In a column just before Father鈥檚 Day I shared a few childhood memories from my father鈥檚 garden, where I recall helping to plant nasturtiums to trail down a retaining wall. In summer, I tended sweet peas growing on the wire walls of a chicken coop.
My father showed me how to听adjust a brass hose-end nozzle to create a fine, cooling mist that would help to keep the sweet peas refreshed and productive. That brass nozzle, now mine and still in听perfect condition, is one of my most treasured and frequently used gardening aids.
On the mid-June day that column appeared in the paper, an email arrived from a reader for whom it had 鈥渆voked many deeply cherished childhood memories.鈥� As a child, Hanne鈥檚 鈥渏ob鈥� every Saturday morning was 鈥渢o pick and arrange bouquets of fresh flowers for the house. Sweet peas were my favourite.鈥�
The email expressed exquisitely the deep sense of contentment a garden can bring: 鈥淚鈥檝e spent most of the morning in my garden, enjoying the scent of a runaway honeysuckle wafting over me and fussing with my 鈥榬iver of thyme鈥� that runs alongside a little waterfall and rock stream bed. I gratefully attribute the depth of joy my garden gives me to those early experiences in my parents鈥� garden.鈥�
As young families garden together, tending plots, planting and gathering, precious lifelong memories are being built.
Easy amaryllis. In a recent stream of reader mail came a report from Wayne about an amaryllis he鈥檇 not repotted for 12 years. Five years after the bulb was planted, a baby bulb formed at its side. The baby bloomed three years later. The planting is in a clay pot.
Wayne鈥檚 story reminded me of听sitting in a neighbour鈥檚 garden on a June day and noticing a potted amaryllis in bloom nearby. The neighbour鈥檚 care of the plant, like Wayne鈥檚, was minimal. She put the pot in a frost-free garage for the winter and brought it out in the spring, bringing it into active growth again with water and a top layer of soil mix replaced with fresh.
Eventually, most amaryllis bulbs kept in the same pot will produce little offshoot bulbs. Theoretically, in pots wider than the usual tight-fitting ones for amaryllis, the planting could become a clump of flowering size amaryllis bulbs.
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Bee-witched. A disconcerting note from Gordon in Campbell River expresses an alarming message: 鈥淣O bees this year.鈥� He goes on to explain, 鈥淲e have a compact garden, bursting with plants. Many are for attracting and feeding bees.
鈥淟ast year, the azalea was buzzing with up to seven distinctly different bees and other pollinators. This year 鈥� virtually nothing. There were no bees in the foxglove flowers. Other bee attractant plants have been left forlornly alone.鈥�
Gordon notes that there has been enough pollinating activity for berry formation on bushes and听canes.
I鈥檝e noticed far less bee activity in my garden this year too. Usually, I avoid passing close by听the rhododendrons in bloom because of the thick clouds of bees flying in and around the shrubs. There were bees in the plants this spring, but in sparse numbers. The kale in bloom did not attract its usual crowds of the creatures either.
I鈥檝e seen bees, mainly bumble bees, in foxglove flowers and California poppies, and almost the usual populations in the raspberries at bloom time. On the patio I听have observed bees in the petunias. But the satisfying hum of bees in the garden has noticeably lessened.
I鈥檓 wondering what other home gardeners have observed in bee activity this year.
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GARDEN EVENTS
Picnic in the gardens. The Horticulture Centre of the Pacific, 505 Quayle Rd. in Saanich, is inviting families and friends to bring their own dinners for a picnic in听the gardens on Wednesday evening. Enjoy local musicians, browse through the works of local arts vendors, visit a听Master Gardener booth for answers to听gardening questions, and check out sales of plants propagated from the gardens. Admission is by donation between 5 and 8 p.m. hcp.ca.
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Government House plant sales. Government House, 1401 Rockland Ave. in Victoria, is holding plant sales every Tuesday, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., through to August 27, at the Plant Nursery opposite the Tea Room. Visitors will find an extensive variety of plants. A sampler: For shade there are hardy fuchsias, astilbe, Choisya 鈥楽undance,鈥� small red Japanese maples, heuchera. For sun: salvias and hebes, threadleaf coreopsis, phlox, sedum, nepeta and more.
