Every week, from now until I can no longer find anything living to fill up the boxes, I will be photographing and posting a collection of flowers, leaves, stems, and other plant parts that are in my garden. This is an experiment in celebrating diversity and I hope it will allow me to focus more closely on the beauty that is inherent in the different parts of each plant. It will also serve as a visual file of the seasons.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I know I will enjoy putting them together. I can’t wait to show you more! The garden is so full and alive right now, I could have put together several for this week alone.

From Left to Right:

Top Row: 1. Pansy, unknown corner store purchase. 2. White Bleeding Heart (Dicentra spectabilis ‘Alba’) from my friend Sakura’s garden. She gave me the seedling just days before she died. I think of her whenever it blooms and am thankful that I now have a safe place to grow it. 3. ‘Bloomerang’ Lilac (Syringa) now in its second year. I have dug it up and moved it three times since and yet it flourishes.

Middle Row: 4. Clematis ‘Crystal Fountain’. At least I think it is. I lost the tag. While not my usual style, I’ve been surprised by how much I anticipated the blooms opening up this year. Even Davin got in on the excitement with daily early morning status reports. 5. Coleus ‘Henna’ I grew this last year and loved it. 6. Purple Iris. Dubbed ‘Parkdale Purple’ I can only assume this is because this particular variety has spread all around the neighbourhood. I bought mine years ago at the Parkdale Horticultural Society Plant Fair and planted it into the Guerilla Garden/Street Garden where it lived for about a decade. Last year I dug up several rhizomes and transplanted them into my new garden. They are happier here than they have ever been, most likely because the soil is perfect and I’ve been able to pamper them.

Bottom Row: 7. Columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris ‘Nora Barlow’). I originally acquired this beauty as a self-seeding volunteer in my community garden plot. I loved it so much that I brought it over to the new garden where I am pleased to find it is flourishing. 8. Cushion Spurge (Euphorbia polychroma). I have absolutely no recollection of its origins, but I believe it may be another transplanted from the Street Garden. 9. Sweet Woodruff (Galium odoratum). I originally planted this in the Yardshare Garden, but moved it over here this spring. Someone new has bought the house so the garden has come to an end.

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Please note that I received both ‘Crystal Fountain’ Clematis and ‘Bloomerang’ Lilac as review plants last year from Loblaw Inc.

We’re hitting that magical time of the season when a growing portion of our meals are gleaned from the garden. I enjoy moving around the space, snipping bits of this and that from here and there. I have edibles tucked in everywhere. There are lettuce seedlings in every bed, except the dry one. They would not fair well there.

Yesterday’s lunch, a simple salad (Except the eggs. No chickens here. Le sigh. Oh, and the cheese.) came from the garden.

Here’s my process:

1. Photo Top Left: ‘Four Seasons’ lettuce. This is the same lettuce that miraculously overwintered. I dug up the seedlings and planted them here and there.
2. Photo Top Right: Harvesting assorted edible greens. These include: Two types of spinach, bloody dock, chive flowers, viola flowers, French Sorrel, pea shoots, curly parsley, violet leaves, another type of lettuce (I forget), curly cress, ‘Green Wave’ mustard, mizuna, ‘Red Frills’ mizuna, spring onion, lemon balm, mint, and borage seedlings. These are just a few examples of salad fixins you can grow.
3. Photo Bottom Left: Easy dressing done right in the bowl. Just add your greens and toss. Olive oil, a dash of Balsamic vinegar, grated Parmesan cheese, chopped chive blossoms and parsley.
4. Photo Bottom Right: And eat. With boiled eggs and asparagus. Enjoyed with a kefir milk smoothie.

I am loving this combination of the chartreuse ‘Designer Genes’ hosta, flanked by the delicate Claytonia virginica ‘Spring Beauty’ blooms.

See also: Sierra Spring Beauty (Claytonia nevadensis).

Last night, I gleefully laid out the collection of items I had purchased from the flea market onto the floor and imagined how I will use them in the future. Most of the items were purchased for the garden and some will make an appearance in the photos I take for future book and assignments.

Most of the items that show up in my work projects are also used by me in my home. Few are purchased for one-time usage and then shuffled out the door. Perhaps it would be better that way, but I am a collector, always have been. Still, I can’t recycle the same plates, bowls, and fabrics book after book, photo after photo, so to keep things fresh, I collect an affordable hodgepodge of items that I like, primarily from thrift shops. I’ve never really been into sets anyway. It’s one part of my job that gives me an excuse to indulge in a whim that I would be otherwise forced to curb. It is why I go to the effort of dragging home dirty curbside “treasures” on my bike and why I fill up my luggage with special canning jars when I go away on business trips. In truth, I was doing these things before it became a part of my job — this just gives me the justification I need to continue.

Part of a burgeoning collection of rusty witches’ cauldrons. Some are used as pots. Some just sit there. What can I say? I like them.

Davin looked on lazily as I went through a sort-of ritual of assembling and disassembling the motley collection. Lay the items out. Ponder their use. Put them away. Pull them out again for a second glance. I looked up at him and remarked that laid out like that, I could see that what I had purchased that afternoon amounted to a pile of crap. If it is rusted, dirty, broken, and has sat unused in the back of a barn or storage shed for at least a decade, chances are good that I will buy it and bring it home. As long as the price is right.

There I sat, like a kid with new toys, delighting in a pile of wares that most people would identify as garbage. I’m like a bird seeking out shiny things, but the things I seem to like most are tarnished, pocked, and laden in a patina of filth.

“They’re for your Tickle Trunk,” Davin said.

“But I don’t collect costumes — I’m not Mr. Dressup.”

“It amounts to the same thing. You use them to tell your stories.”

Antique cobbler shoe lasts that will sit in the garden and hold up nothing.

Old tools. They’re all still in excellent shape and will be used in the garden. They don’t make ‘em like they used to.

I didn’t buy these, but I wanted to. They’d make great planter boxes. But at $75 a pop, they are not within my budget, nor do I think they were worth the hefty price-tag regardless. Someone with more dollars and less sense can have them. I tend to stick to things in the $1-15 range.

I loved this old bird mansion with the adorable topiary bushes flanking the doorway, but again, too expensive. I may be a sucker for junk, but I don’t drop $60 on things that are falling apart no matter how beautifully decrepit they may be. I have my limits. It is also far too big for my small yard.

God, how I love an overnight rainfall. There is nothing more optimistic than waking up to a bright and sunny day with the soil moist and fresh smelling. These are the perfect conditions for weeding. The softened soil makes it easy to slip weedlings (a spelling slip that I’m not gonna change) from the soil, and the pleasant atmosphere brings an added sense of joy to the task.

I’ve made it a habit over the years to learn about and identify as many plants in the seedling stage as I can so that I know at a glance who stays and who goes. Some seedlings are worth cultivating, but others just suck up nutrients and space — the sooner you can get them out the better.

The mystery seedling with just the seed leaves showing.

A handful of one particular type of seedling that I can not identify has been coming up in a section of the garden. They seem too delicate to be a tree, but don’t look like anything I have grown or even seen before. Some seedlings do change dramatically as they age, so there’s always the chance that they are something I am growing. They could have come in with the wind or birds but I don’t see them in my neighbors’ yard, yet many are situated near the fence. They could have come in the soil with some plants I planted last year… I can’t say for certain where they hailed from, but I do want to know what they are. They are delicate and pretty little things. Their beauty has bought them some time as well as my curiosity.

Can you identify these seedlings? I’m so eager to know I will send one of our t-shirts, any size or style to the first person that can correctly identify them.

Your help is appreciated!

UPDATE: Thanks to Kristen who identified the seedling as jewelweed (Impatiens capensis). The plant came in through a bush I bought at last year’s Parkdale Horticultural Society Plant Fair and I left it because it’s such a useful medicinal plant. I completely forgot about it until Kristen made the identification.

The first pieces of flair I added to the garden early last year was a collection of bird and bee houses that I affixed to the left front side of our ramshackle shed. Recently, high winds have been knocking them off and when putting them back up I happened to notice a few stray baby yellow garden spiders (Argiope aurantia) and a big egg case affixed to the back of one of the houses.

Since then I’ve been watching eagerly to see if there was any movement. And look what I discovered today…

…a massive cluster of brand new baby spiderlings! They are all stuck together in a tight ball with just a few that are beginning to break out of the pack. Before long I will be finding them all over the garden so I was glad to catch them while they are still so new.

Some organic gardeners are conflicted about inviting spiders into the garden. Yes, they are fantastic pest deterrents, unfortunately they kill rather indiscriminately, preying upon both insect pests as well as other beneficials. Still, I consider any help good help, and I believe that it all balances out in the end. They are always welcome in my garden and even inside our home. While I do not encourage spiders in the bathroom or bedroom (there are limits), we have welcomed another species in the kitchen since late last summer. His name is Spidey and he does a pretty good job keeping the fruit fly population under control.

When we first moved in, the yard was a bit of a wasteland with few inhabitants. It makes me so pleased to see how busy the garden is this year with so many pollinators, butterflies, birds, and other insects finding their way here to partake in the healthy habitat we are trying to create.

Of course, as I write this I can’t help but see the paradox in that statement as it applies to the unpleasant feelings I harbour towards some of the less helpful wildlife that have also found the garden appealing: namely the squirrel menace whose enthusiastically inflicted damage I spend hours attempting to undo or protect against over the course of the growing season.

Cue a rousing singalong to the Facts of Life theme song.

The end.

“Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.” – The Carpenters

I’m not going to mince words — the weather is shit right now. It’s grey and cold and the coffee I drank two hours ago has been unable to penetrate its dreary, low energy malaise. I feel like a zombie and I look like one, too. I often joke that I’ve spent so much time in the company of plants that I’ve become one. But the plants are bright, colourful, and standing up straight today — we are not in sync at all.

If you can stand to be outdoors, the overcast haze makes the perfect conditions for photographing the garden. I dragged my sorry ass out there this afternoon to capture some recent changes to the garden and photograph these books. The lemon balm is reaching a nice size now and I was reminded on sighting it that a fistful lazily torn and brewed in a cup of hot water is a good rainy day remedy. I added slices of fresh ginger and ginger honey purchased at the market to mine.

The cup is empty now and while I can’t say that I am feeling any more chipper than before, I am at least cheered by the prospect of more drinks made with fresh (rather than dried) herbs from the garden in the coming months.

The Books:

It has been ages since I’ve done a book round-up on this site and I’ve got a backlog that I’ve been meaning to write about. Here are three:

• Planting the Dry Shade Garden: The Best Plants for the Toughest Spot in Your Garden by Graham Rice. I don’t have a dry shade garden at home, in fact I have very little shade at all, just an awkward, thin sliver that is cast in the shadow of the house and a wooden fence that the neighbours put up but then seemed to abandon less than a quarter of the way down their property line. However, my community garden plot has become increasingly shaded out by weed trees over the years and the water supply is growing scarce. I’ve been thinking about how I can still put the space to use rather than abandoning it in frustration. This book is a nice, inspiring resource if the tricky combination of low light and dry soil has left you baffled and lost in how to make the lush, woodland garden you hoped to grow.
• Cucina Povera: Tuscan Peasant Cooking by Pamela Sheldon Johns. This is simple, hardy cooking with ingredients that are readily available and on hand. A lot of the dishes are one-pot feasts and soups, which come to think of it would hit the spot on a day like today. Like all good cookbooks, the beautiful, richly textured photos in this one had be aching to get home to my kitchen (or fly to Italy) as soon as I picked it up at the store. Indeed, we have cooked from it a few times now. My favourite is the new-to-me concept of “gnudi,” a gnocchi-like pasta that is sort of like the filling of a ravioli without the hassle of rolling out the dough. Instead, you add the flour to the filling ingredients and drop spoonfuls into boiling water. The cooked dumplings are then served on sauce. I’m never slaving over a meal of homemade ravioli again now that this is in my repertoire.
• Secrets of the Red Lantern: Stories and Vietnamese Recipes from the Heart by Pauline and Luke Nguyen. I was drawn to this massive hardcover book by the photos, but it was the story of a family’s escape from Vietnam and their shared passion for food that tempted me to buy it. I’ll admit that I haven’t tried any of the recipes — I’m not particularly drawn to cook Vietnamese food, but man do I ever love eating it! At some point I will be forced to assemble the ingredients and make a go of it since I am yet to find a restaurant in Toronto that meets the standards of the kind of understated freshness that seems to be at the heart of real Vietnamese cooking (Please offer recommendations if you have them). Traveling there is in the top two of my dream trip wish list, and I kick myself daily that I didn’t have the time or the money to extend last year’s trip to Thailand and make that dream a reality.

  Beyond the photos of tantalizing dishes and the overall beauty of this book, it is the honesty of the storytelling that has drawn me back to dip into its pages several times since I picked it up at the bookstore. I was initially floored and secretly thrilled by Pauline Nguyen’s straightforward telling of the difficulties and challenges in her family’s story. Most writers tend to glaze over family “problems”, especially in cookbooks where families are primarily depicted as glowingly warm and inviting, much like the food. Ms. Nguyen manages to strike a balance between firmness, compassion and love that was unexpected and makes this book so much more than a cookbook and worth reading even if, like me, you never cook any of the recipes.

Please note: Book publishers often send me books to review, but I only post about those that genuinely interest me. “Planting the Dry Shade Garden” was one such book. I purchased the other two books myself.

The other day I posted the above image, a photo of the garden as it was at that very moment. I’ve been swinging back and forth lately between satisfaction with the garden’s progress, and frustration with the weather and the feeling of being behind. Or if it’s not that it’s a nagging dissatisfaction that it hasn’t come far enough and is not enough… yet. And then I find joy in a new flowering bulb that emerges, that fresh look that the soil has after it rains, and the relief in finally having laid down a new layer of mulch and I come back full circle to satisfied again.

It was that seesaw of ambivalence that held me back from pressing the post button for a minute before I got over it and let the image go live. Despite my own uncertainty and/or insecurities I am not Better Homes & Gardens and I have never aspired to be. We’ll leave that to those who are better suited to it. I have intentionally rejected that path as a gardener, and thwarted that role as a garden writer for all sorts of reasons, the most basic being that it’s not me. As a result, I feel a commitment to showing my gardens as they are, as never-ending projects that are always in progress. I don’t stage them for photos or wait for that final moment of “doneness” because in truth that moment will never come.

My gardens are working spaces where I grow food, test plants, experiment, and satisfy my botanical whims. The moment the garden feels done is the moment that I dig it all up and start again. When it comes to design, I know that growing in groupings of three or five is more aesthetically pleasing, but I tend to grow only one of many things because that’s either all I need, or because I am saving the space for something else that I must have OMG YES PLEASE! I’ll start gardening the “right way” when I give up on life in the city and move out to that multi-acre farm (never).

The garden in late April 2011. One year ago exactly. All we had at that point was a compost bin that we built from a futon frame that was left behind by former residents. There was also the patch on the right that we had dug up a few months prior for spring bulbs and a few others for garlic that I had covered with straw. There is also the pear tree that we moved to the back of the garden and a small area on the left that I had haphazardly dug when we moved in to overwinter my Japanese maple and a few other perennials. Everything else was as it was when we moved in.

Shortly after posting that picture I took a quick look through old photos to remind myself of where the garden was at exactly one year ago. Thank god for photo documentation because when it comes to my work my memory is not always as kind as the truth. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was no garden at this time last year. We had only just returned from Thailand, were thrust back into full throttle producing the last book, and I had to learn how to sleep again like a thirtysomething infant (I know I harp on about this but my god, I will never forget that experience) all the while trying to get some sleep so that I could speak in full sentence on camera for a demo that was being shot. I never did get that sleep and I swear to you I am still catching up a year later.

Somewhere in there I managed to sneak in time to dig up the yard, piece-by-piece, using a shovel and any remaining strength that I had left in my body. As I’ve said before, I’m on the fence about tillers and I was stubbornly determined to do it without a machine. When I have the full picture in my mind and I look back at the photographic evidence and see how far the garden has come in a year, on a non-existant budget, with the labor of just two people… I can’t believe it.

Will this garden be featured in Better Homes & Gardens? Not likely, but since that has never been the goal it’s not exactly a standard worth holding it up against. Is it something to be proud of? Is it enough? Hell, yes!

More on the Evolution of the Orto Garden Thus Far:

• Here’s a shot of the garden midway through May last year. Still a total mess and barely existing as much more than an excavation site. Fortunately there were no bodies. Unfortunately there were no buried riches either.
• The garden timelapse.
• July 2011
• My Agave Collection
• Winter 2011

I have to say that while I had been feeling a bit extravagant in my fall bulb purchases, I don’t have an ounce of regret now that spring has come and I am able to enjoy them in bloom. It’s been a joyful surprise watching each bud emerge from the soil and open. In many cases I had forgotten what was planted and it’s been like an adult version of a surprise inside bag. What will bloom next?

Of everything that has come up so far, I like these short, orange tulips, Tulipa praestans ‘Shogun’ best. Orange is my favorite color, but it can be garish in the garden. I planted another taller, darker orange tulip hybrid, but it doesn’t hold a candle to this one.

It’s beautiful whether open with the sun or closed on an overcast day. I love the purple parts inside and the very thin red line that borders each leaf. The best part is that it will naturalize and spread in the garden, whereas the other taller tulip will probably fizzle out after a few years.