August is the time of lush and luxuriant growth, the time of reaping what you have sown.  I tend to become a lazy gardener in August and let things have their way. 

The tomatoes aren’t ripe yet.  I’m going to reduce the foliage a bit to let the sun into the interior of the plant and those lovely clusters of tomatoes.  A bit of sun will colour them.

Weeds in the flagstones and at the edges of gardens call me or Mike.  They need a weed-whack to tidy the area a bit.  The dream of beautiful moss between our flagstones never materialized.  We get a great growth of grass, dandelion, and other weeds.  They grow too tall and need barbering often.

The roses need some tidying.  Spent blooms abound.  There are many rose hips developing on the Ballerina rose.  There is a decision to be made.  Do I cut the spent blooms off in the hope of having more blooms in September or do I leave the tiny rose hips to mature for the birds. 

Joe Pye Weed is beginning to bloom and to attract butterflies to the garden.  It’s such a beautiful plant – it should be in every garden.

Planted some sunflowers but the Midnight Marauder ate most of them before they had a chance to bloom.  Two bloomed only to attract the marauder – flowers gone without a trace.  Wish I knew whether the culprit was the chipmunks, the squirrels, the rabbit or a raccoon.  The same marauder pulled the lilies over and ate every single bloom! 

Bees have been busy in the garden.  Holes Mike drilled into wood blocks are filling up fast.  One kind of bee chews leaves into pulp and fills the holes with that.  A leaf-cutter bee of some sort.  Another little bee closes up the holes with a clear substance – a resin bee?  We can spend hours just watching the bees come and go from the holes in our bee “hotel.”   

And that’s what August is for – standing and watching the results of spring work.

And just for you, a link to my latest presentation: A New Kind of Gardener

Note: It takes a while to load. Please be patient.

 

Pollinator Patches

"Be the change you want to see in the world." When Mahatma Ghandi said that he must have been thinking about Pollinator Patches. You can make a difference in your world this year by creating a Pollinator Patch -- a habitat for native bees.

To help you build your own Pollinator Patch, see our Roadsides Guide.

Roadsides Guide to Creating Pollinator Patches

The first Pollinator Patch was planted in Barrie, Ontario, in May of 2010. Visit the Roadsides site, read the blog, and be sure to look at the gallery to see pictures of the creation of Pollinator Patch from Year 1 to the Weaning Year 5.

Roadsides web site

 

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do. --Wendell Barry

 

Jottings

Jottings contains some articles I wrote for the monthly newsletter of Barrie's Garden Club and other projects. I hope you enjoy them.

 

It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. Ansel Adams (1902-1984)

 

Hints & Tricks

This is a collection of neat ideas and crazy tricks that I've collected from various sources. Many are amusing, and most are useful. We gardeners just love to learn neat little ways of doing our gardening jobs more effectively. My most popular talk was just that: "Hints and Tricks."

Most of the hints I've used myself or know someone who will vouch for them. All of them are fun to read and almost as much fun to do.

 

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it's forever. Carl Sagan

 

Gardening Info

This is a miscellaneous section of odds and sods of information I've collected and would like to share. I've found most of the information in magazines and on the internet or in the many gardening books I can't resist buying!

The side column of this section includes some of my presentations using Adobe Presenter.

You'll also find some of my favourite links on the Gardening Info page.

 

"Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the F.D.A.’s job." ~ Philip Angell, Monsanto's Director of Communications

 

The Blog

I guess the whole site is a sort of blog, isn't it?

But this new section is a more conventional blog -- a space to put my thoughts and new ideas as I learn them or think them.