Rain, rain, and more rain....

Although not preferred by people, Spring rain is extremely good for plants... and water/dew drop photography! 

I love how the water drops are beaded and suspended on leaves and branches...  

My nemesis

This is an act of my nemesis ... "the squirrel".... 

Only in our neighborhood do the squirrels try to hide a large piece of pita/naan in the soil of a small potted plant.  Really?  Is that the only place you can hide your treasures?  There's a whole yard right in front of you!    Grrrrrr....  

Hopefully they won't cause too much havoc on the strawberry patch and vegetable garden this year! 

Happy Victoria Day!

Happy Victoria Day!  Lots of gardening plans for the holiday weekend.  Everything are in full bloom in the garden (finally!) despite the slow start to Spring.  The garden seems to be much fuller this year compared to  last year, so in the near future I'll probably have to put in some "clean up" effort.  

Here's an updated view of the backyard.  Vegetable seedlings are have been transported to the planters and more vegetable seeds have been sowed.  I've put up the "safety net" in place straight away because I can't risk having the squirrels destroy the small seedlings (due to late start of Spring).  

What were your gardening plans for the long weekend holiday?  

Spring Bulbs

Spring bulbs in the front yard have started to come up for a few weeks now.  This year, we have:

Here are some pretty Spring bulb flowers for your enjoyment.  This year, we have:

Hyacinth (Orientalis Mix - various colours) - first ones out of the gate this year, very fragrant and beautiful colours.  The kids in the neighborhood seems to like them :) 

Daffodil "Sir Winston Churchill" - these are beautiful as well as incredibly fragrant.  The only downside to them is that they are quite "head heavy", as they have double petals as well as multiple flowers per stem.  So if there's heavy rain fall, the think stems aren't actually strong enough to hold up the flowers and ends up snapping.  So this years these ended up as cut flowers I have in my house, which are perfect because they smell so nice! 

Narcissi "Texas" - double petal yellow bright yellow daffodil.  Really gorgeous, strong stems.  

   Muscari "Armeniacum" - first year planting these.  Apparently they're also known as Grape Hyacinth.    They are low to the ground and have very pretty purple colour.  

Orange tulips - we got incredibly lucky that the squirrels didn't get to these before they were in bloom.  Theses are not as orange in colour as I was hoping for, but still beautiful to look at :)

And lastly, these beautiful little flowers (which I did not plant) came out again this year.  Last year I had a post just for this flower trying to see if any of my friends/family would be able to identify it.  This year I finally found out what they were called!!  These are "Puschkinia".  A flower named in honour of a Russian botanist.  

The only other bulb still yet to bloom are the Allium "Purple Sensation" also known as Dutch garlic.  I'm hoping in a week or two they will be in full bloom.  Can't wait! :)

Here's a link to a handy little bulb planting chart http://www.bhg.com/gardening/flowers/bulbs/planting-charts-for-spring-flowering-bulbs/  .  I'm already brewing some ideas about how to re-arrange some of these bulbs later and what to plant for next season.  

Seedlings transferred to soil

Seedling updates!  The seeds I started with the wet paper towel method have been transferred to soil and containers (all indoor still).  They are adapting to the soil quite well and are growing quickly, reaching for the sun!

As I mentioned before, this year I'm trying to be organized, so I've put together a nice little chart for what I've planted in each of these little containers: 

Keeping my fingers crossed that these will survive through the next few weeks! 

Seed starting 2013 and Frost Chart

I started looking at my calendar and realized that I really need to hurry up and begin starting some seeds for my vegetable gardens.  Compared to last year I am actually quite behind schedule so I need to get to work straight away if I want to have decent size plants to plant outside by the time we get our last frost here in Toronto.  (here's a handy Frost Chart for Canada: http://www.almanac.com/content/frost-chart-canada )

Luckily I've been collecting used food containers all winter so at least I can start the seeds using the wet paper towel method before I have a chance to go purchase and prepare other containers with potting soil etc for the seedlings.   

This year I plan on planting a lot of the same vegetables as last year and some new variety with seeds I purchased at the Canada Blooms show:

- Parisian Market Carrot

- Rosa Bianca Eggplant

- Caspian Pink Tomato

-Big Rainbow Tomato

- California Wonder Golden Pepper

I have never planted eggplants before, so that should be very interesting.  And I'm really looking forward to those Pink and Rainbow tomatoes, they are apparently of heirloom varieties and they have beautiful colours and distinctive/unique shape.  I'm also hoping that I'll have a better handle on how to space out plantings and replantings this year, so that for certain vegetables (i.e. lettuce) I can have a more manageable harvest where I harvest fewer plants at a time, but more continuously throughout the summer (instead of having 10 heads of lettuce at a time and having to wait a few weeks before the next harvest, I can harvest 3 hears of lettuce at a time, but on a weekly basis).  

Wish me luck! :) 

Canada Blooms 2013

Welcome to the 2013 Canada Blooms show.  Since I'm running low on time to blog these days, here are simply a few fun photos with short captions (they say a picture speaks a thousand words)!

This year again there were many fun and interesting landscape design display.  It was a bit too crowded so and we were being herded like cows through each booth, so I didn't have very many chance to take photos. He's a fun one, with the green roof on the (fake) dog house.  I'd build that if I have a dog :)

I find myself attracted more to the floral display portion of the show.  There were some amazing pieces, such as this one.

I think my favorite floral display of the show was this poppy themed one by Quince Flowers.  

The poppies were GORGEOUS and the way they've placed single stems in various glass vessels made it very interesting to look at.  

But I believe the favorite part of the show was the "Abracadabra" Youth Competition.  These were all pieces made by little little kids (as young as 3!) made with dried leaves, flowers, and other floral related materials.  

They were so much fun to look at, and so creative!  They look like such fun projects!  

And I caught a glimpse of Mr. Lady Bug.  He was a huge hit with all the little kids that day!!

Happy Canada Blooms!