NoBloPoMo – November

Why would anyone commit to writing a blog post a day for the whole month of November, as I've just done for NaBloPoMo, the blogging equivalent of NaNoWriMo AKA National Novel Writing Month. A garden blog post. In November? November! When nothing of note is happening in any garden in the northern Northern Hemisphere. A post a day, and I can't miss one. Not one. I must be out of my blogging little mind.

As anyone who had to memorize this little poem by Thomas Hood knows, November is, shall we say, off-season in the garden...

November

by Thomas Hood

No sun--no moon!
No morn--no noon!
No dawn--no dusk--no proper time of day--
No sky--no earthly view--
No distance looking blue--

No road--no street--
No "t'other side the way"--
No end to any Row--
No indications where the Crescents go--

No top to any steeple--
No recognitions of familiar people--
No courtesies for showing 'em--
No knowing 'em!

No mail--no post--
No news from any foreign coast--
No park--no ring--no afternoon gentility--
No company--no nobility--

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member--
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
November!

The challenge runs all year, but November's the main event. And it starts tomorrow. There's still time to register, yourself. Thanks (I think) to VP of Veg Plotting for the heads-up. Come on, all you crazies in the blogosphere. Lubricate your blogging muscles, and let's get Blo-ing!

What's to love about a rainy October day?

Perhaps it's our English or Welsh blood*, but I like the rain. Sometimes we might get too much of a good thing, but there it is: a good thing.

With my hefty, 2,424-page Compact Oxford English Dictionary (New Edition) came a button-shaped reading glass to magnify the mouse type. I love the way rain does this to leaves, making the details shine. Above, are the fall leaves of purple Japanese barberry, Berberis thunbergii 'Rose Glow' (which I now feel honour-bound to tell you is an invasive plant, a disappointing detail I just learned from Toronto blogger Native Plant Girl. Please read her PSA and be informed and forewarned.)

See what I mean about magnifying? The surprisingly tough nasturtiums (Tropaeolum majus) are still chugging along at the close of October, despite the preview of winter we've been given over past weeks. Their fleshy bits remain undeterred, and are still having fun pumping out flowers and catching the dew.


Rain also glosses up the furriness, so the colours of these big-root geranium (Geranium macrorrhizum) make more of a show. If only they'd "do their thing" over more of their leaves each autumn, it would compensate for the fact that, in my dry shade garden at least, these plants hardly ever flower. They are an almost invincible groundcover, though.

Rainy days can send you scurrying for shelter. When there isn't much to look at in the garden, it can cause you to see what little there is. Lilac leaves might not change colour, but you can occasionally spot them wearing crystal earrings if you're quick.

And then, there's the way a wet, cool, fall day can amplify the light apple scent of a rose like 'New Dawn.' It's a fragrance that can get lost in the heat and hurly burly of a summer garden. This one offered itself at nose level, right at the end of a long cane, as if to say: stop and smell me. The raindrops on roses are but icing on that particular cake.


*As someone, or in our case sometwo, with Welsh heritage who spent a significant hunk of our childhood in Wales, one of my favourite bits of a Jasper Fforde novel is the fake ad slogan enticing you to holiday in Wales: Not always raining. In my second warning of this post, I'd like to caution you against clicking Jasper's link unless you have earned a significant number of Procrastination Points.


















So enjoy the rain, and the mildness that makes it possible. In a few weeks it most certainly will be not always raining.

Orange you glad I didn't say Pumpkin?

Compose your own captions for this Hallowe'eny Wordless Wednesday...

Ideas from Québec City's Ephemeral Gardens

Québec City was born in 1608, and in 2008 it had a big party to mark its 400th. The Ephemeral Gardens were among the events and happenings that unfolded all through the year-long celebration – and which included a free concert by Céline Dion, for 250,000 of her closest friends, on the Plains of Abraham.

The heart does go on, even in summer 2009, down in the Old Port (Vieux-Port) of Québec. Here, you can still catch the innovative Robert LePage/Ex Machina Image Mill (Moulin à Images) show, the story of Québec's history projected on those silos in the background, the Bunge company's 600-metre-long (almost 2000-ft.) grain elevators.

More à propos for this blog though, a few of the least-ephemeral Ephemeral Gardens remain: a handful of the original eleven contemporary gardens, about half of which were selected by juried competition and half invited. (To give you a taste of the conceptual innovation that informed these temporary spaces, this link is to the Boustrophedon Garden that exists now only in the ephemera of memory.)

I didn't see any interpretive signs that would place these gardens in their often political context. Yet, I saw much to appreciate. The use of materials, for instance, is inspired. These rust-tinted rebars make bold fencing, with emphatic upright lines.

I read recently (and wish I could give credit to the garden blogger) that a good designer can make asphalt interesting. Immediately, the willow maze below came to mind. The willows appear to be growing through the cracks in the pavement; albeit artful, man-made (in a non-gender-specific sense) cracks.

I also liked the simple barriers created by the stacked and pegged boards. Threaded through with boardwalk pathways, it might be used in a contemporary garden to create a transition between spaces. Or, for something more rustic, replace the rectilinear forms with pruned branches. No nails required.

The intent behind the installation at right might have been related to clear cutting... I could be misguided in that notion, but something about clear cutting rattles around my memorybox. In a purely pedestrian sense (pun unintended), doesn't this make a novel paving material! It even suggests how to apply it to a change in grade.




Behold at left a simple application of negative space. The bed inserted into the grassed area is filled with gray gravel identical to the material used on the larger picnic area. I would have liked to see the mirrored bed planted with ornamental grasses. Perhaps it once was... or with turf. Right now, it's just a garden waiting to happen.

But good ideas are growing in it, if you look closely.

Sunday Favourite: Not everyone has your passion for dead leaves

Linda from Crafty Gardener has alerted us to a new way to revisit some of our blogging blasts from the past – to introduce them to new readers and because some things are just worth repeating. This great idea comes from Happy To Design, who hosts links to reprises from bloggers everywhere.

This post, written by Sarah, is the first we ever published on Toronto Gardens, way back on October 18, 2006. Hope you enjoy it!
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Not everyone has your passion for dead leaves – Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

What is it about Canadians and dead leaves? The spurning of them, I mean. To my utter horror, I've just discovered that my new downstairs neighbour has carefully raked and stuffed into plastic garbage bags every single decaying leaf in the backyard of our shared garden.

Imagine smoke coming out of the top of my head at a furious rate.

This is not the first time. There was another neighbour. Another rake.

And, as it was the neighbour's mother who was the actual culprit it made things stickier. But more of that later.

Few things make my blood pressure rise instantaneously - I mean that instantaneous clutching of your insides when something has been done that Shouldn't Have Been Done. I don’t suffer from road rage, and generally only mutter sarcastically when someone does something idiotic in most arenas of life. The garden is different, however: when I saw those bags filled to bursting— with leaves I had been tending and amassing for years—I was fully ready to viciously throttle the perpetrator.

I admit I have become a bit nutty about leaves. The more rotten and closer to becoming leaf mould, the better. But I as I garden in the city on practically pure sand I have good reason to be. My garden was once a beach of Lake Ontario. Some sort of geological happening, details of which I am unclear, caused the lake to recede further and further out and the beaches to remain behind.The end result is that many east-end gardens are pretty much pure sand, and mine is one of them. And I mean, real sand. Yellow, fine sand.

Few things are actually happy growing in it. There’s nothing to eat. Water drains straight through. It’s a hard life, or a slow death in many cases. Yet, if enough organic matter lands on it and rots, becoming humus, sand can become soil. I've been doing my part in my little postage stamp garden to help this along. Soil does happen. Eventually.

That, at any rate, was the alchemy I was trying to practice by allowing leaves to settle on my garden for years. Between earthworm action, (more on earthworm love later) and natural leaf breakdown, the soil is beginning to improve. By grabbing leaves and pulling them down into the soil, the worms create soil. The more leaves sitting on the surface, the more earthworms, and the better it all works.

I look back to the halcyon days in my garden before my first “Leaf Incident”. The days when my fellow tenants cared not a fig for the great outdoors. Their only garden requirement was a flat place to put a barbecue. They saw me puttering about back there and usually paid me no heed, except to say something like, “Looks like a lot of work!” My leaves sat, my earthworms ate, and all organic matter quietly rotted.

Now I will tell you how my first Leaf Incident unfolded.

Looking over my balcony one day, to my utter shock, where once my garden nestled in a cozy bed of leaves, I saw a barren and leafless firmament. I saw bare soil. I saw the Tell Tale Rake. I saw the green bags a-bulging. It swam before my eyes. Who…what….how? Then, with my heart a-pounding, my hair on fire and my brains spilling out of my ears, I cornered my neighbour and said, with as much restraint as I could, "Why, Why ? The leaves! The leaves! What h-happened?"

Looking at me a little puzzled, she told me her mother had raked them, believing herself that this was one of the most sensible acts anyone could have done. "But, but, but," I stammered "I meant for the leaves to be there, I put them there on purpose. It's for the Soil! To help things grow!”

The tenant apologized on her mother’s behalf and told me the story. Her mother was visiting her from Nova Scotia, and while her daughter was at work had wanted something to do to help. She had looked outside at the leaves on the garden and found them…..messy. "Nobody wants dead leaves cluttering up the place.” She thought, “It’s lucky I came along!” She grabbed the rake and hoved to it. And an hour or so later, there was nothing but bare earth, a rake, bulging garbage bags, and a well exercised mother.

Well this points out how different people’s mindsets can be. To this fine lady leaves equalled filth. While to me, leaves were life itself in the making.

I’m happy to say, this point of view re: leaves does seem to be altering a bit, at least officially. The garbage men won’t even pick leaves up in green garbage bags any more. Unless they are earmarked for composting, and in special paper bags. No, no more leaves are going to landfill. In theory.

But even with this welcome change, I still don’t want my leaves raked up. My leaves aren’t going to go to some community compost heap. Not my leaves. I want them right there where I can keep an eye on them, thank you.

Our urban forest: Life and death of a tree

When my son came across this circa-1928 image in the Toronto archives, I realized how much we take our urban forest for granted. This is a picture of the school across the street, taken from what is now our front lawn. And here is how the same scene looks about 80 years later...

That tiny sapling beside the fire hydrant is today the massive Norway maple (Acer platanoides) that wreaks havoc with my foolish attempt to create an English cottage garden.

We think our street trees have been around forever, and that they will continue to be around for generations. Not so. These giants have a shorter lifespan than trees in forested situations. We should be thinking forward and planning (and planting) to replace them now, before they disappear. An illustration...

At the right of the entrance to the school in the archival shot, you might detect the threadlike trunk of the brother or sister of my maple next door. Here is what happened to that sibling in a wind storm this May.

Such tall trees are continually being pruned to avoid conflicts with hydro lines or homeowners who feel they need a trim. The main branches can become long and top-heavy. Insects such as carpenter ants can move in where damage or a narrow crotch (the V where main branches meet) have left the trunk open to rot.

Wind happens. Lightning strikes. Branches fall.

Naturally, a tree like this once compromised, especially one above a loading zone for kids and parents, must be scrutinized. Once assessed, trees might end up painted with The Dreaded Orange Dot.

That means it's slated for removal. This one might have been tagged earlier, but I noticed it first in June. It enjoyed its last summer. Then, last week, I saw the stump.

Eighty years isn't long, but it's long enough that we stop paying attention. We shouldn't. Our street trees, and even those in our parks, aren't mighty redwoods lasting 5,000 years. They have a brief lifecycle that includes old age and death. We, therefore, should have a succession plan.

At the awards show for the East York Blooming Contest, I met Andrea Dawber of GreenHere, who has become a bit of an expert in grassroots community reforestation. I'll be asking for her guidance in attempting a street-long initiative to interplant the next generation of street trees here. I expect it will be difficult. People like the smaller trees, or flowering trees. They don't like the shade; I kvetch about it myself.

Yet, in addition to the environmental role our soaring trees play, aesthetically they have a huge impact on the character of our street and on nearby nabes of the same vintage. It would be sad and ugly if all we were to see of our trees was this.

Golden fall foliage: Katsura tree

The fall foliage I uploaded yesterday leaned strongly towards reds. Yet, sometimes yellow can make an equal statement. Especially a yellow intense enough to literally drag me down the street to investigate.

Meet the Japanese katsura tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum), a tree that should be planted more often in Toronto. This picture is just as it came out of the camera, with no colour boost. Not one little bit.

And here's how it looks from afar. Isn't that clear, rich yellow something else? On an overcast afternoon like today, this was sunshine on a stick; a golden pool amid the darker foliage all along the street.

I read recently that katsura's autumn leaves give off a scent like candy floss. That would be very pleasant indeed, but my nose didn't detect any today.

What says this is a katsura? Mostly, the small, simple [(smooth-edged) oops, I knew as soon as I hit Publish that I didn't mean "smooth-edged." Simple leaves are simply not compound.], heart-shaped leaves. The name Cercidiphyllum means roughly "with leaves like a Cercis" or redbud. On this specimen, the shape is enhanced by a feathered pencilling of dark green at the edges. I wonder if that happens every year?

Katsuras tend to have a vase-shaped branching habit you can begin to see in the tree above, but which can be more pronounced and multi-stemmed.

Closer to home, this katsura at bottom right in a more exposed position was photographed in May. Its foliage is virtually gone right now. Squint carefully at the picture's upper right corner, and you can almost make out the upward branching pattern.

Katsuras are among the choices available through Toronto's street tree program, which also includes a number of local and North American native trees. This tree is a well-behaved guest, however, and is deserving of consideration. It's clear some of the local wildlife concurs.

Wordless Almost-Over Wednesday: A leafy one

Purple barberry (Berberis) showing its little red pal how to really do red in fall.

In full sun, berberis gets that glowing embers effect; purple, red, orange yellow.

Amur maple (Acer tartaricum var. ginnala, formerly Acer ginnala), striking in red.

Yes, must get myself one. Too bad the columnar form is harder to find.

The burnished red on gold of the sugar maple (Acer saccharum). Sweet!

Alas, the American ash (Fraxinus americana). With the currently unstoppable emerald ash borer wave, how much longer can we enjoy your crown of gold "overlaid with plum"?

Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia), its fall colours backlit and brilliant.

Here, stealing a little of the berberis' glowing embers thunder. Note the black fruit.

Even from the front, it's not too shabby... though a little too aggressive a clinger.

The fall colour of the Freeman hybrid maple (Acer x freemanii), a cross between the bold red but fussy red maple (A. rubrum) and fast-growing silver maple (A. saccharinum).

Redbud (Cercis canadensis) in autumn. Heart-shaped leaves are simply a bonus.

Sorry about the words after promising wordlessness. For a clear explanation of why autumn leaves change colour, read this by Deborah Silver on her blog Dirt Simple.

Yorkville on a Sunday afternoon

The rose window of the Toronto Heliconian Club, for women in arts and letters.

A colleague of my husband's invited us to hear her perform a Bach concert at the Heliconian Club on Sunday. The club, celebrating its 100th year in 2009, is a place I passed daily when (long ago) I lived in the only inexpensive flat on Hazelton Avenue.

The concert was beautiful, and afterwards the blue sky beckoned me and my camera on a stroll around the streets of Yorkville, while my husband went in search of coffee.

Yorkville has come a long way since its hippy and coffeehouse days in the 1960s and 70s. I came here then, not to hang out, but to get my teeth straightened; or sort of straightened. Our dad had a knack for finding off-beat medical professionals, and our dentist on Cumberland Street – who gained notoriety at the time for stating that smoking pot prevented cavities – had methods as unconventional as his opinions.

Though a little past its au courant peak, Yorkville remains an attractive part of the city. Much of its original architecture is intact or tastefully updated, especially on the residential side streets. There are posh shops, galleries and restaurants. Plus the high-end hotels here make celebrity-watching a sport during the Toronto International Film Festival.




Scooting through Old York Lane between Cumberland and Yorkville Avenue, I headed for Yorkville Park, designed to suggest different regions of Canada, including a massive hunk of the Canadian Shield.

I like this park, although late afternoon in early fall doesn't show it to best advantage. A rectangle of Amelanchier trees with leaves shading to a subtle orange was the only, very gentle splash of colour.

A last few rays of sunlight over the surrounding towers added sparkle to the park's water curtain, through which you can see the huge rock that was moved in pieces from Canada's Great White North, then stitched back together like an immense granite quilt. Its sun-warmed surface is a pleasant place to sit to hear street musicians in fine weather.

The original plan for the park was, I believe, that it be planted largely with native species. However, the reality seems more catholic in its application. There's an orchard planted alongside the pines and alders or birches, and I noticed Silver Lace Vine (Polygonum aubertii) on the steel pergola.

My goal for 2010 is to fill the large gap in my knowledge that is ornamental grasses (in a quest to find some I can actually grow). So I don't know who or what is making this airy cloud of seedheads, but it looks like quiet fireworks against the modern backdrop.

As a (de)parting shot, who said we ordinary gardeners can't learn from the lifestyles of the rich and, well, even richer? The placement of this garden divan in the archway illustrates the universal value of having a focal point. And on that point, I will head back to reality.