A shower-cap for The Scoot

Compliments of Jill, the Rummage Sale Queen.


It's actually a pool-lounge-chair cover, re-purposed for April showers. Hadn't occurred to me to keep my seat dry, but it's rather nice, I agree.

The Challenge with Container Gardening, or the Mystery of the Disappearing Hedge

Strange title perhaps, but I promise to explain.

The blaze of colour and foliar-festivity below is, unfortunately, a classic case of a mature over-planted garden. For a long time, the yew hedge has framed a copse of magnificient magnolias and an understorey of weeping Japanese maples, rhododendrons, and azaleas.

In recent years, the cup has begun to spilleth over.


In particular, the back corner of the yew hedge has lost vigour, and one after another, the individual plants are yellowing out and creating unsightly gaps. What to do?

The owner, being attached to his hedge (figuratively speaking), wanted to try replanting new yews in the gaps. Seemingly at random, the new yews also yellowed and failed to thrive.

After two years, this "new yew" was dug up. Notice the root-ball, below... (Also notice how close the magnolia trunks are to the hedge, above)...

No new roots. Ach!

The other significant observation was that the new yew's root ball was swarmed with magnolia roots--over and around and under. You can distinguish magnolia roots from surrounding plants' roots because magnolia roots are as fragrant as fine (but dirty) perfume.

So we have to see the forest for the trees--a classic example of an old expression.

This planting can be considered a container-planting--just on a much grander scale than your average balcony-pot. The plants are indeed contained on all sides by the street and driveway. Even though the bottom of the "container" may be open to the ground, plants have defined root structures: in this instance, yews and magnolias and rhododendrons and azaleas have shallow roots.

In short, the magnolias are winning.

In this case, the magnolias are winning both below and above ground, because, given the choice, the owners prefer magnolias over yews. The solution, sadly, is removing some plants from the "container." A hardscaping solution (fence) will have to be found for the privacy issues on that corner--and perhaps the length of the roadside in the future.

This reflects the particular challenge with container-planting in general. Restricted root-space increases competition and stress on plants, so initially underplanting a container will ensure longer-term health. Another approach is to plant your preferred specimen in a pot, and temporarily embellish the pot with annuals or plants that you plan to remove. As the preferred specimen matures, it roots can then claim the available space.

Seaside Gardening on Bedrock (or gardening without dynamite)

John and Margot live on a south-facing slope of granite with the Pacific Ocean rolling at its feet. "Whale Rock" rests in a shade garden above the house.


All around John and Margot's garden, builders are blasting away the original grano-diorite bedrock to make way for the newest West Coast style of architecture. The new trend proclaims "blending in" with the landscape with muted colours, stratified rooftops and see-through window schemes. The overall effect ends up looking...a bit Kremlin. Stalinesque. (You can see a new roof line just above Whale Rock.)

Apparently, blending in requires blasting into the landscape. A typical sunny day on the West Van seaside pulses with the cry of gulls, crash of waves, and dull thud of dynamite. So many of these lovely contours are cracked apart and flattened so $20 000 (...$50 000...) instant gardens can be installed for a quick sale.

Meanwhile...

...Here's a stairway between a bank of the rampant Himalayan blackberry and the "new" garden bed just coming into its third year. The blackberry is actually under control (ha ha), and kept for picking. Notice the bank of perennial Geranium on the left, dwarfing all passers-by on the path.

John has wended his way around the mountainside, hand-building rock walls to retain soil for garden beds, and stairs to get there. Often, beds are strategically located to catch run-off rivulets that cascade over the bedrock.

This bed of Darmera peltata receives a constant trickle--necessary moisture for its next summer-long phase of large umbrella-like leaves. Right now, the flower heads look like sea creatures, reaching for surface light.

Back to John's "new" garden bed, you can see the degree of the slope by the hand-railing behind the Coral-Bark maple (Acer palmatum 'Sango Kaku'). Anyone else see a heart in this photo?

Didn't plan that--just proof of what makes the world go 'round, I figure.

The incredible blue line behind the Spanish lavender (Lavandula stoechas) is Lithodora diffusa 'Grace Ward' which is seen below, as a foil to a close-up of a Coral-Bark branch...

...and in a tapestry with one of the creeping veronicas and the dwarf Spiraea bumalda 'Limemound'...

Yes, a lot of good plant vibes going on here!

If you want to know the secret of turning out a garden like this on a slope like that...John and Margot have carefully engineered the Right Plants in the Right Places, and used a whole lotta mulch. I help.

We sort garden debris into weeds for the curb, green compostables, and chippables. John has a homeowner-sized chipper, and strategically disperses fine mulch for pathways and garden beds: building and holding soil, retaining moisture, and smothering weeds.


I've learned a great deal in this garden, about blending a garden into the landscape, without using dynamite.

We thought we'd just come up and take a look around.

Literally...

Some people take this bicycle-gardening thing so literally...

I walked into Trims in Edgemont Village on Saturday (a very rainy day) and saw this bit of artistry. These are all imitation plants--except for the moss.

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What a fabulous shop--more like a botanical boudoir than...whatever it's supposed to be. Maybe it is a botanical boudoir.

That would explain the peep-hole behind the paeonies.

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Trims sells only imitation plants--very nice ones, but I always wonder who in the world buys imitation plants?? Maybe theatre people. (The store is definitely in the vintage-theatrical-botanical curiousity shoppe genre.) Maybe cemetary people--that would explain the headstone.

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Your local gothic-vintage-theatrical-botanical curio supply store. I bought a fake-foliage boa out of sheer gratitude for the pics above.

After the ecstasy...digital networking

I had to put my cel phone someplace safe while I hip-wadered through the pond.

This image struck me as...anachronistic...contradictory...? But maybe not.
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If Siddhartha had lived today, he probably would have been a Saudi prince/oil magnate (fully digitized) with penthouses in six cities and a modern-day-harem-equivalent before he renounced everything and became Buddha. And if Buddha were around today, he would probably use digital networking to teach. In fact, there are a lot of Buddhist monks around teaching, and I bet you can fit a lot of digital devices under those red and gold robes. Totally wired.
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Speaking of red and gold, I have a new broom.


Sweeping is a Buddhist practice. We're supposed to do it to learn to let go of our ego ("I'm too busy/important/etc. to sweep") and learn to be mindful ("I am sweeping... I am still sweeping") or you can hire me to do your sweeping for you, kind of like Buddhist carbon credits. Which transitions nicely to the real reason I have a broom: to avoid using the noise-and-air-polluting two-stroke back-pack blower that is one of the signs of the end of civilization, so far as I am concerned.
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Back to the broom: this is no ordinary broom. This is a German Wolf Garten broom with a detachable head. You can also buy rake heads, cultivator heads, pole pruner heads etc. that fit on the pole. I was a little delirious when I first discovered these, as you can imagine. And the broom itself is a little bit magic. It is quite effortless. It's a television commercial waiting to happen. I'm a little embarassed that I'm this excited about a broom so I'll stop now. Except for this:


Notice how said detachable head fits in the side-pannier while pole can be tied snuggly (with repurposed bicycle tube) to frame of bicycle for transport. Actually, if I left the broom head on, I'd look like a witch. Totally doing that for Halloween, with a real corn-broom.
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Notice I'm on my bike, rather than The Scooter. I'm figuring out my optimum scooter/bicycle balance and after two days of scooting this week, I started noticing cyclists with jealousy. So today was a fantastic long ride, a totally beautiful cherry-blossom day. I'll have to do another post, comparing rides, because it's quite the contrast.

Ready, set, divide!

Divide yer hostas now!

I like dividing perennials nowish, when they're still all pointy noses. These big blue sieboldiana hostas seem to emerge later than all the green and variegated varieties, maybe because sieboldiana leaves take longer to warm up. They are somewhat lizard-like, forming large, primordial, corrugated blue domes.

I have a theory about large, well-established hostas: they don't notice when they are divided. I think they have "spatial memory" and simply fill out to the same circumference even if you have removed half of them.

I have noticed this enough times in different circumstances to come up with this theory. So I'll watch these two bits (in my suite's garden) and see if my hypnotherapist is correct. I mean hypothesis.

One reason for dividing perennials (hostas included) before they unfurl is so that you won't damage tender flimsy unfurling leaves. Another reason is so that the division will unfold into its new home as its own fully-formed entity, instead of looking like...half a plant you hacked off.

Another point about my "spatial memory" hypothesis is that it doesn't work if you keep dividing the divisions. Perhaps it only works for halves. Otherwise that would be too miraculous. I also think that if you divide hostas into tiny (say, 3-nose) bits they take forever to get big again. I know this because garden centres sell 3-nose hostas for $12-$15 and they take...forever.

"A Little Secret About Plant Bugs and Disease" or "Why Pesticides Make No Sense"

Here's sooty mold on camellia leaves.

This camellia has never had sooty mold before. Hmm.

Usually, I look under sooty leaves and see scale, that strange juice-sucking bug that attaches to the underside of leaves and stems and forms a seal over itself like a scale. (These pests are very literal.) Scale also excrete a sugary substance that sooty mold (a fungus) likes to grow in. So they often coexist on the same beleaguered plant in a sticky, sooty mess.

I'm not going to give you the name of a product that will magically make this problem disappear, like a household cleaner with a strangely sterile, muscle-y man on the label.

The little secret about plant bugs and diseases is that they wouldn't be there if the plant wasn't already stressed out.

Healthy plants have the right balance of minerals and sugars and water and chemical compounds and faery spirits running through their branches. Bugs and diseases are living things too, and they know when an environment is ideal for setting up camp. At some invisible level, bugs and diseases may actually be repelled by too many healthy vibes--a high level of certain sugars, for example, is an indicator of the presence of other minerals and compounds that may create a hostile environment for pests.

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Pests may not even "see" a plant until its healthy vibes have deteriorated to the point that--chemically or energetically--it is a beacon like a cheap hotel (depending on your definition of beacon).

So I'm not going to fret about the soot. Instead, I'm going to wonder what has changed in the past year, that would have stressed out and blackened this lovely specimen.

Possibility #1: Construction site run-off

For the past couple months, the deck has been under a major renovation, and there is a likelihood that various chemical compounds have found their way down the bank...into the root-zone of the camellia. One such compound is concrete slurry, which is very alkaline. Camellias prefer an acidic soil, so there is a possibility that the pH is off, and the plant can't absorb nutrients.

Possibility #2: Soil compaction

The original low-traffice maintenance pathway veers left, edged by stones. Last year, I re-routed the path around the camellia because heavy snows had collapsed the trunks over the pathway. I suspect that the shallow roots of a camellia don't like being walked on...whoops...so pink flagging tape is now blocking the detour. Allen the Pool Guy and I will just have to hobbit our way through.

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Soil compaction is bad. Without air, life is hard for soil organisms. I've just learned about a compost tea that will introduce aerating soil organisms to compacted soil, and fix it. So I'll try that, but before, I'll set the hose on the area to flush out any toxic residues from the construction.

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Extra Note: Sooty mold also tends to appear on Pieris japonica (Andromeda), Sarcococca (Himalayan sweetbox), and Trachelospermum (Star Jasmine). According to my observation, it tends to affect very old Pieris (they are waning already) and Sweetbox/Star Jasmine that are planted under eaves and suffer from lack of watering in the winter. So they are already stressed.

Oh never mind...

Just kidding. I know that wasn't April Fools Day, but close enough. I'm still posting to this blog.


Fact is that, yes, I'm taking a part-time online technicial writing course so have to spend a lot of time in front of the computer. I got scared. I could feel my eyeglass prescription racketing up.


At the same time, I've slowly realized that there are hundreds--perhaps thousands--of people out there who spend all day every day in front of computers. Shocking. So this may be a public service: sharing my peasant-like toil to remind them to be happy they're warm and safe and dry, with nice dental plans and vacation pay etc. Hmm.

Or: sharing my grounds-eye view of plant wonders, to remind people of the vitality outside the door, the living systems that keep us alive even though we spend our time in 3-D movie theatres swooning over blue aliens.

In reality, we wear rubber suits at times and have questionable hair. "We" being charismatic megafauna who Feel the Source. I see you.

Enough of that.

In fact, that pic above was at Eagle Island on Friday, the day the gale blew in and sunk a sailboat in the West Van Yacht Club regatta. Boat after boat bailed out and came back in with dishevelled crews. No kidding. Mike (garden comrade) and I nearly got blown out to sea when the battery motor on our putt-putt boat ran down. The wind was blowing so hard, we drifted off-course and I could just leap out onto the end of the dock before we ended up out there...



This pic was, however, after the gale had blown through a bit, and we were sitting on the deck, sampling lobster/shrimp bisque and 5-cheese bread with the owner. Doesn't sound so bad now, does it?

Here's the trailing rosemary, in full gorgeous bloom after a very mild winter, and in spite of the current tempest...

Wait, is that a Na'vi-pot??