Jerry's Thoughts, Musings, and Rants!

In the Garden

It is amazing how quickly the garden is growing - especially given how dry it is - with no winter to speak of and a relatively rain-free spring we're going to be in for a rough summer if it continues. So far things are well ahead of schedule.

Last weekend Paul and I popped by mom's to help her with her garden. She decided that she was getting rid of some of her garden art - de-hoarding for the future condo move. This statue was my grandfather's and I think mom was tired of lugging it out every spring and packing it away int eh fall. We were happy to give it a home!

The Gardens of Alcatraz

Alcatraz has undergone a bit of a transformation since we were last there. A group of gardening volunteers have transformed a barren wasteland into a place of quiet beauty (although it was likely quiet because the rain had kept the tourists at bay).

For more than a century, gardens were an important part of everyday life for officers, families, and prisoners confined to Alcatraz by sentence or duty. Many of the plants selected by these unheralded gardeners proved to be excellent choices for the harsh and barren environment, flourishing through the four decades of neglect that followed the prison’s closing.

Alcatraz’s current visitors experience an island that is alive with colorful plants gathered decades ago from around the world, and complemented by newly introduced plants. These historic gardens not only illustrate the importance of gardens to the human spirit, but also the ecological benefits and aesthetic possibilities of sustainable gardening.

In 2003, the Garden Conservancy and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy formed a partnership with the National Park Service to restore and maintain key gardens on Alcatraz. Through the Alcatraz Historic Gardens Project, the partner organizations preserve, rebuild, and maintain the gardens created by those who lived on the island during its military and prison eras, and interpret their history, horticulture, and cultural significance for visitors.

I loved the beauty of the gardens set against the harsh rocks of the island the the ruins of the prison buildings. Here are some shots from yesterday:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The New Garden Furniture . . .

We're in the process of getting some pretty extensive work done around the house. As you know, that doesn't come cheap! ARGH As a result we're having to watch what we spend money on.

I think we had a period of confusion on the weekend.

We were at the St Jacob's Farmers' Market where we saw a furniture store that had some interesting garden furniture. Given that our wooden garden furniture had to be tossed out last fall and we'd been making do with folding camp chairs we thought we'd have a look to see what was available.

You know what happened, right?

YUP! We loaded up two chairs and a table into the back of the SUV (with a cooler full of market purchases, bags of vegetables, baskets of fruit, AND two bunches of sunflowers) and headed home. The 'work around the house' account is getting depleted. LOL

San Antonio Japanese Tea (Sunken) Gardens

When I mentioned that I was heading to San Antonio my slowtravel friend Barb e-mailed me to tell em a bit of her family history. She was born in San Antonio and her family was closely associated with the Japanese Tea Gardens in Brackenridge Park. She said that I should pay a visit if I could.

My session finished at 12:30 yesterday. The sun was shining. The sky was blue. It was 80 degrees. All-in-all a perfect day to visit the park!

In 1915, the city requested a Japanese immigrant and his wife to transform an old rock quarry into a Japanese-styled garden. Mr. Kimi Eizo Jingu agreed to the task. He started with a rock house, which still stands today (although it is under reconstruction and scheduled to reopen in the summer) and is surrounded by winding pebble walkways, stone bridges, a waterfall and tranquil pools.

His work transformed the old rock quarry into a garden filled with lily ponds and lush green vegetation. Together he and his wife raised eight children in that house. In addition to raising a family and creating a beautiful garden they opened the Bamboo Room, where light lunches and tea were sold.

After Mr. Jingu's death in the late 1930s, his family continued to operate the tea garden until 1942, when they were evicted because of anti-Japanese sentiment during World War II. After the way the Jingu family gradually left the San Antonio area.

A Chinese-American family operated the facility until the early 1960s, and it was known as the Chinese Sunken Garden. The imposition of the chinese culture on the japanese likely explains the somewhat schizophrenic nature of the gardens. Is it Japanese or is it Chinese??? Nonetheless, it was a lovely, serene place to spend some time on a lovely San Antonio afternoon.

In 1984, the area was rededicated as the Japanese Tea Garden in a ceremony attended by the Jingu's children and representatives of the Japanese government.

The garden underwent a renovation beginning in May 2007 in which the ponds and waterfall were repaired, along with adding a recirculation system to provide a safe habitat for new Koi and aquatic plants. This phase, which cost $1,587,470, was a public-private partnership with the City of San Antonio, the San Antonio Parks Foundation and the Friends of the Parks.

A grand reopening ceremony was held on March 8, 2008, which was attended by the Lambert family, descendants of Park Commissioner Ray Lambert, as well as numerous members of the Jingu family, including Mabel Jingu Enkoji, who was born in the Jingu House and lived at the garden as a child. It was neat to see the photos of the reopening and see Barb in the pics!

Photo Hunt - Yellow

Today's photo hunt theme is yellow. When searching for photos to use I was amazed at how many I had that were appropriate for the theme. Some were food shots, some pics were from travels we have taken over the years, some photos where from the garden, and others were shots of art. In the end I decided upon a garden shot because I am aching to get out there and start digging again - gardening is a great stress reliever. Spring may be here according to the calendar but it isn't gardening weather just yet here in Ontario. . . .

When I bought this plant a few years ago it had been mis-labeled at the garden center: it was only supposed to grown 12 inches in height. Of course it grew taller than me! LOL The next year I moved it to a more appropriate spot in the garden and it has taken off ever since, filling the garden with wonderful yellow flowers.

Lots of the slow travel  community members also photo hunt when they aren't traveling. You can find their posts by clicking the links below. 

• Old Shoes, New Trip
• Eden's Wanderings and Wonderings
• My Place in the Sun
• Churches in Venice – Mosaics, Marble, and Miracle-Working Madonnas
• Palmabella's Passions
• What I Really Think
• shave Ice and Gelato
• Jerry's Thoughts, Musings, and Rants!
• Keep your Feet in the Street
• Baked Alaska
• That's my story...and I'm stickin' to it!
• Postcards from the Trail
• Cooking at the Whistlestop Cafe
• Candi's Corner
• Trekcapri's Blog
• A Wine Lover's Wanderings
• Destination Anywhere

Spring Has Sprung

It was a little over a month ago that I was whining about the snow we had been having. A friend commented that she didn't know why anyone would want to live in a cold place like Burlington. Reflecting upon it I think it is because we have clear, well-delineated seasons.

Six weeks ago we had this . . . .

Today this is what I saw when I arrived home from work . . . .

This is what I call seasonal delineation!

Out back, where the sun hits the garden last thing in the day, winter was more slow to depart. Still the lilac tree has budded and the blooms are ready to burst forth.

I love when spring breaks loose in the air. A time of promise. It is funny how quickly one can forget the trials of winter in the rush to slip on some sandals and race out into the garden.

The Iris

Right now the garden is in its 'in-between' mode; the early spring flowers (bulbs) are finished, the late spring flowers are pretty well done and it is nothing but green as I wait for the summer flowers to start to bloom. One of the greatest challenges of being a gardener I think is in trying to arrange for colour throughout the growing season, but after all of these years I think I am finally getting the hang of it.

One of our favourite flowers is the iris. Unfortunately they have such a short growing season. I took these pics awhile ago and decided to include them today so that I can recall the stages of garden growth when the bitter winter kicks in.

In our garden there are two types of bearded iris - dwarf and the giant bearded type. The dwarf iris are planted in the front of the house and they seem to spread like wildfire - the two small plantings are now two HUGE plantings which need to be split. I actually did split some last year and the ones I planted in the side garden are doing quite well. There are two colours: a pale blue and a deep purple.

In the back gardens we have four types of bearded iris:

A chocolate brown iris which seems to do really well where it has been planted. The huge blooms last for a long and the plant seems to be multiplying nicely.

A less showy yellow and mauve bearded iris. The blooms are less showy than the large bearded iris. They appear to be more delicate yet them seem to have more staying power. This one was a gift from a neighbour down the street who showed up one day with the roots (rhizomes) and asked if we wanted it. What gardener says no to free plants?

This one has large peach coloured flowers. It tends to get the most compliments of them all. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be very prolific; I don't think it is spreading and it never has more than one flower stalk.

This one is my favourite. The flowers are variegated with a creamy white and purplish blue. This plant is quite prolific both with blooms and with spreading. I have split it twice and it is ready to be split again - yeah.

The Canadian Iris Society has an informative website and includes tips for gardeners. This is the tip for this month:

Quick Tip on Iris Growing for May-June
Enjoy the fruits of your labor. Some nice iris should be blooming in your garden at this time. As a gardener, I know you probably don't like to just sit around, so here is something to think about... After all the blooms are completed, clean up the garden by snapping off the stalks at the junction of the stalk and rhizome. The technique is as follows; grasp firmly near the bottom of the stalk, bend-twist-snap and the stalks break off cleanly from the rhizome with minimum effort. With a little practice this technique is becomes very easy to do. This type of after-bloom cleanup is more preferable than cutting the stalks as there is less chance for rot and infection from the remaining portion of stalk, it is also quicker than cutting. Try it and see. Why do this at all? Besides having a nice clean, good looking garden, it opens up the iris planting to better air circulation and allows more sunlight to reach the rhizomes. This promotes better and stronger, healthier rhizome increases so that you have another great season next year! C.H.

Family History

You are no doubt wondering what the heck this vase full of peonies (and a cat who shouldn't be on the kitchen table) have to do with family history . . .

It goes back more than 200 years ago. My grandmother's family (many generations ago) were living in the 13 Colonies (New Jersey to be precise). Staunch monarchists, they were content to let history with a vile king run it's course rather than do anything crazy.  Obviously others were not so patient and they fought a little 'skirmish' known as the American Revolution.

When it was over and the the forces of the King lost, the upstart rebels were not exactly taken with those who had not supported their cause. Seeing the writing on the wall, many of these families packed up their cherished possessions and fled to Canada. The woman of the Smith household (I don't know her name - have you ever tried to trace a family named Smith?) loved her garden and was particularly proud of her peony plants. Guess what she tucked onto the wagon with all of her worldly household goods?

Once in Canada the family settled in the Niagara region with many other United Empire Loyalists. The story of these peony plants became the stuff of family lore. These weren't just any old peonies, they were family themselves!

My grandfather, who lived in Beamsville, was a brilliant gardener and his peonies were always a beautiful sight. He would often tell us the story of how they were brought to Canada, making sure that we understood that they were family.

After my grandfather died my mother and her sisters couldn't bring themselves to sell the family home. They rented it out to one bad tenant after another. In short, a headache! Finally they had had enough and they made the decision to sell the house. There was a stipulation in the bill of sale: the grandchildren could come and remove any plants from the garden that they wanted.

I wanted some of the peonies which had been so special to my grandfather. Unfortunately I had nowhere to put them as our house was nothing but a construction site at the time. Our friends came to the rescue and agreed to 'plant sit' , taking great care with the plants for close to 2 years until our house was ready.

They were one of the first plants we put in the garden and the rest of the garden grew up around them. Every year when they start to inch their slow progress up from the ground to brilliant bloom I am remembered of that ancestor who valued beauty and roots. It seems strange to think of a plant as family but these certainly are a strong tie to my past, the present, and the future.

And Victor, ever the vain kitty . . . he knew I was taking photos so even though he isn't allowed up on the table he jumped up and wouldn't stay out of the pic. Talk about family!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

We have lived in this house for just over four years. When we moved in it was newly constructed, raw, and surrounded by mud. Other than arranging furniture and hanging our art we have done very little inside the house; outside is a very different story.

Because of the soils dumped on the clay by the builder creating gardens was a huge problem. Any new garden had to either be raise up with good quality soils added or else we had to dig down for more than a foot, remove the bad soil, and replace it with good soil. Needless to say over the past four years we have spent close to $800 on soil alone!

The front of the house has a large balcony so I wanted to create a raised garden in front of the balcony to provide some privacy, shade, and to break up the geometric harshness of the building.

This was the garden when we first created it:

This is the same garden this week:

Along the side of the house we had some trouble. The next house is quite close and little sunlight reached the grass that the builders placed there . . . and so it died. There was a huge patch of mud. Last year my neighbour and I decided to have a cement walkway put in with a garden on either side. I planted a shade garden which has really taken off!

In the part of the shade garden which gets the least sun we tried to duplicate a wild forest garden with trilliums, Jacob's Ladder, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, mayflower, and other native flowers.

The back has seen the most change. We started with a flower garden back in 2004:

The back shows what the soil is like hidden under the sod. This is the same garden this year:

You'll notice that we expanded it considerably. We also added a pond:

Last year we noticed that the grass that was in the shade of the fence was not doing well, what to do? Dig it out and create another shade garden. This is the result:

We are at the point where we need very few annuals. Our trips to the garden centre and far less expensive then they were in the past. Now I am busy splitting perennials and giving them away, and replacing those plants which don't make it through the winter.