From Imperfection, Beauty: Wabi-sabi in November

It's not a secret to anyone who knows me or who follows bloomingwriter that autumn is not my favourite season. The vanishing light does bad things to my moods although I do cheer myself with the thought that as soon as we make it past Solstice in December, the days will be lengthening again.

Usually autumn in Nova Scotia is a thing of wonder and glory, especially in September & October. This year, not so much, especially October. For many of us, what is usually a golden month felt uncomfortably like November, with a seemingly endless repetition of rain, cold, wind, dreariness, cloud, repeat as necessary. And now, abruptly, we're in November.And so many garden to-dos haven't yet been to-done.It could be cause for guilt, panic, frustration and I-give-up-itis. Could be, but isn't.


A couple of things happened that helped to adjust my attitude. A week or so back I was squishing my way around the yard, complaining about the mess and begrudging the disappearing of beauty & stressing over the to do list. Then I came indoors for coffee and took a few minutes to catch up on some blog reading. My friend Kylee at Our Little Acre had written a post about what the Japanese call wabi-sabi, and it pulled me up short. She was following an exercise challenge put out by fellow garden writer Debra Lee Baldwin at gardeninggonewild.com, also talking about this subject.


Wabi-sabi, Debra writes, is “the Japanese aesthetic that finds beauty in imperfection and transience. In seeking wabi-sabi, one cultivates an appreciation for the ordinary and becomes aware that age offers its own poignant beauty.”


Hmmmm. Beauty in imperfection and transience. That really resonated in my soul. We’re a culture that seems to seek perfection, though what defines perfection varies with each of us. I thought about this for a while, and went back outside to look at the garden again with more open and less critical eyes. There is a lot of beauty out there, when one takes time to look at things a little differently.
We can fixate on the fading roses (which indeed hold their own beauty) and while brooding about the dying blossoms fail to see the valiant late blooms still coming on.

Such blossoms are unexpected gifts that we sometimes forget to appreciate, just as we fail to appreciate friends, family, the daily blessings we have.


So you know what happened next, don't you? I turned off the critical gardener who sits on one shoulder, listing all the to-dos that need to get to-done. And went back out into the garden.


Turned off the eyes that are mourning the winding down of summer and opened the eyes that rejoice in late season flowers like widows tears.

Saw the dying foliage and denuded stems as just the prologue to a new chapter, not the end of the story.

Instead of being sad because the hummingbirds aren't here to enjoy their feeders, I was glad that the calibrachoa was still flowering its head off, seemingly unscathed by the frosts.

Seedheads of this exuberant clematis look like cheerleader pompoms or floral fireworks, celebrating the season's finale. The way they catch and reflect light when the sun deigns to find us makes me deliciously gleeful.

We’ve had some frost, but not enough to do in all the annuals, and some are still valiantly flowering, like the verbena and lobelia (yes, lobelia!) and alyssum and osteos. They may not be as profuse as they were in July, in most cases, but that means we can focus in more closely and celebrate one single flower or cluster as opposed to being overwhelmed by a wash of colour.


And suddenly, with a shift in my thinking about the garden, everything seems to be all right, even if the beds and borders aren’t perfectly tidied and weeded. They never are. But they’re beautiful anyway.


The bulbs that I don't get into the ground outdoors can do their bit to remind me that they are "another season's promise", in the words of the late great singer-songwriter Stan Rogers, by catching winter light and turning from promise to blossom.

I’m sure most of you are already quite able to celebrate the beauty in imperfection and transience, but if not, that’s my wish for you as we go forward into November. Regardless of the weather.

Happy Halloweening from the kitties!

see more Lolcats and funny pictures
If it's not one thing it's another. Been buried in work (which is good and fun and interesting and pays the bills) but also down-a-quart, healthwise. So I've been missing in action again. I told the catchildren they could do the post for Halloween but most of them weren't interested, being busy sleeping.

We don't get trick or treaters here now, because the local kids are all grown, & we're too rural for others to visit except from car. So we'll have a quiet evening of reading, whether online or actual books. And napping, in the case of the catchildren.


However, no Halloween is complete without a big black cat, so Rowdy Retread hopes everyone has a fun and safe day and evening. He isn't going trick or treating, but is good at supervising yard cleanups. And at having naps.

Mungus isn't so interested in candy treats, but he highly recommends pizza. Especially pizza that comes with a big box he can lay on afterwards for his post-pizza nap. (what's left of the pizza is in the fridge, incidentally).

I'll be back later with something more garden-related!

Gardening by colour: White spring bulbs

The weather here continues to be more like November than October: cold, wet, dreary, windy, rainy, repeat as necessary. It's been annoying because the great fall colour we often get has been somewhat beleaguered by excessive wind and rain, so that many leaves are just getting to their good colour when the wind shreds and sends them away. I've done nothing outside, but am declaring a day off indoors to catch up on much neglected matters, such as blogging and cleaning the house up.

Work took me out and around the other day and I landed in unexpectedly to visit a dear friend I hadn't seen in far too long. She was taking the opportunity of a decent (if cold) afternoon to clean up her containers, bring her houseplants in, and do other garden chores I've yet to touch. Naturally, we got on to the subject of planting bulbs and of colour and of other timely subjects.

Last year I received a box of white-flowering bulbs from the International Flowerbulb Centre, and managed to get most of them planted out before snow and surgery ended my gardening year. In talking to my friend, I remarked that while I love white flowers, I wasn't sure how much most gardeners would appreciate white bulbs after a winter spent buried in snow. We're really craving colour by March, aren't we? And we're not all into doing a white garden a la Sissinghurst, are we?
My friend pointed out, wisely, that white is an excellent colour for bringing out contrast and attention to other colours. And actually, it's pretty awesome by itself, just accompanied by sparkling green foliage, as with these 'Mount Hood' daffs.

When I got home, I got thinking about white bulbs in earnest, and went back through my photo libraries looking to see what I do have planted out there. Of course, the first harbinger of spring in our garden are the valiant white snowdrops (Galanthus, top photo) which are barely out of the ground before they're blooming. They are my favourite spring-flowering bulb, bar none. We do have some white crocus ('Snowbunting', second photo from top, named for my beloved snowbirds) but mostly I do prefer other colours in crocus. But I'm really partial to white or white-bicolour daffodils of all sizes and forms, including this double 'Sir Winston Churchill'.

'Thalia' is another favourite white daff, smaller than the standard types, and highly fragrant. In our garden it blooms with the forget-me-nots so we have this lovely sea of tiny, lacy blue flowers underpinning the wonderful daffs. Makes me very happy.

The last daff-family species to bloom in our garden are the 'Poeticus' narcissus, which don't come on til late May and into June. They're very fragrant and strikingly beautiful; they're also known as 'pheasant's eye' narcissus, and if you've ever fed pheasants in your yard and gotten close enough to watch them well, you can see the description fits well.

Normally, I DON'T plant white tulips. This is one situation where I really do want outbursts of colour. There are exceptions to that sort-of-rule, mostly having to do with form. These white parrot tulips have yet to reach their full glory, but I love the green and yellow feathering on the white, ruffled petals.

The double white 'Mt Tacoma' looks more like a peony than a tulip, but I do like its clean appearance. Behind it is perhaps my favourite of the viridiflora tulips, 'Spring Green'; again, that white-and-green combo just does it for me.

Muscari, or grape hyacinths, do very well in our garden, forming lovely clumps of fragrant, brilliant blue flowers. This white hybrid 'White Magic' appeals to me very much too, and I hope it multiplies as quickly as its relatives.

Lastly, we have the 'White Festival' hyacinth, which is amazingly fragrant. I planted these in the front garden near our main door and they sent out huge waves of fragrance this past spring. The fresh gold-green foliage of 'Aztec Gold' creeping veronica on one side of them, and the almost-black new growth of Actaea 'Black Negligee' made this little combination quite appealing.

I've found focusing on these white flowers has actually brightened up my weather-dreary day, bringing some much-appreciated light into my perspective. My plan is to focus on various colours over the next few blog posts, and maybe get some conversations going with more of you again. So it's over to you--do you like white spring bulbs? What do you plant?

The fruits of MY labours...

I've mentioned before that autumn isn't my best time of year, as the daylight shrinks and the garden winds down. Normally I do something to sort of prepare for the coming of winter, a yearly ritual like putting the garden to bed, filling the woodshed, and so on. It's amazing how it fortifies one's mind and soul.

This year is no exception, and thanks to my longsuffering spouse's generosity and loving support I've had a wonderful rejuvenating interlude. More about that soon, I promise. And now I'm really, really, REALLY busy with work. For which I'm extremely grateful to editors and other clients, believe me. But it's meant very much limiting my time with my blog and more importantly with visiting other friends' blogs. I figure the next two weeks are going to be insanely busy and then after that will return to the normal rhythm of work.

A couple of other little things are happening: I got a new, compact digital camera for work purposes (the kind with really good resolution that you can stick in your purse and just go with so I don't have to drag my DSLR everywhere I go) but also need to have the time to really work with it and get to know it. Unfortunately, the weather has been nothing short of hateful for the past week or so, at least when I've been home. Rain, fog, and drizzle, followed by fog, drizzle and rain. Not so conducive for good photos in the garden, at least not when it's also blowing a gale of wind.

So thank you for the concerned comments/emails/facebook PMs I've received in the past few days. All is well here, and more than well. I ask for everyone's patience. I'll visit and comment whenever possible, and post once I clear a few of the urgent deadlines off my desk. Meanwhile, let's all pause a moment to envy the art of perfect relaxation as done by Mungus.

The Fruits of their Labours

I've been working on a couple of assignments that mention seedheads, berries, and other fruit forms, and that necessitated me taking a walk around the yard with my camera, looking to see what has or is in the process of setting seed. I'm not the tidiest of gardeners, and while I deadhead my container plantings, I tend to leave the perennial beds alone so that they can set seed to provide food for birds and winter interest for me.


Teasels are a mixed blessing. On the one hand, their seedheads look marvelous all winter long, especially if sheathed in ice or dusted with snow, and their seeds feed a number of songbirds. On the other hand, you need to mulch heavily under them or be prepared to dig up about 90,000 seedlings per plant next spring.

One of my favourite native plants is the witherod, or wild raisin (Viburnum nudum var cassinoides). It grows in the woods around our place but I actually planted several shrubs in our garden last year so as to encourage their spread a little more.

We have a big highbush cranberry (Viburnum trilobum) in the back garden, and it has a good crop of fruit at the moment. I expect visiting waxwings and other fruit-eaters will take care of that in coming weeks and months.

This is going to be 'quite a year for rose hips' if the rugosas are any indication.


However, they're still flowering as well as setting fruit, which makes me very happy, as the rugosas are one of my garden favourites.

Another garden favourite are the Japanese barberries, of which we have a number. The best one for fall display is the standard green one. The foliage turns awesome shades of gold, carmine, and scarlet, and the brilliant red berries look stunning against that backdrop.

Whether you call it Cimicifuga or Actaea, black cohosh is a splendid perennial. Ours are just finishing up their flowering and are forming very cool seedheads, which look neat in flower arrangements as well as waving in the autumn breezes.

Some of the clematis have finished up flowering and have gone to seed, with these pompom like tassels all but covering the vines.


Others continue to flower. This is 'Josephine', a personal favourite because it blooms for a long long time and also manages to have both double and single flowers.


I don't expect to have much for holly berries this year, either in the evergreen or in our winterberries. The male evergreen holly decided to have a traumatic winter and lost every leaf, the first time it's done that in the ten years I've had it. I cut it way back and it's rallying, but not flowering. The female, on the other hand, is more than eight feet tall in some spots, and is still flowering, hoping to catch some pollen somewhere. One of my male winterberries had an unfortunate winter, getting broken down to the ground, and the other isn't very big yet, so I don't know that it produced enough pollen for any of the plants to get fertilized. I guess we'll know in a few more weeks.
I was sent this Paniculata hydrangea to trial along with a few others several years ago. Unfortunately, the label got lost somewhere in transit and I have no idea which one this is. It might be 'Pinky Winky' because it keeps producing flowers from the tips, but I don't think it had that name when I got it. Whatever it is, it's fabulous, though not as early flowering or fast-growing as 'Quick Fire.'

My miscanthus varieties are all blooming now, with my favourite being Martin Quinn's 'Huron Sunrise.' You have to watch out for miscanthus because some spread by runners while others form well-behaved clumps. This is a clump-former.

There are still plenty of things flowering in the garden, although they're quite far-flung around the yard, unlike in high summer when there are blooms everywhere we look.

Every autumn, the colchicum surprise me with their sudden blooms. They leaf out in the spring, the foliage dies back, and I forget about them until they explode into blossom in mid-September. It's nice to have an autumn surprise like this, and I'd welcome more of this type of surprise. As opposed to the one that will happen one of these days when we get surprised by frost. Hopefully we're still some time from that, though. Yes, I'm still in autumn 'de nile' but only a little.