I wish I could tell you that I’ve been feverishly painting since we last met.  Alas, nada.  I can’t stay away from the garden.  Because I crashed at six yesterday and went to bed with a dose of muscle relaxant, Jon has banned me from the garden until I demonstrate that I can walk upright..  But, even right now, where I sit working on the iMac in my studio, my nose is practically pushed against the glass because I’m afraid of missing something.

Let’s start with the aerial acrobats.   Today alone a brown thrasher bounced past me on the shrub near the back door, three turkey vultures circled (a bit worrisome, when you think about it), and a pair of red-tails surveyed the neighbourhood from the top of an old spruce until they were routed by a furious grackle.  A blackburnian warbler treated us to flashes of orange while scouting the buffet.  As usual, loud mouth blue jays and cardinals compete for the “Best Effort at a Primary Colour”, although blue jays cheat by sporting body parts with different shades of blue.  Jon just ran past with the two halves of an orange, intent on attracting the orioles who haven’t come by much since our pear trees died of storm damage but who are calling to one another.   (As I word-process this, a black squirrel has already spotted and claimed at least one of the halves.  I am told that oriole feeders have been invented and wow do we need to purchase one fast.  Oh,  the oriole has just arrived.  To eat suet??  Go figure.  I want my orange back.)

All in all, it never surprises me when a wild critter has the last laugh.  — the red-bellies continue to confound us;  we know they are living in our garden but they practise ventriloquism, then cleverly vacate their  perch before we can track their trajectory.  But the best event was last week in the park when I watched a gaggle of bird-watchers train their cameras and binoculars on a warbler while right behind them a gigantic wild turkey sauntered past.  

It’s like Cirque de Soleil around here.  There could be a bit more soleil but cirque it is!  I finally got the chippie out of the garage and closed the door. 

​Oh, dear.  Cue the red squirrels....

One of the things I love/hate about hand-watering a good-sized garden is the opportunity/inescapability of letting my mind wander.    Today - an already steamy one presaging a run of forty-pluses (yes, I do count Humidex), here’s where it ended up.


It occurred to me that plants’ species vary as much as character types do.  The last downpour was almost a week ago, and one of my most drought-resistant species is echinacea, hardy and beautiful to boot.  A comely survivor.  Let’s call her Melania.    She first showed up literally on our doorstep (wedged between a stone step and a flagstone) a decade ago.  Not where I would have wished, but still…I welcomed her and have cosseted her ever since.  Every autumn I harvest her seedheads, scarify them, sow them where I, the gardener, would like them to grow, and then I hold my breath.  In ten years, I have succeeded four lousy times, and every one of her kids has chosen an inauspicious spot (the driveway, in front of a yet another doorway, under a bush).  I’m starting to think Melania may not be a team player.  We all know the type.

At the other end of the garden showgirl spectrum are the day lilies.  Like echinacea, they are almost impossible to kill, a quality about which gardeners have complicated feelings.  Sturdy and cheerful and generally named Bob,  day lilies are cooperative to a fault, unless you want them out from underfoot.  They don’t settle for simple survival,  but thrive wherever you put them.  I love these irrepressible entrepreneuers.  
Then there are the tough little chickweeds, the Jareds you all remember from recess, and the sensitive “perennials” like Tifanny, the deciduous azalea, forever stressed - too hot or too cold, too dry or too wet, too sunny or too shady, the classmate whom you inevitably got partnered with for labs.  I was not heartbroken when Tifanny finally exited this earthly garden.  And don’t get me started on crab grass;  it’s low and sneaky, like  A.K.A., that guy who hangs around the mall.

As in any neighbourhood, however,  good guys make up the majority.  There are Jon’s rhododendrons, who remind me of high school seniors uniformed in jeans, teeshirts, ball caps, and silly nicknames, who suddenly and briefly sport sartorial dazzle in June;  they work hard even in winter but know how to cut loose when the time is right.  Hydrangeas are less hardy.  They have a tendency to droop when they want attention, as many of us do, but will spring right back, given half a chance;  they marry young, and produce dozens of kids.   Grass and clover, BFFs, are the steady reliables coming to work every day.  Many a Fred, never a Frederick. If the factory closes for a few weeks due to lack of rain, they simply hibernate until the situation improves.  I like to think they are watching the Jays.  And even if they make a huge mess once in a while, magnolias (all of whom are girls) can be forgiven anything because when they're good, they are very very good.

When we first moved in, the garden was a crowd scene full of strangers;  it turns out that most of them make great friends!

Spring — so long awaited, so quickly over.  I am never prepared for the speed of the growing season. Just days ago, it seems, we were celebrating the scylla, but already the irises are almost finished and the canopy is completely open.  It must have been last week that lilacs perfumed the garden;  now spent blooms  of anemones, true geraniums and lamium litter the flower beds.  The bleeding heart too is winding down, slowly spending its pink hearts.  

Only in the past fews years has there been much colour left in our shady garden by the end of June.  The rhodos are at their peak today and as I write this, their pink heads nod outside the studio window, but they too will be reduced to their dark glossy leaves very shortly.  The last of the  showgirl flowers - peonies - are just starting to fluff their skirts but they too will be gone in a week or so.  For decades I have had to count on variations of green to satiate my hungry eyes in July and August.

This is a long preamble to admitting that my panic about the loss of garden colour is assuaged only by taking at last one photo - preferably more -  of everything that passes for a flower around here.  I comfort myself by knowing that these warm weather delights can be enjoyed in January by being  painted.  Because our own peonies are only several years old, I used to stage annual hunts for these blowsy beauties.  This miss was living downtown and we met when Jewell and I went to Woodstock;  I said hello, Jewell sniffed the air with unusual interest,  and Miss P preened and fluffed, clearly hoping to be immortalized.  I obliged.

Taking the reference shot is  the easy part.  For painters, complex white flowers have their own special condo in Hell.  The rendering, to begin with, leaves me cross-eyed.  Assuming I persevere further, the painting is even tougher.  The only way I can make it work is to identify and exaggerate the shadow variations.  This gal offered me only the transparent blues of her skirts, and hints of her  golden throat.  

Foreseeing the end of spring’s bright notes, I planted far too many pansies as usual, suckered by their cheery faces;  now I spend my days beheading them like so many little French aristocrats.  Last season they bloomed (and I dead-headed) until mid-October so I have hope that the effort will  rewarded again this year.  Because only my friend and dental hygienist, Anna-Louise, admits to finding pleasure in this activity, I have lately been absorbed trying figure out how to lure her to this paradise of dead heads.   I have suggested that she give up her day job, but so she’s not biting  (Get it?  dental joke!).  So if you call me, let it ring.  I will be outside, beheading pansies.  Frankly, I'd rather be Mme. Defarge.

 Well, the male canary has switched his shabby winter coat for a snazzy yellow one, the male cardinal is broadcasting territorial arias, and the canine bachelor next door is straining on his tether.     This universal male springtime behaviour suggests that spring may be in sight (although the recent ice storm nearly put paid to that hope).  We dodged the bullet, though, and Jon is busy in the basement, fibre-glassing and epoxying everything in sight.  He comes up to eat, but that far-away look in his eyes tells me that fishing season is opening soon and that canoeing will follow close on its heels.

There are so many things that Jon and I love about winter that it always comes as a bit of a surprise to feel totally pumped about spring.  We have a cold garden, always the last in the neighbourhood to bloom, so it’s not that.  It must be the light levels.  What is not to love about finishing dinner before the sun sets?  My I.Q. mirrors sunrise and  sunset, so I get a whole lot more accomplished in the sunny half of the year, and don’t ever ask me something complicated after dark.  I have started to locate and rummage through the gardening tools and might even clean and store the winter boots this week.  As with snow tires and male mania, timing is king in spring and fall.  

When it comes to beating everybody else in the garden to the draw, scylla is the uncontested champ.    We began decades ago with a single plant and now these dear sweet bulbs bloom everywhere:  they are my favourite spring flowers.  I try to corral them in the rock garden, only because it kills me to mow their little blue heads off several weeks from now, but this is an impossible task and so we end up with fanciful mowing patterns.  Luckily, they bring me inordinate pleasure and it’s a small price to pay for that brilliance of colour.  Within a few days the crocuses will open, happily surprising me yet again because I will be  reminded that they in fact are my favourites;   masters of survival like the scylla, croci even manufacture a miniature eco-system with their hairy leaves and petals. Before you know it, the blue violets will appear.  I usually decide that I like them the best.  You might sense a pattern developing.   It’s not that I can’t make up my mind;  it’s more about being a cheap date, as my husband observes. 

By then I will be past redemption,  hopelessly tantalized by the need to paint something, anything, which is deep blue;  keeping that in mind, if you walk past our garden in late April,  you might  find me doing The Photography Crawl;  simply put, I lie prone on the ground, use the close-up lens and try to think like an ant.    But digital photography saps the reds so the blues are never right, and I’m tired of guessing.   So if you catch me paint-splattered while recumbent or crouched in a flower bed, palette in hand, just do the decent thing, for heaven’s sake.  Don’t let on that you saw me.  I will do my best to ignore you too.  Thank you.

Walking back up the slope with my hands full of moss yesterday was simply an expression of my life-long fascination with panes of glass.     Even as a pre-schooler, I was something of a connoisseur of houses in that I studied each one we walked past in order to decide on my favourite.  Day after day, the outcome was the same:    the winner simply had no competition.  It boasted not only diamond-leaded windows in the living room, but the trump card of a conservatory which dominated one end of the house.  I stared at it longingly each time we walked past and imagined the delights of living there.

I grant you that a four-year-old with a passion for leaded glass is unusual.  But I had already fallen in love with conservatories.    For one thing, I knew from the huge one in the city park that they enclosed all-year-round summer.   And they smelt delicious, especially in January.  A life dream had been launched.

So what’s with the handful of moss?  Our house is about as far from a greenhouse as you can get.  But let me introduce you to the concept of moss gardens.  They survive splendidly indoors if you have the right place for them, a  dwelling place which was invented several centuries ago. When the 19th century brought with it a frenzy of global collecting, British naturalists scoured the world, competing to bring home the most exciting new species of plants.  Realistically, however, even the most successful collecting trip inevitably ended in months of ship travel;  95% of the plants died.  There had to be a way to protect these rare finds and an amateur horticulturist from Sussex named Dr. Nathaniel Ward invented one.  His glassed boxes changed the survival rate of transported exotic plants to 95%, resulting in successes like African violets (which are not violets at all, of course, but hailed from Tanganyika in the 1880's).  The glass boxes, early precursors to terraria,  were a hit at home too.  Although their original use has been displaced,  home-use Wardian cases are still manufactured today, and remain traditionally Victorian in style — little glass houses with peaked roofs and leaded glass. My four-year-old self or what remains of it absolutely adores them.

Having watched for sales of these little gems over decades, I have ended up with a small collection.  They stood empty for years.  Truth was, I had no idea what to put in them.  Not that I hadn’t tried.  There were abysmal failures.  One promising miniature jungle turned into a fungal nightmare. One which I set up outside in the spring boiled its unhappy inhabitants.  Finally I stumbled upon two green things which thrived.  One satisfied tenant is a miniature phalanopsis orchid with the aerial root system exposed (no blooms so far but I live in hope.)  The other workhorse of my Wardian cases is moss.  Many years ago I read an article about a man who lived downtown with a tiny garden that faced north.  Nothing he planted survived until he settled on mosses.   They fit the bill both in terms of size and light requirements., and he  planted every species he could find.  It must have been a beautiful place, for mosses are truly beautiful, not only for their bright emerald greens, but for their multitudinous blooms - hundreds of tiny fruiting bodies standing like tiny palm trees above their miniature landscapes.  I have some in bloom now and every day I lift the lids and marvel, taking in deep breaths of summer. 

​There is much to commend glass houses, despite what that nasty saying implies, and why roll a stone if you want to gather moss?  I heartily recommend living with, rather than in,  at least one;  if you feel the need to throw something at it, throw orchids or moss.  And don’t forget to inhale.

In my defence, let me explain.  Today was absolutely glorious weather for November.  For any month, actually.  And the siren call of the garden could be heard.  Putting a garden to sleep for the winter is a ritual I love, although some years it has been done to the tune of mitts and a tuque.  But I'm busy tomorrow and seasonal temperatures are returning along with rain, so today had to be the day. 

Naturalizing the tableland behind the house has turned me into a leaf miser.  While the City will come and vacuum up leaves hauled out to the front street, autumn leaves are too precious to give away.  So I drag them from the patio and the driveway into our young forest, where they obligingly protect the English Ivy and the ostrich ferns over winter while turning themselves into crumbly rich mulch by spring, thus liberating us from watering during the dry spells. ( Dirty secret: sometimes I even cruise leafy neighbourhoods in the fall and shovel unwanted leaves into the back of the Prius.  Bet you too do some things you wouldn't have predicted as a ten-year-old.)

After redistributing the leaves, I crawled down the curving pathway Jon created to lead to the ravine.  I should have weeded it months ago.  But the ivy clippings could be planted in the perennial bed, so that was the next job.  I sure hope they do better than the echinacea seedlings which I transplanted last week.  Disturbed ground seems to inspire Grand Theft Auto in squirrels, who assume that it must conceal something edible and desirable that a competitor has hidden and that they themselves deserve.  So after I replanted the echinacea, I stamped hard on it with both feet.    

Then it seemed like a good idea to drag the ten foot ladder over to the far side of the house and climb up onto the roof to wash the bedroom windows.  Somehow I got back down too.  At that point I checked my watch.

Seven solid hours had passed.  My happy little brain might have been oblivious, but my back was no longer speaking to me.   Luckily I can occasionally appease it with extra-strength Robaxicet by pretending that it is green and white candy.  So while the garden has been put to bed for its long winter sleep,  I think someone will have to do the same for me tonight.

(This clumsy little watercolour was one of my first paintings.  It reminds me of how stark the house looked at the time -- a stone farmhouse without a foundation planting to be seen. A blank canvas!)

It's like the Wild West around here lately.  While I was mistaken about winter having arrived (for the last few weeks have been glorious), I must have convinced the squirrels, who gallop everywhere (remember Leacock's military man who climbed on his horse and "rode off in all directions"?), frantically burying treasure.  To their credit, I remember reading that squirrels actually do retrieve about 70% of what they have buried, doing it in the winter without the aid of smell and simply using their memories;  maybe they could be trained to find car keys and the like, although I suppose this theoretical model would involve their having put the car keys there in the first place.  In this, the pre-season, they saunter in front of the car, dash over the roof, tight-rope walk across electrical lines, and even careen off the swinging squirrel-guard-protected bird feeder, having launched from an old rhododendron six feet away.  Right now, a black morph has managed to thread himself into the caged sunflower seed tube, encircling it to dine like a Roman emperor.  Noticing that it's mid-morning already, another has plunked herself down on the stone ledge of our front steps with her back to the open door and blithely gnaws on a nut.  If I were a cat, she would be a treat herself.

Chipmunks, it seems at first, leave nothing to chance:  they create an underground larder and stuff it -- all in one place, sign on the door.  I've always admired them for this.  Imagine my horror when we watched a brilliant nature show which filmed one chippie plunder another's store, leaving the homeowner to starve over the winter.  I had to leave the room;  apparently, Jon assured me later, the victim went and stole his acorns back, but it wasn't looking hopeful when I fled.  Now that I think of it, there have been some legendary furious chases in our own garden.

I'm out there almost as much as the other mammals.  Yesterday was the day to cut back the hostas and take clippings from the Annabelle hydrangeas;  their huge duck-green flowerheads dry beautifully, even if they are messy to move around.  The one painful loss this year was that of the corkscrew hazel, which I loved beyond words.  The  littler-man-next-door  commented that he thinks the older clipped branches look spooky in their living room branch pot.  I prefer to think of them as oriental and asymmetrical and elegant, and something similar will be the fate of the dying bush too.

But the berries!  The inspiration for this painting of mountain ash was the combination of yellow leaves and red fruit.  Sometimes the berries themselves steal the show.  I do love the bittersweet's orange berries tangling within its ropes of vines,  but the clear winner is the native spindle-tree (euonymus atropurpureus);  it is also know as the Eastern wahoo, a name which surely describes the scream of delight elicited by its flashy seed pod.  Square like the stem, the hot pink four-lobed husk of the fruit opens to reveal a marmalade-orange berry, the whole effect being captured in its name: Heart Bursting with Love.  I have a great closeup of it which I must find the time to paint.  Spindle-tree is quite rare now perhaps because, as I have noticed in our garden, eastern tent caterpillars adore it. If you would like some and don't mind murdering whole families in the spring,  I have lots of seeds.  

​Don't eat them yourself, though, unless you want something else to burst. 

We were hiking on a country road this week and found ourselves between banks of ripe raspberries on either side. Free sun-warmed raspberries always taste the best and we did them justice.    Although fresh raspberries rarely make it into a bowl, I do insist on keeping a dedicated bramble patch in our own garden too.  The dry heat has finished most of the raspberries here but I dedicated time today to watering the blackberries;  they are heading up nicely and now need only to fill out.  Surely heaven reserves a special place for the genius who developed the thornless variety.  Sadly they only ripen when summer is winding down so their flavour contains a tinge of farewell.

Raspberry is equally appealing as a colour.  I mix it from alizarin crimson with a touch of ultramarine blue and a hint of white.  It always feels sensuous, special, hot.  Watercolour has a higher key version called "Opera," an inspired name if there ever was one;  it is a permanent colour, despite its reputation of being "fugitive."  Clothing in Schiaparelli (pronounced"skaparelly") pink also catches my eye.  Elsa Schiaparelli went so far as to stage a hunger strike to escape from the convent her desperate parents had sent her to ;  as a Parisian couturiere in the 30's she invented women's divided skirts (thank you) and teamed up with Salvador Dali (we forgive you).  The hot pink which bears her name remains a favourite of many, even if it appears only as a hot "pop" in a cooler setting.  

I was drawn to these waterlilies for that very reason.  While the deep pinks cover very little of the total area of the paintings, their placements play a major role in directing the eye of the viewer through the blues and greens.  

Now it's back to the garden while there is still enough light to see who ripened today!

It is one of those perfect summer days.   Rain might arrive overnight, but for now the sky is clear and the meadow is full of butterflies supping on the tall buttercups.  I have parked myself here, decked out in camera, sunglasses, brimmed hat, binoculars, and field guides.  Alas, no use.  Although I can readily identify black admirals and tiger swallowtails, the multitudinous  "skippers" (those small orange butterflies which flit every which way) all look alike to me.  I have somewhat better luck with the damsel-flies, a more delicate variation of dragonflies;  their wings come together on their backs when resting, and their bodies are slim and often jewel-toned.  My favourites have gleaming turquoise bodies and ebony wings.  They too have congregated here to eat, although they must be looking for smaller prey than the skippers because they dart towards them and then veer away at the last second.  Or maybe six-leggers also indulge in the odd game of  of "Chicken."



The scarlet runners I planted about ten days ago in memory of my maternal grandmother are six inches tall already so I'm on the hunt for the curly garden stakes I hid away so cunningly last fall.  Even the dark blue pansies continue to thrive, as long as I remember to deadhead them frequently;  their little faces beg to be painted, so I do.  Maybe I will plant some blue morning glory seeds too.  these ones, backlit by last August's afternoon sun, proved irresistibly paintable.