August 2021 - Week 3

We went away last week for a little break from Kitchener and some nature immersion.  Here's some of what we did:

Forgot how to use my camera resulting in Meccano growing out of Jacob's hat and Rose's arm

looked epic in the tour bus, which had it's own Wi-Fi btw.  Oh how the kids loved it

Lit fires and ate burnt food lol

Swag kayaking (apparently)

Intrepid canoeing

So there you are.

This won't be much of a post as my brain is still on holiday but I do have a little news.  Last night I stumbled upon the 1,000 Gardens project, an initiative by Rare working to build a pollinator map along the Toronto-Waterloo Region corridor.  I hope the bees have Wi-Fi.

I've registered the garden and in the next couple of days it should be a colourful dot on their map, I might also buy a sign and stick it in the future wildflower gardens at the front to give them a bit more purpose.  I've discovered that there is another pollinator garden on our street so I'm off to have a nosy later on and see what the neighbours are up to.

What's poppin' in the garden

It is bird central in the back garden right now.  The sparrows have been using the minefield as a dust bath so I will probably try to leave some parts of it free of plants permanently.  The goldfinches are eating sunflower seeds in-situ which is very picturesque.

I left 2 of my garlic plants in place as I thought they might flower and now I have these bulbils.  Apparently I can plant them in a pot sunk in the garden, and grow them on for a year then plant them out in November 2022 for harvest in 2023.  I've only harvested one head and there are 22 little bulbils so I should have about 40 free garlic plants in 2023.  Nice.

Three borlotti beans added for scale

Morning glories are popping out all over the place.  This one is climbing up the borlotti beans in the veg garden.

Morning glory

Cosmos is looking fab, I'm particularly liking the small orange one, cosmos sulphur 'bright lights'

Lots of green tomatoes.  They're doing really well now after a very slow start.

Tomatoes

This Echinacea 'feeling white' has been the star of the berry patch this summer.  It began flowering at the end of June and is still looking great.

Echinacea 'feeling white'

Jacob grew a hot dog

And my Dahlia, Bishop of Llandaff is nearly out, hurray

Jobs for this week

Tidy up all the edges of the so called lawns

Mow the back and side gardens

Keep deadheading

Don't forget feeding Friday for the pots, tomatoes and peppers

Extra bits and bobs

Aug 16.  Put two more panicums into the minefield and the final three Culver's Root and pale purple cone flowers.  I thought the Culver's Root were going to be white but one is flowering and it is purple, this means that I have a distinct purple bias back there at the moment and will have to add some yellow to balance things out a bit.  Also began with the edge tidying around the veg beds ready for mowing.