Gardening – Page 3 – Cynthia Reyes

A Good Home, Container Gardening, Flowers, Gardening

The Indomitable Pansy

July 18, 2015July 18, 2015 Cynthia Reyes

The only pansies we’ve had past the month of June were the dead kind.

If not dead, then seriously bedraggled.

That’s why I stopped planting them each spring, and always planted other stuff instead.

Annual plants that last longer. Like blue salvia, pink snapdragons and ivy.

But our landscaper friend Blaine brought us some bulbs and pansies to put in pots in early May.

Container planting is the only gardening I do these days, so I was happier than a pig in mud.

The hyacinth and daffodils bloomed heartily and died back. But the pansies kept blooming.

And blooming.

The rain beat the flowers down, but they’d spring back soon after.

Mid-July and they’re still blooming.

So here’s to the indomitable Pansy.

Long may you live!

For fascinating facts about the pansy, or viola:

http://www.gardenherbs.org/simples/violet_pansy.htm

A Good Home, Flowers, Gardening, Life in canada, Poem, Poetry, Seasons Change, Winter's End

A Winter’s Tail

March 13, 2015March 24, 2015 Cynthia Reyes

The birds are back with songs of Spring

Their tunes incite imagining

That Winter’s end will soon arrive

And living things shall haste to thrive

Via vitalxrecognition.wordpress.com/ — Image Thanks to: vitalxrecognition.wordpress.com/

A Winter’s Tail, how bittersweet!

Today it’s sun, tomorrow sleet

And wind to stop us in our tracks

And cold to freeze Spring-hungry backs

One day we feel a wave of hope

Warmed by our thoughts that we can cope

And then come gales of Winter still

And blizzards coat the windowsill

Ho, Winter! Do your level best

Your time is near to take a rest

For Lady Spring prepares to rule

She’ll thaw your ice and warm your cool

She’ll rout you, kick your icy tail

She’ll make you wish you’d stopped at hail

Who’s mighty now, oh Freezer Guy

Who rules the roost? Oh my, oh my!

Spring wakes the earth; the gardens flower

She turns grass green and makes you cower

She strips away your winter clothes

And sprinkles sunshine up your nose

She brings new life to garden trail

She gives new strength to plants so frail

To stand up ‘gainst your mighty storm

And so defy your freezing form

Ho! Winter’s Tail, I kid you not

Pick up your snow and off you trot

Break down your ice and melt away

See you around, when skies are grey

See you next time, oh Frigid One

But not too soon, for Spring’s begun

And three great seasons I shall see

Before you’re back to torment me.

Thanks to Hamlin Grange for all original photos.

Dedicated to my friends Lisa E. and Marion W: Spring is near.

A Good Home, Gardening, Soil

It’s All In The Soil

January 21, 2015January 23, 2015 Cynthia Reyes

Mr. Smith lived in an old house on a double lot on a side street in Toronto.

I remember the first time I glimpsed his garden. It was a Saturday afternoon in mid-summer and I was driving past his home. I did a double-take, hit the brakes, reversed, stopped the car and got out so I could see more.

A tall, angular, white-haired man was dead-heading some roses. He wore spectacles, was neatly dressed in white shirt and dress trousers as if he was heading for some important meeting. He didn’t look like any gardener I’d ever seen.

Even so, I knew immediately that this was his garden and he was the gardener. I could see it in the way he bent to study his flowers and the soil around them, like an artist studies his unfinished painting on canvas.

I walked up to him and bravely said hello.

He looked up at me, gave a shy little half-laugh. “Hello.”

Something about that half-laugh endeared him to me, along with his grandfatherly age and look.

His flowers were everywhere. Running their riotous ways around the house and into the distance of his back garden, becoming more muted in the soft shade of trees, then re-emerging in all their glory in the brilliant sunlit spaces.

Big, fat dahlias, snapdragons and roses jostled for space with a multitude of other brilliantly-coloured flowers.

The garden was heaven on earth.

One afternoon Mr. Smith invited me into his kitchen for a cold drink. We sat at the small kitchen table and I told him how nicely the garden was doing and he claimed that it was a mess and needed more tending.

“I’d give a lot to have a garden half as beautiful and lush and healthy as this one,” I said. “It would take me forever, though. How on earth do you get it to look like this?” I peered through the back window and gestured to the garden.

He laughed that humble laugh again, and even seemed to blush.

“It’s all in the soil. Everything starts with good soil.”

This excerpt from my upcoming book “Beloved Gardens” is offered in support for Save The Soils. Thanks to Lori and Robbie, two great bloggers, for the prompt.

PHOTOS BY HAMLIN GRANGE, WHO ALSO MAKES GREAT COMPOST!