Garden Therapy

Super Sow Sunday: Umbrella Greenhouses

Outdoors I’ve sown lettuce, radishes and peas in wine barrels. These great clear umbrellas make great pop up greenhouses!

Tags: greenhouse, lettuce, pea, radish

February 07 2010 | Gardening | 2 Comments »

Vectorial Elevation Light Sculptures in Vancouver for 2010 Cultural Olympiad

My fantastically talented husband went out last night and took some photos of Vectorial Elevation, a light sculpture installation over English Bay that runs from dusk until dawn during the 2010 Winter Olympics. The pattern of the lights changes every 8 seconds from a set of 20 searchlights located at Vanier Park and Sunset Beach. Vectorial Elevation was created by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and the many changing patterns in the sky are designed online by people all over the world. We can see the lights from our West window but it looks most striking up close. To create your own light sculpture go to: http://www.vectorialvancouver.net/home.html.

Tags: 2010 Olympics

February 06 2010 | Photography and Vancouver | 3 Comments »

Flora Friday: White Forsythia

Just a fragrant as the yellow Forsythia, but a much more manageable shrub – beautiful!

Tags: Flora Friday, forsythia

February 05 2010 | Flowers | 5 Comments »

Flora Friday: Witch Hazel Diane

Tags: Flora Friday, Witch Hazel

January 29 2010 | Flowers and Photography | 5 Comments »

What’s Your Favourite Season?

I’m pretty freaking excited that it’s so warm here and everything is growing (sorry to those who are still under snow or that terrible Cali rain). I feel all the excitement of a new gardening year ahead. But when asked about my favourite season, I wasn’t sure I could choose.

Perhaps early spring is my favourite. The excitement of season’s change, the new growth, the possibilities. Each seed carries enough energy in it to burst into a new plant and it feels like that energy is rumbling beneath the earth ready to explode into eggplants and coneflowers and sage.

Then again in late spring it’s a joy to have so much lettuce that I’m forced to eat a 10:30 salad daily, and drop off bags of spring greens on the doorsteps of neighbours.

In early summer it’s wonderful to get my big seedlings out to their forever homes in the garden beds while the lush green foliage of perennials are filling up every corner of the garden.

And then in mid summer there’s the wonderful days spent resting in the hammock chair under my deck while the bees and plants do all the hard work to fruit and flower.

In late summer there are the new recipes I’m forced to create to use the masses of veggies that are ripe to be picked.

In fall there is the sound of canning lids popping in a chorus that sings about the freshness captured in each jar to be enjoyed in the colder months.

And in winter rest in the garden gives way to bustling emotions around family and change.

I can’t choose. I love them all. So what is your favourite season? I’d love to know.

Tags: deep thoughts

January 28 2010 | Garden Therapy and Gardening | 8 Comments »

Wordless Wednesday: First Yellow Crocus

Tags: crocus, Wordless Wednesday

January 27 2010 | Flowers and Gardening and Photography | 10 Comments »

Bergenia in Bloom

All over my front garden beds the Bergenia is blooming…already. Wow this is definitely spring.

Tags: bergenia, winter

January 26 2010 | Flowers and Photography | 2 Comments »

Spring Thaw

I was recently asked to share a little more about what Garden Therapy means to me. Virginia at http://www.container-gardening-made-easy.com/ interviewed me to feature on her blog and as I answered the questions I thought I should post those answers here as well, to share a bit more about myself. The first question asked me to explain how I use gardening as a healing tool.

The first thing that came to mind was my first gardening day of 2010, this past Saturday, when it was beautifully warm and sunny. I popped out of bed, put on my grubby clothes and scrub boots, and headed out to clean up the garden a bit. I dug through the brown foliage from last year’s beauties and was delighted to find new growth peeking out from below the spent plants. As I worked my neighbours waved and teased me for doing a spring cleaning in January while other people stopped by with their dogs to tell me how they loved to walk past my garden month after month. Not a flower was blooming, and most of what I was working on was mucky and dead, but for me the therapy from gardening is the activity not the results.

I started gardening to relieve the monotony of my days being forced to “rest” and “give my body a chance to heal”. But it proved to be exercise for my mind and body that is allows any pace I can muster. The mental exercise of figuring out the many biological factors that must be determined to successfully grow a plant provides as much diversity as the physical challenges hold. The benefit along the way is a stronger mind, a lighter spirit, and a better heart rate.

Gardening on that sunny, spring-like day had all the elements of what I need to heal myself: connection with the earth and people, nurturing new growth, laughs with friends and neighbours, physical challenges, and of course the warm sun shining on my skin. I don’t believe that healing should be about strict regimens and a “no pain no gain” mentality. I have enough pain already, we all do in our own ways, and so garden therapy to me is a way to be gentle and kind to myself. That’s what my sunny day in January did that no prescription drug or physiotherapy session can match; it warmed me up, body and soul, and gave me new energy to cope with life’s challenges. As the ground thaws making way for seemingly endless sunny days in the garden, I look forward to the gardening year and the nurturing both my plants and I will benefit from.

Tags: deep thoughts

January 21 2010 | Garden Therapy | 2 Comments »

Wordless Wednesday: Christmas Cactus with Macro Lens

Tags: Christmas Cactus, Wordless Wednesday

January 20 2010 | Gardening and Photography | 5 Comments »

The Old and The New: Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day and Camera Update

I think that I finally have a solution to my camera needs. Last year (well, really only a few months ago) I wrote about my quest for a new camera and over the holidays I found the solution: a basic point a shoot for my purse and a new macro lens for my DSLR. So far I’m happy with this solution. The point and shoot is just a little Canon Powershot SD1200IS that I chose after trying a few different basic slim cameras. I liked this one best because it’s small, it’s fast, and it takes good pictures. The photo of the VanDusen Festival of Lights was taken with this camera with no tripod – not bad!

The much more exciting addition to the camera family is the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro Lens I got for Christmas. While I really didn’t want to have to switch lenses for different shots, the quality I get with this macro is just so much better for close up shots of the garden. I used it for today’s Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day shots after our rainstorms cleared and the sun popped out for a brief visit this afternoon.

The theme for this month’s photos is “The Old and The New”. I’ve used my old Digital Rebel with my new macro lens to take photos of the evergreens, overwintering veggies, and spent foliage that keep my winter garden interesting as well as the mighty new growth that is already pushing the leaf mulch aside. Spring may not be here yet, but it already feels like the dark of winter is behind us. The new growth is emerging from the soil and it can also be felt in the air. That combined with the building excitement for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics is making these short days full of promise. So without further ado, here is “The Old and The New”.