garden muses: a Toronto gardening blog

Toronto spring cleanup yields hellebore love

2013-04-24T07:31:00.000-04:00

Spring 2013: it's finally here (I think)

Sorry for not posting lately but I've been busy doing spring garden cleanups for new and old clients for the past several weeks. Temperatures are finally increasing so that it feels like spring in Toronto, although not as warm as last year.

I took the following pictures after cleaning up last autumn's debris from a client's backyard the other day. Maybe you'll feel inspired to plunk down some bucks for a few hellebores in your garden after viewing this post?

The new varieties of H. hybridus under the "Winter Jewels" and "Gold Collection" trademarks are so nice!

The "hot" hellebore this spring is "Ivory Prince", it was all over the place at Canada Blooms last month.

"Pink Frost" Hellebore

Allan Gardens Conservatory Easter Flower Show 2013: part two

2013-04-06T07:24:00.000-04:00

You want hydrangeas? I'll give you hydrangeas!

Easter has come and gone but there's still a chance to take in some nice colour in a city currently awash in brown. During my last visit to the Allan Gardens Conservatory Easter Flower Show, most of the hydrangeas were still not fully opened so I came back and took some better pictures.

I prefer the lacecap varieties over the big mophead types (more subtle and I like plants blooming on the horizontal plane.) Some of my clients receive these hydrangeas for Easter and then plunk them in the ground outside after the blooms fade. I'm surprised that some of them overwinter successfully but they never thrive and flower as much as the "real" Hydrangea macrophyllas.

I hope you enjoy these big balls of colour!

Happy 2nd Birthday to "garden muses"!

2013-03-29T08:31:00.000-04:00

This Toronto gardening blog turns 2!

A big wet kiss goes out to all my readers who, I hope, have enjoyed reading my "garden muses" blog as much as I've writing it over the past year. If you're not open to the kiss, then enjoy a piece of my birthday muffin vicariously:

Two years and counting....

Keep visiting: I really don't know where my posts will take me!

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Allan Gardens Conservatory 2013 Easter Flower Show | part one

2013-03-27T17:26:00.002-04:00

Well, at least it's blooming here in Toronto!

Inside of course. Winter is sloooowly leaving us and we may reach double digit (Celsius) temperatures next week. I'm seeing a flood of florist mophead hydrangeas in supermarkets and hardware stores in blue, pink, white and variations. Easter is around the corner so Easter lilies are ubiquitous as well. Outside, tips of tulips, crocus and daffodils are poking up.

The Allan Gardens Conservatory in Toronto exhibits five types of flower shows each year, free of charge. Since the focus is on plants (annuals and tropicals) and not interlocking brick or McMansion boulder arrangements, I wonder why anyone would rather go to Canada Blooms than this inner-city horticultural jewel. True, the area is kind of sketchy (nice Harveys down the street, wink!) and the city staff don't make eye contact with you but you're there for the plants, not to be accosted by hot tub and hot sauce salespeople.

I digress.

During my visit today, the mass plantings of tender hydrangeas and Easter lilies were not fully in bloom yet so I'll have to go back in a week or so. In the meantime, please enjoy these pictures of hydrangeas, daffodils, cyclamen and a blooming rhodo.

Wishing you a happy Easter for those who celebrate (and a good long weekend for those who don't!)

Variegated lacecaps, blue mopheads and variegated English ivy

Orchid Fever | book review | Eric Hansen

2013-03-24T08:03:00.001-04:00

A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust, and Lunacy

Source: http://amzn.to/ZfSa4A

There is something distinctive about the sight and sound of a human body falling from the rain forest canopy (p. 4.)

After reading this first sentence of Eric Hansen’s Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love. Lust, and Lunacy, you get the feeling that this book isn’t just a “how-to” instruction manual on orchid identification and care. Orchid Fever does go over how growers look after their prized possessions but Hansen is much more interested on how orchids affect collectors, growers, judges, “smugglers”, and seemingly normal people in bizarre, humourous, and, at times, tragic ways. In other words, how “orchid people” inevitably get the fever.

Read more »

Toronto gardeners in the zone

2013-03-16T00:00:00.000-04:00

Plant hardiness zones can answer the question "Will this plant survive in my garden?"

You’re in the garden center and see this plant that is begging to jump on your cart. You know that there’s a little label stuck somewhere in or on the pot outlining the plant’s common name, botanical name (who cares!), and whether it “likes” sun, shade, or something in between. Then you see something along the lines that your new baby is “recommended for zone 6/5/4/3” and you wonder “what is this zone nonsense?”

To help growers of crops and ornamental plants, American Canadian agricultural authorities have divided and colour-coded the country up into climatic zones in which certain plants are assumed to be able to survive. Here's the Canadian plant hardiness map produced by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada:

Plant Hardiness Zones of Canada

Survival factors include the area’s historical (typical) minimum winter temperatures, number of warm days per year, number of sunshine hours per year, soil type, volume and persistence of snow cover, and wind velocity and direction. A plant’s “hardiness” (ability to survive) is then given a zone designation and corresponding number and map location in which experts believe a certain plant should survive in. The higher the number, the higher the minimum winter temperatures (and conversely, the lower the zone, the lower the expected minimum winter temperatures.)

The Toronto area is rated, using the Canadian system, in the 5 zone (American zone 6) so you should feel secure buying and planting perennials, shrubs and trees with a rating of 5 or lower. (Most annuals, herbs and vegetables we grow in the GTA don’t have a zone rating or a rating that is 8 or higher. This means that they will not survive a typical Toronto outside.)

Well, so what?

Remember that these zones were created by plant scientists (i.e. humans) so they’re really best guesses about a plant’s survival in a specific geographic area, all things being equal. Of course, all things not being equal, don’t be shocked that a perennial labeled for zone 4 doesn’t make through a particularly harsh winter or that a “tender” plant somehow does. A deep and persistent layer of snow really “pushes” the zone higher for many perennials and shrubs in our area.

Zone designations are not perfect (because the folks who dream them up are not, just saying) but instead give you a good, quick and easy to understand (hopefully) indication whether that expensive and trendy plant you just need to buy before your neighbor does will likely live and thrive. Zones are more like probabilities not absolutes.

For me, it’s better to think of growing plants in Toronto (or your particular area) within a range of zones that can be taken advantage of (“pushing the zone”) if you want to work extra in creating “less harsh” growing conditions by covering plants up for the winter, growing them along a south facing wall for us in the northern hemisphere or covering them with an extra deep layer of leaves in the fall to act as a protective mulch. Or you can be conservative, not get involved with all this pampering, and stick with plants with 3 or 4 designations. Boring, yes, but less heartache and pain on the credit card.

Toronto gardeners love to push the zone, earning bragging rights, and occasionally pushing back against their Vancouver/Victoria cousins. You can too but just remember that when it comes to a number on a label called the “hardiness zone”, plants will die (and thrive), zones be damned!

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Sex and manure: the missing link now revealed

2013-03-09T06:50:00.000-05:00

Why this Toronto gardener won't think about composting the same way

File this post under, literally, scatalogical humour or simply, WTF, but this is a gardening blog after all and an irreverent one at that. (There are way too many how-to-grow-this-plant blogs out there. I refuse to add to the tedium.) Anyway, I can't make this stuff up.

I'm a big fan of composting: either doing it yourself in your backyard with some sort of contraption (bin, pit, pile, whatever you have handy) or diverting your organic green waste via the municipality's recycling program (if offered in your area.) So it was with a tinge of curiosity, disapproval and arousal that I re-discovered about the benefits of composting offered in the calendar (and video!) below:

The 2013 Perennial Plant of the Year™ is....

2013-03-03T07:46:00.000-05:00

Polygonatum odoratum ‘Variegatum’ (Variegated Solomon's Seal)

It took me 2 months to get this out to you, loyal reader, but the Perennial Plant Association (which determines these kind of things and actually trademarked that designation) has listed the "winner" for this year:

Polygonatum odoratum ‘Variegatum’/Striped Solomon's Seal

Allan Gardens Conservatory Spring Flower Show 2013, part 3

2013-02-27T11:11:00.001-05:00

Toronto spring blooms to get you through until April

What miserable weather we're having in Toronto right now! As a tonic, I'm posting pictures I took yesterday at the Allan Gardens Conservatory for you to enjoy. We'll see them outside likely in April or earlier if you visit Canada Blooms (our national flower show) next month.

Purple and pale yellow is a favourite colour combination. And, yes, the smell from the hyacinths knocks your socks off!

Real tough love

2013-02-24T17:30:00.000-05:00

A neglected moth orchid somewhere in Toronto

My Phalaenopsis (moth orchid) set new buds last week and is (re)blooming below:

Phalaenopsis orchid, cultivar unknown

I forgot how I brought this home. (Likely it was bought at a big box store for a ridiculously low price.) Local Toronto garden writer, Sonia Day, recently wrote about how these orchids, for various reasons, are now "as ubiquitous as doughnut shops" and given the number of coffee and donut stores in Toronto, that's a lot of moth orchids!

Over time, the many beautiful blooms on my "Phal" dropped and I was left with a whole bunch of basal leaves and a bare stalk.

What to do?

I hated the thought of chucking it out so I left the pot on a west-facing window in the kitchen. Maybe I'm turning out to be like my father who can't seem to discard things like plants. (I wrote about him in a previous post called "Do cacti need viagra?")

Besides watering very sporadically, I gave it no attention: no fertilizing, no misting, nothing. (You don't do the same! Here are some good instructions to take care of your moth orchid.)

And it just sat and looked at me.

Then recently it sent out these lovely blooms, in spite of my lack of Phal-love.

Maybe it's reminding me that Canada Blooms is around the corner...

Anyone else keeping Phalaenopsis, Cattleya, Dendrobium, et al? What have been your experiences?

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Elizabeth in the Garden | book review | Trea Martyn

2013-02-20T22:08:00.003-05:00

A Story of Love, Rivalry and Spectacular Design

Source: http://www.treamartyn.com/

Looking at all these pictures of modern gardens with their clipped hedges, monochromatic colour schemes and use of Cor-ten steel, I wonder if people using them actually have fun walking or lying about. How is any of the five senses (besides sight) satisfied if there are no flowers, no birds, no fruits, no fountains, no herbs? It would not appear that a "conceptual" garden offers a lot beyond the concept or theoretical abstraction itself, merely a physical framework for a particular design theory. A whole lot of mind games:

Contemporary Landscape design by Other Metro Landscape Architect Stefan Laport Landscape Architect IFLA

Can the garden above be called a "pleasure garden?" (No, it's not a rhetorical question!)

It's a light fixture, no, it's a container, no it's...

2013-02-13T13:34:00.000-05:00

One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World in your kitchen!

Browsing through a local Toronto paper today and stumbled upon this article photo of a combination herb planter and light fixture called the "Babylon Light".:

A Hanging Garden?

According to the spec sheet,

THE BABYLON LIGHT IS A PLANTABLE LIGHT FIXTURE. MADE OF ALUMINUM WITH A POWDER COATED FINISH, IT CAN BE USED AS AN ORGANIC CENTRE PIECE OR A WORKING HERB GARDEN OVER THE KITCHEN COUNTER. NO MATTER WHERE ITS SITUATED - BABYLON WILL BECOME YOUR VERY OWN HANGING GARDEN.

(Sorry for shouting, the text was all upper case in the PDF)

No price given as you have to inquire with the designer.

Any thoughts/comments on its utility, design, and function?

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Allan Gardens Conservatory Spring Flower Show 2013: part two

2013-02-11T13:10:00.000-05:00

More Toronto blooms under glass

As promised in my last post titled "Toronto gardeners can get an early glimpse of spring", here are some more blooms seen at the Allan Gardens Conservatory Spring Flower Show today:

This combination has "Easter" all over it with the pastel blue and pinks and the bright yellow of the daffodils

Allan Gardens Conservatory Spring Flower Show 2013: part one

2013-02-04T16:51:00.000-05:00

Toronto gardeners can get an early glimpse of spring

To escape the February gardening blues, I suggest making a trip down to the Allan Gardens Conservatory soon. I took these pictures recently and will return to update since the greenhouse crew was just trucking in the daffodils, hyacinths and tulips as I was leaving. I figure you wouldn't mind seeing these "cyclamen-heavy" pictures because any colour is better than no colour at this time of the year. The azaleas and camellias in bloom were especially appreciated!

More "bulby" shots to follow...

OMG, is it May yet?

2013-01-29T07:17:00.000-05:00

My Toronto garden last May

It's late January and I'm going a little stir crazy with the snow, windchill, freeze, thaw games that's going on weather-wise in our neck of the woods. I dug through the photo archives from last May and want to present some much needed colour to get me and you through these next dreary months. These were all taken in my backyard garden when flowers and foliage were exploding.

We all have those moments when we're in the garden and think "damn, it's nice here!" There were many on that May day.

"Rolly's Favorite" Silene/Campion/Catchfly

"Arnold Promise" witch hazel blooms

2013-01-22T07:37:00.000-05:00

A January flowering shrub this Toronto gardener can depend on

The underside of the petals have a beautiful tinge to them

I had a very small window of opportunity last Saturday when temperatures were about 5 degrees C. (40 F) and the "Arnold Promise" witch hazel in my backyard were open. I quickly took these shots of one of my favourite shrubs which provides as close to four seasons' worth of interest as any plant can. When the deep freeze arrived today, the blooms predictably shrivelled up to protect themselves.

Aren't plants interesting?

Toronto gardeners need some warmth!

2013-01-16T20:08:00.000-05:00

And I got some: the Summer Palace gardens in China last July

We will be getting some very low temperatures soon (windchills of minus 15 degrees Celsius or about 5 F) but what do you expect being firmly entrenched in winter in Toronto? Not much gardening to do (I'm not into houseplants) but to read, do some business planning for spring and moan about how cold and dreary it is. (Funny how I always complain how hot and muggy it is in July and August!) If you're reading this from chilly climes in the northern hemisphere and want to get warm vicariously, pretend you're being blasted with upper 30 degree Celsius (90 degree F) and about 100% humidity and read along.

Such beautiful water lily (lotus?) blooms coming from an incredibly dirty pond

My immediate and extended family went to China and Hong Kong last July (!) on a whirlwind visit. (I blogged about our visit to the Ming Tombs area previously in a post called "The Sacred Way at the Ming Tombs" )

I use the exclamation point because anyone who lives and travels in this part of Asia knows damn well how incredibly hot and sticky one gets from merely standing still in one spot.

I love yew, yew, and yew

2013-01-04T20:21:00.000-05:00

Now, darling, that's a hedge!

Hmmm, which way to the estate today, James?

For those fortunate 1%ers who have a few acres of frontage to work with, consider this bad boy of a hedge above showcased recently in a blog I follow called Gardenista. (The post is titled "Renew with Yew: The Easiest and (Hardiest) Hedge for Your Garden")

I find yews overused but for good reason. They can really take hard pruning and/or regular clipping but are so slow growing. Cultivars of Taxus x media like "Densiformis", "Wardii", "Hicksii" and "Hillii" are commonly found in our garden centres, nurseries and, therefore, local gardens. Inevitably, they are shaped into variations of meatballs growing 2 feet away from the front of the house. All this in the name of "foundation planting"!

Need to keep your shears sharp for these babies!

If shrub lollipops, popsicles and gigantic potatoids interest you, here's inspiration! I admit this would look fabulous right now with the snow we're having in Toronto. Your labour costs would likely go through the roof but so would the "wow" factor for an appreciative audience of this sort of look.

Cylinder, pyramid, sphere, cube, the choices are endless...

Happy New Year to my garden muses' readers

2012-12-31T09:01:00.002-05:00

It's almost over...

I'm sending out a big thank you to all my readers who subscribe to my little blog (or stumbled upon it while searching for porn, sigh...)

It's that time of the year again where we reflect on the good, the bad and the ugly experiences over the last twelve months. (There were many more in the "good" category for me, thankfully.)

Counting off the days...

I think we tend to learn a lot more about ourselves, our character, with the latter two types of scenarios. And as self-actualizing humans (and gardeners!), we should strive to be continuously learning and evolving into better beings with better gardens. Well, this could justify all the pottering around yard we do, often to our spouse's/partner's consternation.

Anyway, enough with the armchair philosophy. I wish everyone (anyone?) reading this a wonderful 2013. The world didn't end last week so all this "extra time" is pure upside!

Allan Gardens Conservatory Christmas Flower Show 2012

2012-12-15T17:43:00.001-05:00

'Tis the Season for Poinsettias and More!

Living in downtown Toronto has its pros and cons, gardening-wise, but I'm lucky to have a public conservatory within a 10 minute walk from home. I've visited the Allan Gardens Conservatory before with readers in a post called "In need of some colour, quick!" It's such a nice place, especially in winter, when you need to be surrounded by living green stuff. The staff change plantings throughout the year to keep things interesting and, currently, the 2012 Christmas Flower Show is on exhibit. Here are some highlights from my visit last week.

(Just a note of caution before we begin. If you're allergic to poinsettias like this person claims to be, you may want to skip this post!)

Thank you, dear reader, for visiting me for the first time or regularly throughout 2012. I've had a terrific year personally and professionally. I hope you did as well.

Have a safe and wonderful holiday season (Christmas for me)!

The smell of paperwhites is a love/hate thing. "Cloying" seems an appropriate description for some!

Hellebores and cyclamen elicit thoughts of spring

A nice drift of pink cyclamen

Mixed among the poinsettias were many amaryllis in bloom. I didn't see any labels so if you know the cultivar, please comment!

A living Victorian fireplace, rug and chairs! See the closeups below.

I was lazy so click and enlarge this photo for more info on how Victorians celebrated Christmas in their houses.

The living rug with kalanchoe and echeveria

More kalanchoe, echeveria and hypoestes, the polka dot plant, forming the mantle and hearth

Closeup of part of the rug. Someone is patient and detail-oriented!

Not your typical modern Christmas tree (I like the citrus slices.)

Poinsettias, like most annuals, do so much better in drifts. The white poinsettias contrast so nicely with the dark purple oxalis. The silver Helichrysum ties it all together.

The poinsettias are the visitors as the umbrella and banana trees are the permanent members in this part of the greenhouse

The poinsettia, Euphorbia pulcherrima, is native to Mexico and Central America, so it isn't out of place next to these tropical neighbours.

My favourite colour combination in the conservatory! The dark purple of the Cordyline makes the off-white poinsettia even brighter and the variegated version ties the two together. Soft, muted and a little sinister.

The power of layers!

November at the Toronto Botanical Garden

2012-11-18T14:05:00.001-05:00

No "fall yard cleanup" here!

Brown is a colour too!

Most of the leaves are off the trees in the city and as a result, the whine of gas-powered leaf blowers shatters any peace one seeks in one of our public parks or our private yards. Not many seem to use rakes these days. Is such usage too low-tech and pedestrian? Where's the wow factor?

No leaf blowers at the TBG when I visited a couple days ago mercifully. No crowds either but hardly surprising. The halcyon days of late spring and early summer are long gone when it seems everything is blooming its pretty head off. Gardens now emit a different level of energy which likely few find inspiring.

Who finds brown interesting?

Well, I do!

Since we in Toronto aren't surrounded by pretty flowers for 5 or 6 months (holy moly, that's half the friggen year!), those who have an eye for things horticultural rely on the structure of, um, dead parts of perennials and dormant shrubs and trees to get us through the winter. "Winter interest" is an euphemism to describe our supposed appreciation of botanical brown bits like seedheads, tree bark, or dead grass stalks. I do believe it's a valid concept when choosing plants for a garden but on more than one occasion, a client/garden owner has looked at me with deeply distrustful eyes a I fawn over the virtues of a pagoda dogwood "holding" a fresh layer of snow as the sun rises on a crisp January morning, etc....

I'm sure some viewers will take out their pruners right about now

Non-believers of the "winter interest" concept may experience a change of opinion if not a horti-religious conversion by visiting places like the TBG in which ornamental grasses and other "brown dead things" are not hacked to the ground the day after Halloween. I truly believe this "scorched earth" approach under the guise of a "fall cleanup" represents some deep psychological need to impose control and order on the external world.

Luckily, I haven't met many clients with such a neurosis but you see them removing every offending leaf from their front lawn, daily, with their blowers!

As low(er) maintenance as you can get

Backlit Miscanthus

This will be even nicer once it snows

I don't want to give the impression that all things botanical were shades of brown, tan, wheat, khaki, etc. I saw this nice composition of fall beauty- and winterberries (Callicarpa and Ilex) which my crappy camera doesn't do justice to. The red (more scarlet) and purple really grab you visually. Alas, it lasts 2 weeks a year like magnolias, rhodos, etc., but what a two weeks!

A montage of Beautyberry, Winterberry and a Thuja

When nothing else is flowering, depend on Colchicum

Nestled among some bearberry (I think), some autumn crocus were in full bloom. This was a nice way to end my visit, don't you think?

Mellow yellows

2012-11-04T07:58:00.000-05:00

More fall colour in Toronto

Autumn Gingko biloba leaves, pre-Sandy

As the remnants of Hurricane Sandy blew into our fair city earlier this week and stripped many leaves off of trees overnight, I was lucky to have taken these pictures before the big winds hit. When some of us think of autumn foliage, we might come up with colour descriptions like wine, russet, crimson, tangerine but let's not forget one of my favourite colours: yellow! There's a huge range of tints and shades of yellow we see in the fall and the following will give you a flavour of the spectrum.

More reason to consider fall colour in plant selection and placement but to be honest, no one thinks about this in the garden centres in May!

Eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis)

Oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus)

Common witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) blooms

Littleleaf linden (Tilia cordata)

Bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora)

Common witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) leaf

"Elegans" hosta

Autumn common witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana)

Toronto Music Garden revisited in the fall

2012-10-26T15:00:00.000-04:00

On an impossibly beautiful day in late fall, I made time to visit one of my favourite places in the city. I've posted about the Toronto Music Garden twice before under the titles
"wind + ornamental grasses = kinesis" and "Toronto Music Garden with the kids" so as you can guess this garden still intrigues and inspires me. The design is thought-provoking and the plant list, well, elicits serious hort envy!

Under a brilliant blue sky with an ever-present prevailing wind off Lake Ontario, I spent an hour admiring the fall foliage and feeling at peace with the rustling sounds from the ornamental grasses. My only regret was running out of camera battery power but the memory is ingrained. Anyone in the Toronto area should visit the space, whether one is a lover of Bach or garden design or not.

Shimmering Miscanthus, Chasmanthium, and Panicum

Fall common witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) foliage
and blooms

More common witch hazel blooms with
last year's opened seedpods

Another reason to love Hakone grass

Maiden grass seedheads ready to catch the wind

Going up the Courante section...

A grove of paper birches in its autumn glory

On July 1 compared to...

A more subdued feeling 4 months later

At the adjacent Spadina Quay Wetlands.
An excellent example of ecological planting
that is also highly ornamental.

It's all about the foliage, baby!

2012-10-15T14:30:00.001-04:00

Reasons why autumn is my favourite season as a Toronto gardener:

I was born in September
My wife was born in October
We were married in September
It's the best time to work outside
no bugs, no humidity, deals at the garden centres

and....

fall foliage!

"Arnold Promise" witchhazel on fire, figuratively

Detail of Hamamelis x intermedia "Arnold Promise" witchhazel leaf in autumn

This witchhazel at my clients, A & M's, has a different colouring than mine at home which has no red margin. Unusual and beautiful nevertheless. Another reason why you need a witchhazel in your garden and not another purple leaf sandcherry from a big box store!

Fall leaf colour and pome (fruit) of Cotoneaster lucidis (Hedge cotoneaster)

Oranges and russets of Cotoneaster lucidis (Hedge cotoneaster) in autumn

You're likely more aware of "Coral Beauty" cotoneaster or Cranberry cotoneaster (C. dammeri and horizontalis cultivars) with their vivid red berries but I came across a hedge type which I think has superior fall colouring. I don't see C. lucidis that often in nurseries. Maybe a good alternative to privet if you're considering putting in a hedge next year.

Acer ginnala (Amur maple) fall colour

Acer ginnala (Amur maple) fall colour with a halo effect

Here are some shots of the Amur maple doing its autumn thing in my backyard. The leaves will only be on for about a week so I had to take some photos before they all drop. Acer ginnala is one tough and hardy maple. It's often sold multi-stemmed and shrubby. I prune mine as a tree form. My plant i.d. prof at Humber College called it a "poor man's Japanese maple" which I think is a bit unkind!

Happy birthday to my wife today. As I tell her, gardening in the fall is all about the foliage, baby!

Down by the Muskoka lakeside

2012-10-09T06:35:00.001-04:00

Another beautiful Canadian Thanksgiving at the Lake Muskoka cottage

A crisp fall morning walk is rewarded by this view

Autumn has descended all too quickly for us in southern Ontario and while our summer annuals (those that haven't been chucked out for mums and kale) on on their last legs, the fall colours of our native deciduous trees and shrubs are peaking. Here are some reminders why I love our four seasons taken over our Thanksgiving weekend visit to my sister and my brother-in-law's cottage near Gravenhurst, ON:

Windy and cool but no water skiers to disrupt the peace

Vibrant orange autumn maple and sumac leaves

Isn't it amazing how the chlorophyll is drawn out randomly?

A final reminder of a wonderful season