A Story _ "Perfect Fix" and Feathery Muscari, Pansies, English Daisy and Mini Solar Birdbath Pump

A Story

Perfect Fix

Jenna was skating on the famous Ottawa Rideau Canal, thirteen kilometers of frozen delight. Figures skaters twirled and swirled.  Turbo-charged hockey players zoomed by her.  Jenna glided cautiously, a tourist soaking up the playful atmosphere.

Suddenly, her skate pick caught the ice, throwing her down hard.  Her right knee zinged with pain.  A hero braked sharply, held out his arms.  "You need a beaver tail."

Confused, Jenna gratefully grabbed his hands and hung on to his arm as he guided her to a snack shack.  He ordered hot chocolates and delectable deep-fried cinnamon doughnuts, shaped like beaver tails.

Perfect fix.

This is a feathery muscari which isn't offered very often by the bulb companies.  This is its third spring in my garden and this is the first year that it has opened properly so that may be why it isn't seen so often. We had a lot of rain in late April and early May so maybe that's what it needs.  It is flopping a bit as the location is fairly shady. It is a lovely periwinkle blue colour unlike the regular grape hyacinths that are more dark purple. The feathery muscari grows to about 6-8" high.

I had planted four columbine in a row.  They all came up just fine but then one died so I needed a replacement plant.  I decided on this pretty pink English daisy which, where I live, will likely only last the summer. If I see the same double columbine as the one that died, I may buy another one to replace it.

Some pansies to brighten a partial shade spot.

 

I saw a mini fountain set up on the internet and decided to try one out. It is a small submersible pump powered by a solar panel (4" square).  I bought a plastic cup and drilled a hole in the bottom and cut away a bit on the top end to allow the wire to go out.  I flipped up the cup and put the colourful top on the bottom that is now the top. The pump has a suction cup to keep it in place and it goes inside the cup. The pump works when the sun shines on the panel but not when it's cloudy or dark. I had bought a green bowl to go with the green cup but it was too small and too much water was landing on the deck when the pump was at full force. I am enjoying the sound of the water and it was so easy to set up.  I am hoping some birds might like it, too. 

Story - "Homemade Socks" and quiet fall colours

A story:

Homemade Socks

The knitting needles followed their well-worn path, row after row.  Donna knew the pattern by heart.  Ribbing at the top, cables down the leg and over the top of the foot.  She used the same grey yarn for every pair.  She spent countless hours knitting the socks and donated them to various homeless shelters.

One cold winter night at a shelter, a worker gave a troubled man a pair of Donna's socks.

As soon as he saw the pattern, tears filled his eyes.  His mother always knit him socks in that particular pattern in that special shade of grey. 

The fall foliage of the maple trees is flashy and bright and always welcome, but some other plants are beautiful in more subtle ways.  The dogwood in this photo has lovely peachy leaves that bounce gently in the breeze.

The evening primrose goes a deep red.  It reminds me of a Scottish tartan with the green, yellow, and brown.

The Solomon's seal changes to a buttery yellow.  It keeps its arching form to give a nice structural focal point in the landscape.

Wood asters have delicate mauve flowers on their stiff stems.  Every flower has slightly different colouring in the center and the petals come out at irregular angles giving the plant a quaint quirkiness.

A few of the pansies are still flowering after limping through the heat of the summer. They are always brightly coloured but their soft rounded petals give them a quiet feeling.

June Transition Plants

I only got three pansy plants to germinate this spring but this one is so pretty it makes up for the small selection.  The subtle pink on the top petals and the buttery yellow contrasting with the bright purple is just perfect.

A few potatoes are blooming.  I think this is Bellanita.  Often my potato plants don't bloom although they always make potatoes.  Somewhere I read to cut off the flowers to encourage the plant to put all its energy into the tubers.  That makes sense but the flowers are so pretty, I'm going to leave them for a while.

I have really cut back on buying annuals in May so June tends to be a very green month in the garden.  I planted some new ornamental onions to try to bridge the gap between the spring and summer perennials.  This little blue drumstick onion is quite small - not much more than an inch across, but it is a real blue which is unusual in most plants.  The flower sits on top of a long, wiry stem.  I hope it will naturalize as a big clump of them would be great.  

This magenta onion - atropurpureum- blooms just ahead of the blue onion with overlap as the flowers last a couple of weeks.  Both these onions bloom about 3 weeks after the Purple Sensation onions.  I have heavy soil and the onions seem to do very well in it.  They do best in a full sun location but some of my purple sensation ones are in shade and still bloom.  Not fussy.

The mock orange is blooming well this year.  I'm not crazy about the fragrance but I do like the look of the flowers and they flower in June - bonus.  The only thing I do to it is give it a prune after flowering.  Like lilacs, they should be pruned as soon as possible after blooming as they bloom on the previous year's wood.

The fleece flower.  The bigger it gets, and every year it gets bigger, the more I like it's frothy white flowers. Excellent for pollinators.  It is a big plant - about 5' tall but it only gradually expands with more stems at the base. The flowers last for about a month.  I don't do anything to it.  No fertilizer, no pruning. The stems fall over after a frost and I just leave them on the ground.

Happy gardening.  Take time to smell the roses, or whatever else you have.

 

Striped Zinnias, Tiger Lily, Daylily, Magenta Astilbe

I started these zinnias with seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.  I didn't know how I felt about striped zinnias when I looked at the seed packet but now that they are blooming I find them really cheerful and fun.

This is a hybrid tiger lily that I've had for years.  It has lived in a couple of places but seems happy here.  Because the plant is very tall and leaning, the flowers are making a circular pattern which I like.

I like the dark freckles on the tiger lily.  Because it is not a true tiger lily, it does not have the dark seeds along the stem so it does not self-sow.  It also does not make new bulblets from the main bulb so it is forever one plant. 

I have tried a variety of daylilies over the years and find that the ones that most closely resemble wild daylilies in shape are the ones that bloom well.  With the fancy ruffly varieties, I'm lucky to get one or two blooms but these lilies have many buds.

This one is very similar to the first photo but the flowers are actually a little darker.  Nice big flowers.

The magenta astilbe is a shortish plant and the flowers are not as fluffy as the pink or white ones. In a shady location, the strong colour stands out nicely.

We have had a cool summer, hardly a day that gets to 30C, so the pansies are still blooming well. Usually they are too heat stressed to keep going through July.

The vegetable garden is coming along well as the vegetables do best with temperatures in the mid 20Cs.  The beans recovered from the beetles and I have an abundance of beans to eat. 
 

Mulch - Different Options

When people think of mulch, they often think of wood chips or straw but many things can be used to block weeds.  A pot of flowers can allow perennials to grow without competition. This pot is protecting an Oriental poppy and some lilies.  

Here some  pieces of poplar logs are mulching between hostas and astilbes.

Because we live on a wooded lot, we have lots of leaves in the fall.  I rake them to the side of the lawn and let them act as a mulch between plants and the grass.

This year is the first time I have used old t-shirts as mulch but they work really well. No splashing when I water and the soil stays a very even dampness.  White also reflects more light.  The pepper plants seem happy.

 If I've been doing some weeding, I might just make a weed pile on top of an area that is growing weeds.  Not super pretty but in a few weeks it will have decomposed .

The astrantia is a relative newcomer and I wanted to make sure it wasn't competing with weeds.  I had some left over flooring and used the tiles as mulch.

A nice flat rock also works well as a barrier, and it always looks natural.

I use cardboard and newspaper as well but I'm always on the lookout for other free sources of mulch.

Take care and enjoy a garden.

Early Spring Flowers

This is the first pansy to bloom from the seeds I planted in January.  We are forecast to get a little bit of snow on Wednesday but after that the night temperatures are above zero.  I'll put the pansies out later in the week so they can establish before the weather gets too warm.  They can take a light frost so no worries if we get one in early May.

The pink, purple and white chionodoxa are really dependable little bulbs and they do multiply.  They don't mind being in a shady spot in the summer if they get the spring sun. The yellow primula is some kind of mutant because it is always just covered in flowers.

I never stop liking this messy combination of blue Scilla, variegated vinca and lamium against the backdrop of dried leaves.

 

Over the years as our bush has matured, the trees have gotten bigger and naturally thinned out.  The dog-tooth violets appreciate the change and we have several good clumps of them now that bloom whereas previously we tended to just have lots of leaves.  The trilliums are just in bud except for one or two red ones that are blooming.  Everything is a bit early this year.

Starting Pansies

 

Pansies are a great flower for the spring garden and not hard to start from seed. They just need to be started early. I bought these Mammoth pansy seeds from William Dam Seeds, a very good company that sells untreated seeds. They have a fine selection of vegetable seeds as well as many flowers.

I have always started pansy seeds in a cool, dark environment. This year the container, which conveniently has a lid, sat in the basement for a couple of weeks until the seeds sprouted in the damp potting soil. The seed packet, however, and other sites on line suggest starting the seeds at around 20C (70F) so I guess pansies aren't very fussy. The packet of Mammoth seeds said it contained 17-20 seeds and I have 19 seedlings so the germination was excellent.

Yesterday, I transplanted them into individual peat pots. I gave them a good soak after the move, but going forward I will keep the soil just dampish to try to avoid leggy growth. Right after the transplant for a couple of days, the pots will be out of direct sunlight to let the plants settle in but then they will go on the windowsill to get as much light as possible. I will give them a little balanced slow-release fertilizer (10-10-10) that will encourage sturdy growth.

I will be able to transplant them outside in early May because they can handle a light frost. Last year, I cut the pansies back at the end of June as the days got hot, and I had a nice repeat show of flowers from August to October.