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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.






Summer’s coming to an end

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It seems that summer went by so fast and here we are at the second last day of summer! Did summer go by fast for you too?

Well either way, the garden is doing well. Roses, daisies, Asters, Sedum and many other plants are still blooming. Even my Hydrangea is still putting out a few blooms.

Pink Hydrangea 7

Our Raspberries are happy as well. They’re still producing berries! Just this afternoon my husband was out picking a small container of fresh raspberries off the plants. Yum. We’re just about to have them on some ice cream – double yum.

What’s blooming in your garden as we wind down to Autumn?

Ugh dead mouse in the garden

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My husband has the day off work today and earlier this afternoon he suggested that we go outside into the backyard and just sit in the garden at our Patio table. Needless to say my laptop comes out with me when we do this (although the glare from the sun sure makes it hard to see!).

We’d done a little work in the garden the evening before and my husband had just cut the lawn prior to our visit to the garden this afternoon.

Shortly after I entered the garden I noticed that my dog was rolling around in the grass. I thought it was just because the lawn was freshly cut so I went over to pet her … and much to my disgust I saw a tail attached to a very rotted half mouse. EWWWWWWWWwwww.

I think my dog rolled in it! She doesn’t seem dirty or to have anything disgusting on her, but I’m pretty sure that she was rolling in the grass in that particular area because of the dead mouse. Labs are particularly fond of rolling in dead animals and other disgusting stuff.

I guess we’ll give her a bath later when we go inside. Now that’s a chore and a half.

I just hope that nobody put poison down and caused the mouse to die … ’cause if my dog tasted that mouse we might have a very sick dog on our hands!

Once the mouse was disposed of I brought my camera out and started taking pictures of the garden and some of the flowers that are currently blooming.

The flowers in bloom include white phlox, Climbing Iceberg Rose, Climbing Parade Rose, Compte de Chombord rose, Cleomes, Brown eyed Susans, a couple of Cannas, Malva, the Honey Suckle vine, Black Hollyhocks, Climbing Westerland rose, Baron Prevost Rose, Pink Salvia, Blue Salvia, Portulacas, Fuchsia, Gaillardia, Breath of Life Climbing rose, Valencia rose, Sedum, Petunias, Impatiens, Sweet William, Snapdragons and Balloon flowers. Then in the front there were several roses blooming – Climbing Eden, Standard Iceberg Rose, Yves Piaget Romatica Rose, Lavender Dreams, Bonica, The fairy and some others, plus Sunflowers, Cosmos and Morning Glory.

It sounds like there’s lots of roses in bloom from my list above, but that’s only about a third of my rose collection and of the roses that are blooming – some only have a few blooms while others like the Fairy and Bonica are covered in blooms.

Hopefully this evening I’ll have some time to upload and process the pictures that I took this afternoon and I’ll post them to this blog sometime this week.

What’s blooming or growing in your garden this week?

BTW Weather wise … can you believe that September has turned out to be warmer than July? Yeah … July was cold for these parts and September so far has just been a little warmer than average. Isn’t the weather getting stranger and stranger?

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