Our garden was on hold for a good part of that time. Oh I did regular garden maintenance on it, such as pruning the roses of dead branches after the long cold winter and making sure the garden beds weren’t full of weeds. However, I didn’t put in any new perennials or plant any annuals until after the fence went in. The shared fence didn’t start going in until the 6th of June so I’ve spent the last two weeks playing catch up with my garden … oh and giving the plants along the new fence tender loving care since new post holes and a big trench had to be dug which likely disturbed some of their roots.

I’m exhausted … but I have to say, here on this first day of Summer, that my garden is starting to look the way I want it to. I must admit that a few weeks ago I was certain that my garden would pretty much be a write off this year. Oh and when the fence was going in I thought that my roses were going to be damaged. I have some very special roses along that fence line – Prince Napoleon, Sympathy and my gigantic William Baffin. I’d hate to lose any of them, but of the eight roses along that fence line Prince Napoleon and Sympathy would have been the worst ones to lose. As it was, we had to lean a few of the roses over while the fence work was being done and Prince Napoleon was leaning right over onto other roses and plants. I thought it was a goner for sure. As it is, it has a terrible case of Black Spot right now because of lack of air circulation due to basically lying on other plants for a week.

Since we’re in Garden and Yard sprucing up mode we sanded off the old paint on the doors of our storage areas under our enclosed back porch and I spent several hours yesterday repainting them. Wow .. everything looks so nice and new now.

Perhaps by this weekend I’ll have slowed down from my outdoor activities and I’ll get around to moving some of my photos from my camera to my computer. If I do I’ll post some pictures of the new fence and how the garden looks now. It does look pretty good if I do say so myself.

Yes, I can hardly believe I’m saying that, but did you know that we didn’t have ANY snow at all here in Toronto in March? None, zip, zero! Toronto has apparently been keeping weather records since 1845 and this is the first year in that time that there’s never been snow in March. Geesh, it might the first year in history that there’s never been snow in March in this area.

Not only that, my home town of Ottawa which is known as both one of the coldest capitals in the world as well as one of the snowiest didn’t have snow in March either.

I’ve had small leave buds coming out on my roses since February and the shrubs in my neighborhood have had leaf buds for two or more weeks. In fact the trees are starting to fill out a bit as well .. There’s no leaves yet but I know there will be soon. Perhaps after this weekend! It’s supposed to hit 25 C (77 F) tomorrow and get even hotter on Saturday. It’s like almost summer temps!

I bet that my husband seriously considers pulling out the patio furniture this weekend.

It’s like we had an extended Autumn, an Early Spring and if the warm weather that we’re supposed to get starting tomorrow sticks around I guess we’re skipping to summer.

Very strange weather but I’m not complaining. I’d love it if it were like this all the time.

Of course last summer we didn’t really have a summer – it was cold and wet – like a long spring and I’ve found over the years that whenever we have a terrible summer like that (seems to come about ever 10 years or so) we almost always have a mild winter followed by a hot hot summer. So we’ll see how summer turns out.

My plants are loving this weather. My first crocus’ were up on the 14th of March and now there’s tons of blooming Crocuses all over my backyard. The clumps of flowers are bigger than I’ve ever seen them.

The grass is already turning green and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we have to pull out the lawn mower before the month is over. I can’t remember ever cutting the grass in April so this might be a first too.

There are also all kinds of plants sprouting up in my garden – something that usually doesn’t happen until mid- April to early May. I’m not sure if the plants coming up are Hyacinth, daffodil or tulips leaves … probably a combo of all. The leaves sprouting up are about 4 or 5 inches tall already.

I’m sure that I’ll be getting out in the garden this weekend to tidy it up, clear out old leaves and just admire all the plants that are coming up.

I’m so excited to see my garden coming to life so much earlier than it ever has before.

Is your garden ahead of itself this year too? Do you have plants coming up or perhaps some early spring flowers blooming? Tell me about it.

I think in the time I’ve lived in Toronto (about 25 years now) we’ve had more green Christmas’ than white ones, but for the last few years we’ve had lots of snow at Christmas.

It actually rained quite a bit on Christmas day and the following day. Kind of nice to have the mild weather – at least we didn’t get the freezing rain and ice storms that so many people in the US seemed to have during the holiday!

Did you have a green, icy or white Christmas in your area?

Normally in the winter time I hope for a good snow cover for my garden as the harsh winter winds and low temperatures are hard on the plants if they don’t have some snow cover to insulate them … but as of right now it’s fairly mild out and the garden and lawn got lots of moisture with all that rain!

Hopefully when it starts to get really cold here again we’ll get some snow. Yeah … I think I’m wishing for some snow – odd I know!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of my regular readers and new visitors. I hope that you had a great time visiting with family and friends!

Last week we got our first real snow. It wasn’t much – only about 2 cm and it was pretty much gone by Saturday when the weather warmed up and it started raining.

As sad as it is to say goodbye to the garden for the winter, it was nice to see the plants dusted with snow, and roses and rose buds lightly dusted with frost.

Last week when the snow storm hit we had heavy winds and it looks like at least one of my roses took a beating. The rose had a growth spurt in September and even though I wanted to cut down it’s extra long stems I didn’t because they had buds on them and I hoped to see their blooms before it got too cold here (I did, once it was freezing!). So the rose got battered in all that wind and it looks like two long stems broke off. They’re still attached, but hanging by just a bit bark.

Have you had your first snow yet? Is it starting to get “winter cold” in your area? If so, how is your garden fairing, and does it look nice even when covered in snow?

We went from sometime near the end of August until the 21st of September without rain. 24 or 25 days!

I’m sure those without gardens or lawns didn’t mind the lack of rain, but anyone who tries to keep a nice yard or garden was probably longing for rain.

That’s a long time when you have a thirsty garden! I guess it’s a good thing that we weren’t having typical warm Toronto temperatures during that time as the cooler temps (especially at night – one night went down to 6 C (42 F)) made it easier on the plants water needs.

During this time the city even put out a request asking residents to water trees near their property. I’ve never heard a request like that from the city.

We haven’t had much rain over the last three days … just a few short showers or sprinkles, but it helps! I do hope that we get a good rain before we go into another dry period.

How’s the weather in your area? Have you been hoping for rain too?

We’re several degree’s below the normal average this month and it’s been cloudy and overcast for most of June and July. Plus … even though most days forecast rain, we’ve only had a little bit in our area … well, up until last night and today that is!

You might remember that I started this growing season talking about how we were having a warmer than normal early spring and how my plants were ahead by two to three weeks … yeah, well forget that now! I’d say most of my plants are behind by two weeks now.

My roses have only flowered once and are slow to develop new buds this month (although a few roses have had some repeat blooms).

The sunflowers … they’re only maybe three feet high and haven’t really developed flower heads yet!

The cosmo’s, cleomes, daisies etc are just beginning to bloom … sporadically.

I have green tomatoes on the plants, but they don’t seem to be growing all that much … and my cherry tomatoes and tiny toms have totally stalled and have yet to produce any tomatoes! I can usually count on my tiny tomatoes before my regular sized ones!

I barely saw any strawberries in June … of course it’s possible that the birds, squirrels and even my dog might have got to them before me! We do have raspberries that are starting to mature now though … so maybe with this rain and hopefully some true summer heat (next week?) the berries and all the flowers will come along.

Actually I’m sure the rain will help – as I said it’s been dry in our area … even though I know it’s rained in other areas of Toronto … still the weather people say we’ve had a lot less rain than we normally do in July as well … so it’s cool and dry.

How are things in your area? Is your garden a little behind because of cool weather or is your garden delightful?

Seriously … we haven’t really had any rain over the last week and a half to two weeks. Oh sure, every day has called for showers, rain or thunderstorms and it’s definitely rained in other parts of the city, but hadn’t rained here.

Yesterday there were dark clouds all day, but when by 6 pm it still hadn’t rained I decided that it was time to water the garden. We hadn’t watered since Saturday so the garden was really dry.

Ironically, approximately two minutes after I started watering the front garden beds it started spitting. The rain soon began to fall harder, but I knew if I stopped watering the rain would stop. All in all it rained here for about 15 minutes, but it wasn’t enough for my garden. By the time I got to the backyard it had pretty much stopped raining and I could still see lots of dry areas in the garden beds. So I continued to water.

Strange though, how it happens to rain whenever I pull out my garden hose!

Does that happen to you too? You get frustrated that it hasn’t rained for a while (even though the forecast says it should), go to water and it begins to rain or it starts raining shortly after you’re done watering? I’d say it happens to me maybe 50% of the time!

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Every time I look out my kitchen window or go into my backyard I’m amazed at how much it’s filled in.

It seems like the plants are growing within hours … not just days! That’s one of the things I love most about Spring – how fast things change and green up.

This is a photo of one of my raised garden beds in the backyard.

The “oval” as I call it separates the patio area from the lawn and garden portion of the backyard.

There are even more tulips throughout the garden beds than there were when I took that photo.

The Pasque flowers that I have in a very small area near the side of the house are blooming now too. Here’s a shot of a Pasque flower bud. The flower opened and started blooming on Thursday.

Unfortunately these flowers don’t seem to last very long so I expect they will be finished by sometime early next week. Maybe longer if the cool weather sticks around.

For a peek at my Grape Hyacinth (Muscari) and my Daffodils take a peek at my other blogs.

The Blue Jays around here aren’t very friendly.

Sure, they’ll eat from the bird feeders and visit some of my plants, but the minute that either my husband or I go outside or one of our neighbors enters their yard the Blue Jays are gone. I’d never get a shot of a Blue Jay landing on a hand held camera in a million years!

It’s been quite rainy here in Toronto today, but the rain has just stopped and the suns out … who knows for how long … but I’m going to try to go out and get a little gardening done.  I have some annuals to plant in planters and a few bulbs to plant in the garden beds.  It would be nice if I could get this stuff done before it begins to rain again!

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You know that Spring has truly arrived once you see Snowdrops and Crocus’ coming up in peoples gardens!

My crocus’ have made their first appearance today. Two tiny little flowers in the sunniest patch of my backyard lawn.

Actually there might be crocus all over the place. We have a lot of leaves from the neighbors maple tree in our gardening beds (just a light dusting of ones that fell in the fall that we didn’t clean up) and at the edges of the raised garden beds. It’s at the edges of the lawn near the stones of the raised garden beds that I planted the crocus bulbs, so there might very well be several plants under those leaves.

I think I might go out into the garden this afternoon and rake up the leaves, rake the lawn and perhaps clear out some of the dead foliage in the garden beds. The weather forecast for the next weeks says that it will be above freezing during the day and zero at night most nights for the next week with only one night well below zero … so I think it’s finally safe to get out there and do a little garden work.

I won’t prune the roses yet. It’s still far too early to do that. However, I suspect with this warmer than average March we’ve had the roses and other shrubs and trees in the area will come out of dormancy at least a week if not two weeks earlier than they normally do … well if the weather holds, that is. I mean, I can already see some leaf buds on many of my roses.

How is your garden doing this Spring? Have you noticed that a few of your plants are blooming or coming out of dormancy a little earlier than normal?