phenology

Strawberry Secrets

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-11-16-14-50-36-smShhh!!

Don’t tell my family.

I ate the first strawberry of the season!

It was delicious!

I’m usually quite generous with my garden produce—everyone gets a fair share of the goodies. But when it comes to the first strawberry of the year, I turn selfish.

I always get the first strawberry.

I get it, because I plant, and weed, and water, and weed again. Because in two weeks, I’ll be spending an hour a day just picking berries, then countless hours processing them into jam and other yummy treats for everyone to enjoy.

It’s my sweet reward for a year of work.

The secret will out in a day or two. When I come in with three berries, and give one to everyone else in the family, saving none for myself, they’ll know. They’ll know I ate the first one already.

But by then it won’t matter. I will have gotten the first one.

 

Aquilegia

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-10-31-19-37-18One of my favourite flowers is blooming—Aquilegia, also known as columbine and granny’s bonnet.

I can’t tell you why I like Aquilegia so much. I’m generally not a fan of frilly flowers. Perhaps I like it because, though the flowers look delicate, the plant is tough as nails. This particular specimen is growing in what used to be the driveway—a hopelessly compacted combination of clay and rock, dry as a desert most of the time—and is all but shaded out by the pittosporum behind it. It thrives, and has even seeded itself into other places in the old driveway.

Or maybe I like it because, in the Eastern US where I grew up, the native columbine, Aquilegia canadensis, attracts hummingbirds and hawk moths. Here, the bumble bees visit it, but little else. Apparently, of the 60-70 species of Aquilegia, several have evolved exclusive relationships with particular pollinators.

Whatever the reason I like them, the flowers make me smile every time I pass them.

Midnight Flowers

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2016-10-26-15-51-31We have several pittosporums around the house, mostly Pittosporum tenuifolium, also known as kohuhu. Kohuhu are nice hedging plants, and form lovely dense shrubs when pruned. They’re a great background plant—like mood music—a lot of nice greenery, but little character.

Until they bloom, that is.

And only at night.

Pittosporum flowers are the kind of blooms that you can walk past a hundred times a day and never see. They’re about the same colour as the branches, and sit nestled among the greenery. They attract no bees or butterflies.

But walk past the same bush in the dark, and you’re practically knocked over by the smell. Heavy and clinging, the smell must attract all the night-flying moths and beetles for miles around.

I’m generally not a fan of smelly flowers, but there’s something marvellously incongruous about pittosporum flowers—so inconspicuous during the day, so in-your-face at night. The smell has become as sign of spring for me, and I always make sure my early-morning chores take me close to one of the bushes at this time of year.

 

Repeating Myself

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-10-01-16-25-02-hdrThree quarters of the way through the second year of daily blogging, I begin to feel that I’m repeating myself. Yesterday I took a couple of photos of the beautiful asparagus coming up in the garden, and was all set to blog about it. But when I looked at the photo, I realised I blogged about asparagus last year. I did the same with artichokes last week.

Which is, of course, one of the joys of gardening. There is a rhythm to it. Its seasonality is guaranteed. Spring always follows winter, and spring brings asparagus and artichokes, lettuce and spinach, daffodils and tulips. Spring will eventually mature into summer, with eggplant, peppers, and zucchini. Summer will fade to autumn pumpkins and the last ears of sweet corn. And winter will bring cabbages and broccoli, and an excuse to stay indoors and bake cookies.

There is uncertainty, of course—there are hail storms, drought, and pests—but the fundamental rhythm is the same from year to year.

There is comfort in that. Though it means I may repeat myself from time to time on the blog, it is something I can count on. Life changes from day to day—the kids grow up, jobs change, we may move half way across the world—nothing is certain. But I always know where I stand in the seasons—always changing, but always predictable.

 

Happy Spring!

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I don’t need the calendar to tell me it’s spring. I know it’s spring because…

The daffodils are blooming.

The daffodils are blooming.

The office is full of plants.

The office is full of plants.

The fruit trees are budding up.

The fruit trees are budding up.

Artichokes!

Artichokes!

The grass needs mowing.

The grass needs mowing.

The weeds are out of control.

The weeds are out of control.

The wind blows hard from the northwest.

The wind blows hard from the northwest.

The dandelions are blooming.

The dandelions are blooming.

Humming Rosemary

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

There isn’t much in bloom at this time of year around our place. Daffodils, crocuses, a few early daisies and other weeds in the lawn.

And the rosemary.

Rosemary is perennial here, and grows into a large shrub unless regularly trimmed. The rosemary in the herb knot in the front yard is kept quite small, but two bushes by the side of the house are allowed to range more widely. They’re about two metres tall, and almost as wide. Right now they are in full bloom.

And they are absolutely filled with bees. I swear, there’s an entire hive there right now. The hum is audible from five metres away.

I love to watch bees on rosemary. Not only are they incredibly enthusiastic about the nectar, but they collect the purple pollen, which looks really cool in their pollen baskets.

We’ve been talking about re-envisioning the plantings at the side of the house. The new plan doesn’t have giant rosemary plants in it. Watching the bees enjoy the blooms in early spring, though, we might just have to rethink that.

Sedgemere Haiku–Spring

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

In honour of National Poetry Day this Friday, the remainder of my posts this week will be in verse.

2016-04-18 14.50.46 cropFog billows in wet.
Frosting hair, spider webs, grass
With silver gilding.

_______

Magpie warbles loud
In early morning darkness,
Waking up the sun.

_______

Bees hum in purple
Lavender blooms, blue pollen
Dusting hairy backs.

_______

Seedlings defy frost,
Growing tall in warm sunshine,
Sheltered under glass.

_______

Sparrows descend to
Old sheds, bringing straw, grass, noise
Leaving poo, feathers.

_______

Ploughs plough, seagulls wheel
Overhead seeking
The freshly turned worm.

List It

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment
See no evil--list it instead.

See no evil–list it instead.

It’s about this time of year when I look around and see how shabby the garden looks. Through the depths of winter, I didn’t notice. I wasn’t outside enough. The days were short. I didn’t want to work outdoors.

But even if the lengthening days and singing magpies weren’t enough to tell me, the calendar is screaming that it’s just two weeks to spring.

So I’m paying more attention to the yard and garden. I’m taking a second glance at what I thought was my herbs beginning to resprout…and finding that the green I saw was actually a giant, aggressively spreading vetch. I’m walking through the vegetable garden to assess what needs to be done…and finding that though the chickens did a lovely job on some weeds, they didn’t touch the most difficult ones. I’m checking the bird netting over the strawberries, and finding hole after hole that needs repairing. I’m inspecting irrigation pipes, and finding ice-cracked valves. I’m walking the rows of currants and raspberries, and finding enough thistles to make me want to cry.

In short, I’m finding so many things to do, I begin to think I can’t possibly do them all.

And so, to maintain my sanity, I make lists.

A list of things to do this weekend.

A list of things to do in the evenings during the week.

A list of things to purchase in town.

A list of things to do next weekend.

A list of things to do the weekend after that.

A list of things that need to go on a list…

By mid-September, I’ll have every weekend through late-November planned in detail—exactly what needs to be done in order to have everything under control and planted out at the right time.

It sounds crazy, but it keeps me sane. Once a task is on a list, I can ignore it. I can walk past that aggressive vetch plant every day, knowing that if I just keep to my lists, I will eventually get to it. I can be completely blind to the holes in the bird netting, because I know that fixing it is on the list the week before the strawberries should start to ripen.

Without my lists, I’d be overwhelmed by the mountain of tasks to get done between now and December.

But the lists aren’t just good for making me get my work done. They also help me get my play in, too. Fun stuff goes on the lists, too. A weekend tramping trip, a day at the beach—I can schedule these things in alongside my work, and then actually enjoy them, because I know I’ve got time to do them. It says so, right on my lists.

 

Winter Blooms

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-07-07 11.00.58 smI miss a good northern winter, with snow, but there is something to be said about the mild winters we have here.

One of the things I appreciate about our winters is the flowers that bloom then.

There aren’t many—allysum, calendula, and pansies flower year-round and grow largely as weeds in my garden (though I usually weed around them, and try to avoid pulling them out).

Camellias and snowdrops bloom in late winter. They provide lovely winter flower arrangements.

And then there’s the mystery iris. This plant wasn’t apparent in the yard until well after we thought we had discovered all the bulbs planted by generations of owners before us. It sprang up in an area we had cleared of plants, and I nearly pulled it out.

I’m glad I didn’t. This beautiful little plant is mostly foliage, but produces short blue flowers all through winter. Another lovely bloom for winter flower arrangements!

Light in the Night

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-02-24 20.57.32Last night was the longest night of the year. It’s fitting that we all overslept this morning. Everyone left for work and school in the dark, and will come home in the dark. To add to the dark of this winter solstice, the day is overcast.

But all is not black and bleak.

Yesterday, we saw the first of this year’s lambs bouncing around in the neighbour’s paddock.

The young blackbirds and magpies are already singing and vying for territories.

The breeze is from the north today, soft and gentle.

And from here, the days will only get longer.

At the bottom of the well, there is only one way to go.

So we’ll enjoy the sun while it lasts, light the table with candles this evening, and look forward to our slow climb toward spring.

A happy solstice to you, whichever one you are enjoying today.