Phoenix Rising

It's early August. Just as my sunflower's face is forming, a squirrel or raccoon attacks it, beheads it. I reach for its trunk, to pull it from the ground, then stop myself. "Look at those leaves," Audrey pointed out when I showed her its picture a couple weeks before. "They're huge." That was reason enough to keep it. Two reasons.

Yesterday Audrey's mom asked how the leaves were doing and I took a picture and passed it on. While doing so, I noticed that where once there was a head, now there is -- a bird? Or I don't know, that shrugging emoji made with punctuation? What's that thing called again? That thing, but without a head.

Birdlandia

am I lucky I was so lucky in the yard today the culmination of a week's bird chirps the appearance this morning of finches and chickadees and this afternoon baby chickadees as if out for the first time since their hatching teenagers full of the newness that makes them their mostess with none of the gaps of their parents and grandparents if they are even alive anymore how long do these birds live? not in age but in generations? more than two generations at a time? three? can I call you my granny if my mother's your daughter?

Death's Bouquet

The passage from garden door to back gate. South-north, north-south. The death shapes were getting to me -- the clump of lady ferns by the rear foot of the bench, the peony along the east fence, the Solomon's seal between the fence and the converted concrete washtubs. I put on my gloves, grabbed my clippers and there it was -- death's bouquet.

I've Been Thinking

The corrosiveness of thought: I should have been a dancer. A rain dancer. The secular kind. A modernist rain dancer who dances not for rain, nor as rain, but as someone who is invigorated by it.

The statue pictured above has endured a number of rainfalls over the years in his role as garden ornament. Not a lot of rain of late. I can't think of the last time it did.

The Goldilocks Dilemma

 

Too hot for the sun.

Too cold for the shade.

Barrenwort

The barrenwort came from Sandra up the lane. She had a lot of it, I admired it, and she said, Take some! and I did, planting it beside the garage where it now thrives, changing colour and shape from April to September, then a smaller piece in the bed that runs before the laurel.

Over time that smaller piece was overtaken by the wild geranium and forgotten, until I noticed one spring its single hat-like flower poking through the geranium's lighter green leaves. A cry for help. So I helped it, moving it to the boulevard, a vignette I made around the Japanese cherry, where things are in balance, with no one getting a leg up on the other.

Bulbs

Dropped by Southland's Nursery on a whim the other day and sure enough their bulbs had just arrived -- narcissus, crocuses (an amber variety) and snowdrops. I will plant them at the end of September, forget about them by the beginning of December, and wonder where they came from in February.

Terrazza del Garage

New teeth added. (Still some flossing to do.)

Begonia

Years ago, when Mina and I would visit nurseries looking for what's new in plants, she announced one April that this would be the year of the begonia, and purchased a dozen species, one of which she uprooted in September and bagged in the hope of reviving its tubers next spring.

More recently I have heard stories from friends that, with a little care and consideration (keeping the potted begonias dry and close to the house), their plants survived the winter.

This November, while at Hornby, I noticed two potted begonias under the corrugated fibreglass shelter at the south end of the cabin. They looked good huddled with the still flowering geraniums and lobelia, but I knew the following day's snowfall would test them, so I brought one of them inside with me -- to survive.

This latest stretch of warm weather had me in the garden more than usual the past few days.

Finally got around to dealing with that heather, crushed to death by heavy snows. In its place, an Andromeda prolifolia, whose blue leaves and pink flowers accent the surrounding green. Also, and more expensively, a "Lawrence Crocker" daphne, which, given the rash of plant thefts in the neighbourhood, was something of a risk.

On the other side of the walk, I began a second rockery, this one featuring a jasmine-scented "Snowbird" azalea to go with the "Hershey Red" Scott Watson recovered and gave to us in 2004. After languishing in a pot all these years, it is nice to see the "Hershey" bedded and doing well.