Myths about trees
My inspiration for this week’s article comes from two different places. First, from an article written by a colleague that I have the utmost respect for: Stephen Westcott- Gratton on the Gardenmaking. com site; and secondly, from a series of videos I just filmed for ONtree, the Ontario Tree Care Experts. In both cases, the […]
Who are the people in your neighbourhood?
Aren’t we fortunate!? This is more an exclamation than a question. I promised myself I’d get to the Milford Fair with LOML and that’s exactly what we did on Saturday. The Milford Fair did not disappoint. We chatted with lots of old friends. We checked out the vendors’ “market”. We ate lunch under the shelter […]
The Mill Pond project
A few years ago, I had the pleasure of bringing my friend and colleague Sean James into my garden club for a presentation on a wetland recovery project that he did in Guysborough. This project was for a Texan who married a Nova Scotia and agreed to call Canada home. They purchased a beautiful piece […]
Power, vision and influence
Okay, I’m still gone, so don’t tell anybody. There’s just a few more things. I would like to start with a strange analogy: Canadian folk hero and musical legend Valdy once performed in front of an audience which clearly hated his music, because it didn’t fit where they were at, and the messages he wanted […]
Bring on the Candy Apples and Chili Sauce
Did you get out to The County Fair? LOML and I dodged the rain and headed out after lunch on Saturday. If you know me, and let’s face it you don’t, these days I have to be convinced to go out to do just about anything in public. The thing is, I spent a lot […]
Driveways
When it comes to driveways, I am not a fan of using interlock for the entire space. I have several reasons why: Often interlock is installed without a proper base. We know that in our climate with lots of freeze-thaw periods, a patio needs at least eight to 10 inches of drainage gravel (base) to […]
Split again, naturally
I know I’m on hiatus, so pretend you are not reading this. While I clear my mind, and set my thoughts at ease, I suffer that ‘vacation thing’ in which your brain doesn’t know if you turned the iron off before you were 100 miles away. Until you truly hit vacation mode, your brain keeps […]
“A Place to Stand, a Place to Grow”
As summer winds down a whole lot of County people will start to breathe a little sigh of relief. In the next few days things will calm down a bit as regards traffic, crowded beaches, line-ups for restaurants and jammed parking lots. I’d be lying if I said tourism was a bad thing for the […]
Summer bloomers
Peony season is officially over and many homeowners and gardens struggle with ‘what’s next?’. It’s a pretty common problem as many of us build gardens that are what I like to call front-end-loaded, which means that they have lots of spring blooms, but less interest going into the summer months. Here are my top five […]
Ready! Or not?
I remember when the last weeks of summer meant a trip to the Ex, back-to-school clothing shopping/swapping and the end of summer camps, which most of the neighbourhood kids referred to as “Summer School”. We went to a Catholic school in town, which really wasn’t any different from the public school a few blocks away […]