I realized we were officially in the grip of pre-Halloween hysteria last week when I was fishing out my wallet to pay for some items in our local pharmacy. A woman swept past me, one hand gripped on a trailing child, the other pointing towards the back of the store. In a loud, theatrical whisper,…
Autumn is officially here and, just like the garden itself, gardening topics are dwindling as winter sets in–at least if you live north of the 49th parallel. From now til spring I’ll be posting a little less often but I promise to keep in touch as inspiration strikes. I find reaching out to my fellow…
A week ago, one little bright red maple leaf fluttered to the ground just outside the back door of our cottage on the Bruce Peninsula in southwestern Ontario. Me and my guy were horrified. The turning leaves in autumn in Ontario (as well as most of eastern Canada and parts of northeastern United States) is…
Foodscaping has been a hot gardening trend for years now. What goes around comes around. In a past blog post, I explored how a lot of “new” foodscaping ideas are actually pretty old. Gardening with edibles is simply a terrific idea. A real win-win. But, I have to admit, there are times when I’ve grown…
You’ve heard that saying – Be careful what you wish for! I’ve been waiting for those classic hot-‘n’-muggy summer days to finally arrive here in Southwestern Ontario. In my mind, it ain’t summer until you and your can of cold beer are both sweating buckets. But with humid weather comes mosquitoes. And so the battle…
One of the biggest challenges for any gardener is trying to make something of the long, thin and usually dark strip between two houses. This stretch of gardening purgatory is often euphemistically referred to as a side garden. But getting the space to look anything like a garden can be really hard. So how do…
Ok. You just bought a brand new box of bulbs. Now what? How about shaking things up a bit by: • breaking the rules. • helping bees some more. • easing a new bed into the garden. • inviting a family of fairies to stay awhile. • protecting a neighbouring ravine. • sending a signal.…
When it comes to growing a cooler backyard, for once I’m not talking about edgy, eco garden design trends. As southwestern Ontario continues its record-breaking heat wave, gardening is now all about the temperature. And since last month (July, 2016) was the hottest month around the world in recorded history, I don’t think we’re alone in…
A garden with room for a view is one thing but a gobsmacking garden with many rooms, each with completely different views, is something altogether different and a little tough to capture with still photos rather than 3D Sensoround. But I’ll try. On a recent (June 23, 2016) garden tour presented by the Toronto Botanical…
Secret hideaways with your choice of hovering rain umbrellas, pink flamingoes or a sparkling chandelier overhead. Old bed frames in new flower beds, a canoe filled with cannas and a loo with a view (made extra panoramic by the absence of a door). These were just some of the surprises awaiting us on a recent…
Slow growing. Too big for a shrub and too small for a tree. Straggly. Did I say really slow growing? Smoketrees can get a lot of heat from picky gardeners. But when the setting sun lights up their panicles in a shimmering nimbus how can you think otherwise than your garden is all the more miraculous…
I was riding shotgun with my guy last weekend. As we were flying down a dirt road, he nodded towards the ditch on his side. It was clogged with tall leafy plants topped with gazillions of tiny yellow flowers. They’re the reason for my fits of sneezes, he said. A conversation ensued. He was quite…
What do 2,200 varieties of plants, all in containers exposed to a merciless Southern Ontario summer, look like? Awesome. The Sawaya Container Trials, one of North America’s largest, threw open their doors (so to speak) in late July for growers, retailers and members of the Garden Writers Association to check out what’s doing best, what…
A garden can be similar to the Tardis, as small as a phone booth to the casual observer but encompassing a boundless space with transportive properties. Parts of Keppel Croft Gardens have these qualities as well and it seems to me that the clever use of walls has something to do with it. So, for my…
In my previous post, I tried to describe Keppel Croft Gardens, the unique gardening experience created by Bill and Dawn Loney near Big Bay on the Bruce Peninsula in Southern Ontario. If pictures really are worth a thousand words then, when it comes to Keppel Croft, I still needed a lot of photos to describe…
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Life is an interesting journey. These are journals, stories, reflections of a traveller of this journey. (songoftheheartsite@gmail.com)
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Where observation and imagination meet nature in poetry.
A blog about life in Wellington, New Zealand
Plants, veg and chickens: a cottage garden on the edge of Brussels
This blog is about gardening in the north.
Discovering the joy of art
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Ministry of the fence 