For the Love of Gardening

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I LOVE GARDENING...

... and I love my site's new look - Updating a website is daunting and along with a lot of “magic” but there was a lot of hard work to make this magic - my part was mostly thinking and making decisions but the real work was behind the scenes with the SBI Pro, Mike with his hero cape in full flight.

I try to keep tweaking pages and adding new ones: sometimes it is just re-organizing.

I want it to make sense for you. If you have any ideas or questions, please ask..

. I would love to hear from you.

You might wonder how I started gardening... my story is at the bottom of this page but...

In the meantime,

here are some pages

that might start you dreaming.

Life is particularly challenging right now:

our world is dealing with COVID,

politics, threats, anger and angst.

But there is goodness out there and kindness too...

so try hard to share that kindness,

smile with your eyes and look out for each other.

And no matter what else is cancelled,

gardening is not.

Plan your garden,

plant some seeds and keep dreaming.

The sun always rises - spring always comes

and we always feel better in the garden.

Stay strong.

We're in this together and we'll come through it .

Don't forget to

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(no pressure, no obligations.. just neat stuff)

"Garden Bliss & Blunder"

I love connecting with other passionate

gardeners and my monthly newsletter

is about those journeys

through the blunders

on our way to blissful gardens

we love.

MY STORY...

HERE'S HOW IT ALL STARTED:

I don't like getting my hands dirty so I never really thought of myself a gardener...

To me, "Garden Design" was about re-arranging flower pots on the deck.

But life threw me some curves and digging in the dirt was kind of therapeutic; it was enough to keep heart and soul patched up just moving those pots around.

Not surprising, the gardening bug bit me

- hard and here I am.

I started digging a few flower beds and made a lot of mistakes. But the few successes I did have, kept me going.

Why do we garden?

Because gardening proves that hope and faith are still alive.

When you plant a dry little seed in some dirt, don't you just KNOW it will grow and bloom into something divine?

Of course you do. And so we still do that.

Gardening is good for us.

But that isn't why I started .. but now is that intoxicating combination of dirt, water and sun that makes magic for me and I always want more

As a single working mom with two (fabulous) children, I didn't have much time for digging and planting flowers.

so our spring outings consisted of racing off to the greenhouse, piling pretty annuals into my convertible and hauling them home.

Then, all I had to do was plop them in pots, arrange them on the verandah or walkway and

...Voila - instant garden.

I still hate getting dirt under my nails...so each Spring I treat myself to a few pairs of gloves in delicious colours, like lavender, blue or peach. With rubber-like palms and fingers and a nice cool mesh on the upper...they are thin enough to pick up a tiny seedling, or protect me from sharp thorns.

I wash them often.Who wants to put on wet, dirty or gritty gloves?

And if an offer of a little help comes along, I can offer a clean pair of gloves...

But back to my garden journey.

One day, the wind blew a big old tree onto my sad little yard and when it was all cleared away, the cost to remove the stump, was too huge - so I stuck a pot on top; threw some soil around it and planted some flowers.

It turned out to be healthy way to heal some life problems; adding a little faith and beauty along the way.

Soon I was bravely carving curvy beds along the fence and filling them with daisies from the side of the road, the farmer's market and some wild phlox I found along the railroad track. I haunted yard and garden-club sales and began asking a lot of questions.

Then I thought a Rose Garden would be nice.

But that story is here..ROSES

The more plants I bought, the bigger I needed to make the beds; less grass and more garden.

I poured heart, soul (and dollars) into my garden and got a bit cocky .. so the 3rd summer, I was easily persuaded to enter in our city's Communities in Bloom Garden-contest...

I came in third... (goodie for me).

By then, I was addicted to flowers and before the next competition, I hired some muscle, and we dug up the patchy grass under the huge Maple tree in front of my house and planted Hostas my neighbour gave me.

See how that went here: Grass-to Garden

By this time I was gardening like a madwoman and wanted more plants. Each spring, it was a giddy challenge to choose colours when the greenhouses were full of 50 shades of the same colour.

(some tips that worked for me) colour.

Soon life was healing and the sad little yard was becoming a garden.