Garden late April

Spring has come early this year. Everything seems ahead by 2 to 3 weeks, the maples are leafing out, the daffodils are blooming and the tulips will be out in a week or two as well. Last year, it was June before the full display of tulips were out. Snow melted very early and we got a week or two of warm weather, then it plunged back down to near freezing; we are about normal now with daytime highs of around 13 to 15 degrees Celsius; nights can still dip near the freezing mark.

Winter sowing, hmm, the jury is out on that. About half of my bottles have germinated, but not in abundance. There are a couple like baby's breath and sweet william and shasta daisies that have germinated well, but the rest have one, two or three tiny plants braving the conditions to sprout forth. These will remain in the bottles for at least another three weeks before they can be planted out. Our last frost is late May here, so nothing can go into the ground until May 31 or even early June.

Bachelor's buttons

Nigella

Lavatera

Sweet William I planted a couple of bottles with tomato seeds a few weeks ago, one tomato sprouted and promptly died. Good thing I have some seedlings indoors.

Because of Covid, our local Home Hardware store is closed except for pickup. The garden centre is open though and ValuMart also has some plants for sale now. I picked up some creeping phlox at the grocery store and some violas as well. And then I spied a crab apple at Home Hardware that flushes out deep pink flowers. Royal Splendor is the name and I planted it in the very centre of the back yard the other day. It has deep burgundy leaves and will grow 5 metres by 5 metres, perfect for that spot.

The first mail order of plants arrived yesterday, so today I have some planting to do. It's a good day for that, overcast and slightly warm. Time to get to it.

January update

 

Mid January in central Ontario, snowy and  cold.  But yesterday and today are sunny, which makes a huge difference to how one feels and what one wants to do. Taking a walk is pleasant (if it isn't windy) and people were out sledding, skating, cross-country skiing, and ski-dooing.  This is what you do here in winter, and the sound of snowmobiles is pretty constant.  Oh and ice-fishing.  Several huts are out on the lake and people can drive out to them, amazing that the lake has frozen this quickly. It was water a week before Christmas and now the ice must be a foot thick.

Here are the snowbanks from early January, already two feet high.

And the front yard, crisscrossed by my boots and by the deer that come here in the early hours of the morning.  What they eat in winter is a mystery to me. They must be starving.

My amaryllis fell over in the night, as the blooms got too heavy for the stalks.  There are six blooms on it now, gorgeous red and two feet tall. I have velcro-ed it to a vase full of marbles to keep them upright.

And so anxious to get going on spring planting, I jumped the gun and started some winter sowing. I know I should wait another month, but I just can't.  So I sowed two containers with red hollyhocks, one container with pansies and another with snap-dragons. The challenge is to find enough containers, I have resorted to taking them from people's blue bins on re-cycling day.