I’m in Toronto, Ontario for the annual get-together of garden lovers who write online about gardens and gardening. This is the eighth Garden Bloggers Fling — and it’s an exhausting and exhilarating few days of garden visits and garden talk. Our program started earlier this week with a visit to a downtown Toronto garden where…
Yesterday I returned from three weeks in Italy. While there I visited almost 20 gardens, some on my own and some in the company of the group of ten I was leading, along with my friend, travel consultant and organizer par excellence, Julia Guest. I write this blog once a week, and generally publish it on Sundays.…
Once again this month I am nowhere near my home in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, so I cannot report on my linden, the tree I am officially ‘following.’ But since I hate to miss a month of Lucy Corrander’s tree following meme, I am cheating this month and following the trees that I see around me…
Crocus and daffodils are sure signs of spring, and I await their appearance at Glen Villa, my garden in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, with bated breath. (Will snow come again or is it finally safe to remove my winter tires?) A less common sign of spring here is the flower that was blooming yesterday…
Winter this year was longer and colder than usual, and the deeper-than-normal snow lingered long past its ‘best before’ date. I worried that spring would be so short that our sugar bush would yield less sap than normal, and so less of that delicious product, maple syrup. I needn’t have worried. The late…
Finally, the snow is melting and the ground that has been hidden for so many months is beginning to re-appear. Today temperatures rose to 15C or so, a big change from what we’ve been experiencing. And the sky was bright and beautifully blue. Despite this, not much is happening yet to the tree…
Flowers are lovely things. The colour, the shape, the texture, the scent: flowers have them all. But at this time of year, when flowers are only a future prospect, I am searching for beauty in other places. (Yes, there is beauty in the winter landscape, but I’ve had enough of it.) So instead…
My linden tree (Tilia Americana) is still trunk-deep in snow. And I am still far from home. So again this month, I can’t post an up-to-date photo of the tree as it is. I can, though, post photos of the tree as it has been. And those photos, taken from a collection that spans the last…
This year I am following the tree at the end of the big lawn at Glen Villa, my garden in rural Quebec. The botanical name of the tree is Tilia americana. I call it a linden. That’s not wrong — the tree is a member of the linden family. Like many living things, it goes by several names. In England, it…
When I first began gardening,, I thought that Quebec’s winter landscape could offer nothing of interest. Now I realize that I only needed to train my eye to see things differently. Instead of looking to plants for interest, I needed to look for patterns and details. Details like the sun-sparkled fuzz of snow that coated a clump of…