Roses

January 20, 2013

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Connecting by Email

For years I published a regular, email newsletter filled with site updates, pictures, contests, stories, and assorted garden-related ramblings… and then I stopped. People wrote to ask where the newsletter went and if I was okay and all I could think was, “It’s in my brain. If only I could will it from my brain and into the computer screen.”

After a five year hiatus I have decided to resurrect the newsletter. Joining is completely free. There is no obligation to join; however, be informed that there will be much commiserating over terrible weather, **frolicking in sunny fields of flowers, and hootenannies that you will not want to miss.

You can expect bi-weekly, weekly updates of:

recent site updates and articles
recipes
workshops and events
interesting links
stories
newsletter-only perks
ramblings
anything else that I think you’ll enjoy

I hope you will join me and I will try my best to make it worth your while!

Gayla

[About the photo: The above photo depicts roses harvested from my garden in early August 2012. The varieties are two climbers and one bush: 'Westmoreland' (orange & pinkish), 'Night Owl' (black/purple), and ‘Graham Thomas’ (yellow-orange). I purchased the vintage lithographed bowl from an etsy shop called Scout and Rescue.]

**The management regrets to inform you that they can not guarantee nor provide frolicking, fields of flowers, and/or hootenannies at this time.

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November 16, 2011

8 Comments

Heck Yeah! Mint and Rose Petals in Persian Cuisine

There’s so much that I experience on a weekly basis while at home or travelling that is related to plants and food that doesn’t seem to have a place here… but should. As a result of this oversight, I’ve decided to start a regular feature called, Heck Yeah! that’s devoted to the simple, yet wonderful things that are worth a mention.

The inaugural Heck Yeah! comes from an impromptu dinner I enjoyed last Friday here in Toronto at a Persian restaurant called The Pomegranate. The atmosphere and food was inspiring, most especially the use of herbs. I came away from our meal full of enthusiasm for Persian food and some new ways to use up the herbs I grow in abundance in my garden. Luck was on our side and we arrived hoping for a table just after someone had cancelled. If you’d like to experience the food for yourself, I’d suggest making a reservation. Tables fill up fast.

Please forgive the poor quality of these images. They were taken with my phone’s camera in very low mood lighting.

Doogh

I thought I’d tried every yoghurt-based beverage out there, and then I found doogh. More savoury than sweet, doogh is a refreshing combination of yoghurt and carbonated water, flavoured with dried herbs and spices. I believe mine was topped with dried and ground mint and rose petals, but I have since researched out recipes that include cumin and cardamon. I’m sure there are other secret ingredients and variations as well.

Persian Mint Tea

My friend Jen enjoyed a classic Persian mint tea, which is a simple drink (fresh mint leaves brewed in hot water) made special by this beautiful presentation. We both agreed that when it comes to food and drink, the rituals are as important as the food itself.

Rose Water and Pistachio Ice Cream with Pomegranate

After a large and satisfying meal, I didn’t think I had the room left for dessert, yet I could not walk away without trying the house rose water ice cream. The portion was generous — enough for 4 people — but we managed to devour it all between two of us, and on full stomachs no less.

Roses are an under-used flavour in Western cooking. One of my goals for my forthcoming herbs and edible flowers book, “Easy Growing: Organic Herbs and Edible Flowers from Small Spaces” was to encourage more people to make culinary use of the roses that they grow. A scoop of rose petal ice cream at a night market in Oaxaca, Mexico back in April 2000 was my introduction to this fragrant ingredient and the way I would suggest first trying the flavour if you’re unsure about eating it for the first time.

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June 5, 2008

21 Comments

Thank You

Sakura’s White Bleeding Heart in the street garden

I wanted to write and thank you all for your very kind words and wishes about yesterday’s post. I’ve been overwhelmed. Thank you.

I have to admit I have felt a little bit of embarrassed by what I wrote. On the one hand it reads so dramatic, but then when I ask myself if it is true the answer is yes. I believe they call that passion although some would call it melodrama. One commenter was right in saying that this is coming at a bad time and maybe I would not have been so crushed at another time. This is true. I am going through something difficult. It had been a particularly bad week and as I wrote elsewhere it was just the cherry on top of a big plate of shit cake. But I should also add that my words were less tempered than previous posts about this issue because in the past I have waited until a lot of time had passed before writing. The last time I wrote something heartfelt about this was a month after the incident had occurred. It took me 30 days to get to the point where I could look at the garden or even begin to think about caring for it again. So despite recent badness I know it still would have flattened me. I’d been holding my breath waiting for the next big incident to occur. There had been a series of smaller incidents over the last month but I could roll with them. However, this was just the final straw after countless larger acts of vandalism built up over the years, much of which had come from the landlord himself. Sometimes it even came from my so-called neighbours living in the same building (this is a small building too). Years back we made a garden in the space by our building’s door but gave up after that space was repeatedly flattened until nothing was left. But not to be deterred I tried and tried again. We even put in a brick path for people to walk on but they still insisted on crunching through the garden. I once watched in slow motion as a former tenant’s visitors stood in and walked all over flowers I had JUST planted. I was still crouched there planting! That kind of disregard is staggering.

Experiences and how we respond to them always happen within a very personal context so in my case this last act of extreme disregard followed on the heels of years of similar incidents. And most especially followed on the heels of last year’s Operation Garden Terrorism 2007 wherein a week didn’t go by when some act of vandalism was discovered. On the morning of this last incident I stood looking at the garden feeling very content with how lush and full the garden had grown. It was the first day I didn’t stand looking at the garden thinking, “I REALLY hope some drunk dude doesn’t fall into the iris bed this year.” And, “Wow the globe thistle is finally getting its chance to come back. Let’s hope no one gets the idea to destroy it, AGAIN.” It was the first time in a while that I didn’t worry. So of course that was the day this next batch of destruction occurred.

The garden is still there. It’s a decent-sized space filled up with plants. Someone would have to really plow through it to kill everything off. So while there are huge gaping holes, there is still a garden. And I suppose there is some hope for me yet in that I am already contemplating getting another rugosa rose to fill up one of the holes. Because while people have tried, the current rugosa rose is the one plant nobody can really mess with. It’s just too big and thorny. I have always chosen strong, resilient, and drought tolerant plants for that space but I am slowly moving closer to filling the entire thing up with thorny, imposing plants. No more delicate blooms or perennials that die back during the winter leaving them in a vulnerable position until they grow back to full size. No, the beauty of the rugosa rose is that once it gets to a certain size it stays big indefinitely. So maybe that will be my new strategy, one in a long line of shifts I have made over the years in an attempt to roll with the punches. Because when it comes down to it I can’t let it go. Not yet anyways.

I recently bought the new book, “What It Is” by Lynda Barry. I think she is an incredible writer and artist and I am loving this new book so much because it’s not only a beautiful work of art filled with very astute observations and personal stories but it is also a guide to writing and story telling that anyone can follow. She believes we all can and should be writing and drawing for the love and creative expression of it, just like I believe everyone can grow a garden. There are a number of personal stories in the book that I really relate to and one is about fairy tales and myths and how often in those stories the dead kingdom represents when people have turned to stone inside. I’m not sure if it’s meant to represent a loss of hope or a disconnection from oneself although I’m guessing either or both could work. I have been reading and rereading the following passage over and over again recently because it encapsulates exactly how I feel about dealing with difficulty and what I said yesterday about feeling everything no matter what.

Page 54 reads:

“In a myth or a fairytale, one doesn’t restore the kingdom by passivity, nor can it be done by logic or thought. So how can it be done? Monsters and dangerous tasks seem to be part of it. Courage and terror and failure or what seems like failure, and then hopelessness and the approach of death convincingly. The happy ending is hardly important, though we may be glad it is there. The real joy is knowing that if you felt the trouble in the story, your kingdom isn’t dead.”

Time to get back to restoring the kingdom. Thanks again to all of you.

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May 29, 2006

7 Comments

Roses are Fussy!

Guest post by Emira Mears

Who knew!?! But seriously. Our house came with a number of lovely roses of different varieties. Some traditional pink, very fragrant lovely ones in the front, two of what I believe are dog roses also in front beds and a very prolific climbing rose on the back fence.

rose Last summer all of these plants kind of took me by surprise in terms of how very much I fell in love with them. Not that I’ve been harbouring a life long hate-on for roses or anything, but they had just never really caught my eye in gardens in the past. I think it was that each of these different roses (and I’ve already reserved a book at the library to help me identify them, and figure out just what they need in the way of care) brought back childhood garden memories. Their various scents reminded me of the hot summer days that my best friend Kate and I used to try making “perfume” from flower petals mixed with water from the garden hose in 4L ice cream pails that were then set in the sun to cure. The look of the different flowers from each bush was of such a simple, but iconic beauty that I was pretty much charmed from the get go. I also really loved how old each bush clearly was (you could see the gnarled past branches trimmed down to allow for new growth), and imagined how many years they had been tended and loved by their previous owner (I’m such a sucker for things with history, whether its a history I embellish or one that has some actual legs, give me a “heritage” seed variety any day).

Anyway, aside from needing to learn the basics of rose pruning last year me and the roses got on famously. No real problems. No real fuss. In exchange I enjoyed beautiful cut blooms and scent in the house for months. A perfect arrangement. And I will admit, I had a few passing thoughts about how much easier roses were to care for than people seem to think.

And then the problems started.

A few weeks ago, one of the dog roses in the front became infested with black spot and aphids (common companion problems). I quickly ran to the internet (of course) and the Forums here for advice, and soon found myself spraying a baking soda, castile soap mixture on the beloved but beleagured plant, but not until I had brutalized it pruning off the blackspot and cleaning up infected leaves. The evening that I did that emergency pruning I ended up out in the garden until nightfall carefully saving every part of the plant that I could, while sacrificing what felt like way too much to the garden waste bin. And as I cut off a number of yet to open buds, I actually found myself pretty upset by the process. Over the few weeks that plant has bounced back a bit, but certainly has a ways to come before it is back to its full glory.

A few weeks later I determined that the other dog rose in the front was really suffering from its position (which I think used to get much more light in past years, but is now heavily shaded by a large japonica). So I carefully dug it out, dug a new hole, followed all directions I could find for transplanting roses and moved it to a new sunnier home. It is reacting much as I would have expected and really it wasn’t doing at all well in its previous spot, but inspite of frequent waters and plenty of measured attention it certainly hasn’t yet re-established itself as the jewel in the garden or anything. I’m trying to give it time.

Then we come to yesterday and what I thought would be a fairly easily, though somewhat prickly task to prune the suckers and some of the very prolific growth off the climbing rose on the back fence. Until I notice the mildew. That’s right: powerdery mildew seems to be taking over on this plant now. And so, I ended up pruning off a lot more than planned and am really not yet done with removing everything.

Argh.

There are two things about all this rose drama that really get me. The first, is that I can’t quite believe that these roses made it this far if they’re such fussy critters. Our house was previously owned by a 99 year old woman and from what I’ve heard for the last year at least she wasn’t out pruning the rose bushes. So how did they survive all the pitfalls that seem to plague them? Second, I can’t quite get over how emotionally attached to these plants I’ve become in such a short while. Each time I have to do this it causes me such distress, distress arguably disproportionate to the task at hand.

Anyway, as I say, I’m trying to amass rose resources, and if anyone has some good ones please pass them on. From what I’ve learned so far one of my biggest mistakes in each of these cases has been not pruning and tending them earlier in the season, but other information and tips would be wonderful.

me pruning the climbing rose

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June 3, 2005

2 Comments

Garden Update: Street Garden and Roof

This week has been a frenzy of cleaning, selecting plants and planting. As hard as I try, I’ve got perpetual dirt-under-the-nails. I should have thought to take a picture to show what I mean.

I haven’t been up to much in the side/street garden (it really needs a name) so I’ll start there. Earlier in the week I transplanted a hyssop that used to take up residence in one of the planter boxes on the deck. Today I moved a big bunch of anise-hyssop that sprouted in one of the large containers on the deck. Now it can spread itself all around the street garden. That’s okay cause it’s a native that can withstand drought and attracts lots of beneficial insects to the garden. I’ve got my own mini version of The Clash of the Titans happening down there.

And speaking of titans, the plume poppy is up to it’s usual tricks. It’s massive and growing fast! I have already pulled out a bunch and have tried transplanting some into containers and the large planter boxes on my deck. I am discovering that plume poppies do not like to be transplanted. All the leaves are dying back, however the roots underneath the soil are good and new leaves are slowly poking through the surface. I decided they would be good in the planter boxes because they’re tall and hardy and will provide good screening and pretty tropical-look foliage once established. I don’t know why I didn’t try this sooner. This morning when I was out taking photos, I discovered a pigeon living underneath the dense plume poppy foliage. See, it’s not all bad.

The wild rose bush I planted last year seems to have attracted a healthy colony of aphids. The plant looks good, has grown quite large (I’m thinking it’s time for a trellis), and is producing lots of flower buds. But the aphids! The horror! I’m not freaked out much by bugs but you should have seen how thick they were along some stems. It gives me the shivers just thinking about it. They were like teeny, tiny, evil robots of destruction, making their way over a densely packed spread of shivering green and red bodies searching for a position with stem contact. Yikes. I first discovered this last weekend on the way out for lunch and vowed (shaking fists at the sky) to get to it the next day. Thankfully, it rained overnight and that washed off a good many of them. This week I have been going out daily to wash them off followed by a douse of my herbal buzz spray concoction (it’s in the book). I was pleased to discover that year-old herbal bug tea still smells okay — which is good since the wind shot some of it back at me. As predicted nothing else in the garden has any sort of bug infestation — just the roses. In fact most of the plants around the roses are insect repellents, but those crafty aphids still managed to find their way to the gold.

The soil is terrible on that side of the garden (the new side) and I’m sure that’s not exactly helping the roses fight the good fight. The plants look healthy but one look at the soil tells me otherwise…. I really need to add more amenders to that side and add two more bags of mulch to the entire garden. Weeds are coming up faster than I can pull them in certain spots and the soil on the newer side is just sadly lacking in decent organic content. I used up all the compost in containers so I’m going to have to buy some.

What else is happening:

I fixed the fence and extended it slightly. I ran out of branches before I could cover the entire garden. Oh well.
The irises are in full bloom. It looks like someone stepped on a few but so far an entire section has not been destroyed, unlike last year. I even had enough to cut a bunch to enjoy indoors. Also see wild dwarf iris.
The Euphorbia is in bloom. I cut some of these to bring indoors as well. This one emits a sappy secretion so burn with a flame (I used a lighter) before placing in water.
Planted the Nicotiana I bought at the Parkdale Plant Sale before we left for New York. I saved some for the deck too. They get really big and lush but the night-time blooming habit means I must have some on the deck in order to enjoy the flowers.
Peony is in action.
Purple Smoke Bush seems to be making a comeback after being stepped on last year. Someone cracked the main stem right where the large stems join. Special thanks and shout-outs once again to the drunken idiots who see the garden as a handy place to urinate on their way from the bar.

And now moving on to the deck:

First there was the cleanup. That’s boring stuff so I won’t bother. I decided to do as little as possible before leaving for New York because I worried that plants would not survive in my absense. Unfortunately a few of the alpines I purchased at the Parkdale Plant Sale did not make it. A cosmos I bought as a prop for a television appearance was eaten by an animal. And speaking of plants eaten by animals, an unknown mammal is back at it again this year. It could be a squirrel or a raccoon since they are the only culprits around here. I have yet to see either on the deck but am left every morning with the remnants of a disaster. Okay I’m exaggerating because anything they tend to be interested in that I have covered with a chicken wire or plastic bottle cloche has been left untouched. However, some plants that were not covered have been either completely eaten (a newly planted sedum. Who knew? They never go for this!), or partially eaten (lavender, sage).

A bunch of containers are yet to be planted up, and with this Sunday’s Herb Fair at Harbourfront I expect to have a lot more planting to do, but here are some photos of finished projects.

Fire escape planter box – I can’t technically call this a succulent box anymore because I added an english lavender this year. It looked really good two days ago before the unknown mammal ate half the lavender and crushed a few of the large sedum stems. A cloche now protects the remaining lavender.
Some veggies – There are more but here’s a big cluster of containers. Here you can see (clockwise): black cherry tomato, lemon thyme, rosemary, purple beauty pepper, purple tomatillo, lemon cucumber, green sausage tomato, silver fir tree tomato, and another tomatillo.
Cart full of plants – I picked these up yesterday from Colette of Urban Harvest at the Dufferin Grove Farmer’s Market. These include the purple tomatillos, all the tomatoes I listed above, two basil varieties, peppers (and more than listed above), and lemon and tangerine marigolds. The marigolds are really cool. They have feathery foliage and really do taste like lemons and tangerines. In fact I’d say they taste a lot like citrus peels. Definitely not your average, boring marigolds.
More plants – Mrs. Burns lemon basil, red rubin basil (I think), dill, a striped german tomato I got from a friend at a party last weekend.

More News:

- A bunch of us from the Toronto YGG group are meeting up at the Herb fair this Sunday at noon for a plant geekery field trip. Anyone in the area is welcome to join us.

- I’ve begun posting about my trip to New York over here. I am also keeping a general book-related journal here.

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