View From The Balcony Autumn 2020

Our front balcony entrance brings so much enjoyment, and not only to us but also to Eli the Cat who shows his appreciation for the doormat every chance he gets.

I love leaning over the railing to check out the front garden. The flowering shrubs in the upper right corner of the below photo are two abelia, beloved by bees.  When I recently did my afternoon exercise walk around the garden the other day, I got to see a HUGE bee all on his lonesome, probably belonging to the Megachilidae family, thrusting its upper body into one of the tubular flowers. 

The meandering brick path flanks the part of the garden situated between the entrance walk and the driveway. The aucuba was propagated from plants already present when we moved here ten years ago. Its evergreen, shade-loving, glossy, substantial leaves splashed with gold flourish in a spot facing north, brightening up that dark corner.

The balcony wraps itself partially around the eastern side of our home. Access to the balcony from the inside is facilitated by not only the foyer door but also two living-room French doors. Presently asters are the dominant blooms from that perspective.

While on the side balcony if one turns towards the south, the rest of the eastern planting with its ivy-covered wall can be seen as it continues into the back garden. Eli the Cat stands guard at various points along the eastern perimeter, mesmerised by sounds coming from the plants' direction, mostly made by insects and the wind.

Once back on the ground, going around the southeast corner of the house brings you to the south-facing back garden with its patio and ivy-covered pergola. The pergola-facing potting room is in the sous-sol (our home is a pavillon sur sous-sol, that is, the living quarters are on the top floor; downstairs houses the unheated garage, utility/storage room, potting/mud rooms, and cellier). The temperature is now cold enough for all the frost-tender potted plants to spend at least the nights inside the sous-sol, near the potting room's window, including the tuberous begonia which is spending the day on the table under the pergola.

It is still flowering but will start shedding leaves fairly soon, feeding its tuber, hopefully giving us a fifth year of flowers starting in June and going all the way to November.

Other frost-tender potted plants that need to be sheltered at least during the night are calendula . . .

. . . bougainvillea, osteospermum, and lantana. If successfully over-wintered, they will bloom outdoors once again.

When gardening most days, I wear woolen hats to keep my noggin warm. The summer jobbies are in the mud room biding their time.

À la prochaine!

High Summer 2020

A fresh spring garden, all bright green and friendly, became a lush summer solstice one which is now becoming a glorious mature profusion but not surprisingly showing signs of wear and tear. Watering, weeding, and deadheading will prolong the abundance for a while.

There are three large pots of orange/yellow calendula and deepest blue lobelia, all sowed from seed, throughout our garden. They did need to be sprayed with sulfur to combat a fungal disease called calendula smut. And they may need to be dosed again in order for them to continue flowering all through summer.

For years now social media images of a pot on its side spilling out lobelia visually simulating a small stream intriqued me, and this was the summer I finally got around realising this clever concept.

The 'stream' flows amidst cannas and dahlias. I love it so. It was just a matter of burying one quarter of the depth of an empty pot put on its side, filling it one thirds with soil, and planting by laying the roots laterally with the flowers placed beyond the pot's opening before topping up with more soil. 

It is now the fourth summer that this fragrant tuberous begonia has graced a small sous sol window sill. I hope it will bloom yet again in 2021.

Pots of miniature roses have found their home in a large tub along with a blueberry bush. In this way, not only does the display look full, when the roses are watered/fertilised so is the blueberry!

Hydrangeas are now fading into glorious subtle tones/texture and by autumn will become much like silver lace which always is a treat to behold.

The ivy topiary heart is being shaped gradually.  I just love it! Sculpting greenery is fun and gives so much joy. The structure on which it grows is a thick honeysuckle trunk that gave up the ghost nearly a decade ago. Requiring both patience and decisiveness makes topiary quite a learning experience.

Beets are putting out foliage which when thinned are added to minestrone.

Green beans are flowering. Soon tiny pods will appear and in several weeks they will be ready for picking.

À la prochaine!

Potted Cacti Plus Our Garden's Wild Area

The same acquaintance who gave us all those miniature dormant roses this past winter had bestowed upon us a couple of potted cacti earlier in the autumn. Echinopsis oxygona, known as Easter Lily cactus, also called the sea urchin cactus, has fragrant, lavender-pink blooms with long floral tubes which are pollinated by moths. Flowering overnight, they give quite a show the following morning though they are not long-lasting, wilting shortly afterwards. The smaller pot is filled with massed, small candle shapes with bright, orange-red flowers. I am guessing they are Echinopsis chamaecereus whose common name is the peanut cactus. Most cacti are from and adapted to dry regions, though a few thrive in tropical and subtropical areas. After their photo shoot, they were returned to a deeply recessed, south-facing sous sol window sill so as to be sheltered from any surprise rain and to get as much solar heat as possible.

When being gazed from directly above, the Easter Lily cactus flower bears some resemblance to a lotus.

Most of its 'stem' is hollow.

Though pollinated by moths, another type of insect, most likely a bee, was having fun inside the deep interior. It was stumbling about, its head well dusted with pollen, so much so, that it just might be possible there's a tiny, mirrored vanity plus a pot of loose powder replete with a puff hidden in the floral tube's depths! It then climbed up with the help of a very impressive stigma to the petal area.

When our acquaintance was giving me the pots and snipping off bits from an extensive collection flanking an eaves-shielded, south-facing side of her house, The Calm One was visually communicating from our Zoe the Electric Car via subtle facial expressions that he had been ready to depart about a half a hour ago. Therefore the giving of cacti care info was very brief—sun, not much water. The first on-hands lesson once arriving chez nous was painfully learning that wearing leather gloves when intimately handling cacti as in potting up (use a mix just for cacti!) any remnants is essential, not to mention that skin punctures can result in irritation or rashes. After all, those sharp structures are protective against animals chomping on the plant. In general, cacti can not tolerate temperatures much below freezing and during summer, may need watering as frequently as twice weekly. This winter was mild, but if necessary, they may have to go into the cold frame in the future. A small amount of balanced liquid fertiliser should be added to the watering can. To snip off blooms, cut just above the fuzzy base which eventually will become more of the plant.

The garden was neglected for two years before we acquired the property a decade ago. I knew I had to pace myself in getting it into reasonable shape. Being on a limited budget at that time, my priority was to grow food which I never had done so the learning curve was steep, actually the incline turned out to be dizzying. So when I noticed a patch of brambles growing under the dying cherry tree, I decided, ah, let it go for a while. Well that while stretched out further into time than desired, and seeing growth midway up to my height, I decided, let it be. The wild area was born. Ivy, laurel, Italian arum, sweet violets, honeysuckle, bay laurel, blue bells, and leather-leafed viburnum were either already there, seeded from elsewhere, or planted from cuttings/divisions of existing established plants. Mostly the earth was uncovered and the wire fence perimeters open to viewing from the outside. Today, it's the reverse. It's hard to catch a glimpse of soil (except for the veggie beds) or sneak much of a peak into what is a lush garden with sturdy, mature green 'bones' like ivy, laurel, and bay laurel. In the below photo, on the left, blackberry and raspberry bushes signal the end of the cultivated garden while on the right, brambles and sweet violets announce the wild area's beginning.

Looking towards the east (I am standing amidst a riot of honeysuckle), right into the heart of the wildest part of this less tended part of our verdant paradise, I know that thorns would stop me from just going where I want to go, so the path surrounding this tall mass of green often alive with a great many starlings will be followed. The more open area is where prunings are put while awaiting chipping and compost piles do their thing.

This is the most eastern edge of the wild area; that bit of white is a large shed that used to house the previous owners' recreational vehicle and now is filled with lavender cuttings waiting to be chipped and various junk, all topped with a sagging roof. Beautifully hidden, I say!

A little further west, the shed's entrance can be spied.

Here's a closeup of the honeysuckle growing over a hedge and sprawling on the ground. My horticultural perpspective is to keep only a small part of the wild area truly unkept while the outside edges are pruned so it's a surprise when the garden's central cement path is followed to its end to see just how woodsy it becomes. Remember that dying cherry tree? Its chopped up branches circle the bramble-covered thick trunk, all rotting away which is excellent for fungi and for emitting a forest fragrance. I regard extension lopers and line strimers as sculpture tools to undulate emerald waves and shape green geometry. I just love how ongoing it all is as I am guided by what nature is doing.

À la prochaine!

Gardening in the Time of Covid-19, Part IV: Portable Outdoor Mosaic Moss Garden

James Wong, an ethnobotanist and known as @botanygeek on Twitter shared a YouTube video of Mossin' Annie dressed in marvelous shades of purple, mossin' away, selecting them from kid-sized sleds filled with mosses acquired from parking lots and the such before placing a patchwork of different varieties in a shady part of her garden. His enthusiasm for her enthusiam as both are passionate about mosses made me wonder on the fifty-third day of the lockdown (Confinement Jour 53) if there was something I could do with those growing in our urban garden.

Ideas started to bubble up, one by one, until they were realised into a triangular arrangement of square plastic pots whose colours complemented each other as their points came together in the centre, that is, blue almost touches the orange while violet, the yellow. The pots being surrounded by wood chips contained in a terracotta saucer are provided with a neutral background. My moss interest is merely one of a novice, but my love of colour is obsessional. 

One of my garden hats became the inspiration for remembering and then using the recycled, brightly coloured, plastic pots. Strips of bubble-gum pink, lime-green, and orange are toned down with the inclusion of bands of more neutral accents like navy blue and brown.

The lovely emerald patches are most likely fern mosses.

So where was I able to find these specimens? One came from a tub of miniature roses. That dark patch roughly in the middle was where that moss once lived. It was scooped up with a spoon, though it could have just been pulled away with my fingers. Potting mix was moistened and packed all the way to the rim of a pot; the moss was placed on top and lightly pressed down. 

The other three came from the central, cement path's end which is close to our garden's wild area. Those were quite thin and needed to be scraped off with a knife.

They were growing under ivy. 

The wild area is about one-hundred-square-metres and runs across the back width of our six-hundred-square-metre main garden. Since the lockdown, this shady area has been included in my daily, thirty-minute garden walks taken at twilight. Below shows a path flanked with blooming, and ever-so fragrant, honeysuckle.

The portable, shade-loving moss garden was designed to be placed under the ivy-covered pergola where I often go to rest after a gardening chore. As I sat relaxing and looking at the finished project, I thought, very adorable, but not substantial enough, so . . .

. . . the mosses are moving into bigger real estate where they will be spritzed with water from time to time.

À la prochaine!

Gardening in the Time of Covid-19, Part III: Returning Sounds, Sights & Smells of Nature

On the 45th day of lockdown (Confinement Jour 45), I find myself sitting under our urban garden's ivy-covered pergola to rest after completing a garden task, realising though always pleasant, it is even more so. Birdsong has little competition from traffic noise. True now as before, after a rain, petrichor permeates throughout, but at present, before the rain and its fragrant aftermath, the air is already wonderfully fresh.

Looking through the sous sol's potting room's window with its coloured glass bottle collection towards the ivy-covered pergola

Then there are the moles. One of their many dirt volcanoes can be seen in the below photo's upper right corner. Why have they entrenched themselves for the first time in the ten years since our arrival? My guess is the lockdown-related decrease in vibrations caused by street traffic including fewer trucks rumbling down one long side of our garden flanking a refrigeration depot's entrance has attracted these industrious soil diggers. After some research I have concluded there are three perspectives on having garden moles:

1) Get rid of these dangerous, disease-carrying, dirt-dragons/rodents as quickly as possible with poison. (Call our extermination service for an estimate.)

2) Be humane to both these annoying critters and your lawn. Trap and release them. (Where? Regardless of the lockdown, if released they will either come back or bother someone else.)

3) Co-exist. They bring benefits too like aerating the soil (those mounds of theirs are excellent with which to top up veggie beds), eating tons of detrimental grubs, and fertilising the soil. As our 'lawn' is mostly English daises and moss, and their mounds though plentiful are not disturbing the roots of bushes and plants, this perspective has become mine.

Centre: osteospermum; heucheras of varying hues: clockwise, paprika, Georgia peach & tirasmu; lavender pot: lantana

This past late winter, an acquaintance of The Calm One gave us many a potted miniature rose. At that time, the floral donation was leafless. All got a good pruning. Then I had to wait a few months to see what colour blooms they would have. Out of around fifteen, only a couple have not yet set flowers. I do not know the different varieties' names, but they are all beauties soaking up the sun on sous sol window sills facing south. During the growing season, each gets sprayed for blackspot monthly and have a few drops of liquid fertiliser added to the watering can almost daily.

Here's a close up of a deep-pink one.

And of a tiny white rose.

Also of a gorgeous coral-coloured bloom.

A tub of two turned out to have deep red, quartered roses. Such flowers look fantastic against a complementary background of deep green, so it is now fronting a patio cutout's calla lily thicket.

Such a beautifully formed rose!

That diminutive ruby stunner has big competition though. Outside the balcony entrance's front door, curving up high over the weigela, is a robust climber, Étoile de Hollande, fragrant beyond belief, so deeply red it can look almost black, and with a velvet sheen that is mesmerising.

Here's one huge, ruffled bloom.

À la prochaine!