Plant Swap

What a great idea for avid gardeners! A perennial plant exchange.  At this time of the year as we clean up our flower beds, we inevitably have to divide fast growing or encroaching perennials and I always hate to throw out/ compost a perfectly good plant digging.  This way someone else gets the digging and it starts a new life as a wanted plant in a new flower bed.

This plant swap came a bit early this year, since we had a late spring. Some of my flower beds were still partially covered with snow last week and so many of the perennials are barely showing yet. But the bed next to the house on the east side has been snow free for several weeks and has a head start as does my rock garden bed next to the deck facing south east.  My blue sages (May Night variety) have grown huge there, so I dug out half of one clump for the swap.

The campanula/ cluster bell flowers are encroaching on the purple and white bearded irises along the side of the house, so I dug out a huge clump, separated them and brought them both along, as well as 3 bags of white shasta daisies which I had dug out  of my beds a few days before. This is the first time I didn't bring maltese crosses, but that's only because they are barely out of the ground yet, not because I have them under control now. LOL!

I decided, as I was driving to town that I really didn't need any new perennials other than maybe something short for my rock garden bed to fill in where I had removed the daisies.  But, of course that's not what happened.   Those of you that know me, won't be surprised to hear that I came home with more plants than I left with!  Couldn't resist... call me weak!  :D

I did get the anticipated short little sedum for the rock garden, but also took a rose root (rodeola rosea), a short type of succulent with medicinal purposes, a big healthy "hen & chicks" succulent, 2 perennial poppies and something called "Snow in Summer".  (Snow in summer... what a concept! The very thing that most gardeners DO NOT want! LOL! )

 And I ended up with a different variety of bearded irises, supposedly these are blue... so now once this much needed rain quits, I can go out and find homes for all my new additions.

The grass wars are continuing as usual! The stealth and under handed (or should I say underground) sneakiness and resourcefulness of grass roots never ceases to amaze me!   Just when you think you have it under control.... more pops up over night where you were sure you had already eradicated it...

I have re-dug the same first 3 beds removing more grass out of them and now have began working on (Oh what a mess!) my stack stone bed. The grass roots and baby shasta daises in there are ridiculous!  I do have 2 friends who want some diggings, so they are both destined to get some shasta daisies from me (and probably some maltese cross diggings). The rest I will ruthlessly have to put into the compost...  

And my wonderful husband has agreed to help me start digging a new flower bed this week!

Work, work, work, a gardeners work is never done! :)

Crocuses Blooming

The wild crocuses started blooming on Picnic Hill near our place on Easter weekend. That's always a happy event which announces the arrival of spring for us!  I love the delicate little pale mauve blossoms peeking out of the long dead grass.

This year there seems to be more clusters than usual. There are a few clusters of crocuses blooming behind our house in the uncultivated / unmowed part of the hill.  Apparently wild crocuses will not grow in cultivated ground. I tried digging them up one spring and transplanting them to a flower bed, but they soon died back (which is normal), but didn't re-grow the following spring.

 And the swallows are back!!! Woke up on April 30 to the exciting sound of the tree swallows and, sure enough, they were swooping around the back yard and sitting on the bird houses there, checking out potential nesting sites. Even though spring is about 3 weeks late this year, the swallows are about 5 days early.  :)  I love the arrival of those numerous midnight blue mosquito eradicators!

Also have seen robins on a regular basis around here, one really huge one! I hope they are alert and wary when they search for food because of our cats roaming around the yard. I would truly hate for anything  to happen to them.  The swallows at least do their feeding in the air, away from feline predators.

Have been busily cleaning our flower beds. The one close to the house had a lot of quack grass trying to take over as well as the bell flower campanula. I dug out much of the cmpanula to try to keep it under control. There is still quite a bit of grass hiding in between the bearded irises, though, sneaky devils!  I don't want to get too vigorous there right now because it's too easy to accidently yank out the irises along with the long grass roots....  The hollyhocks are coming up nicely and so is one of my clematises and one of my black eyed susans.  I watered that bed, then added a mix of soil and sheep manure to fill in some f the holes left after 'weed' removal...

There were massive amounts of grass roots in the upper rock garden bed as well. I got a big laundry basket full and it's not a very big bed! I also took out most of the white daisies at the step side of that bed. I relocated 2 daisies into the upper far corner of that bed.

 The May Midnight blue sage is growing well. There are 2 huge clumps in that bed, too much for the size of the bed. I see there are also quite a number of baby sage plantlets starting there as well.... Hoping to give some of those away either to a friend or to the perennial swap which usually takes place on the May long weekend.  The creeping phlox is turning green in that bed and the soap wort hopefully will make it's usual late appearance and didn't accidently get dug out along with the quack grass....

In the lower part of the rock garden bed, the fall colored rudbeckia is coming up! I had thought they were annuals, but 'something' told me to leave them when I was cleaning out that bed last fall, just in case and I'm pleased to see them reappear!  I had planted them as a replacement for the Swan River daises and the 'ice flowers' which the little marmot varmint ate down to the ground.  I really loved their burgundy/ dark brownish red color and I look forward to seeing them bloom again this year.  Again, I dug out lots of grass in the lower rock garden bed and also many baby daisies.

Will tackle the big stack stone bed next and have to do a radical daisy eradication there! I did get one request from a friend for some daises, so one or two will find new homes...  So far the rose bushes in that bed don't show any signs of life.

My partner in crime cleaned out the pond and filled it with clean water. (What a job sweeping the algae buildup off the sides!) Then he set up the filter system. Soon now the housebound goldfish will be going out into their summer home.

Goldfish in the pond last year

Where Oh Where are you, Spring???

Where oh where has our spring gone; where, oh, where could it be? With the sun so warm and the days just right,  and no more snow anywhere in sight, we long for you with our hearts delight; Oh please will you come back to me! :D

We got more snow on Thursday (April 14)  and Saturday (April 16), but now I think it's supposed to be warm for the next 8 days, sunny and plus temperatures during the daytime...  Okay call me a skeptic, I will put away my winter boots and snow pants when I see it! LOL!

Tulips sprouting at east side of the house

On the positive side, my tulips are up about 3 inches in the bed at the side of the house, and so are the bearded irises and my oriental poppy; (all next to the house.)

Oriental Poppy 

Bearded irises making an appearance

My flower beds down in the middle of the yard are still covered in snow!  It'll be a while before anything starts happening there!

Middle of yard flower bed

A few perennials are just starting to peek out in my stack stone bed, such as the white daisies which are really not much more than weeds, plus a scabiosa and a pink double coneflower. Will have to mix up a batch of Plantskydd soon to spray the new growth to convince the deer to eat elsewhere!

In anticipation of the arrival of spring and the start of gardening, I planted tomatoes seeds a few days ago; (Heirloom Black Krim and some yellow Northern Sun tomato seeds.)  I noticed 2 little sprouts yesterday!

I also planted some flower seeds; Red Durango marigolds, calendulas, bachelor buttons, perennial poppies and some hollyhocks.  The bachelor buttons and the marigolds are showing signs of greenery.

Soon it will be time to put the goldfish back out into the pond

My Firebird dahlia (which I planted from a tuber on March 28) is so huge now that I have to keep cutting it back! The 2 red cactus dahlias which are 6 years old that I had brought with me from northern Manitoba, just sprouted in their pots 2 days ago. So far, no sign of life in the canna lily pots... Canna tubers are tricky to over winter. They need to be kept moist, but not too much or they will rot. I'm afraid that my 2 canna tubers might have dried out...

The snow is melting quickly by the pond. Soon it will be time to clean it out for another season and put the goldfish back into their summer home.

Happy Easter!

Spring 2011

Officially spring arrived 10 days ago, but one would never guess by looking out of the window. We just survived 10 days of snow and bitter unseasonably cold weather!   We have so much snow it's unreal!!!  It did start to melt mid month, but after 3 days, it took a turn for the worse.
Thankfully the temperatures have been above zero for two days now and the sun has decided she has neglected us long enough! :)  The snow has been melting a noticeable amount each day. We still have 2 Christmas reindeer (with white mini lights) frozen in the snow in the yard and I can see more and more of them each day.  keep up the good work Mother Nature. Tomorrow in the first of April after all!

The excessive amount of snow and cold has been hard on the deer. They have been fighting amongst themselves over the sunflower seeds at the bird feeder.  They got so hungry that one of the deer broke 5 out of 6 of the plastic windows in out hexagonal bird feeder! The snow was so high that I saw 2 different deer standing up on their hind legs and balancing while they licked the seeds out of the broken sides of the feeder!

The next time we went to town, we bought a huge bag of oats and I have been spreading some on the snow at the end of the deer trails.  At first the deer would munch a mouthful and then walk away. They were more interested in the black oiled sunflower seeds at the bird feeder, something familiar, I suppose. After a few days though, the oats started disappearing. The deer still seem to like pieces of apples the best though. A bag of apples is cheap, about $3.00 around here. Makes me feel like I'm doing something even if it isn't much. Might make a difference between an empty belly and a slightly full one. :)

We saw 3 Canada geese flying over head 2 weeks ago before the ugly weather hit. I wonder how they managed to survive. Today I saw 4 pairs of geese standing on the snow on the lake. Everything is still covered with at least 18 inches of snow and I wonder how they knew that there was even a lake there!

Red cactus dahlias with a touch of frost last Sept. 2010

Now for the beginnings of gardening:
This week I checked my cactus dahlias and canna lily roots that I have been over wintering in paper bags in the laundry room and one of the dahlias had started to sprout already, the Firebird dahlia! It gets beautiful gold and orange blossoms late in the summer. Three out of four of my tuberous begonia tubers have also sprouted, so I potted up the whole works, 3 dahlias, 2 canna lilies and the 3 begonias.

Firebird Dahlia

The other 2 dahlias are a gorgeous deep red cactus dahlia which I have had for about 8 years now! I grew them in a pot when we lived in northern Manitoba and each fall I brought the whole pot in the house to over winter. Then in the spring when it started sprouting in the pot, I began watering it and then would put it outside again once the danger of frost as over.  I brought the whole pot here when we moved in 2006.  In the summer of 2007 I divided the tubers and planted 2 separate plants in my flower beds. They always did beautifully well!

red cactus dahlia brought from Thompson, MB

One of the canna lilies is called Crimson beauty and the other is King Humbert. So far they don't show any signs of life, but time will tell.

As far as the begonias go, I think they are all yellow, but I can't remember exactly.  Guess I should check in my garden journal to see if I wrote it down. Otherwise it'll just be a pleasant surprise!

Next week's plan:  plant my black Krim tomatoe seeds and maybe a few of the flower seeds...

Gardening... in My Dreams!

Have been day dreaming about the 2011 gardening season. Reading gardening magazines adds fuel to the fire! Still far too early to do much of anything yet except look at the greenhouse that I passed on the highway today with longing!  LOL!

Crocuses from the local grocery store- Gorgeous, aren't they?!

The local grocery store provides some little samples of spring with their assortment of crocuses, hyacinths and Japanese lilies to brighten the cold winter days. :)

In March I will start planting my dahlia bulbs, canna lily tubers, and begonia tubers which I have stored in the laundry room right now. They take several weeks to sprout. Luckily I have some big, sunny windows in my living room ready to provide hours of much needed sunshine when they do sprout!

After that it will be time to trim back the geraniums that I have been over wintering in the house. Maybe take a few cuttings to start some new plants. One of my Orbit Pink geraniums has 3 bunches of blossoms on it right now and looking so bright and beautiful! It is in a south/west facing window in the kitchen and seems to like it there.

I love looking at seed catalogs at this time of the year and making lists of which bedding plants I want to purchase for this year's garden.  All part of the planning and necessary preparation for a successful garden! ;)

I wonder if I have been 'creating a monster' as my husband seems to think. I have been buying apples and cutting them up to put out for the deer. They have been wandering around in large groups of a dozen or more this year. It's called "yarding up"according to my Deer book. I guess they have better protection from predators in groups, but I would think they would have a harder time finding enough food then.

Mama white tail with twins -relatives in background

I saw two really tiny white tail deer in a group a few days ago (Even tinier than the two in the photo above.) It was interesting to see their mother trying to coax them to be brave enough to go close to our backyard bird feeder where some oiled sunflower seeds lay on the ground. She used one front hoof to nudge two other deer out of the way. But by the time the little ones ventured close, there wasn't much left to eat.  I'm afraid they might not survive till spring, they are so tiny. The weather has taken a really serious cold dip again, -21C today and going to -29C again tonight. How can tiny little thin animals even stay warm when it's that cold!?

Anyway, my husband thinks I am creating a monster by luring all these plant eaters to our yard. But I reminded him that we have had deer come every winter since we started living here 5 years ago and now that I have discovered Plantskydd to spray on my flowers as they grow, it deters the deer from making lunch out of them. Besides, by spring there will be a lot of greenery sprouting up in the environmental reserve around our place and the deer groups will split up before they give birth. Once they have better food sources, they won't come around nearly as often. Plus we have a high wire fence around the vegetable garden which no deer have breached yet.

Young mule deer on the deck sampling the plum tree branches

Even the mule deer have been coming around this winter more often, which is really unusual. You seldom see them in summer either, except from afar.  They are very scruffy looking right now. One morning last week, I looked out my front door and saw one brazen mule deer youngster standing on my deck, eating my plum tree to his heart's content, while his relatives were munching away on the other side of the deck railing. It was very icy on the deck after the recent thaw and refreeze, and since it's 13 steps down off the deck to the ground, I didn't want to scare him and possibly cause him to break a leg or injure himself in his flight. I took his photo through the window, then opened the door and poked my head out, speaking softly. He turned around to look at me and then swiftly fled, taking his family members with him!

We have so much snow this year making it harder for the animals to move around. The repeated thaw and freeze up has created a crust on top of the snow. The rabbits just hop around on top, so light that they don't sink through like the deer.  But these conditions make it harder for the deer to find food under the snow.
So I figure, what are a few dozen apples going to hurt!  As much as I love gardening, I wouldn't want to give up the daily deer visits just to save a few bedding plants.  Now my lilies... that might be another matter! LOL!

White tail deer at backyard feeder

White tail deer at front yard feeder

Christmas Trees, Poinsettias and cactuses

2010 Christmas tree

Our living room recently welcomed a new addition, a thick, beautiful  6 foot balsam tree which we bought at the boy scout lot in town.  Many people have turned to artificial trees over the years, but they never appealed to me.  People have asked me why I cut down real trees when I profess to be such a nature buff.  I do love trees and appreciate all their beauty and functions in providing shade, wood and especially their important role in the cycle of life on this planet: providing oxygen. On the other hand trees are a renewable resource. The trees in the Christmas tree lots are grown on tree farms specifically to be cut down at Christmas. No one is clearing existing forests or anything radical like that to provide Christmas trees. If everyone only bought artificial trees, the tree farms would have to stop planting and growing their tree, which would reduce the amount of oxygen produced on the planet, since these trees also produce oxygen in the time it takes them to grow big enough to sell. 

And after Christmas, if you dispose of a real tree properly, use it as mulch if possible, it eventually goes back to the earth as compost, creating new soil. An artificial tree provides nothing... except of course a nice place to hang your decorations while you pretend it's a tree!  Plus it requires a place to store it , and the  artificial  trees that wear out, end up in the land fills as garbage... 

Plus I like the idea of supporting the Boy Scouts association every Christmas with our tree purchase.

Poinsettias are another example of a plant that is grown specifically for Christmas time. I have bought 4 of those this year, one large red one, a medium sized pale reddish pink, and 2 small ones for several rooms of the house.   I have an old poinsettia in my bedroom bow window from last year. It has nice looking green leaves on it, (some new growth), but most of the red brackts have long fallen off. 

In the right conditions, it is possible to get the brackts to turn red again. They need to have long, cool nights and little daylight. They don't like too much artificial light, either. The gardening books will tell you to put your poinsettia in a dark cool closet  for 16 hours a day and bring it out for 8 hours of daylight each day. And they admit that even under those circumstances, it might not turn red.  Seems like a lot of work, so most people consider poinsettias 'throw away' plants. In my house, I don't throw away anything that's still growing reasonably well. (Unless it has a disease or insect infestation I can't get rid of!)

A few years ago when we were still living in northern Manitoba, I had a poinsettia from the previous Christmas on the cold window sill in the computer room between the curtain and the window, and it did turn red again, two years in a row!

My Christmas cactus is blooming now and has an abundance of big buds on it! It is looking quite gorgeous. I have had this Christmas cactus for many years and it often blooms again in the spring around Easter time as well, although not as profusely.  The tiny one that I planted from a slip that fell off the big plant also grew buds, but my middle sized plant has none. 

I think it had something to do with the location. The middle sized Christmas cactus was in the kitchen where it got a lot of artificial light and maybe too much water. I moved it to the cool bedroom bow window where the small Christmas cactus had been to encourage it to set some buds. 

One trick that often works is to withhold water for a month or 6 weeks in October/ November which usually results in flower buds.  Once you notice the tiny little budlets forming at the end of the stems, be sure to start watering your Christmas cactus again regularly. Then it's important not to let it dry out or the rest of the little flower buds will fall off.

So some gardening is still possible in the winter.  :)

Winter 'Gardening'

Winter Sunrise 

The 'gardening' is limited to indoor things right now, due to the extreme weather outside at this time of the year.  We had the most glorious 10 days of early November weather! It was wonderful to go out for a walk, with only a light jacket or fleece, no mitts or ear warmers required!

Then overnight we were hit hard with the opposite extreme. A deep freeze with snow almost every day which lasted almost 2 weeks. But we all survived that and now things are pretty much back to normal early December weather;  Nice enough to walk the dog along the deer trails around here as long as you are wearing snow pants, warm jacket, scarf, hat and mitts.

Through the kitchen window...

Looking for sunflower seeds the birds have dropped.

The deer are out in droves this time of the year. It is rutting season right now so a person has to be very carefully driving at this time. The deer often dart out in front of the vehicles trying to cross the road at the wrong time!  But I enjoy watching them feed on the hills around our acreage.

Mom and spring baby

We have 2 bird feeders which we fill with oiled sunflower seeds year round for the numerous birds out here. It is especially important in the winter when the food is scarce. The black capped chickadees are here all winter along with little downey woodpeckers, the odd nuthatch, magpies and blue jays. The bohemian waxwings often make appearances in huge numbers, but they are here to glean the dried saskatoons and chokecherries or mountain ash berries.  

The ladder back woodpecker and the blue jays are very aggressive at the feeders and for some reason they throw huge amounts of sunflower seeds on the ground. They seem to think there is just the perfect one in the pile somewhere.... The deer have discovered this little treasure trove and they come to check the ground under the feeders every day. I'm always thrilled to see them outside my window cautiously cleaning up the seeds they discover there. Sometimes I will even put extra seeds in an old baking pan near the feeder for them to eat. Of course luring them to our yard this way has its drawbacks come gardening time in the spring....

Mom and twins searching for seeds

Time to go!