It’s raining Saturday, Mar 14 2015 

gardening acairfearann 20:56

And somewhere beneath all those feet of snow, those spring bulbs must be growing.

Gardening is a lot of patience, a lot of hope, for an uncertain reward. In some ways, it is the most honest of many modern individual pursuits. It is an uncertain balance between enjoying the immediate moment: the sunrise, the day lily; and the enjoyment of the potential future: the young tree, the gradual change of the seasons. It is also the past. The trees that have grown and died, the lawns that have risen and fallen.

I am currently reading a rather fun book on the history of tulips (and Tulipmania of course). It is interesting to consider the connection between an Ottoman emir some five hundred years ago, a Dutch merchant, and a gardener today. All hunting that perfect flower and that perfect land. That is a very human connection despite the very different people, very different times, and very different worlds.

 

Not winter Monday, Feb 23 2015 

gardening acairfearann 21:05

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I wonder what the experiment will show this year? Right now this section of lawn is under about two feet of hard packed, wind blown snow.  I’ll have to remember to cut the line correctly, sheer happenstance when I did it last year!

 

Winter Garden Friday, Feb 13 2015 

gardening and Landscapes and Modern Photos , acairfearann 10:49

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Winter views Friday, Jan 23 2015 

Landscapes and Modern Photos acairfearann 22:01

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Are always fascinating. Foreground trees are mostly Norway Spruce. The odd triple trunk in the center is a River Birch (why Do people insist on planting them in small spaces? That one is not small…), beyond is the Ginkgo, the big oak and the Cucumber Magnolia.  In the summer the River Birch largely obscures the magnolia and to a lesser extent the other two trees, which shortens the view considerably.

And others!

And the more I look at it, the more I think I will go back and look at pictures from previous years, that leaning Norway doesn’t seem right. Sigh…

 

Amaryllis Saturday, Jan 10 2015 

gardening and Modern Photos , acairfearann 20:09

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This was last year actually, so far this year both ‘Apple Blossoms’ are blooming, a deep red is definitely going to, and we will see about the rest. We tried marking them last year, but the markers are now illegible!

They spend the summer outside, (happy and green in the shade), a few months in the basement (dark and dry), and then spring into life in the winter with the judicious application of radiators and water. We even have babies from seed.  Have no idea how that will work. They do pretty well, the red one in the photo above was a surprise last year. We had kept him for years, but he hadn’t bloomed in quite some time, and then last year he finally decided to once again. The ones you buy at the store are awfully confused for several years.

 

Still cold Thursday, Jan 8 2015 

gardening acairfearann 18:36

well not really if one has lived a few years in Ontario. But, for the plants that one grows here….it is cold.  Actually, except for the hydrangeas (and agh! the roses), it will likely be a benefit as -6 F for a few hours should set some of the nasty bugs back. I am talking about you, wooly adelgid.

I finally turned my radiator on in my room, I thought seeing my breath was a bit much.

The new heater for the fish pond…well, less said the better. The fish are fine, but not because of the heater.

Otherwise, the indoor plants are happy, all of the jasmine have flowers. The amaryllis (which we can’t get to bloom At Christmas, though one did open on the 12th day of Christmas) are perking along, though we won’t have 100% bloom this year.

I know, gardening, all gardening 100% of the time, I’ll get back to history at some point here….

 

 

 

Zombie fish! Tuesday, Dec 16 2014 

gardening , acairfearann 11:15

Because we didn’t have enough going on… a check of the fish pond yesterday revealed a rather horrid sight: about eight of the large goldfish looking very dead indeed with the rest apparently heading that way.  We pulled out the dead ones and put them in a bucket (with no water, they were dead after all), pulled the heater as a possible suspect, and consulted with a local fish expert.

This resulted in a reorganizing of the afternoon to go and get an air pump for the pond (it has been running with simply the waterfall as the oxygen source for about a decade) since the consensus was low oxygen levels, likely caused by too many leaves.*

The air pump was installed a few hours later. Remember those fish in the bucket? Still sitting there by the pond? One of them twitched. So the bucket of dead fish was put back into the pond. Several dead fish promptly swam off.  As of this morning only two of those ‘dead’ fish are still lying in the shallows looking dead. Another is looking ill, but the rest seem to be swimming about.  I think we will wait a bit to determine the actual death count.

Apparently, asphyxiated fish in cold weather are the opposite of drowned people in cold weather.  The person isn’t dead till they are warm, dry, and still dead. It would seem fish aren’t dead until they are wet and still dead.  Or something. Not an experiment we are going to repeat.

 

*Usually the leaves are removed, for a number of very good reasons that just didn’t happen this fall. Now that we know that it really is important to do it, its priority will be bumped up for future years.

 

dartboard! Sunday, Dec 14 2014 

gardening and Landscapes and Uncategorized , acairfearann 20:37

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Otherwise known as your random photo of the day. Hard to believe that there is a busy two lane road out there!

Norway spruces for the most part, the tree in the front/left is a young redbud. What is funny is that until I was looking at this picture just now, I hadn’t seen the strong diagonal of those spruce trunks…I’ll have to give that some consideration. Lines make a garden!

 

 

The beauty of old houses Friday, Dec 12 2014 

gardening , acairfearann 22:16

for gardeners. Aside from the Christmas cactus that have blooming since October and will continue through January; the house is also cold enough and dark enough in areas to allow jasmine to set buds. Not quite ready to bloom yet, but almost. The buds, which stated as miniscule green points, having lengthened. They are now long white spirals, picture a unicorn’s horn, reaching towards the light. There is no fragrance yet, but there will be, subtle and rich.

We still haven’t quite figured out how to prune them for shape; but considering the difficulty of getting them to set flower…

The trick is to put them outdoors during the summer, and then keep them outside until the first frost. They then need forties to fifties and natural daylight for flower set.  No turning the lights on at night! Not easy to do in most houses. But an old, rambling house? That works.

 

Old and new Wednesday, Dec 10 2014 

gardening and Landscapes , acairfearann 20:20

The old red maple beyond the garden, one of the few survivors from the original early 1800’s line, has a precarious life. It split many years ago and now exists as a carefully balanced, dancing, tree. Someday it will fall. And someday the two young beeches which bracket it will fill the space, now far larger than those little two foot tall, struggling saplings that I transplanted many years ago. For now the old maple rises above the golden beeches still.

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