First November Snow

Yesterday we had our first real snowfall. We got a couple of inches and the temperature is cold enough that it is staying on the ground.  It feels good to have the snow.  It brightens up the landscape and the  air feels crispy and fresh.  No more damp fall weather.

This is a Christmas card I made for my French friend who lives in Quebec. The fuzzy white circles are a watercolour take on Bokeh.

The sky was a lovely intense blue today.  I guess the cold arctic air is very clean. The sky is not only more blue but somehow it is brighter. Normally at this time of year it wouldn't be so blue.  Less air travel is still having an effect.  I wish the eco people would talk more about trying to cut down on air travel.
 

November Plants

It's not easy to find colour at this time of year, but there are some spots of contrast.

I let the broccoli go to flower at the end of the summer because the pale yellow flowers last even after frost.  I can still pick some little bits of broccoli to eat.

The Bishop's Cap has some nice colour.

The Solomon Seal has fallen over but I like the wavy shape to the leaves, almost looks like hair.
 

The Burning Bush is not vibrant red (not enough sun) but I like the range of hues, almost nicer than a solid bright red.

Christmas Cactus

I bought this Christmas cactus last year in December.  It was in bud but, as often happens when a plant goes from greenhouse to store to home,  it dropped all its buds. I thought it was just a solid colour but it's actually quite fancy.  It reminds me of an amaryllis. 

 I kept it on the south facing windowsill last spring and summer, then in October I put it in an east facing window in the basement for a month.  I didn't water it so that gave it a bit of stress and rest.  Once the buds started forming after a month,  I brought it up to the south windows again and watered it regularly. It still has some very small buds which will come along so it will bloom for several weeks.  

Christmas cactus are easy to propagate - just take off a couple of leaf segments and plant them in soil- and I may start a couple more after it finishes blooming.

Bird Nest and Dried Flowers

Some dried flowers from the garden: yellow statice, magenta gomphrena and white astrantia.  Nice reminder of summer.

This bird nest blew down near the house.  I haven't been able to identify who it belongs to as the internet was surprisingly inadequate for bird nest identification.  It is not a chickadee or nuthatch as they are cavity nesters as well as the woodpeckers.  Too big for a goldfinch and they usually line a nest with fluff, perhaps a warbler or sparrow? Anybody know? The nest is about 3" across.

The bottom is well fortified with birch bark strips.  We have birch on our property.

The inside is lined with pine needles with some small twigs underneath.  The bird had to travel to the neighbours to get the pine needles.

I didn't notice this at first but there are blue yarn fibres wound around near the outside. No idea where the bird found that.  It feels like wool or acrylic. Just fascinating to see how birds build their nests.

We're getting frost most nights so it's out with the warm mitts and hat. Quite a few sunny days though so that's pleasant.

Soon be time to plan next year's garden.

 

Air Plant -(Tillandsia) Bloomed

One of my air plants just bloomed. This is the scrawniest plant of the five that I have so  I didn't expect it to ever do anything but here it is with its strange purple-candle flower.  It had been upside down in a shallow bowl of water for a couple of days and I was moving it when I saw that it had suddenly bloomed. I have no idea what triggered the bloom.  During the summer, I put the air plants outside where they got the morning sun. Sometimes they got too much sun which is why some of the leaves look so scruffy.  I would regularly put them upside down in water to keep them hydrated but sometimes they were just lying around in the open air.  I brought them inside when it started to get chilly.

Sadly, an air plant only blooms once.  However, this plant may make some offshoots which have the potential to bloom.  Two of my other plants have offshoots that are growing well so maybe next summer they will bloom.

Strange plants to be sure but it is cool to have a plant that doesn't need to be potted in soil. I do put a little fertilizer in the water I dunk them in every so often.  

 

End of Season Celery

We finally had frost and I harvested the celery in advance of it.  As usual, I have more than I probably need.  Celery always gets away from me.  I really only need two plants but that seems like so little in the spring that I end up with 6 plants.  They love the cool fall weather and just keep getting bigger and bigger until frost.

This little shoot could be cut off with some of the roots with a sharp knife  and potted up in some soil. It will keep growing over the winter and be good and ready for the garden next spring. 

A bigger side shoot that could be potted up.  It would likely go to seed in June or July of next year but it would still give some nice celery in the spring. I won't be potting either of the shoots up as I will just wait until February and plant some fresh seed.  Celery is easy to germinate.

You can freeze celery (best if you blanch it for 3 mins) but I wanted to try to keep it fresh for as long as possible.  The next week is above freezing so I have put it outside in a basin of clean water.  I washed as much of the soil off as I could before putting it in the basin.  I am hoping having light outside will keep it  from deteriorating. I will change the water every few days.

In the meantime, I am slowly using it up in cooking.  Last week I made celery-potato soup with two large stalks of celery, two medium sized potatoes, one carrot, a small onion (pre-sauteed), a few bits of Swiss chard and yellow pepper, seasoned with salt, pepper and marjoram.  I think thyme, or rosemary, or parsley would add some nice flavour, too. After cooking all the vegetables together, I pureed it with a hand blender but it could be eaten chunky. You could add some milk or cream at the end as long as you don't let it boil.  Also a sprinkle of parmesan or mozzarella cheese might be nice.

Just about any soup or stew can use a bit of celery.

I am going to try making celery-apple juice with ginger. Not because it is super healthy and cures everything - just because it will use up the celery!

I also like to make Waldorf salad.  My version is celery, apple, raisins, and walnuts in a mayonnaise sauce.  Some people like to add grapes or cranberries or sunflower seeds.  Anything goes with salads.

A quick and easy meal is to cook some hamburger meat with onions, celery, peppers, carrots, tomatoes and any other vegetables you feel like throwing in. Serve with rice or pasta.

I've always put celery in tuna or salmon sandwiches.  It adds a nice crunch and lightens up the fish which can taste a bit heavy.

On another topic, I found that my Just Sweet peppers will ripen on the counter.  The pepper at the top is what the yellow one on the bottom looked like about ten days ago.  I'm pleased that they do ripen as the flavour improves with ripening.  They are not as sweet as the ones that ripened outside in the hot sun but they are still tasty.

Hope you are all enjoying last season vegetables.
 

Flashy Fall Colours

Last weekend was the peak of the fall colour which coincided nicely with our Canadian Thanksgiving. We   haven't had much in  the way of windy days so the leaves stayed on the trees for longer than normal.  Then they suddenly rained down like a snowstorm and today most of the trees are bare.

I like the eye-popping lime green mixed in with the reds and oranges.

The colourful backdrop allows you to see the structure of the dead branch.

The sky is a lovely blue, but not as spectacularly blue as it was last year in the middle of the lockdown.

Every leaf is different.

This puffball mushroom is about 15" across . When we were young in Quebec, we used to find smaller puffballs about the size of golfballs.  Unlike most mushrooms, a puffball is the same all the way through - no gills.  We would slice them and fry them in butter and they were delicious. My parents were careful about picking mushrooms as a friend of theirs had a very bad experience eating the wrong mushroom, but there was no mistaking the puffballs. As they age, the puffballs turn brown and develop a hole in the top.  The skin gets sort of papery and the inside is filled with spores.  If you push on it at this stage, the spores come out in clouds, hence the name puffball.

This is a beautiful specimen of maple on a neighbour's front lawn.  I think as a young tree they snipped out the leader because it has many uniform sized branches all around. It's gorgeous at any time of the year. It's about 40 years old.

A fun little decoration to make people smile .
 

As The Leaves Fall

The flowers are few and far between at this time of year but the spots of colour are well appreciated.

This hardy geranium has been blooming since June. The main flush of flowers was earlier in the season but it has continued to make new leaves and a few flowers into autumn.  I really like the vibrant magenta with the dark centre.

A few zinnias.

The Japanese anemone are fun plants with their lime green centres. They are pretty tough and can be invasive in mild climates but in zone 4 they just add a nice bit of brightness when September rolls around.
 

September Flowers

The white astrantia has been blooming all summer. This is its second year in the garden and it has grown super well.  I have been watering it regularly as it has been a dry summer but still I am surprised at how well it has been growing.  I have picked some of the flower clusters and dried them so I can enjoy them through the winter.

I had some left over ageratum and zinnia seeds to I tossed them in a planter that had a few potatoes planted in it.  The potatoes didn't do much but the flowers have come along nicely.  The ageratum is pretty leggy especially the magenta and white so it has fallen over but I kind of like the sprawling effect of it.

The magenta gomphrena was seeded in the pot in May so it is just coming into full bloom now.  I like having some plants that are just getting going at the end of the summer as they have a freshness to them that the flowers that have been blooming longer don't have anymore.  I will dry the gomphrena as well as it does very well as a dried flower.  There is a bit of yellow statice in the pot.  With the dry weather, it didn't do as well as other years .  It was also direct seeded in May.

Here is some yellow hyssop with lavender blooms.  Again it was direct seeded in May. The flowers are very attractive to bees. I like the chartreuse leaves that are so bright.  With the bright pink petunias, they make a vibrant combination.  The hyssop is a perennial but other times that I have grown it in the ground, it has not survived our winter so now I am just growing it as an annual.

 

The marigolds are still blooming profusely.  I started them inside towards the end of April so they were pretty small when I planted them out.  They grew really quickly and I had blooms by the end of June. I think they established better than if I had bought flats of plants already in bloom.

Some late blooming phlox with some sedum.  Some phlox is very late blooming such as this one and I have an orange one that is still just in bud.  I hope it will eventually open.

The yellow pear-shaped cherry tomatoes are tasty and also bright on the plant.  It's been a good year for tomatoes as they enjoyed all the sun we had.  I had so many full sized tomatoes that I even made tomato sauce something I almost never do.  The tomatoes are full of flavour and sweet.

I haven't been able to get a shot of him or her but the bright green tree frog that hung out last year in our white plastic pipe railing on our back deck has been back for most of the summer.  I presume it is the same one. Pretty cool that even a frog would return to a happy place from one year to the next.   He is very shy and scoots away from us if we try to take a photo but I'm still hoping that I can sneak up on him.

Hope your gardens are doing well and here's hoping for good days ahead.

 

Just Sweet Pepper, Sweet Pepperbush

The Just Sweet variety of sweet pepper was a 2019 All-American selection and I can see why.  The smallish peppers (about 3" long) have a wonderful sweet flavour. I have tried a few pepper varieties over the years and none of them come close to the flavour of the Just Sweet peppers.

The plants are healthy and vigorous. Next year, I should stake them as they are so full of peppers that they got blown over somewhat in the rain and wind.  I bought the seeds from Halifax Seeds, $4.99 for 8 seeds, so a bit pricey but they are well worth it.  I lost one plant early on as it never made a true set of leaves but with seven plants I will likely have all the peppers I need until harvest time next year.  I like the smaller size as I find that is the perfect size for snacking.  I am freezing the surplus which is super easy as you don't have to blanch peppers, just wash them, take out the seeds, cut them up if you want, and freeze them. 

The sweet pepper bush (Clethra alnifolnia) has a lovely sweet scent that wafts through the air if there is even the slightest breeze. My plant is only about 2 feet high and will likely never get taller because the ends of some branches get winter kill. It is not a fussy plant and blooms even if it isn't in full sun.

The small fragrant flowers are very attractive to little bees and other pollinators.

I planted some crocosmia this spring and it has grown well but no blooms.  The internet tells me that it could be because it is the first year, not enough sun, or too rich soil.  Guilty on all three counts, I think.  Will they survive the winter? Time will tell. This variety is supposed to be hardy to zone 4 but I think you have to be in zone 6 to be reliably confident that crocosmia will make it through the winter.  I am in zone 4 and sometimes have success with zone 5 plants.

This is a view that shows how you can blend vegetables, annuals, perennials and even weeds to make a pleasant grouping.  In the front are marigolds, next, beets with a few bright green weeds, celery on the left.       Beyond are a couple of hostas, phlox, purple bee balm and a spray of asparagus.  Further back still is a patch of native jewelweeds that grows quite tall.

We are dog sitting our daughter's dog Bonnie for a couple of weeks. She is 15 years old but still has a sparkle in her eye.

Hope you are all enjoying  tasty vegetables and beautiful flowers from your gardens. 

 

Echinacea

I have a few different echinacea varieties in the garden and I have tried other ones that have not survived the winter.  This one is, I think, Hot Papaya.  It opens very orangey and changes over a few weeks until it is quite a dark rusty red.  I find the plant is rather weak and needs more watering to get it growing. 

This pink pompom variety makes lots of flowers but the stems are very floppy so that's disappointing.

A  regular pink variety. Very robust with lots of flowers and strong stems.

This is Green Twister.  I started it last year from seed and I'm quite happy with it.  It's fairly tall and has very strong stems.  I will probably only get 2 flowers per stem this year but I am optimistic that next year it will bush out.  I have four planted near each other so I hope to have a nice patch next year.

I have another green variety, Green Jewel, but it hasn't bloomed yet.  I find the plant small and slow but when it finally blooms the flowers last a long time. Only a couple of flowers per plant and not a very tall plant so a bit disappointing on that front, but the flowers are very well formed.

This is not echinacea, it is rudbeckia but it blooms at the same time and works really well with echinacea.  It can be a bit of a bully in good soil but if it's planted with other strong plants it is a great addition to the garden.  Super dependable and tons of flowers until frost.

The balloon flower with more flowers open.

Supermoon lily.  I really like the pale yellow colour with rusty spots.  It has a knock-out fragrance that you can smell from 10' away if there is a light breeze.