Honey bees on 26 July 2021

 

The cottage garden is all for peaceful co-existence

There is peaceful co-existence among most animals but when a human approaches they all run for their lives. One of my favourite poems is by Walt Whitman, in which he writes,

I think I could turn and live with animals, 

     they are so placid and self-contain'd, 

I stand and look at them long and long. 

They do not sweat and whine about their condition, 

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, 

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, 

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented 

     with the mania of owning things, 

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind 

     that lived thousands of years ago, 

 Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

Sometimes animals fight each other, you see them butting heads in wildlife movies, but usually it isn't fighting to the death. A robin is sitting in the bird bath, he's not greedy, he doesn't mind if a sparrow joins him. There is room for all the birds but they might have to wait their turn, and they do; they know how to queue up. They aren't plotting against each other, they don't have concealed weapons, they aren't pedophiles or perverts.

How do you live with the animals in the limited way that city living affords? I suggest just sitting outside and being quiet, the birds will get used to your presence. They will pay you the highest compliment, they will ignore you.

Make your cottage garden as inviting to animals, birds, and insects as possible. Birds will use the bird bath and ignore you. Butterflies might land on your shoulder. The honey bees will continue to visit the flowers; bumble bees, that used to be so common but are now increasingly rare, will visit your garden and enjoy the bee balm. At night, in July, fire flies will make your garden a place of magic and wonder.

The Canadian Cottage Garden

Everything is the best ever this summer; I am referring to the garden. I have never seen the garden so full of flowers as this year; I keep saying to my wife that it is paradise out there, it is the Garden of Eden. 

The Canadian author, W.P. Kinsella, who wrote Shoeless Joe, from which the film Field of Dreams was adapted, wrote something like, "if you build it, they will come." Of course, it is true, including in gardening. If you want birds to visit your garden, have a bird feeder; better yet also have a bird bath with clean water in it every day. If you want insects, butterflies, bumble bees, honey bees, have a lot of flowers and the insects will come. If you want life, then plan ahead and make your backyard inviting for living beings. 

Your backyard, which was barren, just a lot of half dead grass and dirt, desolate and uninviting, can be transformed into a place that is full of life and activity, as I have done with our backyard. Yesterday, I sat in our backyard with my son who was visiting; right away he knew it was a cottage garden that I had aimed for (he hadn't visited for almost two years due to Covid-19). The work I put in for the last five or more years was finally evident. You can transform just about any piece of land into your own Garden of Eden. If you work on it, flowers will grow, the birds and insects will return. Even urban wildlife will stop by and visit; in the middle of last night I woke up to the smell of a skunk, but there are other nocturnal animals making their way through the garden, including raccoons and ground hogs. 

Here are some photographs taken this week of honey bees on echinacea flowers, cone flowers, that I planted a few years ago. Having been a beekeeper many years ago I always love to see honey bees in the garden, not because they are important pollinators, which they are, but because I have a lot of affection for honey bees; they're busy working, they won't sting you, it is live and let live in this life.

Notice the bee's back legs, the pollen sacs are for collecting pollen which is protein for honey bees

Bird bath time

A cottage garden should have some display or presence of water. If you live in the city it's unlikely you will have a stream or creek running through your backyard; I am not too big on fountains or artificial waterfalls although it's a possibility; so the easiest display of water is a bird bath. Birds love to visit a bird bath and sit in the water, they dunk their heads under the water, flap their wings, and then depart. It is a source of endless entertainment. Why do birds take baths? I am not too sure that science has studied this much; even in the fall I've seen birds in this bird bath. Curious, isn't it?

A robin having a cooling bath.

I am a paparazzi of birds bathing in public, there is no privacy anymore...

Sunlight, Water, Soil, Plants

For a good garden you need at least three of four things: sunlight, water, good soil, and healthy plants. 

Not much sunlight, then plant hostas. 

No tap water, then collect on rain water. 

Soil problems, try making compost or buy bags of soil. 

If you need more plants for your garden, then it's time to go to a garden center, or maybe someone will give you seeds or plants from their garden. 

Miss these ingredients and it will be difficult to have the garden you want.

Bee balm

Cone flowers

Day lilies, bee balm

Bee balm, day lilies

Some flowers in the Canadian Cottage Garden

I began making a list of plants that are traditionally found in cottage gardens. Some plants flower in spring, more flower in summer, and some plants are still flowering to fall. A lot of what I do, as a gardener, is by chance, by serendipity. There are different variables that will affect your garden, including weather, insects, how much time one has to garden, and so on. Here are some spring flowers: apple blossoms, bleeding hearts, snow drops, lilacs, forsythia, tulips, and others. Then, in summer, we have roses, peonies, miniature irises, snow ball hydrangeas, day lilies, fox glove, different varieties of hostas, lavender, shasta daisies, gloriosa daisies, cone flowers, bee balm, raspberries, clematis, and others. You want to stick with perennials over annuals, but biennials like Sweet Williams and holly hocks will add a lot to a garden. Self seeding plants are always welcome including, by the way, plants that migrate to your garden from your neighbour`s yard. I have forgotten or left out other plants I've grown and will try to include them here at a later date. Something could be written about every plant or tree or bush mentioned here and possibly will be. 

Bleeding heart

Bleeding hearts

Here is a hosta in early spring

Apple blossoms

Forsythia bush

Tulips

In the Garden

We don't have a large backyard, which in some ways is perhaps an advantage. The main disadvantage is that it is quite shady. This photo was taken in early November 2009.

This room was attached to the side of the house... when? No idea. But the house was built around 1950, so probably in the 1960s. At some point, perhaps in 2012, I cut down the lilac bush on the left to about two feet out of exasperation with squirrels jumping from the lilac bush onto the roof and entering the attic by an air vent. The only way to stop squirrels is to not let them enter or to block where they enter, preferably the former. An arborist told me that the lilac bush might die due to my cutting it down; and then, in 2017, I saw a few lilac shoots coming up, it took until 2021 for the lilac to grow about seven or eight feet in height. Photo from July 2011.

Before I began working on the back yard garden I planted pots on the patio. July 2011

Back yard in July 2011

Our ginkgo tree, on our front lawn, July 2011; not sure if it was planted in 2009 or 2010

The Demise of Vincelli's Garden Center

I guess it was inevitable, more condos being built, now on the site of the former Vincelli's Garden Center. Vincelli's will be missed by many people, by regular customers who love gardening and others. News of the closure was in an issue of The Suburban last fall, it was a bit silly saying that the new 250plus unit building would act as a noise barrier for other residences in the area... well, do you want to live in a place beside acres of railway tracks that is advertised as a noise barrier for other people? I can hear trains at night all the way over here on Belmore Avenue between Chester and Cote St-Luc Road, steel wheels on steel tracks. Even I, who love railways, would not want to live a few feet from the source of this noise. And the new condo is out in the middle of proverbial nowhere, not a lot of parking, not many buses, a small strip mall and a daycare across the street, at the end of Westminster Avenue, beside an increasingly noisy rail yard, and now an influx of at least 500 people into the area. I would not be happy about this new condo if I were a resident of that area. 

To the Vincelli family, thank you for a hundred years of service to the community. You sold the best plants, including our ginkgo tree that is flourishing on our front lawn where you planted it about ten or eleven years ago. We love that tree. Most of my perennials were purchased from your garden center and they have brought me a lot of happiness to this very day. You don't know me, I was just an anonymous customer, but I loved your garden center. 

Photos from last week.