You Grow Girl™

Farmer's Almanac Weather Prediction for Ontario: "Warm, thunderstorms."

Despite the horrible, grey, cold, rainy weather we've been having, gardening season is in full swing and I've been going mad. Last Saturday I met up with Zesty at the Parkdale Horticultural Society's Annual Plant Sale. Despite the amazingly cheap prices I was good and restrained myself from going overboard. The mantra, "No more room in the garden" was repeated in my head as I scanned the gymnasium packed with potted plants while women with plastic trays and their children's carts scurried about snatching up deals. My head swam as I attempted to process each plant and it's worth in my garden before it was grabbed by someone else. With about half a second to make a decision regarding each palnt that crossed my line of vision, you can imagine the chaos. Luckily I am trained in scanning large rooms and making quick decisions thanks to years of thrift store shopping. I thought I had done well until I hit the lineup and saw plants in people's possession that I hadn't even seen on the tables. That's how fast things went.

Some of my more noteworthy buys included:

· an unusual catmint I had never seen before that kind of looks like spearmint and has the most pleasant scent you can imagine
· spirea (gold mound) for only $4.00. The guy actually dropped the price as I stood there contemplating it for longer than 5 seconds. Who can resist a bush at a mere 4 bucks?
· peach iris with orange centre (orange is my fave colour)
· orange mint (mentha citrata)
· sorrel (rumex acetosa)
· euphorbia: a lovely purple variety. If I hadn't hesitated I could have bought two.
· cheddar pinks -- lovely blue/green foliage. They have tons of buds already
· strawberries

I made lots of other purchases but I can't remember them all off-hand.

Saturday afternoon I managed to pursuade Davin and my neighbour friend J to assist in the brutal task of digging up and extending the garden. The soil was really rocky and shitty so we had to really toil to get it going. We put in a divider to keep the soil off the sidewalk and then hauled extra soil from the garden to the side yard to make room for bags and bags of soil amenders. Then we removed all the old irises from the rotting half barrel and planted them in the new garden. The we planted all the new plants (minus the ones that are going on the deck) and moved some plants to make room for the spirea bush. We also dug up an unidentified tree that had been growing way too close to the building for comfort.

J took the rotting barrel apart and found out the hard way that a colony of six large spiders were living underneath the barrel and subsisting on a diet of sow bugs. She was not amused but we all had a good time staring in awe at the plumpness of the spiders. In fact the whole afternoon was a bit of a lesson in entomology as we unearthed all sorts of interesting creatures including moth pupae that jerked and twisted in our hands when we touched them. They look like alien lifeforms incubating in the soil.

Just as we finished up it rained, which was perfect timing because it meant we didn't have to do any watering ourselves.

We had a bit of a disaster on the deck during the week. The gazebo had a bit of an "accident" and has now been taken apart. We were going to try and set it up again today (or get a new one) but it was too cold outside. What a way to start Planting Weekend.

Earlier this week I went to an aquarium store with a friend and bought six new plants for my aquarium. I also bought a new hood for my terrarium and a new bulb. It looks great now as does the aquarium which is now stocked up full of plants. I bought three large java ferns, a gorgeous rose amazon and a plant I always remember as crispus. I got a super deal on the plants because the guy who worked at the store let me pick anything at the sale price rather than only limiting me to the plants that were actually on sale! Needless to say I was very happy about that.

On the way home from the aquarium store we stopped off at a small garden centre. I bought a bag of mulch so large I couldn't carry it, more everbearing strawberries, chocolate mint (it really does taste like the real thing!), a variety of basil I have never heard of before, a bunch of sedums and hens & chicks, and some other plants I can't remember. I went nuts this year and made a couple of nice boxes and a bowl filled with various cold-hardy succulents.

On Friday we had some actual sun so I went out into the neighbourhood with my camera and took a ton of plant photos. In the evening we went to the Royal Ontario Museum. On the way home we walked past the greenhouse at the University of Toronto. We went up and followed the sides, peaking to see what was in there. I want to go in! They had a desert room with a huge opunita, an aloe as big as a tree, and tons of cacti. There was another room filled with orchids and bromeliads. I tried to take some photos but it was dark outside and the windows were fogged up with condensation. Later we stopped at two of my favourite corner stores that sell plants. I ended up talking my way out of making another orchid purchase.