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

As Summer Slips Away

Where did the summer go? And what an odd summer it was in some ways.

I began the summer with a back injury in early June. It kept me from looking after the garden the way I normally do. I also didn't swim or walk as much as usual. So frustrating but a lesson in taking the time to look after myself. After a couple of setbacks (sorry), it is finally feeling better.

The weather this summer has been changeable. We've had incredibly hot spells, dark and rainy periods and this past week actually felt more like autumn than late summer.

We got away briefly twice this summer. My husband and I went on an impromptu vacation to Maine for a few days at the beginning of August. Emma and Chloé stayed here with Meeko. It was the first time we have been away together (sans enfants) in eight years and the first time that our daughters stayed home on their own. Everyone survived. We all travelled to Muskoka to visit family. It was a great visit but Emma, Chloé and I all ended up with a terrible cold and we decided to go home a day early. It's just been one of those summers.

Some things are thriving in my vegetable garden and some are doing poorly. Tomatoes, what happened to you? The weeds are towering over my perennials in my flowerbeds and filling cracks and crevices throughout the garden. They may think they have won but I am coming to get them! Meanwhile, the flowers are definitely in late season mode. There is some sadness at how quickly the summer has gone by but I've always liked this time of year. The garden quiets down, the light becomes more subdued and there are still weeks to go of garden enjoyment.

These photos were taken this morning with my iPad on a pajama tour of my back garden! I love that the shrubs surrounding our back garden are now tall enough to provide us with total privacy from the neighbours.

One of the weedier parts of the garden.  I would say that half of the plants here are weeds.

Self-sown and pretty verbena bonariensis with snapdragons in the background.

I was happy to find this cucumber at the back of the vegetable bed this morning.

Two late summer friends: hydrangea paniculata and echinacea 

Rose hips (Rosa glauca)

Obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana)

Phlox paniculata 'David'

I haven't painted for a few weeks now. I can't wait to get back at it. There will be time in the weeks ahead. Emma moves into university residence on Friday. Big changes. (I can do this.) Chloé is back to school on September 2nd. Soon my days will be filled with studio time punctuated by walks with my friend, Meeko.

And speaking of him...as I was writing this blog post, I felt that I was being watched. I was. This is for those of you needing a 'Meeko fix'.

❤  ❤  ❤

Knuckling Down in the Garden

This weekend, I started a job I didn't really intend to do in the garden. I've already written about how I haven't devoted the normal amount of time to my garden this year. The beds still need major weeding. Instead of doing that, I started pulling out the weeds in between the stone pavers on the walkway and patio in our backyard.

This is not a small task, as the pathway leads from the front gate into the backyard and the patio itself is wide. As I was doing it, I started thinking that maybe I was doing things backwards. Shouldn't I get the flower beds looking beautiful and then worry about the pavers if I had time? It sort of felt like dusting before you've picked up things around the house. Oh well--once I had started, I felt committed. It took hours but I don't regret it at all (except for some aching muscles).  It's like I've put a nice clean, mat around a busy painting. The whole garden looks better and I can breathe more easily when I'm walking through it.

I've bought fancy tools in the past to deal with weeding between pavers, but I always come back to my tried and true tools for the job--a worn screw driver and an old kitchen paring knife. The screw driver is useful for gently rocking the pavers apart to extract stubborn roots.  The paring knife slides down easily between the pavers to slice and remove weeds and to neatly edge the lawn where it meets the pathway and patio. And then there are those other indispensable tools--my hands. My nails and knuckles are looking a little worse for wear today (I'm terrible about not wearing gloves when I should) but they can be proud of a job well done.

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'.