Certainly it’s the talk of gardeners in Brentwood Bay & Saanichton.
Now the mystery is solved. Paul, the gardener, was in attendance when we drove past the other day, so I stopped to chat with him.
He says it’s just a regular heather that started to climb the ground wires of the utility pole. He thought that looked kinda cool, so he encouraged it along by tieing the heather further & further up as it grew. The ties wear out & fall off about the same time as the new branches mature enough to hold themselves in place.
It’s famous, says Paul. The local newspaper reporter also stopped by for the photo-op. Pretty cool, eh?
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.
Camellia is one of my favourite broadleaf evergreens. It blooms early, then works hard as background support the other 3 seasons. Several birds make themselves at home in the camellia in our courtyard – – AND the shrub is deer resistant! That’s my kind of plant. 🙂
photo by SVSeekins
A few years ago, I spotted a hedge of camellia in downtown Victoria, beside London Drugs. They were almost finished blooming in mid-December! I have no idea how early they’d started… November? October??
Who’d have expected blooms in autumn?
photo by SVSeekins
Not long after that, KC gifted me with a fall-blooming camellia. It starts blooming before Christmas and has even more flowers through January!
Yeah, Baby!
Once I knew it was possible to have blooms so early in the year, I kept an eye out for even more samples around town:
photo by SVSeekins
photo by SVSeekins
It was delightful to find another variety of camellia starting to bloom in mid-February sunshine near the BC Legislature.
photo by SVSeekins
photo by SVSeekins
Just a month later, in March, I notice these camellia blooming in a yard not far from the YM-YWCA downtown.
photo by SVSeekins
photo by SVSeekins
A block or so away from our place is a camellia that flowers through April.
photo by SVSeekins
photo by SVSeekins
Then there is the camellia in our courtyard typically begins blooming in April & is in full blossom in May.
Autumn… winter… spring…
Who knew there are so many cultivars with differing blooming schedules?
Garden Variety Life 