Tired of winter? Suffering from a severe case of cabin fever? Cast a jaundiced eye on the pendulous forms of the local weeping willows. Their twigs have turned a bright yellow signalling the approach of spring. The more upright shoots of native black willow are orange coloured in similar anticipation. Time to remind ourselves of the old garden adage: When you fall through the bed I’ll meet you in the spring.
Late last December, Environment Canada’s ubiquitous Dave Phillips predicted this year would bring “less snow and rain” and a “January thaw because only not had one in 170 years.” Wrong and wrong again, which is hardly a new state of affairs for friend Phillips.
Nevertheless, while what seemed like almost continuous snow played havoc with municipal budgets, canny gardeners welcomed nature’s natural mulch. In past decades, perennials would often survive north of Toronto in such cities as Barrie, while having disappeared further south like a politician’s promise come spring. More northern gardeners had the Snow Belt to thank for this. Their perennials remained protected under a nice blanket of snow.
Spring officially arrives with the Vernal Equinox on 20th March. Two days later, comes World Water Day. If, despite David Phillips very best predictions, this also ushers in rain, there will be good and bad news. The good news will be the welcome emergence of those first perennial shoots. The bad news is that the first slimy slugs will also be abroad.
While frankly we’ve had enough white for a while, those of central European heritage will doubtlessly go gaga over surfacing snowdrops. These will herald, however, the shy foliage and fat flower buds of tulips and similar delectable bulbs waiting patiently since last fall to show their stuff. So have the local squirrel population. Like packs of uncouth youths, they are ready to rip apart the delicate buds in fits of destructive glee.
Mothballs will keep them away, say some. We tried – and failed to hit one. They did though ensure that not one of furry bandits was attacked by moths. (Supporters of such as PETA please note: mothballs are not obtained by emasculating lepidoptera.)
Nevertheless we will continue to indulge in bulbs. We cannot help ourselves, not when Dugald Cameron continues to inflict his magnificent catalogue upon us. The Spring 2009 edition arrived while winter winds were whistling around the eaves and jolly welcome is was too. Check out
gardenimport.com after first passing to your partner the credit cards.
It is going to be hard to resist the exotic offerings of Arisæma, our native jack-in-the-pulpit kissing cousins or, for the Brit-born, cuckoopints. Dugald also offers the new dwarf reblooming lilac ‘Bloomerang’. Our own test specimens have not yet emerged from winter sleep and we are longing for next May . . .
Dugald admits he got carried away – again. We’ve got 84 new introductions, he writes. Strange, because gardening is not popular. So declares research by St. Catharines radio station CKTB 610. Or so Bruce Zimmerman was told when his well-known gardening show was cancelled and composted, weeded from the airwaves. Yes indeed, no doubt about it, gardening just is not the ‘in thing’ these days.
After all, from sea to shining sea gardening clubs have proliferated like bulbs in Ottawa’s annual tulip festival. This month’s Canada Blooms is expected to attract more than its usual 100,000 visitors, predict the show’s organizers. The Canadian horticultural industry is worth perhaps $11 billion a year. Unlike much of the mainstream media, it is expanding – and very profitably.
South of us also: Despite the economic meltdown, ValleyCrest, the largest U.S. landscape and garden maintenance company, expects to expand by 12 per cent this year – and pull in over US$1 billion. This is believed to be somewhat more than local radio stations or their program directors pull in. Replacing Zimmerman with Amy Winehouse might have the desired effect, in the short run anyway.
Back home, the Niagara Peninsular, home territory of a certain St. Catharines broadcaster, has a positive plethora of famed commercial and retail horticultural nurseries. But who are they to disagree with the wizards of commercial wireless?
In eight years, CKTB never showed Bruce his ratings, he told us, so who is he to complain when receiving a garden boot to the coccyx? Could it be just coincidental that 300 years ago this month, slavery was legalized in New France? Meanwhile, Bruce must feel empathy with the mushroom’s famed bemoan: “They kept me in the dark and fed me horse manure.”
In closing, some have questioned the superstitious interest shown here in February and again this month feature a Friday the Thirteenth. Reassuringly, 13th March was the birth date of Thomas Jefferson, third president of U.S., and an avid gardener. The year after Jefferson died in 1824, Thomas D’Arcy McGee was born on 13 March in Carlingford, Ireland, later to become the only Canadian politician to be assassinated. And on this same day in 1866 Butch Cassidy (Robert LeRoy Parker) was born in Circle Valley, Utah. But of course nothing will happen this 13th March 2009 – touch wood.
