The Year in Review | stonethegardener

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2011 Autumn pictures

01/06/2012 in Autumn, gardening

Autumn

(part 4 of a 4 part series)
Part one: Winter

Planting the cool weather crops, carrots, turnips, collards and such still required us watering to get anything to grow. The temps broke early this year though…

As it cooled, and the miserly rains made the occasional appearance, the trees began their autumnal show. This autumn was as nice a show as I can remember in this area.

As Autumn progressed, it became unnecessary to water, and as it turned into winter, it became possible to dig new beds in untilled soil. It took until December before any new digging was worth attempting…

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Be sure to click the pictures, they enlarge, and the plants are named.

If your favourite autumn flowers were omitted, my apologies. I had a lot of great pics, but was limited to picking 20.

Feel free to mention the ones I missed, and I’ll set up an album that includes them.

Tags: Autumn, photo gallery, photography, The Year in Review 17 Comments »

by stone

2011 Spring pictures

01/04/2012 in gardening, shade garden, Spring Garden

Spring

(part 2 of a 4 part series)

Spring came in with beautiful flowers and promise.

By the time of the columbine bloom, the gardens were complaining about the lack of rain. Columbine and bearded iris don’t mind dry weather, and were very pretty.

The pollen was severe. The trees were all thinking about love, and the rains didn’t arrive, we are all swimming through a sea of tree jizz, sneezing, coughing and the shade garden seemed like a place to be avoided…

The Spring of 2011 was also the year of the cicada. When outside in the garden, the chorus was so noisy that carrying on a conversation with visitors to the garden in a normal tone of voice was impossible.

As the drought gained in severity, an unwatered garden became a desert.

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Even the desert blooms, and we still had beautiful flowers in that dry hot year. Knowing the plants that tolerate the existing conditions is important when planning the garden.

On to Summer

Tags: flower gardening, photo gallery, photography, The Year in Review 2 Comments »

by stone

2011 winter photos

01/03/2012 in gardening, winter gardening

Winter

(part 1 of a 4 part series)

Where do you draw the line between seasons?
Where is the dividing line between winter and Spring? When stuff blooms? when our coats come off?

Snow-birds might have said that we had a single day of winter last year, which is represented by the ice on the hellebore bloom. Arbitrarily, I used the calendar, and the vernal equinox as the end of winter.

We had an auspicious start for the year, appropriate rainfall, beautiful plants, really great blooms… and then the spring rains failed to materialize.

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