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Just about every day something new is blooming in my garden

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Wow I’m BAD. I run the Green Thumb Sunday meme and I haven’t done one since last November. Yep, bad bad bad meme creator!

Ok it’s time to get back on track. This meme is still alive … barely, but I know some of our members are still posting Green Thumb Sunday posts regularly, at least more regularly than I have been lately.

I don’t have a good excuse for my absence. As usual I haven’t been feeling well thanks to my Crohn’s, but yes, I’ve still been gardening and so far this year I’m amazed with my garden. I just need to start posting about what I’m seeing and doing more often, now don’t I?

So … if you’ve been participating in Green Thumb Sunday or waiting around to see if it was going to start up again … come on, let’s see some Green Thumb Posts. (please).

As I said above I’ve been amazed with my garden this year. I think it started waking up in February … way way early! By March 15th I had my first Crocuses blooming. Usually they don’t bloom until near the end of March.

First crocus to bloom in my garden this year

This was the first crocus to bloom in my backyard this year. It bloomed on March 15th! Shortly thereafter more and more crocus popped up. They’re all done now though.

Years ago when I first started gardening I planted Snow Drops .. but I rarely ever saw them. Either they bloomed too early for me to notice or it warmed up to fast and they faded within days … unnoticed. It was obvious this year that they’ve been growing, multiplying and thriving as I had a few large clumps come up in March.

Finally caught some Snow Drops blooming

I even had a few tiny Dwarf Danfordia Irises come up too

Dwarf Irises near the end of their bloom

They’re a little faded in this photo as they were already wilting by the time I noticed them. They didn’t last long. We’ve had some warm weather in March and April which wasn’t all that good for making Spring flowers last.

Here’s a shot of my center garden bed … full of red and white Tulips, Heuchera, Astilbe, perennial Geranium, and tiny shoots of Phlox and Hostas and probably a few other plants that I’m forgetting … I took this picture on April 18th. I just wish that I’d pushed the hoop that I use to contain the Phlox when it grows down a bit before I took the photo!

Tulips, Heuchera and lots of other plants in the garden bed

This is a wide shot of my garden. It’s small, but for the middle of April there’s a heck of a lot of plants up. All of my roses have fully leafed out now and more and more plants are coming up each day. Right now I’ve got Daffodils and Hyacinths that are just about finished blooming and I think my Glories of the Snow are pretty much gone. I have a feeling that I’ll have roses about two weeks earlier than usual this year too.

Wide shot of my small garden - everythings coming up

And Finally this is my dog, Midnight, enjoying some sun in the garden. She’s growing and blooming too. She’s two and a half years old now and still very puppy like in a lot of ways … just thankfully not quite as hyper as she was a year or so ago! LOL

My Labrador Retriever enjoying some sun in the garden

How is your garden doing? What’s blooming? What’s growing?






Spring is here and my garden is a month ahead of itself

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Winter is over and Spring is definitely here in Toronto. Actually it seems like we lucked out and never really had a winter this year.

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.

It’s time to start your seedlings gardeners!

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I meant to get started planting seeds indoors earlier this month, but it’s been one delay after another, most specifically _ I came down with a cold – my first in about 15 years!

So, this weekend I’m going to be getting out my seedling trays, and then I’m going to go down into the basement and find the two boxes that I keep seed packages and seeds that I’ve picked off of plants from my garden. It’s cool and surprisingly dry in our basement so it’s the perfect place to keep dormant seeds and even plant bulbs or corms like the four Cannas that I currently have down there.

I just have to decide where I’m going to put all my newly seeded trays. I think I’ll probably put them upstairs in our spare bedroom. It faces south so the containers and hopefully seedlings will get off to a good start with lots of sunlight. I do have a couple of grow lights that I can try to dig up out of the basement if I need them, but when I’ve grown seeds indoors in the past they’ve done well in that room without the need of additional lighting.

Have any of you started seedlings indoors for your garden?

I’m glad that we only have 6 weeks of winter left. I can’t wait to get outside and see new plants coming up in my garden beds. Oh and the crocuses! They’ll probably come up in my lawn by the last week of March like they normally do … perhaps earlier this year since we’ve had a fairly mild winter with barely any snow … so far anyway!

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