Category Archives: My Garden

The Witch Balls & The Japanese Maple

Posted on by
10

It’s always the week that makes November worth celebrating. I’m referring to the spectacular display in my living room in the first ten days of November when my Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) transforms itself from a tracery of green to brilliant shades of apricot, coral, gold and scarlet.

 I don’t have any curtains in the front room, just the maple outside, but the jewels in my window are the blown glass witch balls I hung there eight years ago. Not to ward off bad spirits or protect my house, as is the apparent historic use of witch balls – though that would certainly be a side-benefit. Rather it’s that eye-popping contrast of the fall colour pigments of the maple (anthocyanins and carotenes) with the refracting light from within the blown glass that makes the window seem more like a dynamic art installation than a potentially kitschy folkcraft display.

Kitsch. That’s what I was worried about a decade ago after impulsively purchasing a case lot of select witch balls from Iron Art in Ohio (at the time, I was allowed to place their minimum wholesale order, but they’ve since set up a retail site called Iron Elegance, and they also have a wide network of retailers). I’ve never been a fan of window coverings if there’s a view to close out – whether the lovely tree in the front garden or the panorama of the entire back garden from my kitchen window. Let the neighbours stare, I don’t care; nature is more important to me. But glass witch balls aren’t stained glass panels; as lovely as they might look, how would I hang them?  I decided to go ahead and if I didn’t like the look, I could remove them. So I bought three wall-mounted metal cup racks featuring leaves and birds and a couple of small hooks for the larger middle window, then spray-painted them all dark-teal to go with the woodwork. I screwed them into my window frame, then, using fishing wire, I tied the balls at various levels in the upper part of the window.  And as the sun shone through them that first November 2013, I was completely enchanted.

I have always loved the look of blown glass, but the first time I saw it used in a garden was in 2003 at my dear friend Virginia Weiler’s home in North Carolina, where the work of her friend John Nygren hung in her tree.

And during a 2008 garden writers’ tour of Portland, I was intrigued by Lucy Hardiman’s wonderful hanging glass display.  I thought about how I might achieve something like this at home, but it seemed to me that the cold winters and winds in Toronto might be too severe for an outdoor display.

CORNING MUSEUM OF GLASS

In September 2008 we visited the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York and my love affair with glass continued. (You can read my blog about the museum here.)

From Dale Chihuly’s ‘Fern Tower’ in the lobby…

…. to the 1905 Louis Comfort Tiffany window of hollyhocks, clematis and the Hudson River, all that survives from the 44-room Rochroane Castle, built for Natchez oil and cotton millionaire Melchior Stewart Belthoover in Irvington, New York…

… to the exquisite forest glass or ‘waldglas’ drinking glasses made in northern Europe from the middle ages to the 18th century using tree and fern potash whose iron content lends the green hue…

… to the sleek, modern work of Italian and Finnish glass artists…. 

…. to a mosaic Mediterranean glass bowl from the 1st or 2nd century BC, I loved it all.

At the conclusion, I even had the opportunity to blow my own glass ball – with a little help from an expert.

MURANO

Two years after visiting the Corning Museum of Glass, we were in Venice and decided to tour the island of Murano with its famous glass blowing factories.

The tour was set up by our hotel with the pick-up and boat ride to the island courtesy of one of the glass furnace factories, so we were obliged to begin there. After a long, interesting tour of the firing floor, we visited all the display floors beginning with the most expensive sculptures and chandeliers at the top (nope!) and descending to the affordable cufflinks!  But somehow we ended up ordering six of the most beautiful, gold-rimmed glasses you’ve ever seen, which were mailed to us weeks later. I also wrote a blog about this memorable day.

After the obligatory furnace tour ended, we walked around the small island, visiting the interesting glass museum and window shopping. I found a jewelry shop owned by a young woman busy making earrings and beautiful blown-glass bead necklaces.

One of those became my Christmas gift from Santa that year.

Walking on, we came upon this spectacular sculpture by Simone Cenedese called Comet Glass Star. Then we had one of our best meals on our entire Venetian vacation, at a little workman’s osteria on Murano.

The Magic of Light in my Window

Though ever more humble, I still find myself sitting in my living room on those days when the sun shines through the fall leaves of the maple….

…. and hits the splashes of colour in the witch balls.

I even made a video a few years back to try to explain it.

When unilaterally short and tight, the QL can ‘hip hike’ levitra buy generic the left ilium as the client assumes an off-weighted supine posture. Designed to be used in a variety of situations, these lifting tools come with a variety of combinations. levitra purchase No surgery helps in making the disorder vanish from the person. http://deeprootsmag.org/2019/02/12/voices-raised-in-determination-and-triumph/ tadalafil uk price In US alone, the survey reveals that it also contains citrulline that has the ability to relax blood vessels, improve the flow of blood to the penile organ Prolonged bicycling Staying away from buy generic cialis http://deeprootsmag.org/2012/09/07/bob-marovichs-gospel-picks-september-2012/ the above-mentioned risk factors can help prevent the development of erectile dysfunction.

Today there’s freezing rain outside and soon snow will be in the forecast in Toronto. On the snowy November day when I photographed the window, below, the leaves hadn’t even fallen yet.

And I recall vividly the winter wonderland look of the tree after our devastating ice storm of December 21, 2013.

Sometimes, when I have holiday lights on the maple’s branches, I stand in the front room looking out in the darkness. The witch balls even look festive at Christmas!

In late winter or early spring, I can often catch the resident cardinals in the maple tree.

At that time of year, when the tree hasn’t yet leafed out, I especially appreciate the detail and colours of the blown glass, whether blue…

…. or green…

… or a glass so clear you can see the tiny grains from the glass-making process.

And then, suddenly, it’s June and my “living” living room ‘curtain’ is back in place, its leaves energized by the power of the sun and the glass balls refracting all the light that’s left over.

After I gave the witch balls their every-three-years wash last week, I watched them turning for what seemed like hours. I’m sure there’s some Galilean law of reciprocal motion about what happens when you twist a sphere suspended by a wire, but it seemed even more magical, as if they were rotating in sympathy with the fluttering leaves on the maple. So I’m ending with this magical moment, which I’ve set to music by the very generous T.R.G. Banks.

A Devastating Gypsy Moth Summer on Lake Muskoka

Posted on by
14

Well, I tried. That’s all I could say about my summer 2020 preventive efforts as I watched hordes of gypsy moth caterpillars climbing up our oak trees in summer 2021.  Though I probably dispatched tens of thousands of caterpillars with the egg-mass-spraying program I blogged about last year (and those masses completely dried up), there were obviously egg masses too far up in the trees that escaped my control efforts. And before we go any further, I am going to continue to refer to this insect as a ‘gypsy’ moth, since I’ve read rather refreshing and reassuring things from actual Roma people who are proud of their collective name. If I were publishing scientific journals, I would need to abide by nomenclatural consensus, but “LDD moth” (from its scientific name Lymantria dispar dispar) confuses the issue unnecessarily for the sake of this final blog.

May 20 – Let me take you through this year’s saga in photos, beginning with my pant leg as I sat on our dock on Lake Muskoka, a few hours north of Toronto, on Victoria Day weekend. Those tiny things are the newly-hatched first instars. They were falling freely from the oaks and pines above our heads. But we read reports in the papers at this time of people developing contact rashes from the tiny larvae landing on their necks!

May 22 – I took a spring wildflower walk through the forest nearby and found an early instar on the leaf of striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum).  These first and second instars are the stage at which aerial spraying forests with Btk (Bacillus thuringiensis subsp.kurastaki) works, with 2 applications at 7-10 days in age and a second approximately 2 weeks later, while caterpillars are less than 1/2 inch long. Gypsy moth males complete 5 instars; females require 6 instars for the additional energy to produce eggs. Caterpillars feed on foliage for 6-8 weeks before pupating.

Alas, Btk also kills the larvae of native butterflies and moths actively feeding at the time and is increasingly proscribed by governments, which is why I photographed this native moth on our back door. It would be an unintended victim of a spraying program – part of a life cycle of which we may not have intimate knowledge but is most certainly part of the native ecology.

June 2 – When we returned to Lake Muskoka eleven days later, the caterpillars were everywhere, including on our house siding where…

…. in the heat of the day, hundreds climbed up to seek shade on the north-facing back wall, many heading right to the roof eaves.

On the hot, exposed hillside behind our cottage, they were eating the leaves of the many red oaks (Quercus rubra) that grow naturally there. The sound was loud, like Rice Krispies…. “snap-crackle-pop”.

June 4 – As I took a break from gardening, once again I was able to assess the development of the caterpillars on my clothing…

…. and the veiled hat I wear to deter blackflies in the woods.

But some landed on our sundeck and were fair game for the resident ants.

Because of the phenomenon of the caterpillars seeking shade on our north-facing cottage wall, we were able to carry out a program of dispatching them into soapy water. We did this several times a day.

Over several weeks in June and early July, we filled many buckets with caterpillars, not that it did much good. It just made us feel we were doing something to help our trees.

The feeding continued throughout June. I could stand beside a tree and watch a never-ending procession of caterpillars up into the canopy…..

…. where, gradually, the foliage began to disappear on our trees.

When we returned to the cottage on June 23, most of the oak trees looked like February…

…. and our back porch was covered with dried-out oak leaves and male flowers. There would be no acorns produced this summer, one of the seldom-mentioned effects of gypsy moth predation. A 1990 West Virginia study on red oaks said “The high carbohydrate content of acorns provides the energy necessary for winter survival. Loss of mast crops due to direct and indirect effects of gypsy moth defoliation may result in large-scale reductions in wildlife habitat and food sources.” The study mentioned three factors related to defoliation: “direct consumption of flowers, abortion of immature acorns due to low carbohydrate supply, and lack of flower bud initiation

Meanwhile, the caterpillars had begun their assault on our big white pines….

…. leaving our sundeck littered with needles daily.

On July 1st, Doug stood on our dock picking caterpillars off the pines. A drop in the literal bucket, as they say.

Besides the oaks and pines, the caterpillars devoured staghorn sumac leaves….

….. and the foliage of my poor nannyberry (Viburnum lentago)…..

…. and even snacked on some meadow perennials like daisy fleabane (Erigeron philadelphicum).

That weekend I visited one of my favourite wetlands nearby, a place I call the Torrance Fen. Here the caterpillars had stripped the speckled alders (Alnus incana)….

…. and were working on the winterberries (Ilex verticillata). 

On June 26th, I took a walk down the dirt road near our cottage and looked at the forest there. Because it is more mixed than our hillside, the damage seemed less severe, but there was still the crackling sound of the caterpillars eating. They were on the young beeches (Fagus grandifolia)…

…. but completely ignored the white ash (Fraxinus americana). Sadly, emerald ash borer has other destructive plans for that species.

Paper birches (Betula papyrifera) and trembling aspens (Populus tremuloides) were stripped bare.

By June 30th, the oldest caterpillars had matured and begun seeking a sheltered spot in which to pupate. Pupae are a dark red-brown with hairs on the exterior; female pupae are larger than the males.  They will stay in the pupal stage for 1-2 weeks before hatching as moths.

Some of the aggregations were truly disgusting looking, with tens of caterpillars pupating together.

But on that day, I also noted a lot of withered caterpillars stuck to branches in a ‘backbend’ position, indicating they had died of NPV or nucleopolyhedrosis virus.

If there was any good news this summer, it was that July featured unusually rainy weather – which was not great for people wanting to plan events outdoors, but was the best possible news for our ravaged trees. Refoliation of defoliated deciduous trees requires sufficient groundwater to enable a new round of leaf formation and photosynthesis. Watching the rain fall outdoors actually gave me great joy…

…. and this Canada Day rainbow seemed to augur well for our trees. This year, at least.

I even spent some time on July 4th counting the number of monarch butterfly caterpillars eating the leaves of the butterfly milkweed I’d planted just for them.

And on July 12th, I photographed the new leaves appearing on our red oaks…..

…. even as newly-hatched male gypsy moths flew about in a flurry, seeking the stationary females. The females were everywhere, including in the grooved bark of white pines and…

…even under the plastic tarp covering our firewood pile (and on the firewood itself.)

But on July 14th, it was sadly apparent that the egg masses on trees were much more abundant than in summer 2020.  This was one of our worst affected trees. Without sustained cold temperatures in the coming winter, it seems evident that next summer will be even worse, if that’s possible.

So (as in 2020) I mixed up another batch of my horticultural oil solution, attached fresh sponges to my extender pole…..

… .and began the long process of spraying eggs. With the number of egg masses I’ve seen it will be a long process this autumn. But each mass contains a potential of 200-1000 caterpillars so it’s definitely worthwhile to reduce their numbers. And it was evident from last year’s dried-up egg masses that the homemade oil does the job.

I made a video that captured some of this year’s saga, below. Just as a last word, I have read in so many publications that gypsy moths tend to come in cycles of 10 or 12 years, but we have never seen predation like summer 2021 in more than 40 years of visiting and living on Lake Muskoka.  If this becomes an annual phenomenon, it will have dire consequences for our tree canopy. Fingers crossed for a cold, cold winter, since extended days of temperatures -25C or lower are reported to be fatal to the egg masses.

While as a canada cialis levitra davidfraymusic.com collection it’s fulfilling to watch, it does not likely work as a remake. Things to no rx levitra follow along with Kamagra treatment: Whatever you had during may affect your health including physical, metal and reproductive. Hotels Miami South Beach, Miami Attractions and Everglades Tours and An Enjoyable Florida Vacation, Coral Castle is a most attractive monument in Miami. levitra samples The study was observational, so there is purchasing viagra in canada not a permanent cure.

My Spring Nosegays

Posted on by
12

According to etymology online, a “nosegay” was historically a “small bunch of flowers used to delight the sense of smell”. The word arose in the late 15th century when ‘gay’ was a noun (now obsolete) meaning ‘a gay or bright thing’.  Nosegays gave rise to the tussie-mussie, a handheld bouquet in an ornate, cone-shaped, metallic vase popular in late 19th century Victorian times that became a kind of fashion accessory (plus mobile air freshener in those pre-deodorant days.)  My spring nosegays are different from the summer bouquets I make at the cottage with my meadow flowers…..

…. or the bouquets I make for the living room mantel, like this one with boughs of cherry blossoms and peonies…..

….. or the ones I’d make in hollowed out cabbages and pumpkins! This was autumn 2002.

I think of my nosegays as tiny bouquets that indeed often delight my sense of smell, especially because the spring blossoms I include are often growing too low for me to bend in order to smell their perfume. That is definitely the case with fragrant snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis), which I adorned with a small rhyme one spring after a long, snowy winter. 

Snowdrops in a shot glass
How apt, I think.
I could get drunk in these
 tiny, nodding blossoms..
Savoring, after a long sober winter
The first intoxicating sip of spring

Snowdrops flower very early, often persisting under spring snow, along with crocuses, Iris ‘Katharine Hodgkin’ and fragrant viburnum (V. farreri), so they make lovely companions.  This tiny bouquet from March 25th this year had such a sweet scent.  Speaking of ‘this year’, spring flowers emerged early, were buried in snow a few weeks later, and have enjoyed the cool temperatures, allowing them to last longer – something that doesn’t happen often in Toronto,

There will not be any side effects in comparison to other drugs.Another benefit of these cialis generic canada, is that they reduce the understanding so you become less delicate. Under this shell the furnace still churns, providing free and limitless heat with which buy viagra generic https://unica-web.com/dezvareh.pdf to heat and light our homes. Anxieties, guilt and depression are all contributing factors that could quite possibly cause you to lose what most men find as the most pleasurable experience of their lives, and so much more, their self-assurance relies on it. order viagra usa Kamagra is the generic counterpart and costs less than https://unica-web.com/watch/2014/crafty-fellow-i-saw-his-obituary.html commander viagra does.

There is such a delicacy about these early bloomers, best appreciated up close. I photographed this on April 19, 2020.

Way back on March 20, 2012, a record warm and early spring, I needed three little vases to showcase my spring bulbs. From left we have blue and white Siberian squill (S. siberica and S. siberica ‘Alba’) with glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii), Dutch hybrid crocuses (C. verna), and Greek windflower (Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’) with Corydalis solida ‘Beth Evans’.

This was April 6, 2020. I liked the little dash of orange from the Crocus x luteus ‘Golden Yellow’, along with the ice blue striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides), glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii), blue Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) and pink ‘Beth Evans’ corydalis (C. solida).

When the Dutch crocuses are at their prime, sometimes it’s fun just to showcase those silken purple petals. This was from April 12, 2014.

Similarly, I sometimes like to pick just one perfect spring bloom, like this Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’ on April 9, 2012, and give it the spotlight.

On April 23, 2013, I selected just a few stems of ‘Violet Beauty’ glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii) to photograph. Interestingly, this cultivar has not persisted in my garden, unlike the parent species.

We have a set of antique crystal shot glasses just the right size for a nosegay of spring bulbs. This was April 18, 2019, and featured the usual suspects.

Pastels flowering at the same time, on April 10, 2020, included light pink Viburnum farreri (which I blogged about recently), pink Corydalis solida ‘Beth Evans’ and ice-blue striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides).

These two little bulbs grow together in my garden and look just as lovely in a votive candle holder.  Blue Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) and Corydalis solida ‘Beth Evans’.  These would normally be finished by now, but our cool 2021 spring kept them in good shape for my April 25th photo.

I adore grape hyacinths and wanted an early one in sky-blue. So last autumn I planted loads of Muscari aucheri ‘Ocean Blue’ and I am delighted. They’re at the front of this little nosegay, along with pure-white Narcissus ‘Thalia’, broad-leaved grape hyacinth (Muscari latifolium) with its navy-and-royal blue florets and Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’.

Last April 29th, I combined Muscari latifolium with the wonderful Tulipa praestans ‘Shogun’ and Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’.

Last week I plucked just a few flowers from my garden to place in my green Irish mug. Included were three daffodils, ‘Thalia’, ‘Stainless’ and little ‘Golden Echo’, which has become such a favourite that I wrote a blog in its honour.  As well, I added a stem of peachy-orange Hyacinthus ‘Gipsy Queen’ which wafted its scent in my kitchen. Behind are two tulips, T. fosteriana ‘Orange Emperor’, left, and T. praestans ‘Shogun’, right.

This little nosegay had a bit of everything! It was May 4, 2020, so I was able to partner white Narcissus ‘Thalia’ with (clockwise from front) a sprig of blue Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla) with a stem of magenta Rhododendron ‘PJM’ right behind it; lilac-purple Corydalis solida; Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’; broad-leaved grape hyacinth (Muscari latifolium); and wine-purple snakeshead fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris) at right.

I love bright, sunny colours and this little nosegay in a bud vase brightened up my kitchen on May 13, 2020. Along with spice-scented Narcissus ‘Geranium’, front, I used the orange, lily-flowered tulip ‘Ballerina’; Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’ (which lasts a long time because of its sequential blooming); and a few sprigs of forget-me-not (Myosotis sylvatica) and forsythia.

As May arrives, other parts of my garden wake up. Spring 2019 was quite cool, so the Greek windflowers (Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’) and Corydalis solida were still in flower when my masses of forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica) started flowering. I celebrated these “little blue flowers” on May 22, 2019, including common grape hyacinth (Muscari armeniacum) and Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla).

One of my biggest garden problems here at home in Toronto is the steady advance of lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria majalis) through plantings. In my case, it was here when we bought our old house 38 years ago and my mistake, had I known what was coming, was not to eradicate it immediately. Now it is the tough groundcover for most of my front garden and a lot of the back. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to deter the native, prairie perennials that emerge through it for summer. I have had fun with lily-of-the valley, turning it into a fragrant chapeau for a garden party, which I detailed in a blog. And I also add a few stems to whatever is in bloom, including grape hyacinths, Siberian bugloss and forget-me-nots, like the nosegay below from May 22, 2020.

My lawn contains lots of native Confederate violet (Viola sororia var. priceana) and I’ve included them in the odd nosegay with forget-me-nots and grape hyacinths. This was April 22nd in the record-warm spring of 2012.      

In my final photo, made May 23, 2020, I’ve used the green shot glasses and flask from a vintage ‘gentleman’s travelling bar set’ that my late father-in-law gave my husband. Rather than whiskey, it includes the first perfumed blossoms of Burkwood’s viburnum (V. x burkwoodii) along with blue camassia (C. leichtlinii ‘Caerulea’), the final flowers of Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’, lily-of-the-valley, and common grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum). And that’s a wrap for my spring nosegays!

April Snow

Posted on by
2

Winter. It’s never really over until the fat robin sings… at least 50 times.

We’re always reminded of that in April when mother nature says, “Here, have another helping!” 

We had snow last night in Toronto, quite a lot for mid-April. I went out with my camera as I often do early in the morning after an ice storm or dusting of snow leaves the spring flowers shocked but photogenic.  My Tulipa fosteriana ‘Orange Emperor’ bowed down – humiliating for an emperor.

Tulipa praestans ‘Shogun’ seemed less martial arts this morning, more ‘shivering’.

Sweet little Iris aucheri ‘Ocean Magic’ looked like Arctic Ocean magic….

…. and Muscari latifolium wore a tiny white toque.

These diseases results in too much pain and extreme difficulty in concentrating, thinking, drawing conclusion, expressions order viagra from canada and recognizing things around them are treated with cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy. Nothing makes a man feel astonishing like resembling a decent, costly architect fragrance, so why not simply ahead and treat yourself and feel breathtaking? Regardless of whether they have a permanent partner, and many feel the real sexual freedom in a sear and yellow leaf. tadalafil 5mg no prescription Modern society has always placed a huge step forward since the first ever oral erectile dysfunction drug known as cialis tadalafil 5mg also called as sildenafil, was brought in the year 1998. There are several kinds of dosages of Check Out Your pharmacy shop levitra cheap online available at an inexpensive price.

Hyacinthus ‘Gipsy Queen’ looked like she wanted to move her caravan somewhere warmer.

Lovely Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’, my new favourite daffodil whose virtues I extolled here last year, hung her head sadly.

Snakeshead fritillaries (Fritillaria meleagris) seemed less than impressed.

Miss ‘Beth Evans’ (Corydalis solida) swooned. I’m not sure why, her kin come from northern Europe – she should be used to this spring trickery!

In the back garden, the resident cardinals were quiet – why sing when you can stay warm in the cedar hedge?

But out on the street, the sparrows kept up their spirits, and reminded me to keep mine up, too. After all, April snow showers bring (back) spring flowers, right?

My Motley Pots

Posted on by
6

For someone growing plants in meadows and naturalistic planting beds at ground level at our cottage on Lake Muskoka north of Toronto, I spend an inordinate length of time each summer watching a few mismatched pots on the upper deck right outside my cottage living room window. 

At first it was just a pair of oversized resin pots planted with conventional annuals. In 2007, that meant ‘Profusion Orange’ zinnias, nasturtiums, ivy geraniums and peach and yellow African daisies (Osteospermum ‘Symphony Series’).

In 2011, I planted both pots with an eclectic mix of succulents, agastache and spiny porcupine tomato (Solanum pyracanthos) that I bought at the Toronto Botanical Garden’s spring plant sale. 

That was the first year I noticed that the ruby-thoated hummingbird seemed to be enjoying nectaring in the agastache flowers.

In 2012, my pots featured the few succulents I was able to winter over in a sunny ground floor window as well as a swath of colourful portulaca.

In 2015, with photography on my mind, I paid more attention to hummingbird favourites, shopping at a favourite nursery (Toronto’s Plant World, sadly now closed) to buy a selection of salvias and agastaches (aka hummingbird mints) I called my “hummingbird groceries”.

One pot featured deep-pink calibrachoa, orange portulaca and ‘Zahara Double Orange’ zinnias with Agastache ‘Kudos Series’.

The hummingbirds loved Agastache ‘Kudos Coral’.

I added a third pot that summer, planting it with Bidens ferulifolia ‘Campfire Fireburst’ (an over-rated plant)….

….. and some special salvias or sages, including Salvia microphylla ‘Hot Lips’.

 The hummingbird supped a little in an ordinary nasturtium too.

In 2016, I couldn’t find all the plants I wanted so I filled in with assorted fancy  petunias. I also found holy basil or tulsi (Ocimum tenuiflorum) which is one of the most amazing bee plants. Since I do a lot of native bee photography, I never had to go far to find a huge assortment of bees to photograph…..

…… including the tiny green sweat bee (Augochlora pura).

But that was the year I discovered that hummingbirds love the Wish series of salvias, including Salvia ‘Ember’s Wish’ below.

The next year, 2017 (notice I added two additional very motley pots from the back of the cottage), I had a pleasant surprise.  The striped and ‘Wave’ series petunias I’d grown the previous year self-seeded in the soil over winter and…

….. produced a beautiful mix of healthy hybrids in all kinds of jewel colours.  I liked them much better than the originals, and some had that old-fashioned fragrance.

I also grew heliotrope (Heliotropium arborescens) for its sweet perfume and was pleased to welcome back self-seeded ‘Apricot Sprite’ agastache (A. aurantiacum)……

….. which is always a hummingbird menu choice.

That year I also grew blackeyed susan vine (Thunbergia alata ‘Susie Yellow‘) on a tripod in one of the pots and caught the hummingbird checking it out on occasion.

In 2018, I worked on my close-up photography.  It’s not that easy to get photos of the male ruby-throated (it’s the male that sports the rosy neck feathers or gorget), since males migrate south much earlier than females, usually by the end of July. But here is monsieur on Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Blooms’.

It was fun to try Lantana montevidensis that year, and someone approved!

As always, the self-seeded ‘Apricot Sprite’  (Agastache  aurantiacum) was popular not just with hummingbirds, but with the odd bumble bee too.

For 2019, my motley pots featured the usual suspects in the sage department, and I added a little birdbath which was never visited (though pretty)…..

….. and one unusual Betsy Clebsch (California’s sage queen) hybrid called Salvia ‘Big Swing’.  It was visited once in a while, but it wasn’t as popular as….

…..Salvia ‘Amistad’….

….or Salvia ‘Ember’s Wish’.

Which brings me to 2020.  Actually, let’s go back to November 2019. When I knew my Toronto source for plants of Argentine sage (Salvia guaranitica) was going out of business, I decided to dig up my tender ‘Black and Blooms’ plants and bring them down from Lake Muskoka to the city. I left the pots on the deck in early autumn for my husband to keep watered when I travelled to Greece to take a botanical tour with my pal Liberto Dario. Alas, my husband  also travelled to New York on the coldest night of November and my poor sages sat outside in Toronto as the thermometer plunged to -9C. When I came home, they seemed to have died. But I put them in our basement laundry tubs, gave them a watering, and just watched. Sure enough, little leaves emerged eventually and by March they announced themselves ready to greet hummingbirds for another season.

For some reason, perhaps Covid-19!!, I decided that this would be the year I would return to seed-sowing at home. Alas, I had long ago discarded my old basement grow-lights, but I did have a few LED lights for the gooseneck lamps which I sometimes use for small-scale studio photography.  And I also had an empty 3rd floor guest bedroom window-seat. Voilà, I had seedlings in April!

I had long wanted to try sowing Petunia exserta, a rare, threatened endemic from limestone outcrops in the Serras de Sudeste in Brazil. It was first described in 1987; thirty years later, only fourteen plants were found during an expedition. It is reputed to be a good hummingbird plant, so of course I wanted to try it.  A friend in Victoria gifted me seeds and it turned out to be amazingly eager to germinate and grow!

I also thought it would be fun to grow an old French marigold from seed, a tall single form that was supposed to have been grown by Linnaeus himself in his garden in Upssala, Sweden.  So I ordered seed for Tagetes patula ‘Burning Embers’.  You should know that although this species is called “French” marigold, it’s actually native to Mexico and Guatemala. It got its common name because it was brought back to Europe in the 17th century by Portuguese explorers.  The seeds germinated quickly, but they were a little wonky as they twisted vigorously toward the light.

By June, the annuals were planted in Muskoka and the petunias looked stunning. 

I wasn’t sure if any hummingbirds had found them, but I was convinced later when I saw the watercolour that my son’s girlfriend, Italian artist Marta Motti, made for me as a birthday surprise.  That’s the male with his ruby throat, by the way.

Hummingbird on Petunia exserta by Marta Motti

Late June and early July saw an unrelenting heat wave and drought. On July 4th, I put a thermometer on a chair on my sundeck near my pots and it read 104F-40C.  It was a huge challenge to keep the pots watered sufficiently, and I realized these two annuals were meant for rich, moisture-retentive meadows, not crowded pots.  And the petunias grow upwards in the fashion of indeterminate tomatoes, making flowers only on the end of the shoot and dropping the withered flowers by the dozens.  If you want to revive gangly plants, it’s recommended to shear them back in midsummer to the first branching shoots and new growth will form.

Finally, on July 16th the rains came. It poured. My meadows rejoiced and the motley pots were saturated. I did notice that the bright red of the Petunia exserta faded to a pale rose in the heavy rain, but that seemed to be temporary.  Notice that I had added a few rustic willow arbours to host the red morning glory (Ipomoea coccinea) that I seeded in the pots and has yet to flower.

Fast forward a few weeks to mid-August and the pots look wild, overgrown and the most motley they’ve ever been. Fortunately, I’ve never wanted to win a beauty contest with these containers; it’s all about hummingbirds and bees.

This gold-edged red flower is the classic seed catalogue look of Tagetes patula ‘Burning Embers’,but the seeds I sowed produced a sunset mix of colours, some striped or streaked.

Bumble bees arrived in droves to forage for pollen on them.

They look very festive with the ‘Black and Blooms’ sage.

Though they’re usually listed as growing to 18-24 inches (45-60 cm), mine have reached  41 inches  (104 cm) and may well grow taller.  I was curious about the connection to Linnaeus, and asked my Facebook friend, Swedish ecologist Roger Holt, who was at one time a gardener at the Linnaeus garden. He said: “I asked botanist Jesper Kårehed, responsible for the Linnaeus heritage parts and got the answer that both Linnaeus and his precursor, the universal genius Olof Rudbeck (1630-1702) who built the first Swedish Botanical Garden (that later become the Linnaeus garden), had Tagetes patula (and erecta) and from paintings you can see that Rudbeck had the high elongated forms.  In the 1920’s seeds from a form, said to have been picked in the garden of Hammarby, Linnaeus’s private home, started to be around in the trade.  The Linnaeus garden was recreated in the 1930’s, and the tagetes have been there all from the start but probably not the same line of seeds.”

It’s a bit like having Linnaeus’s meadow right outside my window.

The petunias have hosted the odd wasp, and a handsome slaty skimmer dragonfly made it his sunny hunting perch for a few days.

But it has been fun to watch the hummingbird make its way around the flowers, taking a sip out of each.

Here’s a little video I made starring Petunia exserta.

Cervical fusion is fusing one vertebra to another in the discount viagra levitra neck, the top seven bones of the spine. This procedure causes semen to be released generic viagra through the penis. Natural products need to be taken for a longer duration of sexual activity is a must No! Surveys have found that viagra prescription for woman an average sexual session lasts for about 7 to 10 minutes. It not only helps in proper flow of blood but also arouses a person sexually which increases the desire to have a better sex. http://appalachianmagazine.com/author/AppalachianMagazine/page/22/ cialis tadalafil uk

However, the champion this summer, as every year, is Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Blooms’.

Let me leave you with a musical nod to my motley pots and their faithful feathered visitors.