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It was a green Christmas!

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Well, for the first time in a few years we had a green Christmas here in Toronto.

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!






It sure feels like winter here!

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I know it’s not winter yet, but it sure feels like it here in Toronto.

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?

Our roses don’t know when to quit!

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Join Green Thumb Sunday

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Can you believe that I still haven’t finished putting my garden to bed for the winter? Ok it’s not that bad … we only have a little bit of gardening work to do, but still … it’s almost the end of November and we could have our first snow fall any time!

We still have to cut down the sunflowers in the front boulevard. They are starting to look raggy and they need to come down. We also have a few plants that have died down that I should cut down as well, like the balloon flowers that have died down and who’s stems are now falling over onto our front walkway. LOL

Thanks to the much warmer than normal temps we had about two weeks ago (hey it reached 20 C (68 F) two or three days in a row) we have roses blooming! The Breath of Life climbing rose, both of our Iceberg roses, Octavia, Lavender Dreams, Baron Prevost and Jacques Champlain are all blooming. Full true roses!

They are lovely, but it’s a shame that they are blooming because it’s getting colder and I don’t doubt that we’ll have snow within a week or so.

Here’s a photo of Lavender dreams that I took a while ago. I still can’t believe that the plant is putting out more blooms even though it’s reached zero a few times in the last week.

Lavender dreams rose blooms 2

Is anything still blooming in your garden as we approach winter?

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