Tangled Brush

Inspiration abounds. I was reading about the life of Vita Sackville-West (and what a life!) when I read about her "White Garden" at Sissinghurst. Apparently it's famous! She wrote, in 1950: "All the same, I cannot help hoping that the great ghostly barn-owl will sweep silently across a pale garden, next summer in the twilight- the pale garden that I am now planting, under the first flakes of snow." The U.K National Trust, which manages the garden, states "Only the colours of white, green, grey and silver were to be allowed to grow in this new pale garden thus creating what we now call the White Garden, one of the most famous areas of Sissinghurst." Photo source:  https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/sissinghurst-castle-garden/features/a-moonlit-masterpiece-at-sissinghurst-castle-garden Simultaneously, in July I noticed a curious lot of white perennials on sale at the Canadian Tire near me: white bleeding heart, white liatris, white scabiosa...

No discussion of the garden would be complete without my describing the Side Garden, a strip of land on the other side of the driveway. Since I am on a corner lot, I get this extra strip of land to work with. It delighted me, as it meant I could have two front gardens. But, ah, what a tortured piece of land it was!  Weeds, rocks, sunshine, thistles and lurking roots of decapitated Virginia Creeper. Ah, the Side Garden! So it was weedy, and wild. The previous owners had pulled down a cedar hedge on this corner plot (quite the safety hazard, everyone in the neighborhood agreed), and put up a shiny new fence. Great! But then, they never got around to landscaping in front of it. By the time we moved in, it was a weedy overgrown mass. The grass had been mowed, but it was hardly the lush green carpet of your dreams; no, it was clover and dandelions, knotweed and toad flax, crabgrass and such. But it got great sun. Oh, this corner had such great sun! Unlike the main front gar...

We are deep into winter here in Ottawa, no denying that. So, since there is no gardening to be done, I will post the pics I never managed to post last year.  Let's start with gladiolus. I didn't have gladiolus in my garden growing up. My grandfather did grow it in his garden, though, notably, in his vegetable patch! And so, I associate gladiolus with vegetables. Alas, my vegetable garden is smaller than his was, so I planted my gladiolus in the rose garden. Or, more accurately, in the patch of land painstakingly reclaimed from the voracious goutweed. But one day it will be a rose garden, so there we go.  Very cheerful, these blossoms were, and I really enjoyed looking out the kitchen window and seeing them. It made all my efforts worthwhile! I also had a purple gladiolus, which was fun. Also in this garden, fluffy pink and yellow double holllyhocks! That was a surprise - I bought them as seedlings and they were supposed to just be single hollyhocks. That...

Well, talking about irises so much in that earlier post got me thinking about future iris garden plans. And, boy, do I now have plans! These plans have been particularly stimulated by some photos of irises that I came upon. Isn't Google amazing! I forget how I found this one - I think I googled "a nice lawn makes a garden look better." I am trying to figure out why other gardens look so good and mine looks so....scruffy. I really think it is the lawn, so this year I am going to focus on getting my front and back lawn looking better. This will require lots of manual weeding (I like weeding - makes me feel so zen), and sprinkling fertilizer and lawn seed. I did this with my side lawn in the front, last year. It went from looking like a wasteland to an...acceptable patch of green. That is an improvement! But back to the flowers! Look at this: Hot pink and orange and a lush green lawn. Me loves! Don't you think I need a garden like that? Hot pink ruffled Ori...

I had a serious illness back in May 2018....a very bad, bad case of Iris fever! Now, don't get alarmed, it's nothing fatal or debilitating - except to the wallet! And, indeed, my wallet was well and truly damaged by my iris obsession. Though, actually, not quite as badly as it might have been, thanks to some wonderful connections I made...but I will get to that! In my garden growing up we had some purple irises - dark purple and white bearded irises, given to my mother by a friend of hers. Tall, green swords, tight purple buds, then big, heavy beautiful flowers. When I finally had my own garden, of course it had to have irises. There were irises all over the neighborhood - I needed irises! But I didn't just want the usual purple ones, I wanted some exotic colours. I went to trusty Google, and found a website, Breck's Bulbs, that sold many colourful varieties. I wanted them all! But they were pricey! So after much dillying and dallying I got the ones that my heart j...

Of course, I love to garden. But I also love to make flower arrangements! I think flower arranging is my first true love. Well, that and flower gathering,  which, as a kid, I sometimes did in places where one isn't supposed to gather flowers. Ahem. Well, that is a story for another day! The first few years we lived in this house I didn't pick too many flowers, as there wasn't much of a surplus. I rationed them out - a stalk of yellow primrose here, a few purple clematis there. But this year, I finally felt I had enough that I could splurge! As well, there were a surprising number of new wildflowers - daisies, monk's hood, flowering oregano, so those went into the mix too. And what a mix it was! Look at this gorgeousness - monk's hood, hydrangea, flowering oregano and phlox from my garden; globe amaranth and some other pink flower that I bought as annuals and in a flower basket. Glorious! And see how artistically I posed them, on a weathered stump? This bo...

The garden in winter is about pattern  Gone are the distractions of lush green blade, riotous blossom, or nodding leaf. Instead there is geometry against a  stark white background. But, though the scene is reduced to planes, there is nothing plain about this scene - oh no! There is depth, shape, and drama. There are shadows and light. Most of all, there is sparkle. Behold the patterns in my garden: Bare sticks... Animal tracks... My neighbour's shrub... The pink chrysanthemum that gave me so much joy last autumn.... Hydrangea branches... Cedar hedge... Iron rails of the deck... A lone sunflower stalk, against a deep blue sky. Crusts of snow.