If we took a holiday,(we did)
Took some time to celebrate, (lots of it),
Just one day out of life, (ok, how about much more)
It would be, it would be so nice. (and it was!)
song- Holiday by Madonna
For anyone who did not know, I have been “up north” at Kilbourne Grove for a summer holiday the past two weeks. Gorgeous weather, I was really lucky.
I didn’t get as much done as I had planned (the story of my life), a bit too much relaxing came into play (well, it is my holidays) and that pesky lawn needed cutting, (3 times x 3 hours per time = 9 hours of precious gardening time forever wasted!)
I will publish some (fascinating, lol) posts letting you know what I got up too over the next couple of weeks (I don’t want to bore anyone, by droning on and on).
I hope that everyone out there had a great New Years, so great, that you are only just recovering from it, and you cannot even remember dancing on the table, but there are incriminating photos, ok, enough talk about me…
These are my New Years resolutions for 2010 and they are way easier than vowing to lose that 20 pounds again.
1. Lay out the path to the front door. I do not wish service men to come to my kitchen/back door anymore, catching me in my knickers. (With that extra 20 pounds, it is embarrassing for both of us!)
2. The Peony Walk will have its south side beds, laid out, all in preparation for fall planting.
3. I will finish the Serviceberry Allee.
4. Actually, I have just thought of a fourth, and it would have to be accomplished before number 2. We need a drainage pipe laid behind our house, and this would actually run right under the Peony Walks path. It would be good to accomplish this first!
5. Make the path, running east/west through the Lime Walk, so you can travel between the Yew Garden and the Croquet Lawn.
6. Cedar buttresses in the Lime Walk?, this is still not a for sure.
7. Extend the Flora Glade, all the way to the berm on the west side of the garden.
8. Make a second bed for Teza. This again is still not for sure, will have to remeasure the space (when I can actually see the ground again) and see how wide a second bed would be, after leaving room for a path between them.
This is probably enough work for the summer, (I am sure that Ian is getting grey hair, just thinking about it). Hopefully, I will not be wasting every weekend cutting the grass this summer, like I did last!
What are your New Years Resolutions?
How can they not? Look what we did to the flower shop last week.
Starting with the outside, two galvanized pots are filled with 6 foot birch poles flanking the entrance. Although you cannot see it, the centre is stuffed with moss.
This is the view that most customers see, if they are just walking by. Hopefully, it is eyecatching enough to draw them in.
On one side of the room we have a fireplace mantle. This has been a lovely feature, and always interesting to display on. We have placed a small wooden table in front of it for an extra display area this Christmas.
This is the other side. It is much brighter as it has a window behind it. Customers can see in from the outside as well as from the inside, so the displays have to be arranged so they can be viewed from both sides.
These four pictures hanging over our design desk are actually framed moss. They were created for last Christmas and have stayed up all year. They have not deteriorated at all. I love them!
Look at the beautiful colours in the cooler now. See the peonies from New Zealand.
This is the front display window, sorry for the glare.
Unlike most retailers, we do not start decorating for Christmas in October. To me this is ridiculous. It seems to start earlier every year. I do not even want to think about Christmas when there is still leaves on the trees, veggies to harvest, that is autumn. Christmas is a winter holiday. Can the stores not wait to decorate, we all know Christmas is coming, no need to shove our faces in it. (Sorry, I guess that is a touchy point.)
To me (personally) any time after the middle of November, it can start, all though at the flower shop I am working at now, we have always decorated the last weekend in November.
So much of what we sell is perishable, we cannot afford to start too early. Next week, I will show you some of the designs we are making for Christmas.
It was a fairly warm weekend, and I thought that I had better get the terrace in Toronto tarted up for Christmas/winter. It has been a very mild autumn, and my ferns were still not dead.
But it was getting colder, and there is a chance of snow this week, so I decided that I should get it done while it was still warmish. It is also getting very busy at work (equals more hours) and I might run out of time before the ground freezes.
I like a very clean simple arrangement in my two big urns. This year I chose to have a mass of curly willow. The key is to have it really full, most people under buy the quantity needed. There are 50 branches per urn in these arrangements. By using just the branches I am avoiding that age-old problem of evergreens lasting all winter. You know, the one where the branches look old and dry in March, but it is still too early to plant for spring. These urns will look good right till April. I could add some forced forsythia, and some pansies at the base in April, and I wouldn’t have to completely redo it.
We also put out a few Christmas baubles. These are just a mix of gold and silver plastic balls from the dollar store. These can take the harsh winters, this is actually the third year I have used them, they have held up really well.
We also hung some icicles from the tree. These also are plastic, from the dollar store, they can take the cold and it does not matter if the wind smashes them against the tree or each other, they will not break.
I would like to have hung more, but our ladder only goes so high.
Here it is, just as it started getting dark. The light shines on the icicles. Prettier in person, of course!
Green Theatre 