Fairies and Gardens

Faeries, come, take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame!
~William Butler Yeats

Faërie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons; it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.
― J.R.R. Tolkien

We call them faerie.
We don't believe in them.
Our loss.
~Charles de Lint

Friday afternoon I was texting with the daughter, and I happened to mention that we never made it to the massive garden center in Ajax this year. Next thing I know, we’re on a road trip after the granddaughter was let out of school. LOL

Though there may have been a few regrets over the amount of money spent, we didn’t regret it enough to part with any of our plants. The granddaughter helped pick out the plants for the fairy garden, and I think we did a pretty good job. You’ll note the toadstool I made during our craft day a few weeks ago.

We also picked out some flowers for another hanging basket – fuchsias and (my favorite) sweet peas.

The only problem is, the hanging basket I bought for it is too heavy for the shepherd’s crook. *sigh* I’m either going to have to buy a smaller hanging basket, or maybe just a stand to rest this one on.

Meanwhile, I also discovered that I sort of, kind of, overbought on the plants for the fairy garden.

There is another planter on our patio like the one on the fairy garden is in. It used to have a beautiful red rose bush in it, but for some reason it didn’t come back after the winter this year. I’m pretty sure it’s gone for good, so I could commandeer that pot for a second fairy garden. The first one has four gnomes in it – I’m sure a couple of them would be quite happy to relocate to a second pot.

I also got a couple of beefsteak tomato plants for my vegetable garden, which seem really small compared to the plants from my neighbor. My tomatoes, green beans and peppers are all doing well. The spinach is starting to show and I have a hint of the carrots, but the lettuce and beets are taking their sweet time.

My peonies all bloomed this year:

They must finally be happy in their little garden. You can’t really see in the picture, but there’s a single black lily growing in the center of the peonies. I didn’t do it deliberately, but it’s probably going to bloom once the peonies are done. Makes me think of planting more lilies in that garden, in between the peonies.

So far we’ve had a very wet start to our summer, which makes my plants very happy.

That makes one of us! LOL

Orchid Mania

The orchid is Mother Nature's masterpiece.
— Robyn

An orchid in a deep forest sends out its fragrance even if no one is around to appreciate it.
― Confucius

If I see an orchid that's fantastically expensive, I'll buy it. It's worth it, for no other reason than it gives me pleasure.
— Lee Radziwill

My first orchid was a Cattleya Orchid. It looked something like this:

This isn't a picture of my orchid, it only had one bloom, but it was massive. I bought it as a seedling and it’s amazing to me that it survived because I knew nothing about orchids at the time. Nevertheless, it grew. Dare I say it flourished? It took seven years before there was a single bud on it, and six more months before the bud opened. The bloom stayed open for months, until the summer came.

The plant graced the end of the kitchen counter, and although the window air conditioning unit we had at the time was in the dining room, apparently the blast of cold air was strong enough to reach my plant. I learned the hard way that orchids don’t like blasts of cold air. Not only did I lose the blossom, I lost the entire plant.

I’ve been careful with the orchids I’ve bought since then and currently I have about half a dozen of them.

A few months ago, I did a post about indoor gardening and included a picture of the orchids on my kitchen window ledge. One had a couple of bloom stalks that had run their course and the blooms had died, but it also grew a new bloom stalk that was full of blooms. The other plant had a bloom stalk that was still in bud.

The smaller orchid is still blooming, and the buds are now open on the second orchid.

I also have a one of the orchids in my office blooming at the moment:

You notice there’s only a couple of leaves on this orchid. I have another one that’s down to just one leaf, and I’m not sure why. They all get treated the same way and the others are okay so far (*knock on wood*). Though I’ve never used it in the past, I bought some orchid food for them – I figure I have nothing to lose.

The prize in my collection is my Oncidium Orchid:

Unfortunately it’s not too happy with me right now because it’s getting too much sun so its blooms are starting to fall off, but I’m going to give it a shot of the plant food and maybe try and find a new place to keep it.

I also picked up a couple of mini orchids, but they were already starting to lose their blooms before I got them home.

A lot of people are intimidated by orchids, but they’re surprisingly easy to grow. If you like plants, I encourage you to get one. If you’re afraid of overwatering, try using ice cubes. The mini orchids take one ice cube a couple of times a week, the larger plants take 3 cubes, two or three times a week. My neighbor, who has some beautiful orchids, swears by the ice cube method of watering.

So next time you see an orchid for sale, go ahead and splurge. Next thing you know, you’ll have a shelf full of them, like me. :-)

Houston, We Have A Problem

Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love!
— Sitting Bull

The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul.
— Alfred Austin

From plants that wake when others sleep, from timid jasmine buds that keep their odour to themselves all day, but when the sunlight dies away let the delicious secret out to every breeze that roams about.
— Thomas Moore

I always see gardening as escape, as peace really. If you are angry or troubled, nothing provides the same solace as nurturing the soil.
— Monty Don

And that problem would be my lack of impulse control. *sigh* A funny thing happened to my vow to not buy any more plants . . .

The daughter and I went to the Vintage Clothing Festival in Toronto on the weekend. Only the foolish, or desperate, drive downtown in Toronto, so we drove to Oshawa and took the GO train in. It got very crowded very quickly – sort of like “fill a bag for a buck” day at the thrift store. We went through it all once and then we were pretty much done.

However, we knew this was probably going to happen, so we had a couple of alternate plans in place, seeing as we were already in the city section of the 401. One of these plans was to go to a garden centre in Ajax where a friend of the daughter’s had bought a miniature orange tree. It seemed harmless enough, and it wasn’t too many miles out of our way.

O. M. G. It was the largest garden centre I have ever seen, and I defy anyone to go there and come away empty handed.

We breezed through the outdoor section, proud of ourselves for only picking up a couple of plants. Then we went inside, where we entered plant nirvana. First up was the most amazing collection of succulents it’s ever been my pleasure to witness:

And trust me, the above pictures were just the tip of the iceberg.

The fuchsias had the largest blooms and the most vibrant colours I’ve seen:

And I didn’t realize that calla lilies came in so many different colours:

There was a section for water plants, but it was a little too early for them. However, they did have huge vats of koi of various sizes:

They even a section for those interested in the art of bonsai:

I bought a couple of dwarf daffodils, a blue and a white grape hyacinth, and something pink to use in a fairy garden, and a morning glory I’m hoping will grow up the light pole in my peony garden. And then we got deeper into the houseplant section where I had to keep reminding myself that I had no more space for plants.

I did, however, find a couple that were irresistible:

That’s the morning glory in the bottom left, and you can see just a bit of the strawberry begonia beside it. On the right side is a string of arrows, and above that is a string of marbles (also known as string of pearls or string of beads). In the upper left corner is a pot of turtles on a string.

No, I do not know where they’re going yet, so wish me luck in keeping them alive.

And wouldn’t you know, they were sold out of the miniature orange trees that brought us there, although they did have full sized orange, tangerine, lime, and lemon trees. But they are supposed to get more of the miniatures in June, so I guess we’ll just have to go back for them.

I’m sure it will be worthy of another blog post.

April Showers . . .

The coming of April heralds the time to plant seeds of magic and fill the heart and home with the joy of light and life.
— Lotuswulf Satyrhorn

April showers could bring a cold winter mood when it poured. Then when it was gone, it wasn't warm or cold, but stayed in a residual flavor of both.
— R. Lupi

April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.
— T. S. Eliot

April showers may indeed bring May flowers, but I decided that until I got my indoor gardening done, I shouldn’t start my outdoor gardening. Plus, not only has Walmart been offering a tempting selection of plants, but it’s not even safe for me to go to Foodland these days.

This is my latest acquisition from Foodland. It’s a goldfish plant:

It’s just starting to bloom, but you can see a single goldfish on the upper left. And no, it did not come in the macrame hanger, but it fits it well. I’ve got it hanging in my office over my reading chair.

It’s not the only plant I’ve got in my office, of course, they’re also all along the top of my bookcase:

From left to right we have an orchid with a dead bloom stalk, a blooming orchid I just repotted, a little purple thing that was also repotted and I lost the name of, a kalanchoe that was given to me by a friend and that I’ve actually kept alive for over a year, another non-blooming orchid that just got repotted, and a fishbone cactus. Not shown is a spindly little hearts-on-a-string.

I was a little reluctant to repot the blooming orchid, I don’t like messing with them when they have blooms, but this one’s leaves were drying out and it was listing to the side. The larger, non-blooming orchid on the bookcase came from behind the vertical blind in the dining room. It was there for several years and the last time it bloomed it had two bloom stalks, but that was more than a year ago. I’m hoping some more direct sunlight might perk it up a bit.

I have two more orchids on the kitchen window sill. The one on the left just started blooming again, but it really needed to be repotted. And the one on the right hasn’t stopped blooming since I got it a year ago. Normally if the bloom stalk doesn’t dry out when the blooms drop off, it will re-bloom. But this one started at new bloom stalk instead.

And what’s that purple thing photo bombing the left of the picture? That’s my wandering jew, which is wandering all over the kitchen counter.

I’m really hesitant about doing anything but watering it, because most of my wandering jews tend to start drying out. They’re easy to propagate, just break off a piece and stick it in the dirt, or stick it in water to root first, but for me they’ll only do well for so long and then start dying and I have to start a fresh one. Might have something to do with not getting watered regularly. ;-)

I had one in my office that I should have taken a picture of before I repotted it. This time I stuck the pieces into a pot that already had a philodendron in it, just to see what happens. The philodendron also came from my office, but it wasn’t happy either – I think it was getting too much sun.

Moving along to the dining room, I found I had to repurpose my dropleaf table into a plant stand because four of my new plants, which I’d thought to put in the southern facing window of my office, turned out not to like such bright light.

In the green pot at the front we have a ribbon fern. Behind it, hard to see, is a trio of unknown tropicals, but because all three of them were only called tropical, I figured I could safely plant them together in my oblong pot. Even harder to see is the nanouk plant behind them, also fairly new. Above them is the Swedish ivy I’ve had for years. It used to be in the office where my goldfish plant is, but it was getting a little too big to be over my chair. And yes, that is a trellis in the pot to help keep it contained.

I also have a trellis in the pot with my 45 year old philodendron.

And just because they’re there, I might as well show you the rest of the plants in the dining room:

Starting at the bookcase, we have a spider plant and a philodendron started from clippings from the other one. On the much smaller plant stand there’s a sansevieria, an aloe plant, a spindly tropical thing that I think is related to the tall tree beside the dropleaf table, and in behind those three is an African violet that’s actually blooming and a pineapple plant that I’ve been growing hydroponically for over a year.

Is it any wonder it took me two days to catch up on my indoor gardening?

Mutagenesis Monday

mutagenesis ~ origin or induction of mutation

Well, summer is definitely here. Flowers are blooming, trees are full of leaves, the grass needs weekly cutting, and oh, did I mention the humidity is on the rise? We had a week or two of warm days and cool nights (which to me is perfect weather), but now we’ve segued into warm day and night.

We were supposed to get thunderstorms and rain today to cool things off, but it only rumbled a little and the rain didn’t amount to much, only made it more humid.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog you probably recall past summer posts where I start complaining about the noise from the pool pump around this time of year. However, the hubby was forced to buy a new pump this year and it’s amazingly quiet. Seriously, the filter in Tiddler’s tank makes more noise than the pool.

When I was sitting here last night trying to come up with something to write about for this post, the hubby suggested I should do a garden update because my garden is looking so good, but it’s only the one garden (the rest are pretty sad), although I did notice I have a beautiful purple iris blooming in it today. It’s just unfortunate that it’s kind of hidden by the basket hanging from the shepherd’s crook just over it.

Instead I figured you’d much rather see a picture of my orchids.

There are actually five orchids on that table, but only four of them are blooming right now. Yes, there are five bloomstalks, but two are coming off the same plant. They’ve actually been in bloom for a couple of weeks now, and past experience tells me that barring any accidents (knocking a bloomstalk, forgetting to water them, overwatering them) they’ll keep blooming for weeks.

You can’t really see it, but the yellow and pink orchid on the left has about three more buds that are ready to open even though the rest of the flowers have been open for a couple of weeks now. And please ignore the sansevieria listing towards the right in the background. As soon as I can figure out a way to get it standing upright I’m going to repot it. I’m thinking a tomato cage might work…

I have to confess. I actually pulled that table out to get my picture. And the yellow/pink orchid actually lives on the kitchen window sill. I have plants in most rooms of the main floor of the house, but most of them live either in the dining room, or the kitchen.

There are a lot more plants on the bookcase, but they’re kind of hidden by the orchid table. And on the opposite side of the room there’s a big spider plant on top of a tall bookcase, a…something, Swedish ivy maybe? hanging over a drop leaf table, three insanely tall spindly palms in the same pot, and this guy:

This philodendron is over … um, it’s really old. I bought this for the hubby when we were dating and it lived for at least a year in the basement apartment in his parents’ house where it got not even a speck of light. Periodically I’d trim it back and put the cuttings in water to root them and give the resulting plants away. This time I just let it grow and one of the vines was snaking its way up the corner cabinet and along the drapery rod above the deck door. I finally bought a trellis for it and it seems to be containing it…so far.

Most of my plants are easy to care for, and the ones that need more frequent watering end up in the kitchen where I don’t forget about them.

Here we have a strawberry begonia hanging down, an English ivy on a trellis rising to meet it, and two of my orchids. Not pictured is the philodendron and hearts on a string in my old office, and the wandering jew in my new office.

So, as you can see, my outdoor gardens might not be amounting to much this summer, but my indoor ones are doing just fine.

Mucopurulent Monday

mucopurulent ~ of mucus and pus

It’s the 24th of May
The queen’s birthday
And if we don’t get a holiday
We’ll all run away!

Yes, I know it’s actually the 21st of May, but that’s the way the rhyme goes. :-P

It’s the first official long weekend of the summer season for us here in Canada, the weekend where cottages are opened and gardens are planted. The barbeques are being brushed off as I type. When I was a kid it was also the time for major fireworks displays, but although some people do still set them off now, the big fireworks holiday is Canada Day.

I got a jump start on the weekend by starting my planting during the week. Wednesday the grandbaby and I went shopping for plants for the small square garden at the front of the house. Of course by the time we got them home there wasn’t enough time to plant them that day, so the next day I went ahead and bought the rest of my bedding plants to have ready for Friday.

Friday was a little cooler, but we filled the square garden and the long narrow garden along the front:

But while the front is looking pretty good, the back is another story. This is the pond garden:

We were already planning to redo this garden, but we were hoping to save at least some of the plants. It needs the saw dust removed (obviously), a retaining wall built at the back, and the entire garden will be more than doubled in size. We want to get a properly formed shell for the pond itself, one deep enough that maybe we can have fish. If we can get it to the point where it’s ready for plants by the end of the summer I think it’ll be a job well done. We can worry about the actual plants next summer.

Another project for the back yard was going to be putting in a couple of raised vegetable beds. This won’t be a particularly difficult project, but it will be a little time consuming so it’s been put off until later in the summer. Once again, if we can have them ready for planting by the end of the summer, then in the spring all I’ll have to do is pick out my seeds.

Speaking of vegetables though, remember the tomato seeds the grandbaby and her grapy planted?

Aren’t they cute? Yes, well, a funny thing happens when you leave plants in the sun and keep watering them. They tend to grow. I thinned them out once, but now they need bigger pots (maybe even later today). I’m beginning to suspect they’re not going to be cherry tomatoes as I’d first hoped, but some much bigger kind.

So… How’s your garden coming?

Morphogenesis Monday

morphogenesis ~ origin or development of a body part or organ

Just when I thought it was safe to put on my gardening gloves, this happened:

That’s not really snow you’re seeing, that’s the build up of ice pellets from our two day ice storm over the weekend. We were actually pretty fortunate that we never lost power – many communities around us did. Stretches of the 401 were closed periodically because slippery driving seems to bring out the stupid in people, and there was a whole list of closures and cancellations on Sunday.

I thought April showers were supposed to bring May flowers, not ice and snow?

The bulbs I bought last week are sitting on the dining room table sprouting in their little mesh bags. I’m sure this doesn’t bode well for them if/when I finally get them in the ground. But I have 50 iris bulbs, so surely a few of them will survive.

This week I really have to start thinning out the tomato plants the grandbaby and her Grappy started. They are growing like crazy:

The marigold seedlings are holding on, as is the brave little daisy. The forget-me-nots were still not doing anything, so I bought some more seeds and replanted them (which is why their pot is covered in plastic again).

Not pictured is the green divided tray the grandbaby and I planted a variety of seeds in last week – morning glories, stocks, catnip, and dill. Unfortunately, I did not label anything so I have no idea which pot holds which plant. Guess we’ll be surprised. LOL

We also planted a fairy garden last week. This was a kit that I bought from Giant Tiger and I actually had my doubts about anything coming of it because that’s where I bought the little single pots with the forget-me-nots, marigolds, and daisy. So imagine my surprise when I checked them on the weekend and saw this:

In conclusion, it may not be spring outside, but it’s coming along nicely inside. :-)

Microphyllous Monday

microphyllous ~ having small leaves

Speaking of small leaves...the English ivy I have in the wide planter with the trellis on my kitchen window ledge is going great guns. But the strawberry begonia I have above it is just exploding with little shoots. I’m going to have to find someplace else to hang it because it’s growing into the ivy and if I’m not careful it might take over the whole window.

I have a couple of hooks in my new office that would work...once the office is finished. Right now I keep closing the door to keep the cats out which makes it kind of cool in there. The Wandering Jew I already have in there doesn’t seem to mind, but I have to wonder if that’s why the sweet potato vine is dying.

Last week was...challenging, to say the least. Especially Thursday.

Thursday I had a string of bad luck the likes of which I hope to never see again. It began with the debit machine at Tim Horton’s destroying the chip in my debit card, and ended with a cloud of smoke from the oven at supper time. You really don’t want to hear what went on in between.

And it didn’t stop there, either. Saturday the TiVo box went on the fritz (right in the middle of the three hour movie I was really getting into) and it looks like it’ll have to be replaced. On Thursday. Meanwhile, if we want to watch any network cable TV, we’ll have to go down to the basement to the TV with the regular cable box on it. *sigh*

Ironically, the TiVo part of the box is still working. So anything we’ve already recorded we’re able to watch, and we can still access On Demand and Netflix. But anything we saved to “watch later” will be gone. Things like the last season of Killjoys, the final concert of The Tragically Hip, all the hard to find old movies...

And I don’t know if the two things are related, but Sunday I was having problems with my phone. Any time I tried to text or check my email it kept telling me “Network unvailable”.

I think what happened was this. When I’m at home I use my home wifi for the phone to save on the data usage. In the course of trouble-shooting the TiVo box Saturday night I had to reboot the modem that the TV, phone, and internet run off of. I’m thinking when the phone lost its access to my home wifi it wasn’t able to find it again. At least I’ll know what settings to check if it happens again.

I hate technology!

Monoousian Monday

monoousian ~ having the same substance

Warning: Picture intensive post!

I’ll give you three guesses what I was doing this weekend... Gardening!

We bought our plants on Friday night and I was appalled at how much we paid - to the point where I even suggested to the hubby that we could forget plants in the front garden and just fill it in with decorative wood chips instead. I think I’ll be buying a lot of seeds next year. Maybe some bulbs this fall.

But before I get to my garden pictures, a couple of people asked me about the christening gown I made last weekend. I know it’s kind of hard to picture it from my description (you can click on it to see a bigger version), so here it is in all its glory:

Not bad considering I was working without a pattern, eh? My friend was thrilled, her daughter was thrilled, but I have no idea how the baby boy felt about it. LOL

Now, on to my gardens. First we have the front garden, always a treat because it’s so long.

As you can see, I lost both of my dogwoods and one of my sand cherries over the winter. Not sure how that happened considering the winter wasn’t all that bad and they’re right up next to the house. These are the same shrubs that made it unscathed through the ice storm a few years ago.

Anyway, here’s what the garden looks like now:

I added a pink begonia hanging from the shepherd’s crook yesterday, but didn’t take a new picture because it was raining.

The other major planting I did was in Kelsey Park. Kelsey Park, for those of you who are new, is a small round garden with a fountain in the center, under which our border collie Kelsey is buried. There are also three cats buried in various spots around it - only the hubby knows for sure where, and he also knows where the others will be going when their time comes. Our own little pet cemetery. :-)

This is what it looked like before:

The after picture kind of looks like I just planted my plants amongst the weeds, and in a way that’s exactly what I did. When I bought all those bedding plants, I did not realize that the sweet pea seeds that I planted last year and didn’t come up came up this year. So now as well as pansies, marigolds, and tufted things, I have sweet peas growing around the edge of the garden.

And last but not least, a few years ago I lucked into a terra cotta strawberry pot. That was the same year I found a variety of mint plants - spearmint, chocolate mint, lemon mint, pineapple mint... I can’t remember what store had them, but I thought it would be really cool to do an all mint indoor herb garden in the pot. And I’m sure under the care of someone else it would have been. But for me the plants died rather quickly and the pot has been empty ever since.

So this year I started thinking about what went wrong and I wondered if maybe I should have had the mint garden outside for the summer to let the plants get well established before bringing it in for the winter. This year I only found two kinds of mint, but I found some thyme, chives, and sage for it and I bought some dill seeds to plant in the top. Now it’s sitting on the deck where it will get lots of sun, if the sun every comes out for any length of time.

According to the 14-day forecast on the weather network, it’s going to be another week before we see any significant sun. While I’m sure the plants in my gardens will enjoy the good soaking, I’m not so sure about the wildflower seeds I planted in the boxes bordering the patio.

Guess I’ll have to post more pictures at the beginning of July to show you how my garden is growing. :-D

Meteorism Monday

meteorism ~ abdominal cramps and swelling due to flatulence

You ever have one of those brilliant ideas that turn out to be not so brilliant after all because it has a ripple effect that had you thought things through a little better might have been enough to make you think twice? Yeah, that was me yesterday.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago about how I wasn’t happy with the orchid on my kitchen window sill and was considering moving it. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Well, this particular simple thing took me half a day.

The little table I was thinking about moving it to had a very large ceramic pagoda which had to be relocated. First I thought it could go up on the bookcases in my office. So I got up on the step stool and shuffled things around and the pagoda fit - just barely. But it looked terrible up there.

So then I figured it could go on the bookcase in the upstairs hallway, which was lower and wider. I took the pagoda apart, took it upstairs, and removed the large ceramic knight on his horse and the dragon he was fighting from the shelf. The insanely dusty shelf.

Naturally I dusted the shelf off before reassembling the pagoda, which looks great up there, especially since the opposite shelf has a Chinese doll in a case and mythological beastie. However, I couldn’t just have one clean shelf, so I ended up dusting off the rest of the rather large bookcase. And the books on it.

At this point moving the orchid was simple, but the one drawback of the table is that it sits between the cat tree and the bookcase in the dining room, and the cats like to use it as a gateway to the plants on top of the bookcase. Which is why the pagoda was there in the first place, to block their passage.

So to kill two birds with one stone, I decided to plant the sweet potato vine in a small planter box and drape it over a bamboo trellis I just happened to have. This necessitated finding my planting stuff in the depths of the basement - no mean feat in itself. I found a partial bag of dirt that had just enough for the vine planter, but not for the pineapple that is also growing hydroponically.

Now, the sweet potato vine has been growing for several weeks, and it kind of grew up around the other plants on the window ledge. It even had a shoot wrapped around the stick in the orchid pot. And another that was wound around part of the window. And several tendrils were growing up and intermingling with the hanging plant above it. In retrospect, it might have been easier to just leave it there.

But all’s well that ends well. The orchid is in its new home, the sweet potato is in its new pot, and the plant hanging in the kitchen window received a much needed divesting of dead matter.

I don’t know if you can tell by the picture, but the sweet potato vine looks a little wilted. In my defense, it was already wilting before I planted it in dirt. I’m not sure if it didn’t like the sun we were getting, or if it was just tired of being hydroponic. I’m hoping it’ll be happier in dirt, and the blinds should shade it a bit from the sun.

But I guarantee you, I will think twice before deciding to move a plant again. :-D