We are now a couple of months into our learning experience with high density successive vegetable growing. Quite a success so far and perhaps this is a good time to publish an update for those who have been asking questions. In May we started with the installation of three raised vegetable beds [...]
Mid-summer Progress Report We are now in our second full year of letting what was once a scrappy lawn have the freedom to just grow while we wait to see what's there and what has arrived. Mid June is a good half-way stage in the process of creating a "mead" and to pause [...]
Bird Protection Quebec regularly has guided birding field trips each weekend but, with social distancing and groups being forbidden for the past ten weeks they have organised "virtual field trips" restricted to the birds in our gardens. These have been surprisingly popular with many more people taking part than ever come out [...]
Thyme-leaved Speedwell (Veronica serpyllifolia) Working in the Fritz Garden (where the community grows vegetables for food banks) a few days ago, and preparing to plant tomato seedlings I was caught by this tiny gem of a wildflower looking appealingly at me and pleading not to be “weeded”. What could I do but [...]
There is a famous phrase from a chidrens’ poem written in the 1760s by Isaac Watts that asks: “How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour?” ... and the answer in our case is by industrious labouring in our Socially Distant Garden. What, you will be wondering, loyal reader, has [...]
After over a week of unseasonably cold northerly winds that held spring bird migration back things changed overnight and we are in a south-westerly air flow that's a bit warmer. Quite a change and we have spent half the day glued to the windows watching the garden, especially the waterfall, as bird [...]
In the town where I live there is a small wooded copse adjacent to the Fritz Farm Community Centre that for most of the year is nothing very special but just now is carpeted by a rather glorious collection of blue flowers. A few days ago, seeking interesting mosses (I do stuff like [...]
Mourning Cloak butterfly, appeared in the garden last week after overwintering in a sheltering crack somewhere We spend a lot of our lives doing gardening things and watching the wildlife regardless of whether the virus and the government allow us to wander further afield. Despite that, however, there is a [...]
Gradually the snow is melting and daytime temperatures are mostly a touch above freezing point )well below at night) - even the very first snowdrop shoot has popped its head up. The early returning birds have appeared - principally huge clocks of Canada Geese and plenty of male Red-winged Blackbirds strutting their [...]
Messy Eater Blood on the Snow We’ve noted before that the berries on the native Viburnum triloba are eaten in the fall while those on the similar European species (Guelder rose) are left until well into the New Year. Obviously those of the native species are more palatable while the [...]