Posts tagged ‘Gardening’
Goodbye garden
Here begins the slow goodbye as we trade our current in Calgary’s frigid Zone 3 for a patio full of pots in Vancouver’s lovely Zone 8. When we arrived in our current home almost three years ago the gardens were a blank slate. And now, just when things are finally settling in and filling out, it’s time to move cities.
I love gardening. There are few things I would rather do than spend my days planting, digging and tending to a garden: nothing is more peaceful, calming and real to me than cultivating a little plot of land and watching it grow.
What’s pictured above and below here – the pots and the six inches of dirt are similar to what’s available in our new place. I guess in some ways things won’t change at all. In Calgary I can see the first chives and my pretty violets starting to poke through the earth. I think if I can take a few of them along with me to Vancouver that will be enough.
Welcome to fall
Calgary’s fall has been less than idyllic so far. We spent 10 days vacationing on Vancouver Island in mid-September, and when we came back the weather was hot and balmy, as if it was still summer. A few days after that it turned cold with the first frosts of the season. Since then, we’ve experienced chilly rains and more than a few days of snow, most recently paired with blustering winds and temperatures dipping to -10C.
Aside from braving the cold for a few brief moments today to hang this beautiful sunflower head from Eagle Creek Flowers for our backyard birds to snack on, I’ve felt mostly deprived of the usual joys of experiencing the fall season outdoors. At its best, fall is one of my favourite seasons. It is soothing and peaceful to watch the plant life in our garden reach its full life cycle and prepare to rest for the winter months. And while I miss the warmth of the summer months, enjoying more time nesting in our cozy house is a welcome shift as the seasons change.
We’re spending this weekend, Thanksgiving weekend in Canada, visiting Lake Louise for a couple of days and after that we’ll enjoy a family dinner to celebrate the holiday. With luck we might also squeeze in the Harvest Country Drive, which is happening between Calgary and Red Deer – a seasonal, farm-friendly activity in our region that I’ve never experienced. My hope is that the whole weekend will provide a thorough dose of fall and some much-needed time outdoors, walking, taking photographs and experiencing nature before the long winter settles in.
Garden bouquet
Isn’t it lovely? All picked from my very own garden! I know I will spend the rest of the fall and winter dreaming of this moment of having a vase of fresh cut flowers resting on the patio table on a perfect late summer day.
Late summer flowers
A few photos of flowers blooming in our late summer garden. This is the garden is in its best stage. It feels like it’s finally gotten started – I wish I could keep gardening for another few months! I try not to think about the fact that today someone stumbled across my blog by entering the phrase “first frost calgary” into a search engine! The days are still warm enough to ignore that and to focus instead on documenting this gorgeous time of year that we all have in mind during those other months of planting seeds, choosing perennials, leafing through gardening books and catalogues and dreaming of next year’s garden. (more…)
Poppies
I discovered this year that poppies can be amazingly easy to grow. In the spring (early May) I sprinkled poppy seeds throughout our gardens in the front and backyard. I was fairly liberal with them, especially in places where we didn’t have much growing already.
They were a smashing success. There was a veritable poppy field growing in the front yard, and for a couple of weeks, I could hear people passing by on the sidewalk exclaiming, “Look at all the poppies!” They were beautiful. They grew up tall and straight, some of them almost waist-high, and the sight of them swaying gently in the wind was a lovely thing to look out on. They’re just about finished now. I’ve cleared them out and hung a couple of bunches of stems with seed heads still intact inside the garage to dry, possibly for an indoor arrangement, or at least to harvest some of the seeds for planting next year. I’m not sure if they are perennial or not. I am sure, though, that the squirrels have done a thorough job spreading the seeds around the yard. Squirrels are incredibly fond of poppies. I’ve seen them perched on a tree stump or in the garden dozens of times now, happily munching away on the seed heads of the poppies after they’ve finished blooming. (more…)
