As the Garden Grows

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Longing for Spring!

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Well, as some of you know right now I’m having a blog party over at Tricia’s Musings to celebrate my first year of blogging. Yep, Tricia’s Musings is one year old!

I’m having a pseudo ICE garden party over there. Go have a look at the photos of the ice garden and the ice bar. MMMMM lots of chocolate over there too. Yum!Ok I know I can’t complain about our winter here at all. Others have had much worse, particularly people who usually have great winters … but winter has finally arrived as of this week. We’ve had snow, finally, and now very cold temperatures. Right now it’s -12 c (10.4 F). Brrrr!

So I’m jonesing for Spring. Here’s a flower, a tulip and other spring flowers, that I’m longing to see in just a few short months:

Red Tulip

I’ve noticed that only a portion of the Green Thumb Sunday members have been playing lately. I know that while I’ve been posting regularly I haven’t been visiting as often as I should. My reasons are that I’ve been too busy trying to raise money to keep the bills paid (I’m home sick with no income coming in so I’m doing paid posts to earn some money), and I’ve been very ill lately.

I am wondering why others aren’t playing though. Have you lost interest? Or is it just because it’s winter and you don’t have photos to post? Remember photos do not have to be current. They also don’t have to be of a garden or a plant. It could be a nice scene from nature, something outdoors … use your imagination.

I created this meme so that we could show off our creative talents and our gardens. A great bonus that we get from interacting with each other is that we get a boost in traffic, some extra links to our sites, and perhaps some regular visiters too.

I’m going to go through the list and people that haven’t played for at least two months or haven’t even updated thier site in the last month will probably be removed. I’ll leave messages if I’m considering removing you from the list.

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.






My Parade of roses

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parade

This is a photo of one small section of my garden. I took it a few years ago. The roses are called Parade – specifically Parade Climbing rose, and then there’s the brilliant blue delphinium beside the roses. Doesn’t that blue almost look fake in this photo? Just to the right of the delphinium is a plant called Maltese Cross with orangish Red tiny blooms on top of tall stalks.

Fellow Green Thumbers? I’ve been thinking about it, and I was thinking that perhaps we should skip the next two Sundays? Next Sunday is Christmas Eve, and the following Sunday is New Years Eve. Yes I do realize that it’s also Hanukkah between December 15th and December 23rd as well, so perhaps some of you aren’t even playing today.

I think that many of us might be busy during this time period, and that it might be best to begin our regular Green Thumb Sunday postings again on the first Sunday of this coming January?

I’ve also noticed that many of the Green Thumb Sunday members haven’t been participating as much in the last month or so. Perhaps it’s just the holidays and life being busy, but if you are dropping out please let me know. I also realize that I haven’t been the best at getting around to all of the sites lately either and I’m sorry about that. I haven’t been well and I’ve had a lot on my plate lately too.

So, my message right now is that if you don’t want to participate because of the holidays over the next two Sundays – that’s fine. If you do, then by all means make a Green Thumb Sunday post. I’ll try to keep an eye out to see if anyone posted and I’ll try to come visit.

Otherwise I hope to visit all of you after this Sunday, in the New Year.

Happy Holidays – Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa and New Years!

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Garden evolution part II

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An excerpt from my Gardenweb members page from the year 2002. This passage details how we landscaped the backyard.:

” Well, it’s spring 2002 and we’ve been working on landscaping our front and backyard gardens since early April. We widened and added several garden beds to the gardens. We decided to create raised beds- which unfortunately involved moving and replanting many of the 400 or so spring bulbs that I planted last November! LOL Most appear to have survived the move.

In April we purchased 272 easy-wall garden stones. We chose the red/orange colour which really seems to be a pinkish colour. After planning out the layout of the garden beds we dug out trenches where the easy-wall stones were to be placed and filled in the trenches with screening to provide a solid well draining surface for the stones to sit on. Then we began the creation of our two layered walls. We decided to have our raised garden beds run along the edges of our very small backyard (approx 100 feet long by 17 feet wide). The beds along the long sides are three feet deep, and the bed along the back of the garden is 4 feet deep.

We put in a patio that is approx 10 feet X 10 feet and laid it with red/savanah cobblestone patio stones (4 placed together form a large circle pattern). Along the side are of the patio we have a two foot wide flower bed, and at the side of the patio that borders on the rest of the backyard we built a long oval shaped 3 foot wide flower bed. The flower beds that border the patio will contain plants that grow to 3 or 4 feet in height. This will hopefully create a sort of garden room that gives us some privacy from our neighbours yet allows us to enjoy the rest of the garden while sitting at our patio table.

I purchased several perennial plants from Botanus.com (60 plants or so) and spent March to April growing more perennials, annuals and veggie seedlings indoors. It’s been a cool spring so some of my seedling planting has been delayed. However it’s been warming up nicely in the past week (May 27 to 31, 2002) so I hope to get the rest of my seedlings planted this weekend.

My garden will be a little bit unconventional. I’m planting several wild flowers, roses, and heirloom plants, but I’m mixing them with vegetables in several areas. It’s my hope that the veggies and their colours compliment the garden and don’t look too out of place mixed amongst the flowers and herbs. I really didn’t want to have a separate section of the garden just for the veggies as I felt that would break up the overall look I’m trying to achieve. If it doesn’t work perhaps I’ll go more traditional next year. ”

I’ve planted many more plants since the garden was started. Please see my “What’s Growing” page to see a list of the many many plants that I grow. It’s been a fun journey and along the way I’ve discovered that I do indeed have a very green thumb.

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