My Garden – Mon Jardin – Mi Jardin – Mein Garten – Daily Adventures & Thoughts

No matter the language, my garden is my paradise. To watch the lovely birds that nest in the trees and bushes. The bees, butterflies are such a joy to see.

Tag Archives: magic


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Surprises and Magic in the garden .. what a fun place to be – all beneath beautiful blue skies ..happy is me!

Tis the season of blue skies and rainy days here.  Like .. yesterday!  The sun was shining brilliantly  in the morning.  I dutifully practiced my singing exercises, followed by my fiddle session.  These are easy to set aside for a later time in the day but I find that, when I do that, procrastination takes over, big time.  So .. I just focus on these 2 lovely sessions.

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When I did finally go outside, a slight rain had occurred and again .. there were blue skies overhead!

So my darling little Lady JaneE came outside with me.  She is my gardening cat.   Born in ’96, the year of the “big snow” here in Victoria, she literally rules the roost in our house.  We love her so much.  Anyway, she is waiting for some treats which I place on the steps beside her.  One of our gardening rituals.april 18, 08 (2)Sipping my mug of Yorkshire tea, I wander around the yard a bit .. this also is a ritual that I follow.  To see all the changes that Spring has brought to the garden.   And enjoy the sweet little songbirds.  Here is a little Golden Crowned Sparrow.. I love their songs and find them very comforting. april 18, 09

The Spotted Towhee .. another lovely bird, very shy but bold in colour.  They have a wide range of sound and sometimes they sound (to me) like the Bewick Wren!   april 18, 05

Sweet little Red-breasted Nuthatch … zooming in for some suet!   The trees in our yard are tall and provide nesting areas for many of the birds that visit our yard.   april 18, 04

The tall Oregon grape is flowering nicely .. cheerful yellow flowers brighten up a bit of the yard.   The leaves on the fruit trees are starting to grow and fill out.   Soon they will be accepted as a normal part of the trees but during this growth period after the winter, they are marvellous bits of magic manifesting in the yard.  I like that.

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Tiny little pink flowers on this perennial which I am pretty sure is an Escallonia …  april 18, 08

Flowers of a fruit tree.  I potted this up last summer, and am not sure if it is plum or cherry.   Guess I’ll find out this year!  More of the magic & a surprise to unfold.  Love the mystery.april 18, 06

I discovered this idea, to cut up (organic) seed potatoes, from a great youtube video of allotment gardening   This guy is just amazing!  Anyway, I have potted these up now and am waiting to see if they will grow and then I’ll plant them.  I have a few ideas as to how I will do that and will post when that is done!    A nice surprise for me last week .. was discovering 2 sprouting garlics!  Last summer I had tied up bunches of garlic to dry beneath the sundeck and these 2 must have fallen down! april 18, 01

I’ll pot these up in containers and look forward to harvesting them at the end of summer!  They are hardnecks, so more scapes for pesto!  Yumm april 18, 02

Last week I visited Russel Nursery in North Saanich, what a wonderful place for a gardener to be!  I was there at least 3 hours, which seemed like 5 minutes.  Everyone there is so knowledgeable and helpful.  This is one of a few wooden structures there that I totally fell in love with.  So much character and beauty.  A portal to the plant world.

april 18, 03

Another sky photo.  Such beauty for us to see.  april 18, 11

Hey, hey, hey!  Have I found the perfect gardening tea mug?????  Yes!   And yesterday I filled it with lovely Yorkshire tea and sat on the front steps to drink it and enjoy the greenery around me.   This lovely hypertufa mini-garden is the perfect place for it to be.

Many, many, years ago, I purchased all the ingredients to make one of these and life just became too hectic for me to accomplish this!   So I bought this one ready-made and love it so much.  Perhaps I will try again, this motivates me to think about that.

april 18, 10

This day is starting out in a gentle fashion.   Cloudy skies, sporadic rain showers.  Birds singing in the yard.

Time to get on with things,  Practicing my two passions.   The fiddle and the singing.  And then on to other things .. like the garden which is calling out to me.

🙂


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Looking upwards .. what do I see ? Just the most amazing sky art there can be!

Saturday .. a few days ago .. was a magnificently beautiful day and the skies were just plain awesome.  I’d accompanied DH to the lumber store and while he selected the supplies that he needed for a project, I wandered outside .. and devoted some time in admiring the show high above me.

We all have fun seeing shapes in the clouds and sometimes they are clearly seen.  In this one, I can see someone riding a horse .. galloping away to a place in the sky ..m-01

Same sky .. another area .. wispy waves that look like a sand washed beach ..

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Dreamy wispy clouds that look like the softest of cotton candy floss ..

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Happy dancing clouds …

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I caught some tree branches in this photo but it shows that fall is near, leaves have begun to fall .. are the branches waving to the sky?  Perhaps.

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Are these two clouds lusting after each other?  They seem to be kissing.    Lovely, against a panoramic background of incredibly beautiful sky art.

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And the kissing clouds are softly covered with a gauzy curtain of fluffy white clouds.  Censorship ??  “ok you’ve seen enough .. run along now”   🙂

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Love seeing such a variety of shapes and textures up above .. and I love even better being up there, flying amongst them.

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Now I can see something above the upper half of this photo .. is it a spreading tree, branches flung far and wide?  Is it a mythical shape from Aesop’s fables?

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The cumulus clouds were so solidly dense it seemed as if I could just reach up and break off a piece .. like a marshmallow or something like that.  And, ahem .. are these more amorous clouds that I see???

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The clouds are getting a bit darker in some areas .. an indication that rain will be happening later on .. and there was a little bit of rain but not that much really.

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Art Nouveau, anyone?   Time to return home, vehicle loaded with supplies.  Camera loaded up with more beautiful photos of the uplifting skies above.

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The beauty of the skies has a special energy which I find quite compelling.  Such random beauty that is ever changing and brightens up our daylight hours.

I am compelled to look upwards and sometimes must remind myself to focus on where I am as it is easy to trip over something!

At this stage of my life I am no longer embarrassed to be looking upwards and quite often I just simply stand still in awe of the beauty up there.   And there is lots of action up there also .. soon it will be time for the Turkey Vultures to migrate and luckily we are on their pathway so I must keep looking up to see this feat of nature.

The magic of seeing these birds, many hundreds of them, is humbling.  They are part of the nature that created this earth and we mere humans must always respect this.

Despite all the inventions by humans, the raw power of nature answers to no one.

Thank goodness for that, eh???

I have to say this … we Canadians are well known for saying “eh” … and that is not a bad thing.   And there are a few thoughts on how this came about.

My vote is for the French “hein” meaning “what”?  Some words in French, carried over to English, are pronounced without the “h” sound.  thus “hein” becomes “eh”.   And there are other words carried over also, which need the “h” sound, but that is for another day, another blog.

🙂

 


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The magic and joy of being in a garden never gets tired.

Fall is near and dear and the skies sometimes reflect this …

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The little birds are getting themselves ready to endure the coming cold weather so I help them out by putting small sections of suet and bird seed out for them

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I think this is a female Bush-tit .. sweet little bird ..

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It is still hit and miss to try and get a good photo of the Gold Crowned Sparrows .. love their songs ..

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There are a number of Nuthatches that visit the yard .. they like this feeder in particular.  I’ve spent a fair bit of $$ on good quality bird seed.  The birds aren’t impressed with the costlier hulled sunflower seeds and mostly just toss them out of the feeder.  So I won’t be buying that again!  They prefer to pick out the un-hulled seeds to take away with them.

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A geranium plant is preparing to unfurl a bouquet of lovely flowers …

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It almost seems like a New Year’s celebration with all the curling tendrils of the squash plants .. all we need are sparkling lights to add to the festive atmosphere.

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The rains began, sporadically, on Friday … yesterday the pattern continued, with interspersed spots of sun and visits by the wind.

I wandered outside … looking at the birds.  The word is out that there is extra food set out in the feeders so there are quite a variety.   A Flicker belts out his happy song from up above in the wild and crazy tree.  He is tucked away in the branches so I couldn’t get a glimpse of his beautiful plumage.   I’ll get a good look, though, in the upcoming season.  They can’t stay away from the suet!

The Gold Crowned Sparrows have returned during the past week ..their lovely songs warm my heart and I am so pleased they are back.

Despite the chilly weather, I just know that there will be warm and sunny days ahead.  Plenty of time for the hundreds of bean flowers to transform into juicy green beans.

This has been a most bountiful year for all gardeners and I’ve heard many excited stories of people trading their excess of fruit and veggies with others.  Happy stories.

Myself, I am quite content with my summer of growing beans, loving the beauty of the tall pole plants providing privacy, shade and food for our freezer (and juicer!).

Healthy plants, fed with seaweed, (unmedicated) llama manure and the powerful EM (effective microorganism) that I mix up.   Along with a sprinkle of rock powder, my garden soil has enabled all my plants to grow happily.

The cleaning up of the garden has begun and I have more to do .. potting up plants, moving them to one area of the yard so they will be easier to maintain.  Some pruning to be done, some clipping of errant branches and heavy cutting of larger limbs that seemed to have suddenly appeared.   That will be dh’s job as a chainsaw will be needed.  More sun to come in the yard.

Another year of gardening has flown by .. another year of magic.  Still amazed at the power of one little seed growing into massive plants that bear food for us to eat.  Timeless transformations.  It never gets tired.

There is much to be learned from a garden.

Tenacity.  Inspiration.  Patience.  Mysterious.    Joy.  Happiness.

Just to name a few.

 

🙂