Tag Archives: plants

dining…

08 Friday Jan 2021

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spent a lovely hour in the dining room garden recently…

trimmed up, and cut back, the mandevilla and fuchsia… they have both lost most of their leaves but are still alive…

I am hopeful that they will both perk up… the mandevilla looks lovely now…

listened to music and felt such happiness… before you know it, spring will be here…

today I took some photos of the garden, including the blooming orchid…

joy…

31 Thursday Dec 2020

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last evening I spent time on Instagram… people tend to put up their nine most liked photos of the year, but I decided to put up my nine favourite ones…

I was thinking they would be flowers, with maybe a bird or piece of chocolate included…

once I finished, there were seven with flowers, one bird and a monarch butterfly…

looking through the pictures reminded me of some wonderful times over this past year…

my orchids, which provide such joy for me all year long…

planting, growing and enjoying morning glories, datura and dahlias…

time spent, with and without cameras, viewing the birds in the garden…

a rose along the sidewalk on one of the walks I took this year, with my daughter in my ear;-)…

the amazing time I spent over the summer with eggs, caterpillars and butterflies… and the day my grandson and I watched the butterflies appear…

time with hearts and flower bouquets…

the water lily flowers that erupted in the pond… had the most blooms ever this summer… and I hope to overwinter them in the aquarium…

lovely reminders of a crazy, but wonderfully special year…

swag…

30 Monday Nov 2020

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had a lovely front yard visit with a friend who dropped off some items from an online fundraiser…

before she arrived I put one of the deck chairs out by the bird feeders… she sat there and I sat on the steps… luckily, we each had our own tea, so that kept us warm…

got two poinsettias and a swag for the front door…

after she left, I spent quite some time hanging the swag on the door… there is quite a bit of fishing line holding it up, lol…

it was nice to have a face-to-face with another person…

aphids…

16 Monday Nov 2020

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I brought in one of the pots with datura in it, hoping it would last through the winter… I didn’t spray it with soap like I did for the other plants I brought in…

I have now discovered that it brought aphids into the house and they were feasting on my avocado plant…

I put the avocado in the tub and soaked it with the soapy water and covered it with a bag… after leaving it for a day I removed the bag and put the plant in a room without any plants in it… there were still lots of aphids so I cut off some leaves and nearly drowned it in the soapy water…

then I cut down the datura to the base… after soaping it up I will watch to see how it does…

fingers crossed that this will get rid of them and the avocado will be happy…

roots…

13 Friday Nov 2020

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I went around the house and counted my orchids…

there are five in the dining room, all of which are more or less in a dormant state… I went to move two of them and discovered that they had put roots into each other’s pot… how cool is that… reminded me of the amazing banyan tree in Lahaina…

there are seven in the living room, three small ones and four large ones…

right now, this is the only one blooming;-)…

the other three full size ones in the living room have buds starting;-)…

smack…

11 Wednesday Nov 2020

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I’ve collected all my egg shells since I read about using them to add nutrients to plant water…

they have to be crushed, but I was worried that if I used my food processor they might dull the blade, so decided to put them in a bag and use a wooden spoon to crush them…

the bag sits on the counter and every time I go by it I use the wooden spoon and smack it a few times…

kind of cathartic;-)…

corms…

04 Wednesday Nov 2020

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had a lovely time on the deck this afternoon with the dahlias…

I had watched a video from Dahlias by Julie on how to separate them and was looking forward to the process…

turned out it is much more difficult than I learned… not sure I ever spotted the eyes… it will be interesting to see if any of them grow when planted in the spring, lol…

in the end I put the corms that I separated into a paper bag which then went into a dark basement closet…

but it was a beautiful afternoon…

repurpose…

25 Sunday Oct 2020

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spent the afternoon reading in the living room and decided to move the avocado plant and orchids that have been in the window…

they have grown enough that they block my view of the bird feeders… I anticipate spending a lot of time watching the birds over the next six months…

I’m planning to repurpose the dining room table as a bit of a garden for the next while… not going to be having anyone over to eat there, lol…

root…

19 Monday Oct 2020

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today I spent some time in the garage working on the dahlias…

I took out each of the pots which I brought in a few days ago to thaw, and removed as much soil as I could…

it took a long time, mainly because the plants were packed tight in the pots and were root bound…

now I’ve brought in one pot which all the tubers fit into…

after watching a few videos last week, the next job, in a week or so, will be to separate the tubers into ones that have eyes and package them up for the winter…

winter-proof…

17 Saturday Oct 2020

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yesterday Hilda the Gardener came to winter-proof the garden…

she trimmed back ferns and hostas; emptied pots in front and back; brought all the dahlia pots onto the deck and cut them back; pulled weeds and trimmed the wild rose in the front flowerbed…

my job will be to remove the dahlia tubers, separate and pack them up for the winter… I’ve had to bring them in to thaw so that I can break up the soil, lol…

we are not raking up the leaves, but will have my grandson do one last mulch in the garden once the furniture is put away…

happy and sad that the garden is nearly prepared for winter…

still a few fish to catch and furniture to move…