Time passes

I realize that I've been so busy tending the garden that I haven't spent much time taking photographs. Spring this year has been unusually warm and dry with the result that many plants are flowering ahead of schedule.

 Here's the garden in mid-May, late on a sunny afternoon:

Behind the back fence Rosa pimpinellifolia, which usually blooms in late May, was already full of flowers, attracting dozens of bees and other insects to its generous amount of pollen. The scent, especially in the evening was lovely too. I love this rose for its early blooming, its small fern-like leaves, its delicate, extremely fragrant flowers, its overall health, its colourful fall foliage and rosehips, and even its winter canes that no less an authority than Gertrude Jekyll describes  this way: "even in winter leaflessness the tangle of close-locked branches has an appearance of warm brown comfort that makes it good to have near a house."

Is that enough justification for growing it?

Two weeks later at the end of May the garden looked like this:

Although I'd taken out the pale pink Aquilegia 'Rose Barlow', so visible in the earlier photo, peonies have already filled the spaces. Along the back fence Rosa pimpinellifolia has shed its petals, and begun to produce copious hips,

 ... but 'Ghislaine de Féligonde' behind the car and 'Lykkefund' on the right have taken over and are full of flowers.

Ghislaine de Féligonde

Ghislaine de Féligonde

Lykkefund (Lucky Find)

Lykkefund

In the centre bed 'Rosa Mundi, although barely visible behind foliage in the panoramic shot ,was as vivid as it's ever been.

Rosa Mundi

This year it has done a curious thing, producing a solid pale pink flower on a single lateral.

I've tied a marker on the stem and will try to propagate it later in the year.

Beside 'Rosa Mundi' is my favourite peony, 'Festiva Maxima', always a treat with its dying swan imitation and its delicious scent.

Between  'Rosa Mundi' and 'Festiva Maxima' is the only German iris I care about. I find them as a group too assertive, but 'Midnight Oil' is such a good contrast with its companions in my largely pastel garden, and so dramatic in its own right, that I don't mind giving it a space. A newly opening flower looks like this:

As the flower matures, the petals shift from a voluptuous mixture of purples to silky black.

Meanwhile, in the front garden Verbascum 'Jackie in Pink' is clashing with crimson peonies. I'll let it bloom for now, but it's got to go elsewhere before next year.

I also have the original 'Jackie', a more accommodating pale buttery yellow.

It too will move  - to complement Thalictrum 'Silk Stockings' in the back garden, which needs a leafy neighbour to highlight its black stems. 'Jackie's stamens will also complement the Thalictrum's misty purple flowers

A dark pink combination I'm pleased with is the fuzzy caterpillars of a Sanguisorba with the blowsy flowers of an old red peony, one of the few plants still here in the garden when we bought this place.

I'm also happy with the way Clematis x durandii is using the structure of Hydrangea quercifolia 'Sike's Dwarf' as supports for its cobalt-blue flowers. In the foreground is Geranium x magnificum.

One of my more recent acquisitions (thank you, Jane) is Arisaema triphyllum, a native of eastern Canada. Various common names include jack-in-the-pulpit, bog onion, brown dragon, Indian turnip or wild turnip. It was getting a bit too enthusiastic in the garden so I moved it to a tall pot and placed it by our back steps. That way, you can see the intriguing flowers without having to crouch. Right now it's flourishing, even though the pot is in rather more afternoon sun than it would really like.

The Water Feature

Grand Folly now has a "grand" water feature. This came about because the new house next door installed a heat exchanger close to our shared fence. It doesn't look pretty and what's worse it shuts on and off regularly throughout the day and night. When it's on, the noise of the fan is very noticeable in our garden. The neighbours say they don't notice the noise, so we have been trying to find a way to block the sound from our side of the fence. Our first move was to have a pergola built. You can see what we were trying to block in the photo.

The first year we attached a grid of concrete reinforcing wire and grew runner beans up the wires . They made a nice green curtain, obscuring the object but not the noise it made.

The following year, we replaced the wire grid with bamboo screens, which blocked the view even more efficiently but still did little about the noise.

 So we bought some solid polystyrene insulation panels, painted them dark brown on both sides and nailed them up, facing them with the bamboo. Because we want to be good neighbours, we went to the expense of using the bamboo on both sides of the panels, to make the structure look good from their side too. Then we got a pond liner and commenced the first pond, installing a 900-gallon-per-hour pump to produce a decent column of splashing water.

The noise of the fountain was effective: all we could hear in the garden when it was running was the sound of splashing water - much nicer than the hum of machinery.

However, all was not well. As any Vancouverite could have warned us, and many did, there is nothing raccoons like more than to deconstruct a backyard pond. Every morning, we found the pump knocked over, even when we anchored it with a couple of bricks.

Michael's solution was to make the pond wider and deeper so that the raccoons couldn't reach the pump.  Unfortunately, this uncovered two huge boulders that had to be manhandled (and womanhandled) out of the excavation.

Then the construction began anew. This time, Michael levelled the ground around the excavation and made a frame, which he painted black, to support the edges of the first line of pavers.

The results were more aesthetically satisfying and for a couple of weeks we even thought we had outsmarted the raccoons.

Then they struck again. We have accepted a kind of defeat now. We cover the water with a not very beautiful piece of fencing wire, too thin to support the weight of even a small raccoon. If we are just working in the garden, we leave it in place. When we are relaxing outside or when visitors come, we whisk it out of sight.

Meanwhile, I've started to fill in the edges around the pavers with small lavenders and succulents. Eventually I hope they will spill over the edges of the paved area, disguising any small alignment issues and giving it a more natural look.

Our next problem to solve is how to deal with the algae. Although it is turning the water a pleasant shade of opaque green, we know it will eventually clog the pump if we do nothing.

The Flowers of Spring

When we got back from a short trip to Mexico at the end of January, I continued to take photos of the garden as spring advanced, but I've been slow to add them to this blog.  So here's a précis of what has been happening in the last couple of months. 

Early February saw that wonderful early daffodil, 'Rijnveld's Early Sensation' brightening its patch of ground. It really does lead the way for others of its kind, not just in being so fast to bloom but also for standing so sturdily against the rain and wind that we so often get in this month. And I do like that emerald green stripe on the back of the petals.

Almost as quickly the snow crocus sprang up, although they refuse to open on dull days, 'Gipsy Girl' is almost better closed because it too has stripes on the back that you don't see when it is fully open. Even ravaged by slugs, it was a cheery sight.

The pear tree branches, still bare, were festooned with brilliant green moss.

Snowdrops in the dappled shade under Corylopsis pauciflora pushed up through fallen leaves,

... and were followed by the bright blue flowers of Anemone blanda.

Another anemone nearby, 'White Splendour' came soon after. It is indeed a bright white on top, but the undersides of the petals are bright pink.

I have a small collection now of these tiny daisy-like anemones, including delicate A. nemorosa 'Bracteata''

Nothing special, you might say, but it's the cobalt blue at the base of the bracts that is one of its secret attractions.

Above them all, Corylopsis pauciflora burst into full bloom by the beginning of March.

By this time Hellebore 'Peppermint Ice' and a cluster of species tulips , Tulipa turkestanica, had taken over from the snowdrops and winter aconites underneath.

 

Hellebores were also blooming in the front garden: deep crimson 'Rachel' and pale pink 'Frilly Kitty'.

And Enkianthus perulatus  produced a flurry of white bells, undaunted by being forever in the shadiest of the front garden beds.

We've had a warm, sunny spring so far and many plants are blooming ahead of schedule. My dwarf rhododendron

'Little Vixen' that I grow for the beautiful rich colour of the undersides of its leaves suddenly produced bells of garish pink, demonstrating why I much prefer it as a foliage plant. Fortunately the flowers are not long-lasting.

2015 BEGINS

We spent half of January in Mexico, a trip I'll be recording on my travel blog. It's the ideal time for a gardener to take a winter break.You leave your garden stripped of all colour except the various greens of moss and a few shrubs, and return to find spring bulbs already in bloom.

Snowdrops and winter aconites are among the first,

 

... along with the earliest of the Hellebores.

A few Narcissus 'Rijnveld's Early Sensation' are open too, always the first daffodil to bloom.

And of course, some of the little snow crocus are up, ready to open their flowers at the first ray of sunshine, whenever that will be. So far February has been unremittingly cloudy and rainy.

 One of my favourites is 'Firefly', here looking a bit bedraggled after a downpour. When it does open, it reveals the fiery red stamens that suggest where it got its name.

Merry Christmas to All

Morning visitor

Yesterday, I was just in time to capture (but only on camera) this small passer-by out in front of our house.

The little creature was limping and appeared slightly dazed - perhaps had been hit by a car or attacked by a dog. It was oblivious to me standing on our front porch, which was probably just as well. I was not game to go closer, and it disappeared up the street.