We managed to do a lot today: up early and out in the garden, dug up some plants that are going to a new and more spacious home with friends across town, then off to Corn Hill Nursery after lunch to buy some climbing roses for the front garden (to hopefully climb over the porch) and to have a little walk through their gardens. We had lots of fun picking out Henry Kelsey and William Baffin from the Explorer series climbing roses, and a single-flowering (ie 5-petaled) Rugosa Alba for a hole in the back garden hedge. The front garden is quite small, and I've been calling it a Shakespeare Garden (inspired by the beautiful one at Illinois State U's Ewing Cultural Centre) although it's really early for such a grand name. Last summer I planted some old roses, lavender, irises, lilies, thyme, rosemary, and a few more plants mentioned in the plays. This summer I'd like to work on planting a camomile lawn, probably by cutting out a few small areas of turf to begin with and direct seeding. Advice welcome. The back garden is a well established perennial garden with formal bones: a neat square of wide beds with a lawn in the middle. It's tidy and small, with good hedges on two sides, and the house and garage on the other two. I've been giving away the things that don't make my heart sing (creeping phlox anyone? centaurea?), and replacing them with white and yellow fairly low key flowers. I describe it as a Victorian fantasy of a wildflower garden. I'll blog about the gardens once they are more than mulch: it's so early in the season for us.
Cornhill's display garden seems a little bit behind Sackville, maybe a week or so, but it was beautiful. The early spring garden really shows off the quiet things like bark colors that we often miss. It also highlights the structure of the hard elements, like branch fences. Not quite the wild nature hikes I wrote about earlier this week, but it's a start. In any case, I was wearing flipflops.
Ron was away for a few days, and Peter and I picked out a hiking in New Brunswick book at our local bookstore yesterday. I'm excited about some local trails that I hadn't heard of before, but as I was going through it tonight, I started to think again about domesticating nature: these are all "official" trails, not quite boardwalks, but they've been authenticated and described and given a stamp of approval. What I'm concerned about it increasing not just our time outside, but our time exploring and getting muddy, not racking up points on a list of trails. It's hard to rein in that desire for productivity.
1 comment:
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this post...I've had such a hectic weekend with respite for a foster child, visiting a friend in hospice who's very ill and trying to squeeze in as much time in the garden as possible. For a few brief moments, I was able to visit a nursery with you, read about your garden plans and hear about hiking aspirations...thank you!
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