Comfrey-pah!

Some people like comfrey and tout it as an outstanding source of nitrogen-laden compost. The stuff in the jardin just won't quit, despite our best efforts to do nothing but turn it into compost. Every time Mum comes to visit she digs out more...from the exact same spot! Believe it or not, the above patch was completely comfrey-free in July. It was a beautiful, clear palette, into which she introduced some lovely pulmonaria with flowers ranging from lavender-blue through to white. Can you see the pulmonaria?

Arggggh.

"So keep digging, then!"

The goddess-chat imposes Sisyphusian task from on high. Pussyphusian task. Not far off the mark, actually, since extracting comfrey-root from around struggling pulmonaria requires beaucoup de pussyfooting. Here's as far as I got in October, am scared to see what will be there when I get home at the end of December.

Harriet the junkie

Home for a quick visit a couple of weeks ago. Gave the lawn a long-overdue mow, then spent a little time wandering around with Ozzie and Harriet, inspecting the late-summer/early-fall jardin. Here's what the deux chats think about manual labour:

But once the work is done, they can be persuaded to join in the walk-about.

Lots to see: the apples are hanging on, the spiders are working hard, the ceanothus is so relieved I didn't hack it back that it is having a second bloom.

We headed around to check out the asters and the helianthus.

This is when Harriet remembered what is really great about a freshly mown lawn. Quite apart from the fact that it is pretty, and easier for someone whose belly is only a few inches off the ground to walk across, there is also inevitably some inadvertently-shorn cat mint.

Whoa! Quel arôme!

Mmmmmmmmm.

MMMMMMMMMmmmmyumyumyum.

Oh yeah, this is great stuff.

Life is good.

A party in the Rockies

I've been away this fall, so not so many updates on the deux chats, but wanted to show you some splendour from my trip to Lake O'Hara this past weekend, where we gathered to celebrate and say goodbye to our friend Brian Everest. Lots of chuckling about his trickster ways when we arrived to find a foot and a half of fresh powdery snow that had not been there the day before! It was a wonderful day.

Snow fell steadily as we set out around the lake and started up the switchbacks to Opabin Plateau. Up...

...big and small...

...happy...

...up...

...until we emerged amongst the larches, which had kindly hung on to some of their orange needles, to give us even more drama.

We arrived at Opabin Prospect to some eddying gusts of powder.

We settled in anyway, ate our lunches, and then Joanne read a beautiful poem and we told stories and laughed and cried. Tod led us through Pete Seeger's "We Shall Overcome".

The spirit was with us, if not the words.

At this point the sun started to peek through the clouds, illuminating first one peak, then another. It was like celestial powerpoint. It kept this up for the rest of the afternoon. Here is a picture of Opabin Prospect taken from back down at the lake:

And here's Wiwaxy:

It was a wonderful day.

Oh deer

Last Friday, I had coffee with David and Scott, who were moaning about what they could and could not plant in their gardens, because of the appetites of the deer in their neighbourhoods. David had just chopped down an apple tree that had been leafless and fruitless for several years because the deer so adored the new shoots - he said herds of them would cluster around the tree, denuding it. Later in the day, I had almost the same conversation with Chris. All three of them asked if I had a deer problem as well. I cheerfully replied that so far, the only large four-footed animals invading the jardin were raccoons, although I knew that there were deer fairly close by, at Government House.

The very next day, I was in the kitchen setting up my new computer, with door wide open because it was such a nice day. At one point, both cats came streaking in with eyes like saucers, looking fearfully over their shoulders. Harriet's tail was bigger than a bottle brush. I wondered if the raccoon passing through was especially vicious, to get this sort of response. I poked my head out the back door, and saw this:

Eating the alstromaria! (Actually, that's OK, I was going to yank a lot of it out anyway.) Ted and Mary Anne, who have lived in the house behind for about forty years, say this is the first time they've EVER seen a deer. And the bugger was back, later this week - he ate their new beets and their wine grapes. For once, I didn't feel so bad about not having planted a vegetable garden.

cats

a week ago: columbines

Here are just a couple of the columbines - I have many variations on purple, and also some pretty two-tone pink and whites. They're kind of weeds, but I like them.

two weeks ago

Here are some pics I took at the same time I photographed the ceanothus, a couple of weeks ago. These things have already moved on. Well, the daisies are still going strong, but the weigela and daylillies and lupins have pretty much finished.

Ceanothus

Whooooooeeeeee! This is a bumper year for the ceanothus. I've never seen it bloom so intensely as this. The view out the kitchen door is blue, blue blue.

I guess, like the rosemary, it is especially thankful to be alive this year. There were a lot of casualties - the hebes all pretty much snuffed it. And, sadly, it looks as though the rose on the back deck got just a little too frozen. 

I thought it was just being slow to bud, but all the other roses have leafed out and are blooming up a storm (post to come). It's kind of macabre. Wonder if I should go ahead and cut it down, or give it another year to think about it?

Meanwhile, we're all just drinking in the ceanothus (in this closeup, you can see why it gets called "California lilac") and the sunshine.