The Tale of the Blue Spruce

I hate them.

 OK, that is a bit harsh, but I am not a huge fan.   My parents had planted two on the front lawn of their house, and they grew huge, and blocked the view from the windows. (It was mostly us kids fault, we gave them to my Dad for two Fathers Days).

When we purchased Kilbourne Grove in May 2006, imagine my dismay when I saw this fairly newly planted blue spruce, right on the front lawn. You had a great view of it from the bay window in the front parlour  and I hated it!

But, I left it alone until last month, hoping it would perhaps grow on me.

It didn’t.

So, after promising Ian many favours, we moved it. You notice I said moved it, not got rid of  it. I felt bad for my poor unloved blue spruce. I could not take his life, but I could move him to a more, shall we say, less prominent spot.

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The view from my front parlour. (Sorry, this picture is not great of the blue spruce, I was not taking it with the thought of writing a post about it. You can see that I was attempting to hide it with the Emerald cedars.)

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A little bit more noticeable, taken from outside.

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Notice the big gaping hole here, that was a lot of digging!

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Taken from the other direction. I would like to put a tree back in this spot, but something more (in my eyes anyway) ornamental.

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Something I found a bit odd, but maybe someone with more tree planting experience than I can enlighten me. When we got to the root ball, we found it still in a wire cage. We cut this off when we replanted it, but I was disturbed. Since I am frugal (Scottish), I have never purchased a tree larger than a three gallon pot. Are you supposed to leave the wire cage on? I can see where the tree roots would have plenty of room to grow out, but it seems bad to me, for Mother Earth!

So, we moved the blue spruce close to the road, near the driveway. I am thinking of changing the shape of the driveway to more of a courtyard. This means I have to plant trees and shrubs along the edge of the property, close to the street. We would leave an entrance from the street and then it would widen into a square in front of the garage.

 

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Honest(ly) Scrap(py)

I’m nauseous.

And maybe I am secretly thrilled.

I’m also troubled.

Wendy from The Greenish Thumb, a blogger who I admire tremendously for her hard work, (is she crazy, she built a wall) and her secret alter ego (landscape architect extraordinaire) has awarded my an Honest Scrap award. Then, before that news even had a chance to sink in, (and before I could call everyone I know) Jean from Jean’s Garden also gave me one.  She is such an amazing and hard-working gardener (did you see that path she built) never giving up, no matter what kind of adversity she has to go through. I could learn a thing or two from her.

This is my first award, notwithstanding that Nobel Peace Prize and I am giving it all the attention such a prestigious award deserves.

As usual, when you are given anything for free, it is not free. It  comes along with a number of rules,

A. Brag about the award. I am not sure if that means, brag about me getting the award, or brag about the award itself, but consider it bragged.

B. Link back to the person, Wendy,  and Jean who gave it to you.

C. Share 10 honest things about yourself. Wow, honest eh!

 D. Give the award to 7 more bloggers who inspire you. OK, I will give the award, but I’m not sharing the prize money. (What do you mean there is no prize money?) By the way, you should let them know that you have picked them, they are not mind readers you know!

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1.My mother was born in Scotland and my fathers grandparents came from Scotland as well, so I am mostly Scottish, with a dash of French, German and English blood just to keep things interesting. 

2.I met my husband when I asked him out on a date. He didn’t know who I was or what I looked like, I just called him up and asked him out.

 3.Every house that my husband and I have owned has had a principal room painted red.

4. I read way too  fast. We actually had contests when I was in grade school, and I always won. The bad part is I read so fast I forget half of what I read shortly after.

5. I am obsessed with vases. Do you ever find yourself buying the same thing over and over again. That is the way I am with vases, plant pots, urns, I love them and feel that I never have enough.

6. I am also obsessed with books and magazines. I have over 500 gardening books, 1,000 hard covers and many, many magazines. Have I read them all? No.  But, I keep buying them.

7. The highlight of my life, (besides marrying my husband) was moving to England. I am a devoted Anglophile, and when my husband told me we were being transferred to England, I was over the moon. Every day was a blessing when we lived there, no one could have appreciated it more than me!

8.I have dyed my hair red since I was 20. It started when I was a model in a hair show. You have to sign a release, and they can do whatever they want to your hair. Luckily they decided I should be a red head. I received so many compliments I never went back to my natural dark brown. My husband has never seen me with brown hair.

9. When I was 16, I saw the movie Jaws. It has effected me for life. For years, I would not go swimming. I could not even stand to look at a picture of a shark. My husband would like to go an a sail around the world adventure. All I can think about is , there would be sharks!

10. I hate my name. When I was little, I got Debbie. That wasn’t so bad until, “Debbie Does Dallas” came out, needless to say, I don’t use Debbie anymore .When I was 18, I took a new job and tried to change my name then. My last name was Combe, so I told everyone that my nickname was Honey. Get it, Honey Combe. (I was very young). Well, I couldn’t remember to stick to it, and my real name came back into use very, very quickly (like 2 days). But, I still hate my name!

 

These are the bloggers that I would like to award for their courage and dedication to making the world a better place for us all.

Rebecca at In The Garden- she is a true friend (and thinks that I am brilliant, lol), a new gardener, but with very good taste.

Teza at Teza’s Garden  -what can you say about Teza, a dedicated father to his kids, unselfishly devoting himself to educating us in rare (and blue) plants

The Garden Ms S of Gardening with Latitude- butterfly lover, mother of the cutest tiger ever, she takes brilliant photographs, hopefully, one day, she will let me in on the secret of how to do this.

Julie of My English Country Garden-I want to live in her garden. If I could design a garden for myself (wait, I did,and it doesn’t look anything like hers, boo,hiss..) this would be the garden I would want. Knowledgeable about all things from Austen to topiary, she is extraordinary.

Jack of Sequoia Gardens-his garden is amazing, the dedication and work he puts in is inspiring (and a little tiring), I could learn much from this man, he is a kindred spirit.

Barbara from Gardening in Mannheim,Germany-a new blogger that I have just started reading, but it seems like we have the same vision. Must do something about that, I already need glasses.

Midgefarmer from Midges Moss and Mud  -another new blogger, cat lover with the most beautiful cottage garden. She has a generous spirit.

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Toronto Botanical Gardens-Fall

I took another course on the 24th of October at the TBG. It was supposed to be on speciality pruning, they already had a basic course. It was made up of two types of gardeners, Home gardeners (all women, for some reason), and “professional” landscape gardeners (who were all men). These men all worked for the same company, and they were there to learn “how” to prune. Their company wanted to learn how to do it the “right” way, not shearing shrubs into little round balls (I think that we have all seen that). While I commend them for this, I was also annoyed.  The course became basic pruning, at  least 99% of it was. The last 5% was devoted to speciality pruning, ie: pollarding, espalier, etc. I took it hoping to get some help with my pleached Lime Walk, something that is very “uncommon” in Canada. But, alas, there was no help to be found.

But, while I was there, I took some pictures. The difference in the last three weeks is huge.

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I would love to look out my window and see this.

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What amazing colour, almost orange!

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Why are my Japanese maples not this colour?

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These are the “full moon” japanese maples,

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A fabulous contrast in colours.

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This is fothergilla “Blue Mist”, what a lovely colour.

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The paperbark maple, or acer griseum.

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Look at the bark, it really stands out against this blue glass background.

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This crabapple is just loaded with fruit. Love the way it hangs over the berberis.

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Again, great colour. Perhaps some planning for next year now, will give me better colour next year.

P.S. Sorry, I got the order of the posts mixed up. After I said in the last post, “it is the last one on the TBG”, I publish this one. This is the last, I swear!

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Toronto Botanical Gardens-Fall Containers

TBG 069 OK, you are probably sick of the Toronto Botanical Gardens by now.  But look at this urn, it is all pumpkined up. How can you not want to see these.

This will be the last post on it for quite a while. The snow is coming and everything will be covered. So enjoy this while you can.

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Love this, the cabbage with the stick of corkscrew hazel in it. Very graphic, linear line.

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If you have an ivy topiary in your urns, just change the planting at the base for fall. The ivy can take quite a bit of cold.

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And the same with your boxwoods.

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Or you can pull out the more tender, frost sensitive plants, just leaving your cordyline. It looks lovely surrounded by grass.

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Look, behind the planter, aren’t they cute?

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A bit more traditional. You can add berries to the urn, just stick in a branch of crabapple, rosehips or bittersweet.

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Love the echo of the white birch in the background.

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You can use shrubs in your urns, like this hydrangea. If it is a cold area, like this part of Canada, you would want to plant the shrubs in the ground for winter.

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Another shrub used in a planter.

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BOO HOO!!!!

Well,  as promised, here are the pictures. Wow, what a rush to get everything done. It takes a long time to carve seven pumpkins.

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Our house, see it does look like the Munsters house!

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The front walk, the scene of the crime.

We started by pounding stakes into the ground along the front sidewalk. I decided to go with this method instead of digging holes for the base, I thought that they might not be stable enough. The last thing I wanted was a  ”tree” falling over on some sweet little trick or treater.  Why did there have to be a wind warning that day. It wasn’t much fun trying to decorate in very windy, rainy conditions.

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Then I tied the old branches from the sugar maple to them, trying to angle them, so a bit of a tunnel effect emerged. I would have like to have done way more branches, but as always, I was in a race against the clock.

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After we started, I had second thoughts, would people poke their eyes if the branches were coming in? So, I decided to do straight up and down.

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We nestled some of the pumpkins against the base of the branches. Then using my “dollar store” cobwebs, strung them through the branches.

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Up at the porch, more cobwebs were strung. (I didn’t need to do any in the house, the spiders were already taking care of it for me). Now that garden season is winding down, I have no more excuses not to clean the house, boo!

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We decided to put three pumpkins up at the house.

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We have a lot of crows at Kilbourne Grove (real ones), so I decided to give a nod to them.

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At dusk, with all the pumpkins lit, it looked fantastic. I had raked some leaves in just to make it look a bit fuller at the base.

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I am so happy at how the Hallowe’en decorations turned out.  I am already thinking about ideas for next year, as it is on a Sunday so we can be in residence. I just saw an article about making your own headstones, is that idea a bit over the top, Joy?

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