At the garden centre, 6 May 2025

Vincelli’s Garden Centre is long gone but we still have,  locally, the Reno-Depot Garden Centre on rue St-Jacques, and this is where I was on Tuesday, 6 May 2025. A good selection of flowers but nothing extraordinary. I bought three hanging baskets at a reasonable price (each $14.99 plus tax) and I plan to return for two or three more; I could plant hanging baskets myself but then there is waiting for them to be as mature as these baskets already planted and purchased by me. There isn’t a lot of gardening time in this climate. 

Canadian Cottage Garden, 15 March 2025

It's 10 C this morning, 15 March 2025; spring is here and winter has come to end. This was a winter we are happy to see the end of, very cold, a lot of snow, and hard on all of us. Right now the garden doesn’t look like much, it's still winter, it's still covered with snow, but soon it will be green and full of flowers, birds will be at the bird bath, life will return to life.     

   

 The garden on July 13, 2024.

Rain in Montreal on 23 June 2024

 

My Canadian cottage garden on June 4, 2024

It’s June and with the warm spring weather the garden is thriving; some days it feels more like mid-July. Below are some photos taken on June 4, 2024.

The garden has assumed an identity of its own, and I like weeds, I like insects visiting the garden, I like an aspect of the unplanned assertion by nature.

Foxglove

Hostas

It's not that I am particularly fond of hostas but that the garden is 85% shade, and as we know hostas grow best in the shade.

For ten years I had someone cut the grass for me and then, without warning, their business is now "temporarily closed"; so this purchase was hasty and almost impulsive. I used to push a hand mower, one purchased by my mother back in 1963 when I was expected to mow an enormous lawn, I think that mower ended up in storage and I used a gas lawn mower, and eventually I did use the old hand mower here where we've been living since 1997. Losing the person who used to cut our grass I decided I would cut it myself, good exercise I thought... And I didn't want to buy a gas or electric lawn mower, not for a small lawn as we have. So I ended up buying a Fiskars hand driven lawn mower. It does a great job but 1. it was very expensive ("a fool and his money are easily parted" eh?), and 2. it is very heavy to push; as for cutting the grass, it's great! 

The welcome appearance of weeds.

Miniature iris