aqui with spirea (1 of 1)

Flowers, Fields and Food

An assortment of photos shows the variety of what is happening now at Glen Villa, my garden in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. Flowers are blooming everywhere. One that I am particularly fond of is columbine. The native variety, Aquilegia canadensis, grows freely in many spots in the garden. In the photo below, it complements the colour palette…

Will these bare branches ever bloom?

More Befores and Afters

A sudden burst of hot weather brought out shorts, t-shirts and leaves on the trees. It was only two weeks ago, on May 10, that the Cascade at Glen Villa was looking bare and boring.     Less than two weeks later, boring had become a bouquet of blooms.   Yet three days after that, the…

May various-058

Songs for Funny-Faced Ferns

The ferns are poking their heads up above ground, and I photographed several groups of them when I went out this morning for a walk.     Much to my surprise, when I looked closely at the photos, it seemed that conversations were going on.  Some ferns were lecturing, or at least giving instructions to others that were…

Daffodils bloom on the berm above the Skating Pond.

Daffodils and more

On the weekend, my heart was dancing with Wordsworthian glee. There weren’t ten thousand daffodils in bloom but there were far more than I wanted to count.     For the last umpteen years, we’ve been planting daffodils on the berm above the Skating Pond. I’ve never ordered single varieties, always choosing instead to use…

This 1000 piece jigsaw of a pointillist painting by Georges Seurat was particularly difficult to do.

It’s Beginning!

This is a strange year. Like most of you, I’ve been spending far more time than usual at home, inside, seeing almost no one apart from my husband. I’ve wasted time and saved my sanity by reading, baking brownies and doing jigsaw puzzles.   The weather has been strange too. Spring came about two weeks earlier…

Nothing says spring more than yellow crocus!

A touch of spring

Envy is not an admirable trait but I have to confess that at this time of year, when gardeners even a short distance to the south of me are picking daffodils and beginning to smell the roses, I am envious. Here, in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, patches of snow are still much in evidence and where…

An old hand-coloured postcard shows Glen Villa Inn.

The Job is Done!

The foundation wall of the old Glen Villa Inn is once again standing tall. Rebuilding the wall has been quite a process. In its prime the wall was the base of a grand structure.     Unfortunately, like so many summer resort hotels built of wood, it didn’t last.     A colour postcard of the hotel sent…