An evening on the deck

Last night B and I sat on our deck looking at the sunset. Most days this is hard to do because of the 'supper' winds. We always burst into song here....think Frank Sinatra and the Summer Winds.  The weather takes a nasty change around 6 o'clock everyday and sends wind howling down the 9th fairway leaving us hanging onto umbrellas and chasing crockery.
But last night was unusual. We could smell the blossoms on the May tree and enjoy the bulbs which are up and in top form.  I have frilly scarlet tulips and sculpted pink and coral tulips. I will soon have daylillies and iris. The oriental lillies always bloom on July 7th. and not a moment before.

I have been beating a track to the nurseries and have a good supply of rabbit food waiting to be planted. Coral bells, yellow mimlus 'monkey magic', poorman's orchid schizanthus ( which looks like it already has bees in it), and bright blue nolana. Plus of course the ubiquitous herbs and evening scented stock.


The rabbits are waiting with their napkins tucked under the chins and their cutlery at the ready. I am getting tired of dragging these bedding plants in and out. There is still the threat of frost everynight but by June 1 we should be in the clear. However the temp hasn't gone down below 9C at night. A sneaky trick that natures plays is luring me to leave them out waiting to pound them to mush with a killer frost, but I haven't left the tomato outside yet. In and out and in and out.

Hail will take it out eventually but hopefully I will have had a tomato from it by them...a $10.00 tomato.

Tree Strangling and Child Wrangling

I finished picking all the rocks out of the flower bed in the front and then offed them to a very kind friend who actually came around and loaded them into her truck.
As I cleaned out the bed I discovered that the ignoramous who planted the tree had ringed it with bricks and red rock and tightly wrapped it with landscape fabric...when it was a sapling!! It grew to maturity with an hourglass figure where the fabric strangled it,and it grew inspite of the idiots that planted it, but it suffered a split trunk and black virus. I I dug down deeper to free up more red lava rock I discovered that they had surrounded it even more with old pavers virtually burying it in a coffin of brick trash.
We had it innoculated and pruned by an arborist last year and after days and days of rock picking it is free  at last. I hope it doesn't keel over in shock.






This little person doesn't have the same sense of gardening that I do. I am not saying who is right but one of us ended up in the tub. She helped spread new loam in the old bed and carefully sprinkled it around and tasted it and stuffed it down her shirt and in her pockets.  and filling up the bird bath....

 

Pickin Rocks

When we moved to this house about 6 years ago, one of the annoying things I wanted to change was the hideous red lava rock in the front 'flower' bed. I don't know why the previous owner bothered to create an island in the middle of the lawn with 'alan block' and then proceed to fill it full of lava rock.
I hate the stuff.
So the last two days I have been picking it out. What a back breaking job. My glutes feel like they are made of rock. Or at least it feels I am sitting on rocks.
I don't know what I am going to do with the stuff now that I have it out but I will ponder its new location and let you know where its going to reside.

On Wednesday a big bag of soil arrives so I needed to have the bed prepared for some of it before I start trucking it down to the back yard. I have been to the nurseries and started my plant collection. I hope to get rid of the layers of weed barrier that has been moldering under the lava rock.
I think there must be something really powerful in the rock...like a lot of iron or something that will be toxic to my poor green babies. I have ordered a soil for them that will be soft and nutritious.

I also plan to put a few vegetables in between the perennials and amongst the annuals. Like herbs; parsley, thyme, dill. I found some funny little round carrots which I hope will pop out like cherries but I fear will be pulled out like threads.
My strawberrries are poking through and so are the bulbs...I see leaves budding on the trees and I think it won't be long before I have apple, hawthorn and cherries blossoms.

It has been a while since I have enjoyed the garden, the first year here we went to Gabriola for July so the garden looked after itself and if I may say so it did a poor job of it.
The next year we struggled with a new plan for the garden and just got to know it before we dove in to make changes.
The following years I spent travelling to Burnaby to help the old folks and that killed my garden maybe I should say Bryan and Ginger killed it with neglect.

Then the year of the deck and the year of the reno and now I am really enjoying my lovely garden. I think I will buy a swing so that I can enjoy the deck as much as we enjoy snoozing in the swimg on the patio below.

Special Visitors

Visiting us this weekend, Phillip and Emily and Sebastion. It was lovely to see them. I think Emily looks like her mother Wendy.

A day off for this little family from the rigors of the opera. I look forward to hearing Phillip sing Marcello in LaBoheme at the end of the month.

We always try to get a picture of our visitors. I fed them homemade pizza and salad and trifle. I think they lked it...I know Phillip did. I wonder if I made enough. Next time he comes I will try and fill him up. Its hard work being a baritone.

House Finch April 8th, 2012



He's back!!! I thought he had been murdered by magpies last year. Well, if it is not him it is indeed one of his relatives. Singing his little heart out. I don't think there is a sound more cheerful and uplifting to my soul than the trill of a house finch.
He doesn't get up too early in the morning unlike the robins whom one can learn to hate by the middle of May. The robin's chirp so longed for all winter, turns to an annoying shrilly caw by May and thoughts of pegging him off with a rifle if I only had one, flit through my mind.
Un aware of what I was really seeing, I watched his relative being torn to shreds by juvenile magpies last summer. They had their backs to me and I thought they were stealing strawberries. I was willing to forgive them for their fruit theft and thought their antics were quite comical until I went outside to see what they had stolen when a little pink feather floated past my face. And then another and then I saw the still warm body...headless now, of my beloved little finch.
Now I find it difficult to feel much for magpies. Except that they are so ingenious, and smart and crafty and gynmastic and well they gotta eat too.
Photos courtesy of Ashley Morrow. She has a new whiz bank Nikon



I haven't even gone out to look for daffodils. I am sure some folks have them but they are stubborn bulbs for me. I get snow drops in March, everyone else in the world gets them in February. There are peonies poking up in some yards and people say the trees will bud a month early this year.


Just in time to get their little leaf buds frozen off in the May blizzard me thinks.

But the birds are out and chirping their little hearts out.

Yesterday B and I walked the old trail from Bebo Grove to Shannon Terrace. My that was lovely, warm and sunny with red chipmunks running hither and yon. An eagle in the big trees and chickadees in bushes waiting for a welfare handout.

The creek was brown like tea and very full. Odd for this time of year as there is no way the runoff has started.

in the old picnic area of Bebo

The asphalt pathway was dry and  but the red shale path in the deeper spruce woods along the creek was melty, squashy and  in parts with dark shade, cold ,with rotting ice on top. Making it lethal to walk on, but to be in the dark woods in the middle of Calgary on a busy weekend and to hear nothing but bird song was worth the cold feet.

Best Friends

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