Environment Canada is predicting a warmer-than-normal summer across the country based on its forecast for June and July. Precipitation is predicted to be above seasonal for most of the country. However, if you are reading this in southern B.C. or the Greater Toronto Area, check the sprinklers. The weather wonks predict below seasonal normal precipitation for some of the nation’s most enthusiastic gardeners.
Then again, if your lawn scorches or the geraniums croak, it may be premature to blame global warming, as Tom Spears writes in the Vancouver Sun. Indeed, a study published recently in the journal Science notes that climate hasn’t changed in much of North America – yet. In fact temperatures over most of North America have resisted the global trend.
Diversion No. 1
Prince William and his new wife were presented with what’s touted as a powerful aphrodisiac to mark the end of their 10-day Seychelles honeymoon – the world’s largest seed: a Coco de Mere coconut, Lodoicea maldivica. The famed double coconuts weigh in at 14 to 23 kg (30 to 50 pounds) and may be 45 cm (18 inches) long. (Surely this made their baggage overweight?) Produced by a slow-growing fan palm up to 100 feet high the nuts resemble, according to a discreet Daily Mail, “a pair of female buttocks.” Actually, as botanists more accurately explain, they resemble a more intimate portion of the female anatomy, hence their claim to fame.
Scientists at Zhejiang University, China, have shown that females are drawn to pinks and reds and men to blues and greens – and they believe the explanation lies in our hunter-gatherer past. As gatherers of the operation, women’s brains became fine-tuned to the purples and reds of ripe fruits and berries, for which news we must than Britain’s Daily Mail. The theory apparently comes from Chinese researchers who asked more than 350 students to study 11 colours for three minutes and then rank them in order of preference. They believe men are attracted to blues and greens as a signal that the weather was fine for hunting. How this explains the modern male’s fixation with lawns and all that pertains to them, the Chinese investigators failed to reveal.
Diversion No. 2
Since Ottoman times, farms all around Taif in Saudi Arabia have cultivated the damask rose, a pink, 30 petalled beauty, writes Matthew Teller for BBC News. Copper stills hold 20,000 heads with 13 gallons (60 litres) of fresh water. This is boiled down to 8 gallons of rose water – and a thin film of oil, which sells for $40,000 a litre. This is only sold in small vials half the size of your finger. The petal residue is fed to cattle and is said the flavour their milk.
The big box and supermarket short season ‘garden centres,’ are “Alas a boring lot and only give you bother,” as the immortal Cole Porter phrased it in Kiss Me Kate. Mainstream garden centres feature arrangements, combinations and even demonstration plantings to tempt and instruct. They also seem more prepared to pay for experienced, trained staff.
This year’s crop of dandelions being generous, even the most carefully tended lawn may become infested. Try spot spraying with pickling vinegar – the acetic acid beloved of natural herbicide purveyors. And don’t neglect the weeding elsewhere. As the poet advised: “Half a proper gardener’s life is spent upon his knees.” Just like in church, in fact – only the language is somewhat different.
Diversion No. 3
Most politicians make the odd slip from time to time but few have fallen quite so spectacularly as the First Minister for Northern Ireland did one recent Sunday – landing head first in a fishpond. Peter Robinson found himself up to his nose in water, surrounded by startled koi after an ill-judged attempt to clean out the pond in his garden on the outskirts of Belfast. “The Good Lord punishes any desecration of His day,” he wrote on Twitter. “Calls for help went unanswered as family either chortled and convulsed or searched for insurance policies.” [Source: The Daily Telegraph]
There’s plenty to do inside the home also. This is an excellent time for repotting those houseplants that require new quarters. Over-potting, the keeping plants in too large pots is, however, all too common. The result is their distress and ultimate demise. Provided they are watered, fertilized and generally looked after, plants can flourish in the same container for a number of years.
The classic clay flowerpot has yet to find a convincing competitor. It fits almost any décor and, even more importantly sets off plants perfectly. We are after all looking at the plant, not the container, whatever blandishments are offered by glossy magazines. Cover the hole with a facial tissue to prevent the growing medium falling through. For preference, look for mixes used by professionals such as ‘HortiMix’ or ‘ProMix.’
And just as you enjoy a vacation, so will many a houseplant will benefit from a summer spent out in the garden. Even if in a sunny window in the house, move outside first into shade for a week or two to allow it to become acclimatized to the change of light.
Diversion No. 4
Stuck for a subject to write a scientific paper on? Why not do something on how far grasshoppers can kick their poo? suggests New Scientist’s ‘Feedback’ feature. This is what Yosuke Tanaka and Eliti Kasuya did. They published their study “Flying distance of frass kicked by the grasshopper Atractomorpha lata and factors affecting the flying distance” in the journal Entomological Science (vol. 14, p.133). Frass, for anyone unfamiliar with the niceties of grasshopper life, is the powdery waste material passed by plant-eating insects, notes the magazine. And the female A. lata kicks hers almost twice as far as the male does. There are names for things like that which New Scientist failed to mention.
The oldest serving spouse of a reigning monarch and patron of about 800 organizations, the Duke of Edinburgh celebrates his 90th birthday on 10 June. It is a long way and time from when he was born in 1921 on the island of Corfu, Greece, as Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, but was exiled with his family when still a baby and carried aboard a Royal Navy destroyer in a cot made from a fruit box. And in other news from the royals, the newly-minted Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will come to Canada 30 June to 8 July, visiting Alberta, North West Territories, Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Ottawa. Then it is on to California for 8 to 10 July.
