Notwithstanding claims by now-defunct The Weekly Word News that “February Sues for More Days,” this month will have that extra additive but not from any judicial judgment.
However, here’s giving all Bachelor Boys advance warning: Beware of 14 February. Thanks to the blessed St. Bridget of Old Ireland, it is the girls who can propose marriage on that day during such an auspicious year. Tradition has it that she received approval on suggesting this to St. Patrick himself. Alas, he was less than enthused when St. Bridget purportedly proposed to him.
In the gardening world, this is a clear case of how to make friends and anemones, also known amongst the horticultural hoi polloi as casting aspersions on nasturtiums.
But according to that highly ornamental actress Hilary Swank, “Every day should be Valentine’s Day. Everyday you should show the person you love how much you love them.” According to Canadian Florist magazine, 156 million fresh cut flowers are sold in Canada over Valentine’s Day. Québecers are most likely to give Valentine’s gifts, Manitobans the least likely – and Ontarians to spend the most.
Nevertheless, you are reminded that horticulture of an exotic nature has its uses come Valentines Day. How else would you learn that giving of dark chocolate is signifies not only l’amour but also good health? Ignore the milk chocolate – according to a recent New Scientist article, pigging out on 50 kilograms of the stuff might cause you to depart this planet. Merci, mais non? Then how about roses to last, feather roses that is, distributed by Touch Me Flowers of Thornhill, Ontario, and made of goose feathers. It’s the gesture that counts. Still haven’t roused her passion? Here’s the very thing to say I love you: a photo frame made from panda poop courtesy of the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Base in Beijing. Oh well, then certainly the gardener in your life will just adore the sturdy brush hook from
www.rittenhouse.ca, the very thing to eliminate unwanted growth . . .
Eliminated also is the ground hog, Marmota monax. The rotund rodent’s reputed meteorological abilities are, let’s face it, more fun than Al Gore and the entire IPCC. Outside 2 February, however cute it may be in the country it is a pest in the garden – especially the vegetable garden.
And the vegetable garden is fashionable once again. Many of the green thumb brigade, regrettably, lack suitable space for such an enterprise. Six to eight hours of sun a day, with well-drained, good loam free from competition by tree roots are called for.
Longing for home veggies but lacking these basics? Check out you municipal allotment gardens right now, this month when spaces are allotted on a first-come, first-assigned basis. Toronto, for example, has about a dozen such allotments but the plentitude of plots therein go fast in February. As with much gardening, it is the early bird that gets the worm.
Certainly it is the early – and smart – bird that orders in the season’s catalogues. One never to be missing from the gardener’s bookshelf is the Richters 2008 Herb Catalogue. Page after page of herbs that you probably never heard of, plus a health section of gourmet vegetable seeds, all invite perusal along with lingering longings on how to squeeze every last one into the urban acreage. Of course, there they will then assume cafeteria status for pests too numerous to enumerate. Fortunately, Richters offers natural controls hard to find elsewhere in our verdant nation: Neem Oil and Scanmask Predatory Nematodes, for example. A site worth visiting (
www.richter.com) or order a hard catalogue to read in bed at night.
Likely the long in the tooth act of Britain’s # Girls will have shortly departed our shores, or at least Toronto that they christened ‘# City.’ Doubtlessly this did nothing to endear the metropolis with the rest of the nation. # has been defined as the plural of spouse. Gardeners hereabouts, however, will more likely take herbs to heart – Elvis and Priscilla Parsley, perhaps.
We are left to contemplate that over in the home habitat of this cosmetic surgery demonstration, Valentines Day is also proclaimed as National Impotence Day. Truly remarkable, given the obvious skills of those insular inhabitants when it comes to propagation of all things horticultural.
