A few pics

We had a wonderful Canada  Day celebration here where I live. The gardens were magnificent, the barbie was great and the games were mighty and funny. Plus we celebrated the installation a a gorgeous big, fat greenhouse, more on that soon. We have an abundance of truly great gardeners who live here, some who worked on municipal gardens in the past. I must count all the gardens soon, my estimate would be ten. And yes, the property is magnificent.

PS Staying away from Da Nooz one day at a time. But I couldn't miss the posts about the T-shirts for sale celebrating the first concentration camp on US soil. Yeah, Alligator Alcatraz. All profits into the first felon's pocket.

June Month

My meadow, today.

June month. It is. So it is. June month.

I lit the fire last night when I got in. I was that cold. Today? Started out with a belt of sun but she changed her mind now that all the clothes are flapping nicely in the sea breeze. The front loading washer just about dries them anyway which is a bonus, both to the environment, the water and detergent use.

We had lots of jokes at cards about getting out the skis and everyone enjoying the winter. Still.

How can it be this cold? My mint didn't come up this year, first year in four. The strawberries sorta did. Too soon to tell. We put in the potatoes. I bought some basil which I daren't shove outdoors yet.

Frost still to come, they tell me. And they always know.

Three shrimp boats coming in today so the plant will be busy, but try and buy shrimp here and you'll see the packs marked 'Product of Thailand'. Figure that one out.

The capelin stock has diminished to crisis levels. About 5% of last year so I wonder about the whales as capelin are whale food. Will the whales be here this year? No one has the answers.

I'm thinking of some fruit trees and bushes. The meadow is a carpet of dandelions and forget-me-nots, something about the blue and the yellow does not make me crave a green perfect carpet of Kentucky bluegrass which is what they like to plant here in big rolls once they become citified or suburbanized, take your pick. And then spray it with unmentionables to keep it that way.

A bit of extra money does awful things to the environment, doesn't it?

The Secret Garden

One of my favourite books as a child was "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I was in Fourth Class (Grade 4) when it was read to us on Thursday afternoons by our teacher. I could hardly wait for the next episode, rationed out to us in this way. Subsequently, I took it out of the library numerous times. My parents could never see the point of presenting me with my own personal copy of a library book that had been read so many times.

I bought it for my daughters and again, and I was very lucky this time, I managed to acquire a very old edition for the grandgirl. We all shared the same opinion - we absolutely adored it.

The movies that have been made of it have failed to capture the story very well. The book is quite dark which enhances the slowly brightening beauty of the garden the children create out of emotional need and loneliness.

Of the films, the 1949 version, the second movie adaptation with Margaret O'Brien, which was filmed mostly in black-and-white while the sequences set in the restored garden are in Technicolor, is my favourite. My review of it is here.

I was reminded of all of this when exploring with my dog yesterday I found this wild lost garden and its overwhelming rhododendrons. I took a photo of one and paraphrased Existentialism 101 to myself:

"If a rhododendron blooms in a wild forgotten garden, does anyone see it?"