As the Garden Grows

What's blooming today?


Even my wedding band has a garden theme

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You know, I was just trying to decide how long I’ve been interested in gardening and I’ve decided that to some degree, I must have had an interest even as a young child. I can remember helping my parents in our home gardens and at the two gardens we had at our cottage. I might have complained a bit about it every now and then, but once I got working helping to pull the weeds or planting seeds and watching the new plants grow I discovered that I actually enjoyed what I was doing.

Chris and I have beautiful wedding bands, and even these I realize have a bit of a garden theme to them. Well my band does anyway.

We didn’t go the route of choosing wedding rings the way most couples do. Chris and I were both jewelers at the time – not sellers of jewelry but the people who actually make jewelry. It’s very bad luck for jewelers to make their own wedding bands, so as a gift, our brother in law who was also a jeweller, hand crafted our beautiful bands on his own as a gift to us.

We did have input into the design- thank goodness! Mine does have a garden theme it’s a concave gold band with hand carved grape vine and grape leaves intertwined around the whole band. Small emeralds and diamonds alternate around the band between the grape leaves. It’s beautiful. I wanted emeralds in my band because I felt they gave me a tie to nature.

Chris band is convex yellow gold with a strip of white platinum encircling the middle of the band. It’s very nice, but sorry no garden theme to his band.

Even though we didn’t choose our wedding bands the traditional way, we did have a traditional wedding. However, we did get a friend to do the flowers and decorations for the pews as she was working at a fantastic flower shop at the time.

Don’t you just love having connections?






Allium

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Chives and Daffodil How many of you planted Allium this fall so it will come up next late spring or early summer?

This is a large genus consisting of more than 700 species of bulbous perennials and biennials that occur in temperate regions of the northern hemisphere and range in height from 4 inches to 5 feet (10 cm – 1.5 m).

Some species are edible, including onions, garlic and chives.

The most ornamental species, which are brightly coloured with beautiful flowers, mostly come from west and central Asia.

Common to the genus is the oniony smell emitted when the leaves are bruised or cut. All species have flowers in an umbel terminating on a small, erect stalk and sheathed in bud by membranous bracts.

Chive blossoms Bulbs can be fat or quite slender but generally produce new bulbils at the base, sometimes also in the flower stalks.

Cultivation:

They prefer a sunny, open position in fertile, well-drained, weed free soil. Both edible and ornamental species have the same pest and disease enemies such as onion fly, stem eelworm, rust and onion white rot. Propagate from seed or bulbils.

Gift idea- Telescope for outdoor type people

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I keep coming up with more gift ideas for the gardener or avid outdoors person. Have you thought of giving your loved one or a good friend a telescope for Christmas, their birthday or even just “because”?

Opticsplanet.net has a great selection of telescopes. One brand in particular stands out for it’s quality – Celestron telescopes. Celestron telescopes are known for their high-quality mechanical components, user-friendly ergonomic designs, light weight materials, plus they each undergo rigorous internal testing.

Perhaps your child is a junior astronomer – always gazing at the stars or asking for his or her room to be decorated with moon, sun, and star designs? Have you ever thought of getting your child a telescope? I know I would have enjoyed using one as a child.

Optics Planet carries a wide selection of brand name telescopes made by companies such as Meade, Celestron, Tasco, TeleVue, Vixen, Swarovski, Leica and Bushnell. The company sells everything from cheap toy telescopes to the highest quality brands, plus they offer free UPS shipping which I think is great bonus.

When I was a kid we spent a lot of time up at our cottage. If we’d had a telescope I would have used it to gaze up at the clear skies to spot the planets and stars that I was studying in school or perhaps even to look at a distant animal.

I think a telescope would make a great gift for a nature lover or someone fascinated with the skies above. Think about it.

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