hydrangea

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.

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?

It hasn’t been the best summer – garden’s puttering along

by Tricia

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Well, so far this year I can’t say it’s been a great summer or great gardening season … Some of my plants are behind while others are not liking this weather at all!

We’re finally having some warm humid weather here in Toronto (still not as hot and humid as it usually is!) and that’s helping the plants make up for what’s been a cold summer! We haven’t had tons of rain, but when it does rain it rains a lot!

My roses don’t seem to like this weather. They’ve been hit fairly hard with powdery mildew and several have just about completely lost their blooms! I’ve treated the roses with my organic mix and I think they’ll begin to recover soon … but they’re going to look straggly for a while!

Actually … it’s just the roses in the backyard that are depleted of leaves. The ones in the front look great! Especially The Fairy rose and Bonica! Oh and they’re blooming like crazy too! Take a peak:

Lovely aren’t they? These are The Fairy Roses.

Oh well … at least most of the plants are growing and or producing veggies! My Tomatoes (cherry, tiny tom, early girl and Glam) are all full of green tomatoes. Hopefully the heat starts to help them ripen! Likewise my cucumber plants have tiny (smaller than Gherkins) cucumbers on them that I hope begin to grow soon. I can’t wait to have fresh tomatoes and cucumbers around!

At least I can eat some fresh fruit from my garden – even it’s only a handful! We finally picked our first raspberries off the bushes yesterday. Yummy!

If you’re weather is similar to mine you might have noticed that some of your plants are behind, smaller than normal or even taller than normal! For example, my Hydrangea is blooming, but the flowers are a little smaller than they normally are … yet my Phlox (Phlox David) and Balloon Flowers are blooming like crazy and they’re also much taller than normal … my Balloon flowers are over 4 feet tall! Biggest they’ve ever been!

Here’s my Hydrangea:

The sunflowers that I always grow in our planted boulevard were only two or so feet tall up until a week ago … then we got all that rain last weekend and they grew another two feet or more just like that. Their flowers are finally blooming, but again, they are smaller than normal. Geez … I’m used to having 8 foot tall sunflowers that the city tells me I have to cut down! LOL

At least my plants are blooming and growing. It could be worse!

I’ll leave you with this lovely picture of my Graham Thomas English rose … aren’t they gorgeous?

How’s your garden doing this week?

A little yard work

by Tricia

I couldn’t stop myself … I couldn’t resist … On Monday I finally went outside and did some yard work! First Spring cleaning for the garden this year!

Of course I had to pick a rather cool day and naturally, as per usually, I didn’t go out during the afternoon when it would be warmer and brighter … nope, Chris and I waited until it was about 7 pm before deciding to go outside to take some pictures of the Crocus and other plants that we spotted coming up and that of course turned into what was supposed to be a short lawn raking session.

All in all we were outside for close to two hours and the temp fell to -1 Celsius (30 F) by the time we came back indoors tired and frozen!

Most of the leaves and dead grass has now been raked off the front and back lawns. There were a few areas, shady areas, where the ground was still quite hard and the leaves were a frozen mass stuck to the grass. LOL

We even started to take some of the leaves off of the garden beds. I was surprised at how many of our plants were growing! Now that we’re getting some rain and it’s above zero most of the time I expect to see a lot more green – perhaps by the weekend.

I discovered that the Sedum had little green nubs coming up, there were some tulip leaves, maybe some Grape hyacinth leaves, our two hydrangeas have leaf buds, and the Chives had doubled in size from when I first discovered them last week. I also think some of the German Iris leaves had started to come up and green as well. There’s so much life in the garden hidden under a thin layer of leaves.

Have you been out in your yard doing any Spring cleaning yet? Discovered any plants that you didn’t expect to be coming up yet?

Summer’s coming to an end

A little yard work

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