It was well worth the half hour walk up the neighborhood trails into Mt. Tolmie Park this morning. What a sight – – the camas is in bloom!
I like garry oak meadows. They’re especially inspiring when colored with a sea of blue. Spring is really here.
photo by SVSeekins
Who would expect wilderness just a short 5km from Victoria’s inner harbour?
Checking out the wildflowers in April & May is at the top of my list for reasons to be a tourist in Victoria.
photo by SVSeekins
AND if you’re fortunate enough to be around during the last saturday of April, it’s worthwhile checking out Camas Day in Beacon Hill Park. Its hosted by Friends of Beacon Hill Park & has wildflower tours & speakers. 🙂
It’s a fabulous season for finding my inner guerilla. On my morning walk I noticed a bunch of healthy daphne / spurge-laurel beside a wooded trail.
I have a paradoxical relationship with daphne. I like it because its evergreen, drought tolerant, and deer resistant…
BUT the Coastal Invasive Species Committee call it invasive.
AND daphne has poisonous berries & wicked toxic sap that irritates eyes & skin.
BESIDES that – – there are less offensive options to replace daphne.
photo by SVSeekins
The rainy season & my mood convinced me that today I didn’t like it. So I decided to pull some daphne closest to the trail edge & my gloved hands.
I braced my feet,
bent my knees,
gripped the main stalk,
and PULLED.
Lo & behold the daphne slipped out of the ground easily! Roots and all! Woo hoo!
I felt like pounding my chest & letting out a guerilla roar!
I moved to another… and another. 🙂
photo by SVSeekinsphoto by SVSeekins
A young daphne has one primary root, so in winter’s wet soil it pulls out readily. If it’s a couple of years older, it has more developed roots securing it in the ground . Even so, it comes out without much trouble at all!
In about 10 minutes I pulled 86 daphne!
(Seriously!! I counted.)
photo by SVSeekins
There were more still standing beside the trail but I had places to go…
so I left those behind for another day.
This is certainly the best time of year to conquer daphne.
I reckon I’ll add a little daphne pulling to my morning walk.
So much for the golden haze of summer. It’s been below freezing here for almost a week. That’s not a complaint, because we’re cozy inside, but I feel badly for the creatures living outdoors.
A couple of winters ago C & I started hanging a suet log. The birds love it!
They also clean it out fairly quickly – – which means one of us must refill it. We’re pretty good at that, but not perfect. 😦
photo by SVSeekins
This autumn I decided to make a change in garden maintenance that would help out the birds just a little more. I chose to NOT cut back some of the perennials when their bloom finished. I reckon the seed heads might come in handy when the suet log is empty.
Goldenrod has really funky looking seed heads. This perennial is native to North America, so I figure the birds have learned to make use of it over the centuries just as the First Peoples did.
photo by SVSeekins
And if the birds don’t eat these seeds, perhaps they’ll use the fluff to insulate their nests?
photo by SVSeekins`
Lychnis is another with great summer blooms & and an abundance of winter seed. This patch along the fenceline is left standing in hopes it’ll be useful for the birds too.
Happily I’m not worried about those seed heads foretelling a full future for weeding. We mulch the garden beds quite heavily, which (aside from keeping roots warm) has the added benefit of slowing down scattered seeds turning into unwanted plants.
But hopefully the seeds will all be eaten before my pruning hand become so itchy that I just HAVE TO cut the plants back for tidiness sake. (I have good intentions, but I also know my nature.)
Even as we speak the crocosmia & the hardy fuchsia are dying back & will soon be luring me outside to tidy up.
Garden Variety Life 