Wes Porter

A Leek on St. David’s Day

“Old remedies were the best. Had not the leeks sewn in the waistband of his long underwear starved off leprosy?” Irish Spike Milligan once suggested. If he had paid attention to his Shakespeare he would have known it is most unwise to cast aspersions of the Welsh emblem, particularly on 1st March, St. David’s Day.

Ornithomancy Is for the Birds – and Single Women

Female and searching for hints of a future mate on Valentine’s Day? Turn to the ancient art of ornithomancy, as practiced by the ancient Greeks and Romans. It was claimed that the first bird spotted by an unmarried woman on Valentine’s Day hints at her future husband’s occupation. In more frigid northern climes this does rather limit the choice:

Charles Darwin’s Botanical Studies

Born 12 February 1809, Charles Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history. This usually held due to his seminal book On the Origin of Species, first published in November 1859. But as L. Sprague de Camp observed in his Lost Continents (1970):

Heartnuts for Health and Horticulture

How about heartnuts for Valentines? A natural mutation of the Japanese walnut (synonym Juglans sieboldiana), heartnut, Juglans ailantifolia var. cordiformis, is hardier than the more familiar English or Persian walnut (J. regia), certainly up to the southern Great Lakes region. There the climate is similar to its native Japan and the Sakhalin area of southeastern Russia. Not only do the small- to medium-size trees produce delicious nuts but they are highly ornamental, with huge leaves divided into numerous leaflets, attractive catkins in late spring and long racemes of nuts in early fall.

Groundhogs, Feeding Birds & Valentines

“What, in the last resort, is there to be said for February?” queried George Lyttleton in a letter back in 1956. Actually in a word: plenty. Best yet, both our native black willows and exotic weeping willows both are showing orange-yellow twigs, a sure harbinger of spring. But when will it arrive? An anonymous wit once suggested to someone bugging him for such a prediction:

You may speak as you like of the weather, You may speak of the birds as they sing But if you sit on a red-hot poker, It’s a sign of an early spring.

Rittenhouse Celebrates 100 Years of Business

In recent years, Canadians have seen the demise of such national institutions as Simpsons, Eatons and Zellers. While the gardening world has also had its share, vide garden centres White Rose, Weall & Cullen, others celebrate one hundred years of serving Canadians with what they want. Last year it was Sheridan Nurseries. Now 2014 marks a hundred years of business for St. Catharines, Ontario-based M. K. Rittenhouse & Sons or the perhaps more familiar ‘Rittenhouse Since 1914.’

The Saga of Canadian Pacific Strawberries

Call them prunes or dried plums, either way they have a long history. According to Rebecca Rupp (2011), in Western Europe, asparagus was among the touted recipes for the low-libido Renaissance man, along with prunes, garlic, nettle seed in wine, and dried fox testicles.

The Artful Artemisia

Every year since 1995, the International Herb Association has chosen an Herb of the Year to highlight. The Herb of the Year Program, spearheaded by IHA’s Horticultural Committee, has established Artemisias as Herb of the Year for 2014.

Planning, Propagation and other Seasonal Activities

Despite merciless media reminders, forget for the moment global warming. In our northern climes winter is here with a vengeance. Time to get togged up, venture out into the garden and knock the last heavy snowfall off the evergreens before it bends them out of shape.

Mystery of the Gnomes Finally Comes Gnome

Brattleby, Lincolnshire has no village shop, pub or school. So why it became home to dozens of garden gnomes over the past decade until recently remained a mystery.

Questions We’re Often Asked: Poisonous Gift Plants

Exasperated at aspersions being cast upon poinsettias, the late John Bradshaw ate a salad of the leaves in front of a suitably impressed Toronto audience. Bradshaw went on to live for many more years devoted to propounding gardening lore.

The Mysterious of Mistletoe

In human associations, that of mistletoe stretches from ancient barbarians to Bieber. Indeed the Canadian pop idol’s second studio album was entitled Under the Mistletoe. Some sixty years earlier, redheaded 12-year-old Jimmy Boyd from McComb, Mississippi wowed his way to fame and fortune warbling Tommie Connor’s “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.” The song begins:

Gifts for Gardeners

The problem of gifting gardeners – both the gifted and the black thumb varieties – remains a seasonal predicament. Herewith then a few ideas that have caught the eye over the past few months . . .

Planting Pits and other Outdoor Activities

In the United States, for reasons best known to themselves, December has been declared both National Pear Month and National Fruit Cake Month, along with the 15th December being National Cupcake Day. In China, presumably because their ancient culture really appreciates such, the Chinese celebrate the winter solstice, 21/22 December, by feasting on dumplings in northern areas, sticky puddings in the south. But why this Christmas Day, Thursday 25th December, Americans will celebrate as National Pumpkin Pie Day is to the rest of us a mystery. Elsewhere we have other ideas in mind.

Centenary of Death of Alfred Russel Wallace

Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer of evolution with Charles Darwin, died 7 November 1913 in Usk, Monmouthshire. If Darwin’s life lacked adventure following his famous world circumnavigation in the Beagle, Wallace’s was for many years the opposite. And if Darwin engaged in recognized sciences, his associate dabbled in several dubious pursuits in later life. Phrenology and spiritualism may have engaged many a respectable Victorian – and the latter a lawyer and past prime minister of Canada – suffrage and socialism were not greeted quite so enthusiastically at the time – or since in certain quarters. Nevertheless, David Quammen in a recent issue of the journal Nature has called him ‘the greatest field biologist of the nineteenth century.’

Headlong Helix: Snaps of Snails

Can anything not be faster than the legendary speeding snail? The common garden snail Helix aspera can cover a metre an hour. This is actually faster than the recorded speed that certain nations’ mail services at times operate, Canada and Britain amongst them.

Winding Down Another Year; Planning Nexts

Around our part of the country, Canada’s famed fall colours have been a disappointment this season. True, the honey locusts (Gleditsia) dropped their chlorophyll to reveal the bright orange-yellow carotenoids previously concealed in their foliage. These are the same group of chemicals that colour carrots, corn and many other comestibles. But we were eagerly awaiting the anthocyanins, those that bring out the red of our beloved maples (Acer). These require bright sunny days accompanied by cold snap to be activated. This year at least, it was not to be. Even the sumach seemed reluctant to depart in its usual blaze of glory. Scientists can explain how all this takes place but not why. How come the trees don’t simply drop their leaves and be done with it? Researchers have proposed several theories but as yet none have found total acceptance.

Pesticide or People Poison?

In the closing years of the nineteenth century German scientists sought for the ‘silver bullet’ – an elixir to relieve all aches and pains. Their discovery of an opium derivative appeared to be just that – a ‘heroic’ medicine. So they christen it ‘heroin.’

If Only They Could Talk . . .

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, published in 1872 Alice, his child heroine encounters a garden of flowers that can talk . . . and to bluntly criticize her. Almost a century-and-a-half later, science has almost caught up with this fiction.

A Spicy Story

In North America, it is an invasive and obnoxious alien weed. But 6,000 years ago prehistoric man in today’s Denmark and Germany was using it to # up his food. Traces of garlic mustard, Alliaria petiolata, has been found on the inside of pottery shards along with fatty residues of meat and fish.