The sun, it was shining!

Wow what a beautiful day yesterday! It's Maple in the County Festival and toured a couple sugar bushes and had some pretty delicious maple syrup and pancakes! Here's someone special anticipating the feast!


On the gardening front things are finally starting to get going! My first crocus are blooming - species Crocus, can't remember the variety. The smaller daffs will be blooming within 10 days, I predict - next week I have to start a clean-up, cutting back the Siberian Iris so that the large Narcissus can poke up. Spring fever has definitely set in!

March 22, 2009

It looks like my little experiment tying buckthorn branches around the corkscrew Hazel has worked - knock on wood! As of this afternoon there's no sign of critters nibbling away at the tender buds. Take a look:










There's no lakes of standing water this spring either, unlike last year (or the three years before that) - I'm not too sure if that's an indication of a low snowfall this year or better drainage/evaporation this year? On the other hand, the wild temperature swings has lead to some extreme freeze-thaw upheavals. Take a look at these normally upright obelisk-ish stones in the pea stone patio:














And just to prove it is, indeed spring, here the first snowdrops of the year in my Toronto garden, photo taken last Saturday:

The old homestead

Here's the fixer upper that came with the place. That's an old Massey Ferguson manure spreader in the foreground.

A cold cold January

Drove out to the County today - everything is as it should be. It was clear and crisp. Not too many critter tracks in the snow, which gives me hope for the Corkscrew Hazel which, for the past three years, has privded spring and winter salad for rabbits. Last fall I tied some Buckthorn rnahces around the hazel so I'm hoping this will deter the rabbits. Here's a picture where you may disceren the Hazel from the Buckthorn.

One thing I love about winter is how ornamental grasses stand out. Here's a switch grass that'll hold its shape until I take the shears to it in April. I have a number of Calamagrostis x acutiflora Karl Foerster and they seem to vary in attractiveness year to year depending on moisture and, possibly, soil. This swithgrass stays the same year after year though, and I love it.

This other clump of grass, on the right, even gets bigger year after year with no extra attention at all.