Helen Chesnut
So much for birdsong and broad beans. Early in the month, on the day my column chirped about early seedings and the sounds of spring in the air, I ventured out onto the driveway in search of the morning paper and stepped into 20 cm of snow.
After an hour of clearing the long driveway, I made it out to my local weekly farmers’ market and to Seedy Saturday. At both events, vendor presence was noticeably diminished from the usual fully packed halls.
Though early morning, spring-like birdsong fell quiet, wildlife in the garden seemed to spring into action. In the middle of the night before digging myself out, I woke to monitor the snow situation through the glass doors onto the patio. Through the thickly falling snow I watched the fattest raccoon I’ve ever seen plodding across the patio and proceeding up the centre path into the back garden.
Fat-bellied robins and flocks of small birds flitted about in and under the big rhododendron beside the patio. On the opposite side of the house, at the front, bird life abounded as the creatures sheltered in a wide-spreading strawberry tree and scratched for seeds in the soil of a brick planter that stretches across the front of the house.
Alas, all is not chirpy and fine in the garden following the snow. A prized and beautifully showy Fremontia beside the front gate has toppled, its branches fallen onto the driveway. I’ll have to cut it back drastically before pulling it back upright and dressing its root area generously with compost. And hope for the best.
This lovely but shallow-rooted shrub has fallen over twice before, in November rain and winds, and survived. Not sure about this time.
Other shrubs have lost their tidy shapes and have been splayed out with the weight of snow. Beside my front door a formerly neat, broadly oval Gold Cone juniper is a mess. I’ll try pulling it together and securing cord around it, in hopes that an approximate return to its former comely shape will remind the plant how to behave.
Other splayed-out plants, including my largest lemon cypress and a long cherished winter daphne, may be more effectively reshaped with pruning. With the daphne I’ll wait until after it has finished flowering in March. Seed catalogue notes. Winter evenings spent leafing through the new seed and garden catalogues inevitably unearth a few listings that are exceptionally worth noting. Here’s a sampler from my most recent perusals. T&T Seeds (ttseeds.com) A Canadian family-owned company in its 72nd year. • Redskin pepper. Compact (25-cm) plants, good for containers, bear bright red, 12-cm, bell-shaped fruits. I’ll be trying Redskin on the patio this summer. Mohawk is a similar plant with orange peppers. • Dwarf Sensation cosmos is a shorter (60-cm) form of the popular heirloom Sensation, which won an All-America Selections gold medal award in 1936. The traditional Sensation grows 90 to 100 cm tall. • Zinnia Zahara Sunburst, a glorious deep gold and orange-red flower on 35-cm stems, is a European Fleuroselect gold medal winner. W.H. Perron (whperron.com) Formerly Dominion Seed House. The catalogue displays new and novel vegetables, herbs and flowers on its introductory pages. • Snap Little Snow Pea Purple. A dwarf plant, up to 60 cm high and good for containers, with purple bi-coloured flowers and a crop of snow peas. • Marino is a compact coriander (cilantro) for containers. • Snow Princess. An unusual calendula with double and semi-double, cream-tinged white flowers developing from pale yellow buds. A Fleuroselect award winner. • Orchid cream. A nasturtium in variations on a cream and red theme. Striking. • Sombrero. A 35-cm high zinnia bearing single and semi-double flowers with “blood red” centres and deep yellow petal tips. • Navarino. Perron is the only current source I know of for this easy-growing, beautifully shaped, flavour-rich carrot. A longtime personal favourite carrot, along with Nelson and Napoli.
GARDEN EVENT
Rose meeting. The Mid Island Rose Society will meet on Monday, Feb. 20, from 6 to 8 p.m. in the North Nanaimo Library on Hammond Bay Rd. More information at 250-390-2805.