Category Archives: months 10-12: fall

October thru December

months 07-09: summer, months 10-12: fall

Alice In Wonderland Mushrooms

10/31/2015 svseekins 2 Comments

orange mushroom toad stool Alice In Wonderland, garden Victoria BC pacific northwest — photo by SVSeekins

The scorched grass of summer morphs into verdant lushness.
The air sparkles.
Leaves tremble.

I’m Alice In Wonderland, admiring a toadstool.

Am I too big?
Or are they too small?
Looking around, I’m disappointed there’s no bottle labelled ‘drink me.’

Still, I’m enchanted.

Anything this beautiful must be magical – – but NO.

Research says this is probably Amanita muscaria. Hallucinogenic, YES. But not in a good way. Bad. Very BAD.

cap of orange mushroom toad stool Alice In Wonderland, garden Victoria BC pacific northwest — photo by SVSeekins

Fungus & mushrooms are a mystery to me. Our rainforest abounds with their fruiting bodies each autumn.
They’re so exotic looking – so tempting.

Haida Gwaii (also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands) is mushroom heaven. I went there one September to visit friends & forage chanterelles. We found so many varieties I lost count. And the 2 volumes on Mushroom ID just made me even more nervous about proper recognition.
So many. So similar. So tasty. So deadly.
Too risky.

orange mushrooms toad stool Alice In Wonderland, garden Victoria BC pacific northwest — photo by SVSeekins

Each year the South Vancouver Island Mycological Society host a Wild Mushroom Information Day at Swan Lake Nature Sanctuary. Perhaps I should be brave this year and give it a try.

Or maybe playing with my camera in the woods is more my style. Hmmm.

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months 07-09: summer, months 10-12: fall

Great Grapes

10/04/2015 svseekins 2 Comments

Woo-hoo!!
This year our grape-vine has produced grapes! It’s thrilling.

green grapes September 2015 garden Victoria BC Pacific Northwest — photo by SVSeekins 2012

Most years we get 1 or 2 clusters of teeny-tiny grapes… and honestly, I thought that it was just the way this particular variety of grape made fruit.

Nope.

Whatever variety of grape this is, it is capable of producing a wonderfully sweet, juicy eating grape.

When I picked my first cluster, he weight of it astounded me. I just had to check it out on the kitchen scale – –
2.5 pounds !!!

Can you believe it?

And they’re tasty, too!

Now it would be nice to know what we did differently this year…

green grapes September 2015 weight garden Victoria BC Pacific Northwest — photo by SVSeekins

Was it because C didn’t winter prune the vine as hard as he usually does?
… or because we had an especially sunny summer?
… or because there was less competition for water & nutrients in the planting bed this year?

Perhaps there’s a good reason this area is marketed as the Wine Islands.

Cheers 🙂

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attracting birds, drought tolerant, months 04-06: spring, months 07-09: summer, months 10-12: fall, natives, urban deer

Oceanspray

07/11/2015 svseekins Leave a comment

Splashes of frothy white flowers are reminiscent of ocean spray.
Well named.

Some call it cream bush, and it’s easy to see the reason for that, too.

Another name is ironwood because of the strength of trunk.

The west coast first nations call it arrow-wood. That’s self-explanatory.

So, it’s a pretty AND useful shrub. I like that.

The Latin name is holodiscus discolor. Doesn’t that name just sound ugly?? But realistically, the 2nd part of the name is what makes sense to me. Discolor. The flowers fade, turning to brown seed clusters.

I’m reminded of hydrangea & lilac – so pretty at the beginning, but looking more like used tissue paper later on. ick.

oceanspray, — ocean spray
photo by SVSeekins

That complaint aside, I still like the idea of having such a showy shrub in our yard.

I’ve seen some looking lovely on rocky outcroppings in full sun. That’s gotta be the epitome of drought tolerant & low maintenance.

Oceanspray is a multi-season work horse:

spring – flowers that attract pollinators
summer – pretty flowers persist
fall – leaves color & seed heads form
winter – seed clusters continue to feed birds (especially bush tits) even past some tough storms

Oceanspray is also deer food.. The urban herd that uses our yard nibble on the 2 oceanspray that I bought from Swan Lake Nature Sanctuarys Native Plant Sale. I don’t know if either bush will ever reach full height (15 ft / 5 m) unless I cage them in for their own protection. Once they’re tall enough (6 ft/ 2 m) I reckon the upper limbs will survive the grazing.

Cages just don’t seem decorative to me, so I’m looking for other suggestions.

In the meantime I enjoy 2 short (1 ft /.3 m) bushy shrubs.

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