Little Pine

02/12/2022

Here’s a look at some of the little critters the garden supported last year. I can’t wait for spring!

01/21/2022

Here’s a way to contribute to some citizen science. In my wintery urban yard, I can usually only count chickadees and crows at this time of year, but every extra data point helps. www.birdcount.org

01/16/2022

Fall can be a beautiful time in the garden, but it flies by so quickly, and then I find myself in the middle of winter, trying desperately to remind myself that the garden will come again. It helps to go through pictures and videos: like this one of bath time in mid October…

08/17/2021

Speaking of tall…I’ve had Liatris spicata (blazing star) in the past and it was the usual 3 feet tall or so. It didn’t stick around for too many years though, so last year I planted another one in richer soil. I probably shouldn’t have done that because this year the spikes have reached 6 feet, and when those heavy flower spikes bloomed, it was inevitable that they fell over. I belatedly got them into some support, so now they’re adding some interesting “punctuation” to the garden.

08/14/2021

My tall plants seem to have grown even taller this year: New York ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis) with purple flowers, and cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum) behind it with yellow flowers. I’d guess they’re at about 7-8 feet. They’re great for observing butterflies because the butterflies don’t seem to get as spooked when you approach from below.

08/04/2021

Saw this amazing post on the Native Plant Gardening Reddit:

Posted in r/NativePlantGardening by u/ektorp1 • 17 points and 2 comments

07/31/2021

Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum) glows in the late afternoon sun.

07/26/2021

More garden visitors…

07/21/2021

Here’s a trio of long-lasting summer flowers that go well together: hairbell (Campanula rotundifolia) are the purple flowers in the foreground, lanceleaf coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata) are the yellow flowers, and butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) are the orange flowers in the back.

07/15/2021

I should have taken more pictures during the berry season of my Amelanchier shrubs (A. alnifolia, Saskatoon berry, and A. canadensis, Serviceberry), which is end of June, but I was too busy enjoying the berries, watching the robins gobble them up, or laughing at the squirrels’ acrobatics as they dangle from one foot trying for the hard-to-reach ones. The A. alnifolia (pictured below) is slower growing and takes more time to produce a lot of fruit than the A. canadensis - at least in this part of the world - but it’s still lovely.

07/13/2021

It’s moth and butterfly time of year again! Here are some recent visitors…

06/22/2021

Highbush cranberry (Viburnum trilobum) produces an interesting arrangement of flowers. The larger white ones that form a circle end up falling like confetti all over the ground. It’s quite pretty! I think it would be a fairly large shrub, but due to lack of room, I’ve turned mine into more like a small tree. It provides some nice screening from the neighbours.