My friend and fellow plant/collecting enthusiast Uli Havermann (you may remember her from this incredible succulent pot, this stunning blue sea holly, and these beautiful urns) is a member of a large community greenhouse here in Toronto. Last week she treated me to a glimpse inside. Like community gardens and allotments, community greenhouses are not …
It’s not like me to hone in on the flowers and disregard the plant, but it happens. It certainly did the other day when I took this picture of beautiful bell-like flowers on a tour of a local community greenhouse (a post with photos is forthcoming). I could have sworn they belonged to a succulent …
Info on how to enter the giveaway follows. And so it begins. Every spring I compile lists of posts about seed starting, but this year I’ve decided to create a permanent page dedicated to everything seed starting that you can find anytime you need it by clicking over to the Resources section. I am slowly …
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 …
Meaty, dense, huge, and prolific: I didn’t intend to grow ‘Mennonite Orange’ last summer, but boy am I ever glad I did. The details: 80 days Indeterminate Open-pollinated heirloom Beefsteak, Slicer Orange Ripens: Mid-season Story: Originally from Pennsylvania but grown in Southern Ontario. Container Growing: You’ll need a really big pot, 16″+ deep.
Barry’s cyclamen have begun their yearly emergence from dormancy and his small, cold greenhouse is alive with them. My own few pots of Cylamen coum (gifts from Barry, of course) have also begun to emerge, although I have noticed that they are behind his. What you see in this photo isn’t even half of Barry’s …
No matter the season, there is always something of interest (many, many things of interest) going on in Barry’s garden and even though I know not to show up without a proper camera, I can’t deny that sometimes (most times) I am lazy and the camera stays at home. Of course, I always regret it …
Until recently it had been at least a year since I picked up a needle and thread to embroider or cross stitch and I was itching to get back into it. I took some time over the holidays to rekindle the interest and now it is back, bigger than ever. I am stitching up a …
Back in September I wrote about sinningia, an African violet relative with an unusual tuber that grows above the soil. At the time my plant was in full bloom. It is now going into dormancy and has been losing leaves. The photo above is what it looked like yesterday in its current home underneath lights …
Whenever I travel I tend to be drawn to the mundane: Where do people live? Where do they shop? What do they eat? Somehow, I often end up passing a graveyard. Over time and many trips, I have started to make observations about the different traditions that are observed around burials. And as a gardener, …
I’m still engaged in the long process of catching up on developing and scanning a backlog of film dating back a few years. There are lots of plant and garden related images within this pile that I had forgotten about. It is bringing up old thoughts, ideas, memories. For instance, looking at this image taken …
Happy New Year! I wrote my first year-end wrap-up post in 2010 and continued with it in 2011. As I sit here at my desk the end of 2012 [note that I began compiling this post just before the New Year], the garden buried underneath a blanket of snow, I feel compelled to continue the …