Day in the Garden

Betty just left the house on her way to "Day in the garden" in Guelph. This is a full day of camaraderie and gardening seminars and general good fun. Now, while the cat is gone, I have this wonderful opportunity to say what I like, and once it is published, there is no putting it back in the bottle. Right? Unfortunately, we live very boring and un-eventful lives and there just is no juicy gossip to pass along. Anybody interested in some Florida real estate?


"Get a jump on spring" held at the Toronto Botanical Gardens is now behind us. While there we were thrilled to get to meet Beryl Harris in person. Not only is she a Master Gardener and a prolific writer on garden subjects, but the daylily named after her is one of Betty's favourites. The picture to the left shows them chatting, with Gold Strike in the foreground.


In addition to our normal tasks at this time of year, we are going to be manning a booth at the Stratford Garden Festival this Friday thru Sunday. We pushed all our furniture back and are setting it up full-scale in the middle of our house. Hopefully, this will minimize any surprises when we do it for real in Stratford.

Betty is also in the throes of putting together a Power Point presentation for her talk at Canada Blooms. It is a big job and since it has become one of the foremost horticultural shows in Canada, she will be along side some incredible gardening gurus, so second best definitely will NOT do.




I just looked out the window, and there are a couple of young deer having breakfast on our cedar row. First time I have seen them up by the house this winter. I guess with the heavy snow cover we now have, the buffet table is starting to get sparse.





This is a photo of our heifers wandering around nonchalantly in a snowstorm. Conestogo lake is visible in the background. Our house is out of sight to the right.


By the way, just make sure when ordering that you check the sold outs and additions to the right side of this blog. This is the most current information. Sometimes it takes us a few days to get the inventory on the website updated.

Jump on Spring today

Good morning - and what a great day today!! Hmm - it promises to be... so far just dark and cold. BUT we are heading to Toronto for the Jump on Spring programme at the Toronto Botanical Gardens after our "Staff meeting" in the hot tub in a few moments, and after we blow out the driveway. Since I wanted to show off BRUNNERA GOLD STRIKE at the Stratford Garden Festival March 1-4, I brought it inside a few weeks ago. Well, it is blooming to beat the band right now. Our house is heated hydronically, and we neglected to put a cold area in, so it is leaping ahead perhaps a bit more than ideal for a show still 10 days from now. (I am SO thrilled - my sister is coming to visit from B.C. - so that week is going to be a very busy one - as well, I am doing a talk at our local (Maryborough) hort society that week - a dry run for the Canada Blooms talk - "Low Maintenance Gardening by a High Maintenance Woman". ) that was too much a run-on sentence.
However - as I am on a soapbox, I will add one more rant that a friend of mine sent me - and surely we can all sympathize. It follows" Well it has seriously started, Cabin Fever.
I got a call last week from someone in my garden club and she was just ranting. Why aren't there any garden shows. Why don't any of these station have gardening.... where is it...
Well in the back of my head I recognized it. Cabin Fever or lack of being in the garden. Understanding Cabin Fever and often having to restrain myself from trying to take my early morning walk with coffee in hand in the yard....because there is two feet of snow still there, I sympathized with her. I too had in previous years noted how networks have a cycle of show programming. And the fall/winter cycle is home renovations...Gardening coming in the spring and summer. What was apparent to me was that the networks simply do not have Gardeners on the programming boards. Yes there are one or two here and there but likely less that 1/2 % of all current viewing.
So being the good little action oriented person I was I sent a message to HGTV about these. Very specifically I noted to them that Gardeners as much as we like to see the garden shows in spring and summer, we are in the yard in the spring and summer. When we need garden shows is: NOW!! The underlined section below is the response I received.
""As you can imagine, planning and implementing a schedule that will please everyone is a very challenging task and one that is taken very serious here at HGTV. In order to facilitate this process, ratings and viewer feedback are what is used to make decisions when it comes to programming. These two criteria have indicated that viewers are tuning into home-improvement and home décor programming – which is why we are showing more of those kinds of programs. (the fact that these are the only showing at this time of year might be the reason for that also.)
Gardening show requests too are taken into consideration and as a result you will be pleased to know that this spring HGTV will be airing three new gardening or gardening-related programs: Digging Deep, Green Force, and Urban Outsiders and new episodes of the Canadian original series, Take It Outside, as well as encore presentations of Outer Spaces. Our spring schedule starts the first week of April. Please check our website, hgtv.ca, for additional programming information.""
Nice to know and Yippee for new shows, but I have seen Take it Outside and it is a strange show about building decks and living space outside not gardening.
So it appears that they need viewer demand to have more gardening shows. I would invite you and as many people as you can share this message with, to ask for more garden programming.
This is the HGTV contact site, but don't stop there. Go to the website of any station or network you watch and put the demand in. Gardeners need (note need, not just want) Gardening shows NOW, just looking at garden catalogues is not enough!!.. More Canadian based Garden Shows!!
http://www.hgtv.ca/hgtv/faq.aspx#contactus
Now I am going to go look at some of my old vhs tapes of last summer's garden shows."

SO - the coffee pot says it wants to go outside. See you tomorrow... :)
Have a safe and joy-filled day.
Betty

Daylilies added for sale

GOOD MORNING!!! and yes - this is Betty again. and NO I did not die or otherwise vacate this mortal coil. 'Bin busy keeping up, keeping up. So the first thing I did this morning was to add 55 cultivars to the ADDED FOR SALE items. You see them first here - they have yet to be added to the Daylily list - only here on the blog. OOPS Marv is heading out for our morning Staff meeting (Hot tub with a cuppa) so I have to run. Back soon. Contest - I will add a plant of my choosing to your order this year for every error you find on our web page. ALSO - a plant added to your Order this year - my choosing again, but it will be something I like - if you can tell me what same Name appears for sale for each of Hemerocallis (Daylily), Hosta and Heuchera. start digging!! And yes, I have finished the Ontario Daylily Newsletter. It is printed, collated, stapled and stuffed into labelled envelopes - stuffed during Grey's Anatomy last night - so I hope people like it. Gotta tell you - very few photos - and yes - 18 pages of information. SO - if you want a great daylily club to join, consider the ODS. Gotta run - my coffee is steaming out there in the -14 degree air. brrrr. Big hugs. Betty

View of our north deck this morning. Just beyond the small greenhouse is the hot tub in which we enjoy our first cup of coffee every morning.

This is proving to be a very busy time of year. Payback, I guess, for the wonderful kick-back time in Hawaii. We have continued to get lots of snow and cold weather. Just now as I look out of the window, a light fluffy blanket is descending - so heavy that I can't see 10 feet.

There are orders to fill, inventory adjustments to make, plant labels to print.
Electrical wiring, bench construction, computer and shipping areas to construct in our new "header house, installation of an new drip watering system throughout our three greenhouses, supplier shows and seminars to attend, booths to plan and prepare for shows in which we participate.
And of course, there is the website and blog to update. We are also working on an e-commerce addition to our site that will allow you to complete your order on line with a "real time" inventory.

Within a week we will be "waking up" some of our dormant plants to get early growth prior to shipping. The heated greenhouse takes very close attention this time of year. Half of the day we have to ensure that it doesn't drop below freezing, but if the sun emerges, we have to rush out and turn on the fans to keep temperatures below 60 F. so the plants don't grow on too fast.

Our greenhouse (as well as house, hot water, hot tub etc.) is heated with hot water by an outdoor wood burning furnace. First and last thing each day I go out and stoke it up with about 20, 30 to 40 lb. logs. The stove can handle pieces up to 24" D. and up to 5' long and we burn about 50 t0 60 cords per winter. I cut the logs to a convenient length, but don't have to split them. I just discovered a leak in a rubber hose connected to the bottom of the tank filled with 190 degree water. Changing this is going to be quite a challenge to do without scalding myself. I'll let you know how I do.

This is our tractor and generator on left set up and waiting for the next power failure. Below on the right is a view of our woodpile. I've already used 2/3 of it this winter. I store it in the driving shed and carry it out to the stove.

Betty passes on her regards. She is busy taking orders and doing all the paperwork, but promises to do the next installment.