The Garden
Various of my South African friends have expressed an interest on how the garden does in our climate here in Canada so this page will be devoted to give you an insight into the Canadian Experience. To start off the Garden hibernates in winter and it is surprising to see in spring how certain plants just simply start growing again after having been in a deep freeze for months. Apparently some animals like frogs freeze solid in the winter and thaw again in spring. It makes one wonder for how long you could keep them frozen. Seems like cryogenics was thought about a long time before man came on the scene.
Once its spring starts the plants seem to make up for lost time. You realize why it could have been named spring as everything seems to bounce upwards!
I Had me a bit of Peony once or was it a heorse? I never came across Peonies in South Africa but here they are a stunning flower. They die off completely in the winter and in Spring they start again and are amazing to watch. The following is a picture of a Peony and Marilyn Holding a Meter ruler next to it taken on the 10th June. On the 28th May they were only starting to shoot Thirteen days later. The Top bud is at around 40 MM. One interesting fact is that they attract ants and the buds actually ooze a nectar from the outer leaves for the ants. So the ants can actually do the pollinating when the flowers open. In the picture on the right you can see the beautiful flowers, this is after the bulb gets to about a Golf Ball size and then opens. They smell gorgeous and are almost as pretty as Marilyn! A pity is that are so big they droop but we have found that you can buy Peony rings to support them. Apparently very popular in China where they have a kazillion varieties.
Note the South African Wagon Cart wheels on the Veranda. (Not Canadian!)
This is a picture of the ants picnic on the Peony bud. My first reaction was. We've got to put a stop to this anyway some ants are now demised and the Peony survived the onslaught and I learned something.
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Peonies and Goats Breath!
The Next picture is of the flowers on the tree in front of our house which is of the "Prunus" family. This may be so, but they call it a "May Tree" here. It always, to me anyway, heralds the onset of spring or the end of the snow. Almost yearly we have a dump of heavy wet snow when this tree is in full bloom and this year was no exception. The following was taken on the 24th May 2007 and please note where we have cleared the snow it is already wet. In other words the cement of the driveway is warm enough to melt the snow. We were clearing the cars so that we could go to work.
The following photo is of the actual flowers and I have done this so you can behold it's glory.
It makes me think a little of the "Anthropic principle " This principle was proposed as a rule of reasoning, that by simply implying that the universe as we see it exists essentially is because life exists for us to observe it and vice versa.
Even though there is so much hate and ugliness in the world God must have wanted "us" to see the beauty of his creation!
It is unbelievable to think this is the same tree which we see in the previous photo.
For the Orchid aficionados the following is a true slipper Orchid that grows on the prairies and it survives -1000°C ! "Well that's what it sometimes feels like here." I always was under the impression orchids were tropical and needed a hot climate. Well here it shows you that they don't. These two chaps look like little pirates. You can just imagine them wearing an eye patch and having a little black stubble on their chins. "Harr me maties we be the pirate's o' the prairies and well do you in-- I say. Har Har!"
Incidentally these were removed from a Gully near Patrick's farm. I Managed to get them into a pot and they survived this year. "They" don't want people to remove them however what with the herbicides "they" use I think we may be doing nature a favour.
"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot." As the song say's!
I was wondering if these are a relation to the South African ground orchids. They look similar but are yellow and the leaves look alike. Also we had Glacial activity in Durban during the last ice age about ten thousand years ago and in case you don't know there are striated worn rocks at the site of the University of Westville or whatever name it's called now. Also near where we lived in Honeysuckle place, "Glenhills" there were some moraines--when they cut into a hill for building you could see the deposit from a moraine and the round rocks I used to find in my Garden which I thought were river Rocks but when I examined them closely they had long scrape marks on them which was caused by glaciation. So in fact they were glacial and not river rocks.
Our cherry tree is an Evans Cherry which is self fertilizing (IE you don't need a male and female tree) and survives the winter in Canada. the fruit is smaller than the normal Cherry and slightly more tart. They do however look and taste very nice as you can see in the following photo even though its known as a sour cherry!
(30/6/2019 Our cherry tree died this year and we had to replace it so we went and bought a new one and we were fortunate to have our neighbour Michelle to help us remove the old stump and put in the new. It was actually bought with a couple of immature cherries on it so next year it should already start bearing!) The picture is of the old tree! It's 2023 and we are still waiting for our first crop it has flowered but only had the odd cherry! So things don't always go to plan!
We bought a ground cover which has little succulent round leaves and this year it flowered in the back garden. We had to move it to the back as every year the Snow Shoe Rabbits would have it for a snack during winter. They will dig through the snow to the ground to find vegetation. These rabbits are brown in the summer and in winter get white fur with Black tipped ears. You can't believe that it could happen so quickly as they grow new fur. They are in fact a hare as they have longer back legs and ears.
Incidentally these were removed from a Gully near Patrick's farm. I Managed to get them into a pot and they survived this year. "They" don't want people to remove them however what with the herbicides "they" use I think we may be doing nature a favour.
"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot." As the song say's!
I was wondering if these are a relation to the South African ground orchids. They look similar but are yellow and the leaves look alike. Also we had Glacial activity in Durban during the last ice age about ten thousand years ago and in case you don't know there are striated worn rocks at the site of the University of Westville or whatever name it's called now. Also near where we lived in Honeysuckle place, "Glenhills" there were some moraines--when they cut into a hill for building you could see the deposit from a moraine and the round rocks I used to find in my Garden which I thought were river Rocks but when I examined them closely they had long scrape marks on them which was caused by glaciation. So in fact they were glacial and not river rocks.
Our cherry tree is an Evans Cherry which is self fertilizing (IE you don't need a male and female tree) and survives the winter in Canada. the fruit is smaller than the normal Cherry and slightly more tart. They do however look and taste very nice as you can see in the following photo even though its known as a sour cherry!
(30/6/2019 Our cherry tree died this year and we had to replace it so we went and bought a new one and we were fortunate to have our neighbour Michelle to help us remove the old stump and put in the new. It was actually bought with a couple of immature cherries on it so next year it should already start bearing!) The picture is of the old tree! It's 2023 and we are still waiting for our first crop it has flowered but only had the odd cherry! So things don't always go to plan!
We bought a ground cover which has little succulent round leaves and this year it flowered in the back garden. We had to move it to the back as every year the Snow Shoe Rabbits would have it for a snack during winter. They will dig through the snow to the ground to find vegetation. These rabbits are brown in the summer and in winter get white fur with Black tipped ears. You can't believe that it could happen so quickly as they grow new fur. They are in fact a hare as they have longer back legs and ears.
Well life is strange and then it gets stranger. We had a good crop of Saskatoon berries (Amelanchier alnifolia. A member of the rose family) this year (2010) the first really good crop and year by year it is getting better. The Saskatoon is akin to the Blueberry but a little smaller in size and if you harvest your own or go out in the wild they seem sweeter than buying them. Anyway during the course of picking some I noticed some of the berries had changed radically and instead of being blue they had changed and had grown a sort of a cancerous type of growth with horn like protuberances. Really weird, so naturally I could not let this lie and did some research only to find that this is caused by an infection of "Gymnosporiangium nelsonii" which is a fungi (Not a fun guy) which needs two different hosts to complete it's life cycle (something like a plant ménage à trois) It needs both the Juniper and the Blueberry to complete the life cycle.
Not only does this fungus infest the fruit it can also grow on the leaves.
Lily Leaf Beetle {Lilioceris lilii (Scopoli, 1763)}These Beatles are a real pest in Alberta. They only arrived in Alberta in 2009 after originally arriving in Canada in 1943 in Montreal.
In our garden it all started when we noticed that the leaves on the lilies where being eaten by some or other bug. On closer inspection it looked as though there were snails on the Lily's. What I thought were snails was in fact the Larvae of the Lily leaf beetle and they were consuming the leaves at an alarming rate. As you can see in the following picture.
Not only the leaves but also the flower buds. Apparently they cover themselves with their own feces to shield them from the sun as well as make them unattractive to birds. It also makes them unpleasant to handle. As you can see in the picture below where one is sitting on a half eaten flower bud and if you look carefully you can see the legs and head towards the top.
On reaching a certain size they fall off the stem to burrow into the ground and undergo metamorphosis and they emerge as fully grown beetles.
At this stage they mate and lay eggs on the stems so that these eggs could hatch and become new larvae. The end result is that your beautiful lilies get decimated if you don't do anything. The only insecticide which seems to be effective is a product called "Seven" a powder. Either that or squishing the bugs if you find them!
In our garden it all started when we noticed that the leaves on the lilies where being eaten by some or other bug. On closer inspection it looked as though there were snails on the Lily's. What I thought were snails was in fact the Larvae of the Lily leaf beetle and they were consuming the leaves at an alarming rate. As you can see in the following picture.
Not only the leaves but also the flower buds. Apparently they cover themselves with their own feces to shield them from the sun as well as make them unattractive to birds. It also makes them unpleasant to handle. As you can see in the picture below where one is sitting on a half eaten flower bud and if you look carefully you can see the legs and head towards the top.
On reaching a certain size they fall off the stem to burrow into the ground and undergo metamorphosis and they emerge as fully grown beetles.
At this stage they mate and lay eggs on the stems so that these eggs could hatch and become new larvae. The end result is that your beautiful lilies get decimated if you don't do anything. The only insecticide which seems to be effective is a product called "Seven" a powder. Either that or squishing the bugs if you find them!
Rhubarb Bush June 2022 The same bush 2023 in full flower.