Trees and bushes

I mention often in my blog that I have a lot of shade in my garden, which poses many challenges for growing lots of beautiful flowers requiring full sun. Even partial sun can be elusive in some spots. This is because my property and my neighbours' as well have wonderful, beautiful trees on them. In fact, the first thing I spotted when I drove down the street on that fateful day when I saw the "for sale" sign on what would soon become my front lawn, was the huge trees on the corner of the block. I had no idea what they were, as my knowledge of tree recognition was at the time limited to maples, poplars, pines, willows, beeches, and birches. I supposed that is not a bad base to start from. Those are the trees I was most exposed to in the Laurentians and growing up in a part of Montreal which once was a swamp, now well drained by lots of willows and poplars. Oh, I also recognized crabapple trees, but when we bought the house, the crab apples were unidentifiable weeds sprouting in the mint and lavender patch in the back. 

The most stunning trees actually do not belong to us, but to our neighbours. They have a magnificent double-trunked ash tree close to the fence between our yards, which defines where I plant what in the garden as it provides shade for half the day on the part of my yard closer to my house. The leaves have a luminescent quality which makes them appear to shimmer. At night, they catch any ambient light and look like they are glowing. Being in the city, there is always light for them to catch. I love to look up, or even lie on the lawn with the leaves glowing and sparkling against the night sky. The downside to the ash is that it has the tendency to drop large branches in storms. So far no one has been hurt, no windows broken, but lots of clean up whenever it rains or snows or if the wind picks up.

They also have a Linden tree which provides Iulia with plenty of herbal tea and drops sticky sap all over our cars in the driveway. It is a very pretty tree, with a classic, balanced ideal tree shape. Up against their house they have a conifer which I believe is a spruce, and which they are planning to cut down later this summer to let a little more light in.

Both of our properties were originally backed by a thick grove of lilacs. Our neighbours removed theirs but we have ours, a patch at the back corner behind the fence and a big grove along the side of the road on back half of the property. The flowers are classical pale purple (lilac, I suppose) which is not my favorite shade. I am partial to the deeper purple colour but will take what I have. Josh has ambitions to do some arbour sculpture with the lilacs eventually, but for now they do a fine job cutting the noise and view of the city beyond and provide me with beautiful flowers and are probably in part responsible for my spring allergies.

We have a couple of spirea bushes that came with the house. For the first couple of years, I trimmed them savagely in early spring and thus inhibited their floral display. The third year I realized my error, and was treated to a brief but glorious display of white starbursts. It turn out that they are bridal wreath spirea, and in bloom they look like white fire works. I now wait until they have had their fun before I trim them back, otherwise they look messy.

I have a patch of Elms in the back corner behind the fence. They are young and scrawny, but alive. Dutch Elm disease appears to have hit a couple of other elms which once adorned the side of the property, one now a stump and the other a dead shadow of the tree that it was.  We also have a big spruce in front, and two boxelders, which are weed trees. They grow fast, die young and tend to split and crash. Josh doesn’t like having them around the house.

We have added a Jersey Mac apple tree, some rose bushes, a purple tulip magnolia tree, and transplanted two crab apple seedlings to a better spot in the back yard.

I also wanted to write a bit about those mysterious beautiful red flowers which my friend Jasmyn gave me. She told me they were in the mint family. A couple of weeks ago, my friend Julie sent me a photo of some herb she bought but lost the tag and could not remember what it was. I sent it to Claude, who identified it as pineapple sage. He described it as being able to grow up to 5 feet tall, and being a favorite of hummingbirds and butterflies. They are perennials in Mexico and Guatemala, but won’t survive our northern winter so are annuals in our climate. They are also called Tangerine sage, latin name salvia elegans.

Pineapple sage, not from my garden

I took some photos of where things are in my garden this week. We have moved from a palette of mostly pink and purple to yellows and oranges as my evening primroses and lilies have burst into flower. I picked up another interesting oriental lily (I really am a sucker for those), and planted a bunch of stargazer and dark purple lily bulbs which were on sale at Walmart. 

 
I did a harvest of lettuce, strawberries, green onions, herbs, garlic scapes and mint for dinner on Friday, and we had salad, pasta in a rosé sauce and roast salmon all flavoured from the garden, followed by fresh mint tea.

Boxelder

Milkweed

Linden

Lilacs