Winter is too long here in Montreal. It's almost April and the snow has just melted, some plants are beginning to grow; spring has arrived but it feels like winter is still here. One month less of this would be perfect. Top photos taken in 2013, bottom photos this year on 27 March 2024:
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Saturday, December 2, 2023
Before the snow
Saturday, August 5, 2023
The Canadian Cottage Garden, end of July 2023
It is just as I wanted it to be. To sit in the garden, surrounded by flowers, and on a hot summer day to have insects, wild bees, and butterflies going from flower to flower, busy with their work of pollination and collecting pollen and nectar.
Thursday, May 18, 2023
The garden, early May
It was Coronation Day, 6 May 2023, and the garden was coming to life. After a lot of rain and cold in April the sun was bright and the sky blue, birds had returned to the bird bath, hostas and ferns were growing fast. Trees were turning green, the lilac bush was ready to flower.
There isn't much to the garden this early in spring but it is coming back to life. After months of cold, short days, snow, and more or less being housebound, spring had returned to Montreal. I've already planted six new hostas (and I'll plant another six next week) and we now have a second bird bath. It looks like we'll have a nice garden this year!
The fence has enclosed the garden and I've begun planting a second row of hostas |
That bench is sixty years old but still in good condition, I look forward to sitting outside on it and getting a different view of the garden |
A new, second bird bath |
More ferns than ever this year |
Tuesday, March 7, 2023
The perennial garden in winter
There isn't a lot to do in the garden in winter, maybe there is nothing to do but walk through two feet deep of snow and the snow over the top of your boots. Or look out the dining room window at the snow and cold and be glad you're inside and not out there. These bright sunny March days can be quite warm in the sun, you might even get a sun tan sitting outside in the garden if there isn't a cloud cover. In the shade it's cold, it's -2 C. I had forgotten that March is my least favourite month.
A perennial garden doesn't require work in winter, no skimming this years seed catalogues, no buying seeds, no germinating seeds in-doors, there is none of that. All it requires is patience and try to get through our overly long winter. So, just get on with your in-door life, go for a walk, make supper, vacuum the carpets, and soon a mostly white and empty garden will be transformed into something so different from the garden in winter that it is one of the wonders of our northern life. Nevertheless, by late February and the three weeks of winter in March one is fed up with winter, the cold, snow, and we just want it to end.
Friday, January 6, 2023
Hortus Conclusus at Le Grand Seminaire
Years ago, I visited Le Grand Seminaire, it is where my great great uncles, Fr. Martin Callaghan and his brother Fr. James Callaghan are buried. It is also where both men were educated in the late 1800s and I've always felt that attending this school was a great opportunity for both men; they were born into the working class, they became priests, educated men, and they served their community. A few years after this first visit I went on a tour of the seminary; it is located on Sherbrooke Street West near Atwater. From the street you can see the twin towers, built in the late 1600s, they were a place of safety when Indigenous people might attack the compound; it was where they would hide in the towers.
Note the image of Christ at the top left of this image; this hortus conclusus corresponds better to the garden at Le Petite Seminaire in Old Montreal |
On my first visit to Le Grand Seminaire I walked around the grounds; there is a kind of enclosed garden or green space; you can see the stone walls that surround the place below. There is a rectangular pool, see below, that had been neglected. I suspect that access to the grounds is now more difficult as the old seminary has become quite a prestigious private high school.
Le Grand Seminaire from Sherbrooke Street West These twin towers can be seen from Sherbrooke Street West |
Drawing of Le Grand Seminaire from 1600s |