursting with colour at the moment including this blue borage plant that reseeded from last year. The warm colours in the background come from ripening tomatoes, squash blossoms and nasturtiums. It's exciting to see so much happening at once but not everything is thriving. This morning I discovered that my hot pepper plant has wilted and my eggplant is struggling a little. In a garden, nothing is static which provides both its pleasure and ongoing challenges.

"The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature."  Alfred Austin

Party Girl in the Garden

Did the title of my post have you wondering what I was up to?

I am very proud to let you know that one of my garden photos has been selected by 'Northern Gardener' magazine for the cover of their July/August issue! That beautiful plant with the ruffled pink flowers grows in my garden and is called Sidalcea 'Party Girl' (also known as Prairie Mallow, Checker Mallow or False Mallow). My photo was chosen to illustrate their article on long-blooming perennials. I planted it fourteen years ago in our back flowerbed and it flowers reliably and beautifully each summer. It provides lovely cut flowers too. A beautiful perennial that requires very little care.

So proud that one of my backyard plants has made the big time! :) Thank you, Northern Gardener magazine, for selecting my photo for your issue. You can read their blog post about the upcoming issue here.

Turtleheads

A beautiful summer bouquet I saw on the Bookhou site today (Arounna's post on 14.9.11)  inspired me to go out into my garden and pick some flowers.  With just over a week to go in summer (autumn starts at 5:05 a.m. on September 23rd this year), we need to get outside or bring a little of it indoors.

The flower I cut today is a late blooming perennial I love. It's not seen in lots of gardens which I think is a good thing. Who wants their garden to look exactly like the neighbour's? It has a wonderful, whimsical name--turtlehead.  If you look closely at the flowers, you can see why.

At the moment, my turtleheads are busy with bees. I tried to get a photo of the bees but they crawl right inside of the flowers!  Be careful not to bring the bees into the house with your bouquet. :)

The botanical name is chelone obliqua.  If you plant young nursery seedlings, space them according to their adult width and be patient.  Chelone obliqua can take a few years to fill into a lovely clump but it is worth the wait.  One other wonderful quality is that it can grow and flower in semi-shade or even full shade.  I have some planted out in the front of my garden behind some hostas (a lovely marriage). I also planted a small clump beside a staircase and behind a shrub where they get no direct sunlight (I can see them from my living room window) and they are quite content.

Some people tend to give up on their gardens once the school year starts in September and the weather starts to get cool. Don't. I'm all for enjoying gardens as long as possible, right up until the arrival of a four-letter word that begins with 's'.

I cut two bouquets this morning--one for my kitchen table and the other to go upstairs in my studio.  I cut the stems relatively short, just down to the next set of leaves where buds are already forming for more flowers.  Their floral display is nowhere near to being over. They will continue to look beautiful even as the days and nights get progressively cooler in the weeks ahead.

"A late summer garden has a tranquility found no other time of year."

William Longgood

The Space Formerly Known As My Garden

Do you remember 'the artist formerly known as Prince'?  Well, that's a bit the way I am feeling about my garden these days.  I mean 'the space formerly known as my garden'.

I have had my garden for 11 years and I have put an enormous amount of time and energy into designing, maintaining and constantly changing it.  One of my relatives has referred to it in the past as 'the botanical garden'.  I have flower beds everywhere and they are full of trees, shrubs, spring bulbs and perennials.

But, this past season, it has been suffering.  It didn't help that our spring was miserable which made planting annuals in my normal early- to mid-May window foolish.  So I waited.  Then I got caught up in a huge, time-consuming volunteer project for my youngest daughter's school in June, designing and publishing the yearbook for the graduating Grade Six class.  So I waited some more.  We left for our holiday in London and Paris right after school ended.  We returned to our house in July and a garden full of empty pots and bare annual beds.  Weeds had taken full advantage of my absence and were towering over the perennials in the mixed beds. My vegetable bed, normally an organized, productive and beautiful corner, only sported the few brave herbs and flowers that had made it through the winter or reseeded themselves and, of course, a terrifying tangle of weeds.

Veggies anyone?

To complicate things further, I have also been dealing with a very challenging garden pest that I will leave for another post.

There are still pockets of it that are beautiful.  That's the advantage of using perennials, shrubs and trees.  They can manage on their own for a certain amount of time without too much human intervention.

The hydrangeas in the top photo have been blooming beautifully.  One particularly gorgeous shrub this year is a rose of sharon bush (hibiscus syriacus) that I planted 11 years ago.  This year, it had a huge growth spurt (perhaps it's approaching adolescence?) and has been covered with masses of blooms.  The past few days, it has been just stunning.

I went out this morning to take a picture to include in my blog and guess what I found?  It toppled over during the night and is bent in two.  It's not broken, just really, really bent. We had a thunderstorm last night and I guess that the wind coupled with the weight of the blooms were too much for it.  I'm going to have to prune it sharply.  I don't have the heart to do it while it is in bloom, so I think I will leave it the way it is for now, an archway for any elves or dwarves who care to visit the 'space formerly known as my garden'.