A Garden - With Love

Yesterday late afternoon Marylou and I started working on our friend, Mary-Anne's front garden. Last year she had the new walkway put it and did some landscaping, but it needed a boost. Marylou and I bought some perennials at the Carp Market last weekend to help give it a yearly look, dug more up from Marylou's place, all with the intent for less annual care & maintenance. We gated the front walkway allowing for the 2 11+wk old pups, Kodak & Taphee to enjoy a good romp and socialize with all the street noise - like 2 fire trucks & their sirens that went down the main street. We had to move back the cedar mulch, add more compost and peat moss all to give the soil a better quality and to hold the moisture better. We also added newspaper under the cedar mulch to help keep weeds at bay. Between us we remembered all the 'to do's' we'd discussed previously.

At lot of digging, turning over soil and deciding what was going to go where. MaryAnne's girlfriend Gail popped by and we sent her over to the local store to pick up some annuals to add constant colour.

Pups and Tim Hortons go good! Kodak supervising our efforts.In several places, especially under the tree area we put in water bottles - ends cut off, cap off - helps to get the water right to the roots rather than draining off. MA take note - a short sprinkle watering doesn't do it here!

Another Kodak pic ... can't help it! Such a sweet face.

I rummaged through her house to find a few things to add to the garden. We used the 'tree trunk' pot, putting some portulaca in to spill out as they explode in colour. The Cow Welcome, that was for fun and I've heard it will be retiring to the basement :) Gotta find something else MA to add a whimsical look to the garden.
Finally, after clean-up a 3.5 hours job is done. Looking pretty fine to me :) We had FUN doing it and can't wait to see it grow and produce the blooms we hope for. Know the neighbours were impressed!

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Help With Perennial Name

Maybe some of our Blog friends can help me identify this beautiful, vanilla smelling-like white plant. It was present when we moved in to our last home and I made sure to take some with us when we moved 2 yrs ago. It is slowly making its presence in the garden with an increasing night time smell.
It has these multi-small flower burst heads on long stems. The leaves are lower on the stem and are almost fern like. It flowers at this time of year, the fragrance is more noticeable at night and you can certainly have a bouquet of it if brought into the home.

I took these pictures earlier in the week, and now with the persistent rain am sure most of the flowers will be gone. Anyone might know the name of this plant?

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Hoya - Indoor Glory

One of my favourite indoor plants at this time of year is my Hoya plant. It is a hanging one and has oblong green leaves. In the late spring to early summer tho it is spectacular not only in the flowers, but its fragrance! OH my, especially in the evenings, it is so sweet, it oozes out from our dining room ... unbelievable! Wish the web had a scent scratch pad :) The flowers are hard to explain as it's a bundle of them, gosh maybe some 40 stems on my variety that come together in a 1/2 moon shape hanging down.

Each individual stem then has a small flower bud which has about 4 layers placed on top of one another, glossy, almost waxy like, that are star shaped with a darker center one that is 'felt' like. Am hoping you can see in this pic some tindy (shiny) droplets that look like water but infact they are sticky. Below is a variation (of many) I found on the main Hoya Plant website.

Ooooo, this one is such a pretty ruby red colour! I might just have to (order) do more indoor gardening!
http://www.hoyaplants.com/ Check them out ... they are easy to grow in good indirect lighting & easy to start from a shoot.

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Lilac Capital of Ontario

Did you know??? the lilac Capital of Ontario is a very small town just west of Ottawa called Franktown. We live just around the corner from it. Our road boosts several groupings in spots where cedars, especially, don't line the edges. It is now June and many of the lilacs are finishing their blooming ... the constant rainy weather the last few weeks hasn't help them maintain their blooms. Sadly their beauty & smell will soon be gone.

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