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Strange weather

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Wow, the weather switches around here from one day to the next!

On Sunday it was extremely hot and humid. This of course was thanks to the warm weather blowing in, in advance of the remnants of Hurricane Ike. Late in the evening it became quite windy and the rain came – not as much rain as they were predicting luckily.   The wind cooled everything down and so far this week (Mon, Tues) it’s been cooler than it normally should be at this time of year.

It’s so strange to go from tropical temperatures to very cool temperatures all within the span of 24 hours. I wonder what our plants think of all the changes in the weather?

Have you had strange weather in your area in the last few days?






Rose of Sharon blooming

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I’m always surprised when I look at the stats for this site and I see the search term “Rose of Sharon” come up almost daily all year round. There’s obviously a lot more people than I thought looking for information about Rose of Sharon shrubs!

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My Rose of Sharon came to me 7 years ago as a gift from my neighbor. She has a Rose of Sharon, lets call it the mother tree, that is about 40+ years old.

I’m not sure how tall her tree is but lets say it’s somewhere between 12 and 15 feet tall. The seedling she gave me has grown quite a bit over the years and it’s only about two feet shorter than the mother tree. It’s trunk and branches have thickened, but they are still smaller in diam. than the mother trees – but not by that much.

This is definitely not the best picture of the tree that I’ve ever taken, but to show you how big it is this year and what it looks like in full bloom, here we go …

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You can see the power line above the tree so that should give you an idea of how tall it is.

It’s been a beautiful addition to my garden. I love it’s purple blooms. Birds love the tree year round, and butterflies and other insects enjoy the tree when it’s in bloom. I’m sure it’s helped attract some of the butterflies that frequent my yard regularly each year.

The Rose of Sharon is a fairly hardy tree, but it’s slow to leaf out in the spring. It’s often one of the last plants to start to show signs of life in my garden. I usually see leaves forming by early June, but there have been a few years where it hasn’t leafed out till close to the end of June.

My elderly neighbor always thinks her tree is dead each year because it’s so slow and each year I reassure her that it will leaf out and bloom – and it does.

I’ll bet that the Rose of Sharon being slow to start up in the spring or early summer is one of the major reasons why I get so many searches on my site for this lovely shrub.

I used to have a Hardy Hibiscus that would die down each winter, but for the past two years it’s failed to come up. I think it’s gone. My tropical Hibiscus – that I keep indoors in the winter – is doing well in a large urn at the front of the house. There are several peach colored blooms on it.

Do you grow Hibiscus? What type and what have your experiences been with the plant?

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information. GTS participants remember to check in at As the Garden Grows each week so that we’ll know you made a new post!

Time to bring the tropical plants indoors!

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It’s cooled down here in Toronto quite a bit over the last week. In fact, some night’s have started to get close to freezing temperatures.

So, I think I’m going to bring all my tropical plants indoors again. I did put all the tropicals like the passionflower vines, the jasmine, ornamental peppers and so on inside the enclosed back porch a couple of weeks ago. We even put two tomato plants that had been growing in large pots inside the porch too.

The plants have all done well in there and the tomatoes have really taken off and have produced a number of green tomatoes. Most are large enough to begin ripening and as far as I’m concerned that’s just in time as the porch will be too cool soon for the tomatoes to survive.

I think that I’ll bring the tropical plants inside and place them in our sunny spare bedroom upstairs.

I do this every year, but I’ve found that not all of the plants make it through the winter. We have a humidifier that we use upstairs in the winter time, but I think that the plants find the air too dry even with the extra humidity we try to put in the air.

Perhaps we’ll get another humidifier or vaporizer to put right in the room with the plants. That will certainly increase the total humidity upstairs!

They have to combat dry winter furnace heated air and the occasional white fly or other pesty bug attack. I do give the plants a spray with a mild soapy water solution occasionally.

Anyone have any other tips for me as to how I can make sure my passion flower vines and other tropicals make it through the winter inside the house?

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