Thursday, April 22, 2010

spring is still springing in my garden

Pink Dogwood. This is still a tiny shrub. A little late for Easter, but thats ok.
Mexican orange by the little pink dogwood.
Snowball bush. The flowers will be big and pure white in no time. A neighbours daughter came by one day many years ago dragging a 10' branch she had ripped from her moms shrub. Around here these plants have a tendency to grow multi-many branches from the base and grow into enormous clumps of tangled bush.
Well, i really didn't know what to do with it but knew i didn't want a plant that would be 20ft. in diameter.  So i stuck it in the ground and after it rooted made sure to keep it to just the one stem, like a tree. Now, nurserys do this all the time and call them standards. But i didn't know that at the time.
It does require  a little maintenance because its so top heavy otherwise a fuss free plant. I cropped it too tight but you can still just see the little stem that holds this big head up.
The wisteria flower buds are getting longer and in the right light from a distance you can see a haze of bluishness so it won't be long now till full bloom.

11 comments:

Bunnym said...

Oh...I wish I could grow Wisteria...I've tried but...nothing. Everything is gorgeous!

tootles,
bunny

Lalala said...

wow you are quite a green thumb!

Lorraina said...

Bunny i just remembered a good tip - if you buy a wisteria make sure to buy one thats in bloom and it should bloom the next year for you.
Mine took 7 long years and turned out to be a rather common variety even though it has (had) a name the flowers are ordinary in comparison to whats available now - better colour and longer flowers.

Lorraina said...

Thanks Lalala; i wish you could have seen it 20 yrs ago. I don't do any green thumbing at all anymore. My garden is actually in severe decline since i had to stop gardening. Its all i can do to take a few pics and even then its depressing because i see so much is gone and so much in need of a green thumb; weeding, plants in need of dividing, moving or replacement etc. I can't even do small outdoor stuff anymore, like moving an empty white pot and broken down birdhouse out of the camera lenses view, green shoots in the red maple tree and on and on....

I have a guy to tend to the grass and he does do a little pruning but its with an electric saw and he shapes everything round....!!! its most unbearable to listen to it and see my sort of English style of controlled looseness disappear. My daughter said it lost my fingerprints a long time ago.

Lalala said...

I think it still looks quite nice.... why can't you do anything anymore? Are you sick?

Lorraina said...

Thanks, i guess i did give it some good design bones;i loved landscaping and was a member of several garden clubs, also read alot and spent all my time planning where to put more plants. But even alot of those bones are also gone now too. A few yrs ago we had to remove a cedrus Deodora that we planted the day our first gson was born; a huge spruce; a weeping willow, a really beautiful red leaf plum that was so heavy with bloom it simply uprooted itself and layed down one night in a storm; a Bing cherry tree and 2 heritage apple trees; 2 grape vines that produced enough grapes for the whole lower mainland; a Laburnum that had long flowers like wisteria except yellow that contracted some disease but it looked like it had been struck by lightening; dogwood; Hawthorn and lots of blooming shrubs like azaleas and tons of blue flowered perennials....i used to buy anything that had blue flowers. Lots more but can't remember right now. Oh yeah what was the question again, lol...
I have an auto-immune liver disease called Primary Biliary Cirrhosis some of the main symptoms are fatigue and fuzzy brain. If you want to check it out at
http://www.pbcers.org
And osteoarthritis also known as Spondylosis which is a degenerative disease that affects my spinal joints, hips, knees and just recently started in my neck.

Lalala said...

I have never seen so many big words in one paragraph! All the names of plants/trees, and all the medical terminology!

It's a weird disease. I am glad that you can still do photo shop.....most importantly, I am glad that you are always in good spirit.

Lorraina said...

Well, Lalala i guess its like when you talk about recipes and cooking theres so many things i don't know or understand so thats like big words too.
I've learned so much from reading your blog about things i didn't know about before. You know everything about food and nutrition, cuts of meat, spices,cooking terminology etc. and i don't so its all relative i guess.

But you'd think someone my age should know how to prepare food after all i've raised 3 kids so how can this be? Food preparation should be at least a little part of me as my life of being a wife and mother and yet i know so little.

You always surprise me with your wonderful recipe ideas and amazing know how.

Its understandable if one dosn't know these diseases or plants if it wasn't or isn't a part of their life; how would you know or why would you remember.

So really, it's my bad. Now i'm wondering what on earth did i feed them....it couldn't have been Kraft dinner every day. I just don't know.

Now this is the really funny thing - all 3 of them turned out to be great cooks!

Lalala said...

haha, you are very sweet.... I am sure you made wonderful meals for your 3 girls.
How funny that you came from being one of the 3 girls, and then you gave birth to 3 girls!

Lorraina said...

Yes, i am one of 3 sisters but the mother of only 2 girls, my twins born Aug 10th. They wern't even a yr old when i had my son on Aug 7th. So every year theres 3 days where i have 3 kids all the same age.
Well, i don't know about the wonderful meals part. I do remember making tons and tons of potato salad though, and lots of hot dogs.

Lalala said...

wow you were BUSY in baby making!