O Reluctant Spring!

O reluctant spring - when will you ever show your warm spirit and bright days.

Can you believe it - these are my little crocus, frozen in the snow that fell yesterday and through the night. A few weeks ago we were lulled into the prospect that spring was just around the corner. Warm breezes brushed our faces, we scampered to put our laundry on the line revelling in the smell of clean, fresh linens. And then wham. The warm breezes were repaced with blasts of bitter Arctic air and along with those strong winds came blinding snow - yet again. Can anyone believe that it is now April 18th. Spring when will you grace us? These tiny purple petals frozen in time and space. And as Easter approaches this weekend, we can look forward not to donning a new Easter outfit as I did when I was a child but instead to get my winter coat out again.

But the signs of spring are here - these frozen crocus, my rhubarb budding up through the ground (topped by a hood of snow) and daffodils just waiting to burst. And I must remember that we gardener's are a patient lot, so patient I must be and I know that I will be rewarded when my anticipation is finally quenched with spring's warm weather and colourful blooms.

Canada Blooms - Inspiration, Ideas and Information

I can hardly believe that it is mid March already and time once again for Canada Blooms, Canada's premier flower and garden show. Winter has really been hanging on and we are all ready for a breath of spring air and Canada Blooms certainly delivers that along with plenty of inspiration, ideas and information. Some people can easily feel overwhelmed at the show but here are a few tips to help you make the most out of your Canada Blooms visit.

1. Inspiration-The show gardens are large and beautiful but can be overwhelming to some who say I don't have the funds to hire a landscaper to do all that work and it is beyond my own capabilities. Remember these are show gardens where landscapers and designers are showing you new products and their services. These gardens are meant for inspiration. Look at the smaller elements that you can take home and use in your own garden - it could be a new plant variety, and interesting colour combination or a new hardscape element like a water feature, outdoor kitchen idea or some cool accesories.

2. Ideas - The show is filled with lots of great ideas. Bring along your digital camera and a notebook and pen so you can make note and record ideas or new plants you'd like to try in your garden. If you rely on your memory, you'll lose a lot of ideas. By the end of the show your head will be so filled with ideas that when you go home, you won't remember them all. I keep a file of new gardens ideas so that when I have time and want to make changes to my garden I can readily see ideas I wanted to try.

3. Information - If you are a novice gardener just getting started or an experienced gardener wanting to find out about new plants or techniques, Canada Blooms information sessions are filled with quality education from experienced gardeners. There are many opportunities throughout the 4 day show to here excellent speakers who share their knowledge, tips and techniques. Again, bring along a notebook so you can jot down all the great gardening advice.

If you've never been to Canada Blooms, there is no time like the present. Not only will you leave filled with Inspiration, Ideas and Information but you'll leave knowing that spring is just around the corner. So celebrate spring this week at the Direct Energy Centre in Toronto at Canada Blooms.

Winter Won't Let Go

"Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own."

Charles Dickens

What a week it has been. Winter it seems just will not let go its hold on us. It's almost mid March and just when we think that spring might be on our doorstep, we are blasted with another hit of winter. Yesterday, it was rain, then wet, heavy snow and my children even had another "snow day" at home. With the extra rain and snow, it has meant flooding all around our town. We are all getting a little down with the weather these days and can only hope and pray for some sunshine, mild days and warm, warm weather. It doesn't help when our Kenyan son texts us from Nairobi telling us it is so, so, so, so, hot Mama. But still the fresh dusting of white covered up the muddy brown of spring's melt time.

And so we can only hope for spring by looking at our photos of our gardens in full bloom and perusing and picking our seeds and summer bulbs from the garden catalogues but when we will be able to plant, well your guess is as good as mine. So tonight with a light snow falling and mild temperatures, I'll grab a mug of tea and get back to my seed orders.

Roses - Symbol of Love for Valentine's Day

"In the heart of every woman
is the memory of a Rose."

Jean Gordon


Roses have been the symbol of love throughout the ages but it was the Victorians who began to write about roses in their poetry and prose extolling their virtue and innocence.



And as Liz Klose and Laura Peters recount in their book 'Roses for Ontario', "A Greek legend attributes the creation of the rose to Flora, the goddess of spring and flowers. She found the lifeless body of one of her beautiful nymphs in the forest and asked the gods to give the creature new life by transforming her into a flower, one that surpasses all others in beauty. The request was granted and the new flower was named Rose, Queen of Flowers."



Roses have been the symbol of love in my relationship with my husband and he often gives me roses for special occasions, and sometimes for no occasion at all. We have a few roses growing in our gardens, new varieties that come out on a regular basis that seem like they might like to survive in our colder winter climate. We love the ones that smell like roses should smell, that wonderful sweet intoxicating fragrance. My husband especially loves the mauve variety (name unknown) that really exudes with rosy aroma. After all, what good is a rose if it doesn't smell like a rose! In ancient times in Persia it was found that oil could be distilled from rose petals and that once bottled rose oil could last almost indefinitely. This was a real blessing as it was much easier to open a bottle of attar of roses, as the essential oil was known, than to be surrounded by bushels of roses, to enjoy rose fragrance. From this discovery, the scent of roses became a staple of cosmetics, aromotherapy and perfumes.



This Valentine's Day show your loved one you really love them with a gift of roses. And remember that the Rose is the goddess of Spring which I hope is just around the corner (and on this very snowy day we could use a few warm thoughts about spring!).



Did you know that Kenya is one of the major rose growing countries in the world that services much of Europe?

My English Gardening Angels

" Gardening can become a kind of disease. It infects you; you cannot escape it. When you go visiting, your eyes rove about the garden; you interrupt the serious cocktail drinking because of an irrestible impulse to get up and pull a weed."

Lewis Gannit

Well, as life goes sometimes it throws you curve balls and some things have to be left undone while you attend to life's challenges. This past month a variety of family health issues had me racking up frequent fliers points at doctors and dentist offices and as spring advanced, so did the weeds in my garden but no time for garden chores. But if one is lucky, life also sends you garden angels to help out. A couple of weeks ago just when I needed them, my husband's cousins, Jean and Godfrey arrived from England for their vaction. Little did they know what they were getting into.

When Jean saw the state of my garden and my life's challenges she quickly set to work. Every day with good weather she has been out doing weeding, weeding and more weeding. What a godsend, and does my garden now look great. Godfrey and I followed close behind crowning the newly weeded beds with a topdressing of mulch. What a relief! Before I was overwhelmed and now I can relax and enjoy my garden for the remainder of the summer. But as the quote above states, even with the gardens weeded Jean can't resist pulling up a newly sprouted weed during happy hour.

And not only has Jean cleaned up my garden, she also moved on to my neighbours. Karen can't believe she too was sent a garden angel as although she likes the look of gardens, she readily admits she is not much of a gardener herself. And so as we enjoy a new week of proposed beautiful spring weather, I will get busy and plant my veggie seeds while Jean and Godfrey take a rest and enjoy the final two weeks of their visit in Bracebridge before heading out on their tour of Quebec before heading back to England.

Previously Godfrey and Jean have only visited us in the winter as Godfrey loves our Canadian snow but this trip not only have we shown them a Canadian spring but they have experienced snow, hail, rain, and yesterday's summer hot weather (all four of our Canadian seasons) in just two weeks.

The garden is lovely - the forget-me-nots are in full bloom, the hostas have unfurled their large leaves, and a few late season tulips are still blooming, soon to be replaced with the budding peonies. In the greenhouse are colourful annuals waiting to fill my containers when the last frost is over about June 1st and tomatoes ready for transplanting into the raised veggie beds. Well, with the sun shining and blue sky overhead, it's time for me to leave this computer and get my seeds planted.

Daffodils Bring Spring Cheer

"I wandered lonely as a cloud,
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine,
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch in never ending line,
Along the margin of the bay;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not be but gay,
In such jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on, my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils."

William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)


These words penned so many years ago by William Wordsworth are known by many around the world, and today as I look out my window I see exactly what he was talking about. It's cool and breezy and the daffodils in my garden are fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Daffodils to me are one of the quintessential harbingers of spring. As the snow recedes and the ground retreats from hibernation, daffodils spring up, their cheery yellow colour brightening our days and reminding us the the fullness of the garden season yet to come. My garden is home to many varities of daffodils from single flowers to double petalled blooms, from delicate dwarfs to giant trumpets, each strikingly beautiful in their own design.

The prophet Isaiah in the Bible trumpeted the glory of God saying, "Let the wilderness and dry lands exult, let the wasteland rejoice and bloom, let it bring forth flowers like the jonquil, let it rejoice and sing for joy." And how true it is, for daffodils do make us feel joyful - that winter is over and spring is here. Their bright sunny colour also makes our hearts sing for their cheerfulness elevates our spirits after the long cold winter.

And so today, my daffodils are "tossing their heads in sprightly dance" and I sit gazing on their stunning beauty for they are the percursor of the beauty that is yet to come. But remember that if you want to be greeted with a "host of golden daffodils" next spring, you'll have to plant bulbs this fall. And with over 8,000 varities to choose from, I would hasten to say there isn't a gardener who couldn't find just one variety to bring a smile to their face.

Celebrate Spring - Happy Easter!

"European writer Karl Capek described spring as 'the rebellious outburst of the will to live.' A spring garden may be an acre of woodland, a special corner by the kitchen door or no more than a tub of tulips; but whatever for it takes, it is always the gardener's celebration of that joyful and indomitable spirit, the will to live."

I'm not really sure what happened but while we were away in Kenya for a couple of weeks, spring arrived. When we left there was two feet of snow on the ground and when we got home, the snow was gone, and the tulips, crocus and snowdrops along with the daffodils were bursting forth. Apparently as soon as we left, warm weather swept through Muskoka and melted all the snow. Our friends said we missed the best two weeks of weather. Oh well, we were happy to experience summer in Kenya.

It's Easter weekend and a great time to celebrate spring and the rebirth and renewal it brings. How great it was this weekeknd to open the windows and have fresh air blow through the house, to hang laundry once again on the clothesline in the sunshine and to set up the gazebo, get the table and chairs out of the potting shed and enjoy wine and cheese with my good friend Sandra as a day of garden clean-up ended. We had a hard winter and many of the plants and shrubs have suffered under the weight of winter's white snows. Broken branches need to be trimmed and the loss of three of the mature maples on the exterior perimeter of our property mean the face of our garden will change yet again this summer. More sun may mean the hostas will feel out of place but we will see. And I think of it as an opportunity to try out some new varieties of sun-loving perennials to attract both birds and butterflies.

Tomorrow is another day - the grapes still need to be trimmed, the compost to be turned, gardens to be mulched and the raised veggie boxes to be turned. I hope to plant my tomato seeds to - I feel a little behind this spring but Kenya was a great experience for our second trip to Wongonyi Village. It was amazing to see the banana plantation, unfortunately the bananas still had another two months before they reached maturity so we weren't able to taste them. But the Ushvika Ladies Group were very happy when we arrived with their new oil press. Now they will be able to press their sunflower seeds making oil for their own use and hopefully have excess to sell and generate income.

Spring is the perfect time to give thanks for the beauty and wonder of creation and the season of rebirth and renewal that heralds a new summer season soon to come.

Happy Easter!

What Joy - Spring is Just Around the Corner!

"Nothing is so beautiful as Spring - long and lovely and lush."

Gerald Manley Hopkins

What Joy I feel today for I know that spring is right around the corner. The sun is shining brightly the warmth of the sun toasting my face; the snow is melting off the rooftops with a gentle drip, drip, drip; and even though I have only seen one or two chickadees at my feeders, I heard the chatter of birds in the trees. As much as I love the thought of the impending spring, I also don't very much like this time of year, for as the snow melts a dirty world appears as winter's refuse bubbles to the surface with the melting snows and all the sand laid down to ease our winter walking tracks into our homes. But I take heart that it is only for a month or two and then - Spring!

Today we are busy with our final packing as we leave shortly for Kenya and our trip back to Wongonyi Village. We are excited to see all our family and friends again - to see the changes that have taken place in the village, thanks to the support of all of our donors to The Ronnie Fund. As we leave winter here, we arrive to an African summer and the rainy season. I'm looking forward to seeing a lushness we didn't see the last time we visited in August (Africa's winter) and we are anxious to try the bananas, the first harvest from the new banana plantation.

We return just in time for the Region VII meeting of the Garden Writers Association at Canada Blooms. The picture above taken last year gives us all a breath of fresh air as we know that tulips and daffodils will be blooming in a couple of months in our own gardens. So celebrate spring and don't forget to order your seeds now, if you haven't already.

The Seed Catalogues Are Here!

" Snowy winter, a plentiful harvest."

As you can see from my last post it has been a very snowy winter in our part of the country. So if the proverb above is correct, I'll be looking forward to a plentiful harvest both in the blooms like this bounty of roses as well as in the veggie garden.

Each day it seems there is another seed catalogue bursting forth from my mailbox. And I can't wait to peruse the offerings looking for something new to try, easpecially in the veg department. I've been reading the book "Growing Chinese Vegetables in Your Own Backyard." I love cooking and one of my favourite cuisines is Chinese. I once worked with a Chinese girl who took me under her wing, introducing me to all sorts of Chinese food products not available in your local supermarkets and then showed me how to prepare them. Several times a year I make a pilgrimage to Toronto to Chinatown and load up on sauces, unusual vegetables and other culinary treats that are staples in Chinese cooking, so this book has been very interesting in learning the more unique veggies I can add to my backyard garden.

Since Asian foods have become more mainstream in recent years, more seed purveyors are offering these "new to us" varieties. So I look forward in the next couple of days to taking time out with a cup of steaming green tea and the new seed catalogues, making my list and garden plan for the upcoming season (that is if our snow ever melts). And then as the proverb says, with a little tender loving care, I'll be looking forward to a plentiful harvest. This is the perfect time to be making your seed selections, before you know it spring will be here.

Spring Showers bring May Flowers

"On Early Morning
Peach blossom after rain
Is deeper red;
The willow fresher green;
Twittering overhead;
And fallen petals lie wind-blown
Unswept upon the courtyard stone."

Translated from the Chinese by Helen Waddell

This Chinese poem resonated with me yesterday as it rained constantly the entire day. Not that I was unhappy as I love the sound of the rain as it falls upon the earth. I also love, as the poem states, the willow fresher green, for all the world seems greener after a spring shower and there is a certain clean aroma to the earth following a rain. You can almost see the flowers perk up with the added moisture.

Yesterday I also heard a cardinal sing and when I looked up there it was, red and regal in our cedar tree. I felt even more joyful when the female cardinal swooped in to meet its mate. I really hope they set up house in one of the nearby trees for we don't get many cardinals in our neck of the woods, lots of blue jays but cardinals are a rare sighting. I was also surprised to walk out of the garden gate and see a bird's nest in a maple sapling. I haven't seen any birds actually building the nest but it wasn't there a couple of days ago. I'll just have to keep my eyes open.

But not all is rosy at Rosewood (the name we call our house) for Friday our daughter Martha exclaimed that a weird creature had taken up residence under our front porch. We kept watching and yesterday afternoon out popped a groundhog, an unusual critter for a town garden. As much as I love wildlife in the garden, this creature will need to find a new home. He's already dug a few holes in our lawn, so tomorrow Peter will make a trip to the rental store to see if he can get a live trap so we can catch the critter and relocate him to a new home in the country. I really don't want to have him munching on all the tasty delights my garden might offer. The chippies and squirrels are wildlife enough.

I love spring - the tulips and daffodils are in bloom, the hellebores are in flower along with the pulmonaria and the trees and shrubs are beginning to bud and leaf out. As the new tree leaves are forming the sky seems to be bright with lime green colour and the returning birds are twittering overhead. Everything seems alive.

So I leave you with this thought by Margaret Cropper

"Far beyond hope the Spring is kind again,
Lovely beyond the longing of my eyes."

5 Tips for a Spring Garden Tune-up

"With tumbled hair of swarms of bees,
And flower-robes dancing in the breeze,
With sweet, unsteady lotus-glances,
Intoxicated, Spring advances."

from a Sanskrit poem


It's cool, damp, dark and drizzly today (what my husband likes to call a 'Winnie-the-Pooh blustery day') and a friend even mentioned we might be receiving the "S" word ( snow!!!). This rain at least should eliminate the few pockets of snow we still have remaining, so it's time to tune-up the garden for the season ahead.

1. Clean up all winter's debris. We had lots of wind storms over the winter so have to deal with lots of downed branches.

2. Cut back and clean up any vegetative matter you left standing last fall. If the matter is healthy put it in the compost, if diseased dispose of in the garbage.

3. Prune any shrubs and flowering plants like roses and grapes that suffered winter kill and also require a new hairdo (a little shaping for looks and control).

4. Check your compost bin - give it a turn to reactivate it if your fall compost isn't quite finished.

5. Get bang for your buck by planting seeds - now's the time to start planting outdoors your cool weather crops like lettuce and greens, peas and sweet peas.

Remember not to work in the garden until its dry or you risk compacting the soil structure preventing oxygen from reaching the plant's roots.

A pleasant surprise for me the other day as I worked doing garden clean-up was seeing the flash of gold in one of our ponds. The goldfish we put in the pond last summer had survived the winter and are ready to provide us with wildlife pleasures again this summer. It was a meditative day and I was happy for the return of birdsong and the lengthening days - more time to spend in the garden. The daffodils are up now and just about to burst forth in bloom - when they do, it will bring to cheer to these necessary April shower days that promise May flowers. Spring truly is here!

Winters Grip

It's mid March, a week ago we had a couple of warm days evocative of spring - the birds were singing, the snow was melting, dripping off the roofs, puddling on the sidewalks and then wham! Overnight the temperature dropped causing flash freezing, the roads became as slick as a skating rink and the next day we were back in winter's grip with blowing snow causing whiteouts and temperatures so cold one dared not venture out of doors.

It has been a long and cold winter here in central Ontario and I for one will be glad when spring finally decides to come. Until then I will have to continue to dream of spring and nature's re-emergence. Just looking at floral photos like this fuchsia give me hope that spring truly is just around the corner.

"Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush of life may well be seen
Thrilling back over hills and valleys."

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)
from "The Vision of Sir Launfal"