Tag Archives: Toronto

My Covid Journal

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The end of March 2023 marks 3 full years of dealing with a contagion that rocked the world in a way that no disease had since 1919 and the Spanish flu. As of today, the World Health Organization reports that 8,830,881 people died of Covid 19, a figure that almost certainly understates reality, given that many nations were not keeping statistics, or simply not reporting them to outside sources. I was reminded of this as I looked through my photo folders since March 2020, noting all the ways, big and small, that it touched us. This is my Covid journal.

March 14, 2020 – Covid has now been recognized in Canada for two weeks and the newspaper is starting to issue public service announcements.

March 17, 2020 – On St. Patrick’s Day, when I am supposed to receive my new left knee (elective surgery was cancelled by our provincial government), I listen instead to our Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland speak on behalf of the nation’s Covid Committee.

March 21, 2020 – The first day of spring and the newspapers echo our thoughts, for we are indeed “alone together” “in uncharted territory”. By now, we are watching daily t.v. reports by provincial health ministers somberly reading out Covid-19 statistics, including deaths, mostly in nursing homes at the outset.

March 24, 2020 – As people of a certain age, we are encouraged to stay home and stay safe. Instead, our 40-something son brings us groceries. And we wash everything down with rubbing alcohol! Honestly! Could Covid come in on our Raisin Bran?

March 26, 2020 – My apples have never been so clean, even though we doubt that they are spreading Covid.

March 31 2020 – People are encouraged to show the love in our front windows, so children passing by don’t feel so forsaken. I can’t help adding voices….

April 7, 2020 – It feels more real when Boris Johnson is sent to the ICU with Covid. It will be a few years before we learn that his own carelessness around Covid helps bring him down.

April 8, 2020 – Our civic government goes into overdrive protecting its citizens, and the park parking lot at the end of our street is closed. You can still walk in, mind you, but the dog-walkers have no place to leave their cars.

April 10, 2020 – People are getting decked out in masks and I can’t resist doing my own Lawrence of Arabia take on the newest disease control measure.

April 10, 2020 – A family birthday party is held outdoors. The new normal.

April 21, 2020 – Doug’s exercise club is closed, as are gyms all over the city. It will eventually declare bankruptcy. But Doug makes do in the living room, being careful with his golf club.

April 21, 2020 – A neighbour is sewing masks on her machine for visitors to local hospitals. I ask if I can buy a few and she gives them to me free, refusing my offer.

May 2, 2020 – Spring has sprung and people have been walking past my garden since the very first snowdrop. They seem desperate to have some touchstone, the normalcy of the seasons changing. From the porch, I chat with these women who have been photographing the spring bulb parade.

May 6, 2020 – Sourdough baking has taken the nation by storm, and a friend drops off a warm loaf on my doorstep.

May 7, 2020 – The front garden is bursting with color. Such a comfort.

May 8, 2020 – As friends sign up for no-contact grocery shopping services, we weigh how we should be buying our food. Just at the right time, we see an ad for a 100km local farms offer and pick up our order at a parking lot nearby.

May 9, 2020 – People are starting to have cabin fever, and friends call to ask us to take a walk with them. I love that the trilliums are in bloom in this spot overlooking a Toronto ravine.

May 10, 2020 – It’s Mother’s Day and my two youngest sons and future daughter-in-law celebrate my day with me on the front porch. Mimosas!

May 16, 2020 – I’m not sure now about the 46 ways we were going to change. Did we tick them all off? Or did we just tick off people who learned to hate poor Anthony Fauci in the U.S.?

May 18, 2020 – Everybody is growing seeds at home, it seems, since nurseries are effectively shuttered. I order soil from Amazon (!) and get into the act on the window seat of a 3rd floor bedroom, with the rare Petunia exserta and a marigold that Linnaeus and Rudbeck were said to have grown in Sweden.

May 19, 2020 – Our neighbourhood grocery store is allowed to open with a strict limit of customers inside at any one time. The handsome security guard outside (left) keeps count, ensures we’re masked and makes us clean our hands with the sanitary gel. The employee at right beyond the new social-distancing floor tape wears full-face protection.

May 31, 2020 – We watch our first-ever Zoom memorial service, for a dear friend, all the way from Santa Barbara.

Sept. 29, 2020 – I burst out laughing one day as I look at my lipsticks, and think that Revlon and l’Oreal are going to be badly affected when they can’t sell lipstick to mask-wearing women.

Oct. 31, 2020 – Halloween comes and Dracula and the jack are wearing masks.

Nov. 1, 2020 – On the 1st of November, I begin a 5-month ‘Covid project’ to distract myself through the winter. I call it #janetsdailypollinator. This is the saffron crocus (C. sativus) which I photographed in the town of Krokos in Greece. Little do I know that it won’t be the only winter that Covid visits.

Nov. 13, 2020 – Given we can’t go to restaurants anymore, we get into a rhythm of ordering each week from a local restaurant. Our favourite is halibut-and-fries from Zee Grill, a seafood fixture in our neighbourhood.

Dec. 5, 2020 – My brother, sister-in-law and nephew come to visit but we don’t go into the house – so we do a portrait in the driveway.

Dec. 24, 2020 – We are so fortunate to have our house on Lake Muskoka. It’s just three of us for Xmas eve, but we decorate our oak totem like it’s a fresh-cut balsam fir.

Jan. 14, 2021 – It’s a new year but with a spike in cases and deaths, the province institutes serious isolation rules. They even use the emergency system to drive it home.

Jan. 18, 2021 – My special order of home-sewn masks arrive and of course there’s a floral motif.

March 7, 2021 – The grandkids arrive for a March break visit and they stay outside (mostly) because who wants to give nana and poppa Covid?

March 7, 2021 – It feels weird to have a picnic on the cold front sidewalk, but we do. I feel such sympathy for my daughter and son-in-law who both work at home. Now they have 3 kids ‘attending school’ via their little tablets on the dining room table. But at least they have a back yard with trees, unlike all the kids who live in apartments and are in isolation with no schoolyard in which to play.

March 11, 2021 – Thanks to a dear friend who dropped sourdough starter in a jar on my front porch, I’ve made my first loaves – with olives! (The fad doesn’t last with me – I don’t want to be a slave to yeast. But I take up focaccia instead!)

March 31, 2021 – I wrap up my 5-month daily pollinator project and make a giant montage.

April 2, 2021 – Vaccination #1 at Sunnybrook Hospital less than a mile from home. #2 would be Moderna two months later.

April 12, 2021 – The news remains dire with the 3rd wave.

April 13, 2021 – The spring garden is in bloom and I have a crazy idea. Instead of creating a bouquet with the blossoms, I make a floral tiara. I decide it’s going to be called a ‘fairy crown’.

By the end of the fairy crown project, there will be 30 versions. In 2022, I’ll do a blog for each one, celebrating the flowers and garden chapter that made each possible.

April 16, 2021 – It’s our 44th anniversary – and we celebrate with take-out from Zee Grill.

June 12, 2021 – Barber shops and hair salons are closed so darling Lena, my daughter’s hairdresser, comes to the backyard and does open-air cuts – including one for poppa.

Nov. 16, 2021 – It’s been a while since I was on a plane but I take the opportunity of a reduction in cases and isolation measures to fly to Vancouver to visit my brother and sister. The mask is hard to get used to for 5+ hours but that’s the rule now.

Feb. 11, 2022 – Almost after the fact, a giant anti-mask and anti-vaccine policy protest convoy is organized by truckers and sympathizers from across Canada and ends up closing down our capital city Ottawa. It goes on for days and days as the protesters call for the prime minister to step down — while honking horns day and night in the 18-wheelers that block the streets around the parliament buildings. It is surreal. And people are fed up.

Feb. 18, 2022 – Things get serious when the government uses the Emergency Act to seize assets of the protestors and give the cops extra powers to end the protest.

May 27, 2022 – By now, all the Covid test kits that were handed out to companies are gathering dust on shelves. My local greengrocer throws one in with my order as a bonus.

June 12, 2022 – My niece Lily Frost is a singer and single mom who hasn’t had many gigs for 2 years so I invite her and her band to perform a concert for my neighbours and family. It is a perfect day, the band is sizzling hot and such fun.

Lily and her band Thelonius Monk give a wonderful performance for 2 hours.

Aug. 31, 2022 – On the last day of August, we fly from Toronto to Edinburgh, below, on the first leg of what will be a memorable trip. Masks are mandatory in the airport and on the plane, but when we line up at customs in Edinburgh, not one person is wearing a mask. Days later, we leave for 5 days in Florence before celebrating our son Jon’s beautiful wedding to Marta in the Tuscan hills. After that, we take part in a wine tour of Sicily that lasts until the end of September. It feels almost… almost… like things are returning to normal.

It’s been a remarkable three years. As of now, I am the only one in my family (along with the grandkids) who hasn’t had Covid. Yet. But it’s still flying around and finding people who thought they’d dodged it completely. Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll have to add a postscript to this journal. In the meantime, another spring has arrived, reluctantly, with snowflakes, and I’m ready to get back into the garden!

POSTSCRIPT: On June 9th, in the middle of a much-anticipated garden tour in England, I tested positive for Covid and had to depart the tour. Fortunately, I have a son living in London and he could take in his poor mom and make her tea and soup. But I was sad to miss the last wonderful gardens.

Fairy Crown #26-Fall Finery

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For me, autumn is a time of richness as the gardening season nears its end in an explosion of pigments and seedheads.  Those pigments, in particular, have always fascinated me and I made a concerted effort to use brilliant fall foliage colours in my own garden design.  So today’s fairy crown, the 26th, features the fall leaves and fruit of shrubs and trees in my Toronto garden in early November, including Japanese maple (Acer palmatum), Washington thorn (Crataegus phaenopyrum), burning bush (Euonymus alatus ‘Compactus’), barberry (Berberis thunbergii ‘Rose Glow’) and, draped down my front, a compound leaf of my black walnut (Juglans nigra).

Every year is a little different in terms of the parade of colour. Here you see my Japanese maple showing off its regular autumn leaf change as the burning bush hedge turns colour. In the pollinator garden, the ‘Autumn Joy’ sedum seedheads are ruby-red, but the fothergilla haven’t begun to change yet. The columnar red maple (upper left) that the city chose for my boulevard (I asked for one that turns red) has taken on its disappointing dishwater-yellow. Red maples, of course, don’t always turn red in fall.

In this photo taken a different year, the fothergilla in the pollinator garden is a rosy-apricot.  That’s catmint in the front giving a nice glaucous contrast with Russian sage and echinacea seedheads adding structure.

From across the street, my neighbours see my garden through the fan-shaped yellow leaves of my second boulevard tree, a ginkgo (G. biloba).  

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you likely know that I’ve had fun turning those yellow leaves….

….. into ballet tutus of tiny dancers.

The Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) I planted in front of my living room window decades ago is a great joy to me. It’s the straight species with green leaves – in Japan it would be a common forest tree.  But in my garden, since there are no drapes on my front window, it forms a lacy curtain from spring (when bees buzz around the tiny May flowers) to fall. In very late October or the first week of November, the foliage turns a range of rich hues from yellow to apricot, scarlet and crimson.

The leaves are delicate, their branching exquisite. It’s no wonder they were the subject of the renowned Japanese woodblock artists like Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi.

As I’ve written before, my Japanese maple’s brilliant autumn colour lights up my living room in early November….

….. enhancing the glass witches’ balls I’ve suspended from the window frame.

And, of course, the leaves also provided me with an appropriate costume and landscape for my little geisha.  

If there’s a saying that “good fences, good neighbours make”, it can also apply to hedges – which was how I ended up making this hedge in my front garden more than 30 years ago. (My current neighbours are lovely!) Today, environmentalists tend to shun burning bush, given its invasive tendency in milder regions, but my hedge produces very few seedlings, unlike the Norway maples in my neighbourhood which are a scourge. And this neon display in autumn is truly amazing.

My belly dancer’s costume was made from the leaves of my burning bush hedge.

Though there’s no fothergilla in my crown, it is definitely a big part of the fall colour in my front garden.  In this photo made just before Halloween, you can see one of my shrubs has turned a rich burgundy-red beneath the Japanese maple.

The richer, more moisture-retentive soil in my pollinator island tends to produce orange and gold colours in the three fothergilla shrubs there.

Look at those colours! Who needs the spring flowers….

…. though they are lovely, if short-lived, in late May.

And, yes, I did harvest my flamenco dancer’s multi-colored skirt from my fothergillas.

Turning colour a little later in the front garden is my paperbark maple (Acer griseum) with its red trifoliate leaves.

Moving into the back garden, you see Boston ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata) cloaking the driveway gate.  I didn’t plant this vine, nor did I plant all the Virginia creeper vines that pop up throughout the garden. That’s Mother Nature’s role and she’s very enthusiastic about it (!)

I confess that I wanted the Washington thorn tree (Crataegus phaenopyrum) in my garden long ago purely for its multi-hued fall leaves.

But it turned out to be a wonderful tree for bird life – IF the birds can out-compete the squirrels for the fruit. The robin, below, managed to do that, but so have cedar waxwings and cardinals.

Here you can see the range of autumn colour in the foliage of Washington thorn.

When we bought our house in 1983, the native black walnut tree (Juglans nigra) on the property line between us and our next-door neighbour was already mature. In the 39 years since then, it has hosted raccoon families in the crook of its trunk, carpenter ants in its bark and countless cardinals practising their song in its branches.

Our bedroom sits right under the tree, but we seemed to have missed the obvious ramifications of putting a skylight in our ceiling – particularly when windy nights in September roll around and the roof is pummelled with billiard-ball-sized nuts. Though the skylight has proven strong, we’ve replaced two car windshields since the tree’s branches — and nuts — extend far over the driveway.

The walnuts are enjoyed by the neighbourhood squirrels….

….. but the natural dye in the husks creates an unbelievable mess.

The arborist has told us the tree has rot in the trunk, but my neighbour and I have had it cabled and pruned away some of the branches over our houses to reduce the nut fusillade. It is our tree, after all, it gives us shade and we feel a duty to keep it – thus its inclusion in my 26th crown. 

I don’t really notice the ‘Rose Glow’ barberry (Berberis thunbergii) in my back garden until it turns rich crimson-red in autumn – then it’s a show-stopper. It’s another one of those shrubs that environmentalists shun – especially in milder U.S. regions where it seeds around freely. I haven’t seen one seedling in my Toronto garden.

I have a fairly new addition to my back garden:  a little sassafras tree (S. albidum). which I wanted especially for its fall colour.  This autumn – admittedly one of the best for colour in many years – it has begun to display the reds, corals and yellows for which it is known.

Those colours, by the way, are on leaves that exhibit three distinct shapes:  elliptical; mitten-like and three-lobed.  This is what they look like on my light table.

Designing with and celebrating fall-colored plants and shrubs is my way of expressing my appreciation for nature’s yearly preparation for winter, as it cycles through the yellow/orange “accessory” carotene pigments in the leaves of certain species to harvest and synthesize as much sunshine as possible, once the ‘green’ pigment chlorophyll breaks down in cooler temperatures. Red colour is from anthocynanis. According to the USDA, “Anthocyanins absorb blue, blue-green, and green light. Therefore, the light reflected by leaves containing anthocyanins appears red. Unlike chlorophyll and carotene, anthocyanins are not attached to cell membranes, but are dissolved in the cell sap. The color produced by these pigments is sensitive to the pH of the cell sap. If the sap is quite acidic, the pigments impart a bright red color; if the sap is less acidic, its color is more purple. Anthocyanin pigments are responsible for the red skin of ripe apples and the purple of ripe grapes. A reaction between sugars and certain proteins in cell sap forms anthocyanins. This reaction does not occur until the sugar concentration in the sap is quite high.”   Because the reaction requires light, you often see leaves (or apples) fully exposed to sun that are red while those parts that are shaded stay green or yellow, like these Boston ivy leaves on my fence.

I love making the leaf montages that celebrate these pigment changes, like the one below from leaves in my garden.

A few years ago I even held a photography show called “Autumn Harvest” featuring a number of my leaf montages.

Finally, this week as I walked out onto my front porch and gazed into my garden, this is what I saw– a multi-hued tapestry that shows that nature is the best designer of all. It’s my reward for a gardening season that began seven months ago with the first snowdrops and will soon come to an end with the first hard frost.

******

My year of fairy crowns is soon drawing to its wintry finale. If you missed a few, here they are:

#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths 
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady
#7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka
#8 – Lilac, Dogwood & Alliums
#9 – Borrowed Scenery & an Azalea for Mom
#10 – June Blues on Lake Muskoka
#11 – Sage & Catmint for the Bees
#12 – Penstemons & Coreopsis in Muskoka
#13 – Ditch Lilies & Serviceberries
#14 – Golden Yarrow & Orange Milkweed
#15 – Echinacea & Clematis
#16 – A Czech-German-All American Blackeyed Susan
#17- Beebalm & Yellow Daisies at the Lake
#18- Russian Sage & Blazing Stars
#19-My Fruitful Life
#20-Cup Plant, Joe Pye & Ironweed
#21-Helianthus & Hummingbirds
#22-Grasses, Asters & Goldenrod
#23-Sedums, Pass-Along Plants & Fruit for the Birds
#24-Fall Asters & Showy Goldenrod for Thanksgiving
#25-Autumn Monkshood & Snakeroot

Fairy Crown #25-Autumn Monkshood & Snakeroot

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For gardeners who lament the end of the flowering season in colder regions, my 25th fairy crown offers a reminder that there are perennials that offer bloom for the border – as well as the bees – well into October.  But I will admit to a tiny bit of trepidation as I placed it ever so gently on my silvery locks. That’s because the indigo-purple flower is monkshood: one of the most toxic plants in gardening – and also one of my very favourite perennials. Meet Aconitum carmichaelii ‘Arendsii’, aka autumn monkshood. (More on the toxicity later.) The white flowers are autumn snakeroot or bugbane, Actaea simplex (formerly Cimicifuga). The violet-purple daisy flowers are ‘Hella Lacy’ New England asters (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae).  And the leaves against my cheek are fall-coloured Tiger Eyes cutleaf staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina ‘Bailtiger’).

There’s a corner of my back garden where three of these plants grow together. I think they have done well there because it’s the lowest part of my garden – just by inches, but that means that table water goes there naturally. Also, it’s the right amount of light for them, being somewhat shaded by the cedar hedge and surrounding trees.  But I do give the monkshood supplemental water when I’m around. And I realized that other monkshood stands in my garden have suffered in the summer months when I’m at the cottage since they’re not drought-proof by any means.  They also like rich soil and (note to self) are overdue for a good feeding of compost in the spring.

I happen to be very fond of blue and white used together in the garden (and have a large photo library devoted dozens of excellent examples of the combination), so this particular autumn pairing pleases me very much.

In some light, autumn monkshood looks deep indigo-blue; in others, there’s a purplish sheen.  Years ago, when I realized how much I loved this perennial, I got busy dividing my first plants and moving the clumps around in spring. Take care to use thick gloves if you do this, especially if you have open cuts or scratches, because the tabloid stories of “murder by monkshood” are a little startling, though actual living monkshood plants are not usually to blame. In Toronto this summer, twelve people were hospitalized after eating at a Chinese restaurant because a spice was accidentally contaminated with an aconite powder from a different species used in traditional Chinese medicine. Still, if you have dogs that like to eat garden plants or young children who might be tempted, you might want to skip my favourite perennial!  (For everything you could possibly want to know about monkshood toxicity, read this article by the American Association for Clinical Chemistry.)

It’s obvious how Aconitum species got their common name, for the upper sepals of the flowers do resemble the hooded cloaks of medieval monks.  I love those black stamens tipped with white pollen and often see honey bees and bumble bees foraging in them too. ‘Arendsii’ is a hybrid cultivar developed originally by German nurseryman Georg Arends (1863-1952) at his nursery near Cologne.  Around 1945, he crossed A. carmichaelii and A. carmichaelii var. wilsonii to produce the plant.  Owing to its variability, the cultivar is sometimes called the “Arendsii Group”.   

Monkshood’s colour appeals to me, obviously!

Because autumn monkshood generally blooms between Canadian Thanksgiving (second Monday in October) and Remembrance Day in November, the plants can be hit by an occasional early snow…..

…. heavy enough to take the flower-laden stems to the ground.

Autumn snakeroot (Actaea simplex), by contrast, isn’t known to commit murder but the genus does have some toxic species, so don’t eat it!  Related and similar-looking to the summer-blooming Ontario native snakeroot, Actaea racemosa, it hails from northern Russia, western China, Manchuria, Mongolia, Korea and Japan. It has a delightful fragrance that reminds me of incense.  (I’ve written previously about this one in White Flowers for Sweet Perfume.)  Oh, and that big, reddish shrub in the background is native alternate-leaved dogwood (Cornus alternifolia).

On a warm, sunny October day, the spike inflorescences are alive with all kinds of bees and flies, including bumble bees.

I do love Tiger Eyes® cutleaf staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina ‘Bailtiger’) in all seasons, though it is not without its drawbacks. Like the regular native species, parts of it seem to die off each summer. As well, its rhizomes travel a long distance – in my garden, right under a patio to pop up perkily beside my pond. I’ve dug up and re-planted some of these seedlings, being careful to cut the rhizome first and give the new plant time to heal and form feeder roots.  But nowhere is the plant as happy as in its original corner, in rich, moisture-retentive soil.  It has bright chartreuse foliage in spring and early summer and the fuzzy red fruits feed the resident cardinals and robins throughout winter.  But it’s that brilliant apricot-orange foliage that is impressive right now. 

Another fall favourite in my back garden is Molinia arundinacea ‘Skyracer’. When it flings those flowering stems out like a bouquet, then turns bright-gold, it’s a sight to see.

Here’s my autumn kitchen view into the back garden right now, over the lower-deck pots with their tough-as-nails sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula).  There’s a mellow quality about October that is such a relief, after the jungle growth and heat of summer.

In my front garden there’s a small stand of New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae). This one is the cultivar ‘Hella Lacy’—and I wish I could say it is as spectacular as Hella’s husband, the late garden writer Allen Lacy, described it in his 1990 book The Garden in Autumn.  He found it growing in a few neighborhood gardens near his New Jersey home in 1972. “When I first clapped eyes on it in a front yard just down the block, I knew it was classy. This aster is very sturdy, requiring no staking, although it grows up to four feet high and the same distance across. It bears enormous numbers of large, single, purple flowers, each with a bright golden eye when it first opens. For the two weeks that it stays in bloom… it is the handsomest plant in town, not only for its intensity of color but also for the great number of Monarch butterflies hovering over it…”  As you can see, there are bees enjoying my Hella Lacy flowers: a green Agapostemon virescens, a honey bee and the common Eastern bumble bee. In fact, by early October most Monarchs have departed Toronto for Mexico.  Also, my Hella Lacy is unirrigated, i.e. watered in summer only when it rains, and since all New England asters thrive in rich, moist soil (you often see wild plants flanking roadside ditches), it is likely not as beautiful as those Allen saw and named for his wife.  Nevertheless, it is a highlight of my garden in mid-late October.

Native Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) is colouring in my garden now as well. Though it’s not as uniformly red as some vines I’ve seen growing in full sun, it does form fruit which the birds love.

Last autumn, I looked out my kitchen window and saw a pair of Northern flickers snacking on the fruit.  It was such fun to see the yellow on the male’s tail feathers – before it was chased away by a red squirrel.

Finally, here’s a little bouquet to mark Fairy Crown #25 and the last flowers in my garden. But it’s not the end of the crowns, not quite yet. Stay tuned…

******

Want to catch up with my blogs on the earlier fairy crowns? Here they are:

#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths 
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady
#7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka
#8 – Lilac, Dogwood & Alliums
#9 – Borrowed Scenery & an Azalea for Mom
#10 – June Blues on Lake Muskoka
#11 – Sage & Catmint for the Bees
#12 – Penstemons & Coreopsis in Muskoka
#13 – Ditch Lilies & Serviceberries
#14 – Golden Yarrow & Orange Milkweed
#15 – Echinacea & Clematis
#16 – A Czech-German-All American Blackeyed Susan
#17- Beebalm & Yellow Daisies at the Lake
#18- Russian Sage & Blazing Stars
#19-My Fruitful Life
#20-Cup Plant, Joe Pye & Ironweed
#21-Helianthus & Hummingbirds
#22-Grasses, Asters & Goldenrod
#23-Sedums, Pass-Along Plants & Fruit for the Birds
#24-Fall Asters & Showy Goldenrod for Thanksgiving

Fairy Crown #23 – Sedums, Pass-Along Plants & Fruit for the Birds

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My 23rd fairy crown celebrates one of the great, hardy, late-summer-to-early-autumn perennials – sedum. Or should that be “stonecrop”.  And the Latin name?  Well, it used to be Sedum spectabile but now the big pink sedums have been renamed Hylotelephium spectabile. Let’s just call it by its cultivar name ‘Autumn Joy’.  But wait…. that cultivar was originally the German variety “Herbstfreude”.  Okay, you get the idea; DNA is analyzed; parental lines are revised; common names are confusing; and sometimes, the Germans got there first!  But what else is in today’s crown?  Well, the little coneflowers are browneyed susans,  Rudbeckia triloba, a biennial. The fuzzy yellow spike is Solidago sphacelata ‘Golden Fleece’.  And the fruits are crabapples from my dearly-departed ‘Red Jade’ crabapple and wild, native Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) that likes to attach itself to my fence.

Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ has a very long season of interest. In August, the green, broccoli-like flowerheads start their colour transformation, turning a light rose. It was at this point that I photographed my granddaughter Emma “watering” them. That’s rough blazing star (Liatris aspera) with the purple spikes nearby.

The photo below is at the height of flowering in the August pollinator garden, but the sedum takes its time in opening the tiny flowers.

When they do open a few weeks later in September, the colour a deeper rose, the echinaceas have usually finished blooming.

In the background in my city garden is Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’, which I blogged about in Fairy Crown #21 at the cottage. 

Sedum flowers are irresistible to butterflies like the monarch, especially as they begin their southward migration. 

Bumble bees and honey bees, below, love the nectar-rich flowers too.

Sedum time in Toronto coincides with the September flowering of Solidago sphacelata ‘Golden Fleece’, below, a well-behaved, compact form of autumn goldenrod discovered by Delaware’s Mt. Cuba Center in 1985 and introduced to commerce a few years later.  I purchased it years ago and have been patiently dividing it ever since.

It is popular with pollinators, especially bumble bees.

When you have friends with beautiful gardens, you’re sometimes gifted with their favourite plants. That’s what “pass-along plant” means, and the one below, browneyed susan (Rudbeckia triloba) was a gift from my pal Aldona Satterthwaite.  It’s a biennial (green growth the first summer, flowers the next), so I’ll have to wait for its babies to pop up in my garden.

My crown also contains a few fruits from my garden, including the ripening fruit of native wild Virginia creeper….

…. and those from my ‘Red Jade’ crabapple, which sadly will need a replacement next spring.  The birds will miss it terribly.

But instead of ending on a sad note, I’ll finish with a bouquet to remember the flowers of Fairy Crown 23.

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Missed my blogs on my previous 22 fairy crowns? Here they are! #1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths 
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady
#7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka
#8 – Lilac, Dogwood & Alliums
#9 – Borrowed Scenery & an Azalea for Mom
#10 – June Blues on Lake Muskoka
#11 – Sage & Catmint for the Bees
#12 – Penstemons & Coreopsis in Muskoka
#13 – Ditch Lilies & Serviceberries
#14 – Golden Yarrow & Orange Milkweed
#15 – Echinacea & Clematis
#16 – A Czech-German-All American Blackeyed Susan
#17- Beebalm & Yellow Daisies at the Lake
#18- Russian Sage & Blazing Stars
#19-My Fruitful Life
#20-Cup Plant, Joe Pye & Ironweed

21-Helianthus & Hummingbirds

#22-Grasses, Asters & Goldenrod

Fairy Crown 18-Russian Sage & Blazing Stars

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My 18th fairy crown for August 7th features a strange, wild creature having a seriously bad hair day.  All right…. it just contains a lot of spike flowers and I ran out of horizontal room on the tiara so it looks like I’ve endured a shock. These are flowers and leaves from my Toronto garden. The lavender-blue spikes are Russian sage (formerly Perovskia atriplicifolia, now called Salvia yangii after DNA analysis proved it was in the sage family).  The fuzzy dark-mauve spikes are Liatris spicata ‘Kobold’, aka blazing star or gayfeather.  The stem with wine-red leaves and flower clusters is Sedum ‘Vera Jameson’. The chartreuse flowers cascading over my forehead are Canada goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) – at least, a few stems that I didn’t tear out to try to prevent it from spreading (which it will do anyway). The dissected leaves come from my Tiger Eye sumac shrub (Rhus typhina ‘Bailtiger’) and the vine falling over my right shoulder is Boston ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata).  Those little, pale-pink bottlebrush flowers on my left cheek are ‘Pink Tanna’ burnet (Sanguisorba officinalis) at the end of its season.  Finally, tucked into a corner on my forehead are a few red flowers of Petunia exserta that I forgot I’d thrown into my sundeck containers and they emerged in the midst of self-seeding oakleaf lettuce.

With its airy wands of long-lasting, light-blue flowers, the sub-shrub Russian sage is a big presence in my pollinator garden…..

…..and it offers nectar to bees for many weeks.

But it is sometimes short-lived and does not take kindly in our cold climate to being cut back in autumn. Much better to wait until spring when new growth has started.  

It flowers at the same time as violet-purple dense blazing star (Liatris spicata ‘Kobold’)….

…. which is also a wonderful pollinator lure.

I adore the burnets and was able to source Sanguisorba officinalis ‘Pink Tanna’, which has interesting little “scrim” flowers. But I’m still on the lookout for the big, dark-red species which add such a zingy note to a meadow-style planting.

The Tiger Eyes sumac (Rhus typhina ‘Bailtiger’) is a favourite…..

…… and it retains its chartreuse colour well into summer, before turning a beautiful apricot in fall.  

I forgive it its suckering-wandering ways because the birds absolutely adore it throughout winter.

As for the Boston ivy, well it’s pretty much a given in my garden… on my gate, below, and on my fence, and it would climb the house if I let it, but I don’t.

The little red petunias (P. exserta) were a seed-starting project a few years back and are quite rare and not found in garden centres.  I wrote about them extensively in my 2020 blog My Motley Pots.  This one managed to thrive in a container of self-seeding oakleaf lettuce on my deck.

As I wrote back then, my youngest son’s girlfriend Marta Motti did a painting of this petunia being visited by the hummingbird which she gave to me as a gift. I am delighted to say that she is marrying Jon on September 10th in Tuscany – and we will be there for the ceremony!

Sedum ‘Vera Jameson’ is in my backyard deck pots where it partners with the tough native grass sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula).  It’s very drought-resistant, given that these pots get watered very rarely, except by mother nature.

A few plants that are flowering now or in the next few weeks missed being in a fairy crown, so I’d like to say a few words about them now. The first is hoary or downy skullcap (Scutellaria incana), a native northeastern North America plant that I’m trialling in my front pollinator garden, where I’m hopeful it will be able to fend off the lily-of-the-valley groundcover.

Lastly, I’d like to give a nod to my favourite blazing star or gayfeather, Liatris aspera, aka rough blazing star.  Though endangered, this is our regional native.  Drought tolerant, it reaches 90-120 cm (3-4 feet) in height; it will start to flower in the next few weeks and is a superb, late-summer pollinator plant. 

As for the Canada goldenrod….. well, it’s a useful weed but if you turn your back you’ll have a forest. So don’t turn your back!