Some Cuttings

There's WHAT coming down???

Here's what we woke up to today:

Kip and I were NOT IMPRESSED! Yesterday the only snow left was under the trees and now look at it!

Mind you, now it is mid-afternoon and the stuff coming down is more rain than snow. But I'm staying holed up in my cosy office with a nice cup of hot coffee nearby.


Amaryllis

I was a bit worried that not many of my Amaryllis were going to bloom this year, but over the winter practically all of them have. I'm guessing that the bulbs you buy have all been grown to bloom at a specific time, but then when you grow them on, over time they drift to their own schedules. Many of them also put up a big crop of leaves before they bloom, unlike the ones you get from the stores.

So if all you get at first is leaves, don't give up. They may bloom yet!


Clivias

One more of my seedling Clivias has bloomed. It didn't have the wonderful soft fragrance of the other yellow one, but the flowers are a better shape and the colour is much more yellow. A beauty!

Fletcher Fern Garden

Stopped by the Fletcher the other day to check out the Fern Garden. The Garden itself was still covered with a layer of ice, but I was sorry to see bad news when I looked up at the Ash trees. I think they are pretty much all dead. Almost every one of them had large areas of bark picked off by woodpeckers, a sure sign of Emerald Ash Borer infestation. The Garden is in a area known as the Ash Woodlot, so this is a very sad thing. There are Maples in the understory, some of them 20' or more high, but it will be some time before they form a good new canopy.

I'm not sure what effect the lack of the overhead cover will have on the ferns. Obviously there will be less shade, but what worries me almost as much is that the lack of the larger trees will mean much less wind and weather protection. It is already a windy hilltop, now it might just be too dry and windy for them.

Not to mention that removing the trees will be a huge disruption and very damaging to the wildflowers.

OK. Head shake. We can plant new ones.



Snowdrops

Yesterday, before that nasty white stuff re-appeared, I had Snowdrops in bloom. I was surprised to see them - it has been very cold and there are still piles of icy snow under the trees, but there they were. Clusters of tiny white 'propellers' hanging gracefully over their emerging leaves.

Not a very good picture, I'm afraid. It was cold and getting dark. Typical snowdrop weather!

Snowdrops always remind me a garden in Manotick that I saw years ago. It belonged to very sweet person who had never cultivated them but had left them alone to take over her yard. There were thousands of flowers every spring. To the best of my knowledge they were all the same, but at the time I didn't know enough about them to check. I was a new gardener, and actually thought that, well, snowdrops were snowdrops.

Snowdrops are a major cult plant in the UK. Do a Google search and you'll see!

A Good Word for a Neglected Shrub

How about a good word for the lowly Forsythia? I know it is not in fashion right now, but I think it deserves better.

Yes, some people do prune it so it ends up looking like a lollipop.... or a pudding. But you don't have to do that. If you really want to keep the shrub shorter than its natural 8 to 10 feet, just remove the tallest 3 or 4 stems after they bloom. Don't take away too many as the shrub needs to keep its strength up, but you can usually remove up to a quarter of the bush each year without sending it into an irreversible decline.

Yes, it does spread a bit. The natural shrub, like the natural woman, spreads a bit with age. But you can easily enough dig out the stems that appear around the base of the plant to keep it within limits. It's no worse than lilacs, or some roses.

Yes, if it is a really cold winter, some of the flower buds will freeze. Then only the buds which were protected by snow will bloom, giving your shrub the effect of a bad home perm. The only thing you can do about that is to get the variety 'Ottawa', which is a good deal hardier than the species. Mine has come through this past winter's -28C temperatures with all flower buds intact.

But the best thing about Forsythia? It is just about the earliest and easiest to force flowering shrub we have. If you have a bush, go out right now and clip off some branches, the ones that show an abundance of the pointed brown buds. Just stick them in a glass of water in the window and in a week or so you'll have flowers. Here is a small branch I cut 14 days ago. It's still in great shape after being open for about a week. I warn you, I'm not a flower arranger.... you can do better than this:

The lovely vase, by the way, is by one of our local potters, Jen Drysdale. I bought it for my vase collection at the pottery sale, fireGifts, last October.

There are a couple of other varieties of Forsythia available as well. I have one which is prostrate, fanning itself out along the ground and rooting as it goes. I have it in the rock garden, cascading down a steep slope. Except for its tendency to swallow everything in its path, I wouldn't want to be without it when it blooms in early Spring. The third one I know of is supposed to be a dwarf.... well, it is maybe a little smaller than 'Ottawa'.

Forsythias are great in shrub borders, by the way. A brief burst of glory in early Spring, then a quiet green presence for the rest of the summer. It really ought to come back into fashion!

Another Snowy Day

We're again having another fine snow storm. How snowy is it? Well, look at Kip:

This was going out the get newspaper. Notice that you don't see his feet - he's standing in 5" of new snow. No going into town to look for a graphics card for my other computer for me today.  What a luxury to be self-employed and able to just hole up in my Studio or office and enjoy a snow day! I love working at home and not having to go out on days like these.

All this snow this winter will be very good for the region's aquifers. It's been so dry the last couple of years they were getting rather low. Maybe this spring my marsh will be back up to it's usual level.

Before I went in again I checked on the Plant Shed. Very nice in there, with the snow falling outside but things blooming and growing inside. Another of the Cattleya seedlings I bought a few years ago is showing its first flower, and a fine one it is, too.

The yellow Clivia is just opening a first floret. There are 15 buds on the stem this year. Last year this one had a wonderful fragrance so I'm looking forward to sniffing the air in the Shed tomorrow.

The scented Geraniums are blooming, too. One, which I think is called Mrs. Taylor although I have no idea why, is a wonderful mix of crimson, scarlet and purple. The Geraniums aren't getting enough light of course and are getting a bit sprawly but  I'll trim them back soon. Once it gets warm enough outside (and they can take quite cool temperatures) they'll go into the Herb Garden for the summer. They get quite huge, but cuttings taken late in the fall always grow. Here's Herself:

Well now, I do think it is time for hot chocolate.

Dream Time

Somewhere in the back of my head I have a sort of vague, confused notion that the Australian aboriginals (or is the New Zealand ones?) have a concept they call the 'dreamtime'. Not sure if they mean winter, or the state of hibernation, or a drugged state.... or worse, but I like the idea of being in a dream-like floating state while nasty stuff passes by around you. (In a healthy way, of course.) A good way to pass the 'down' days of January.

I may be coming out of it now, though. There are fat flower buds on many of my potted Amaryllis in the plant shed, buds on several of the Clivias, new growth on the geranium cuttings, and, SEEDS ARRIVED in the mail.

The sun is shining, it isn't as cold as it has been, things are moving in the plant shed, maybe I'll survive winter after all.

And speaking of dreamtime, some of the seeds that came are for Meconopsis 'Lingholm'. There is a small area near my marsh, fairly flat, fairly open, high enough not to be water-sogged, but low enough to stay damp a foot or so down even in summer, that might, just might, suit the fabled Blue Poppy. It is right on my Marsh Trail, with the Trillium Slope to the uphill side, and already has some huge Interrupted Ferns, a few plants of Lobelia cardinalis which did very well last year, and a ground cover of Foamflower, Bunchberry and Goldthread. Mind you, that white cedar which seems determined to fall down over the path to the ferns will have to come out, as will a few dozen small Maples, but that can be arranged. I understand that Meconopsis seeds need a cool place to germinate and grow and I figure the windowsill in the Studio will be just the ticket.

A flat of possible Meconopsis plants should be good for some happy dreaming. And 5-6 weeks from now, when I'll have to concede that maybe they really won't come up, it'll be close enough to spring that I'll have other things to dream about.

Ah, dreamtime.

January

It is very January today.

The sun is shining but, at nearly noon, is barely above the trees. Shadows are long as Kip and I crunch along through snow that is about half ice.

We see lots of the effects of the heavy snowfall we had two weeks ago. Lots of broken branches:

And some very bent-over white cedars:

Add to this the effects of last summer's drought:

 

 and you can see I am going to have a lot of work to do in the Spring!

I've tentatively decided that I am going to have to get a chainsaw..... they scare the dickens out of me, but surely I can learn to use one safely. I've tried hiring someone to come and cut down stuff, but it costs so much, and they never quite do what you want. So maybe I need to learn to do it myself. Maybe.

We come back on the driveway, which is bare but covered with ice. It is so slippery even Kip has trouble walking, and he has 4-paw drive!

Yep, it's January.

'Tis the season.....

 To wish you all a Very Merry Christmas!

Cold, wet, snowy.....

It's cold, wet, and snowy.

Kip and I went for a short walk in the woods, hoping to find at least some uplifting sights, but they seemed to be in short supply. Kip kept looking up, wondering where those fat white blobs were coming from.....

His warm feet made very clear Kip tracks!

Near the road we saw lots of Raven tracks. They must have held a dance last night.

 Spruce and Balsam Firs were dripping:

Bracken fronds, leaning over and hanging down were a beautiful, but wet, reddish brown:

Other than that, it was as I said, cold, wet and snowy. We gave up and went home. On the way I stopped at the plant shed and found a happy surprise, a first flower open on a Cattleya seedling:

 The first flowers on orchid seedlings are often not quite as impressive as the flowers will be later when the plant is more mature, but this one is lovely.

Maybe I'll just stay in the plant shed until spring.