Stacey's Garden

Good morning gardening friends, have a great Wednesday. Via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends. Via Facebook

Good morning gardening friends. Have a great day! Via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends. Enjoy the day! Via Pinterest

Happy New Year! Guess what time it is?

I’m going through this Springs arrival and am looking forward to the ‘Mountain Blue’ Hydrangeas arriving. They are only hardy to zone 5, but I’m thinking we can overwinter in pots in a garage or basement. What other shrubs are you looking for? I might get some brought in.

Good morning gardening friends. Enjoy the day! Via Instagram

Good morning gardening friends. Enjoy the day. Via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends, enjoy the day! Via Instagram

I need to check this out. Saving it here in case any of you are interested.

Good morning gardening friends! Thank goodness for Friday’s. Enjoy the day! Via Facebook

Happy New Year gardening friends. I wish you all the best this coming year. Thanks for supporting my small business and clicking these daily posts. Cheers! Via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends! Enjoy the day. Via Facebook

Good morning gardening friends. A late post today. Have a sensational end to a dismal year! Via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends. Enjoy the day! Via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends. If you get a chance to soak up some sun today. Do it! Via Instagram

Good morning gardening friends. Enjoy the day!

Good morning gardening friends. Today my mind is in Verbena bonariensis, my favourite late summer bloomer for the butterflies. Pics via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends! Have a great Tuesday! Via Facebook

Good morning gardening friends, I noticed my kale and parsley is still going strong. Do you still have stuff holding on? Enjoy the day! Pic via Instagram

Merry Christmas everyone! It is an interesting holiday season, during this time of COVID-19. We had no family over, visited no one and no friends stopped in. Ch...ristmas day provided a bit of relief from the sudden cold, as the -3C temps with clear skies was perfect to get outside for a bit of sunshine. I wanted, no needed, to feel the sun on my face. I had to walk North to get to the sun with it being so low on the horizon. And as I walked those long shadows, my thoughts were of the sunshine, light and the recent winter solstice. The winter solstice is a time to celebrate the return of the light. The ancient Greek story of Persephone’s abduction into Hades symbolizes the dark, bareness of winter and the return of the light each year. The ancient Romans had Saturnalia, a weeklong celebration, prior to the solstice in honour of Saturn, the God of Agriculture. The Norse celebrated Yule, from the solstice until early January, lighting a large log at one end and celebrating until the log burned down. Dong Zhi is a Chinese celebration of the return of the sun and the positive energy that accompanies it. We as a global community celebrate the return of the light in each of our own ways. We gardeners depend on the sunshine as light is one of the three critical components that is essential for the development of plants, along with water and air. Plants use energy from sunlight to convert air and water into sugars that it then uses for its growth. Those of us that live in the Northern Hemisphere have the light slowly getting shorter in the lead up to Christmas with the solstice being that pinnacle of the longest night of the year. Most plants require ten hours of light each day for active growth and even more, or sometimes less to bloom, the science calls it photoperiodism. Photoperiodism is the developmental, physiological and growth processes connected to day length in plants. Where I live, the daylight dips below ten hours on October 15th and does not return until February 15th. Do we as people need that return to light for our own growth? Christmas day’s walk was a search for the light. The few additional minutes of light each day will give hope to the 2021 gardening season. The time has come to spend some time in my indoor grow space to provide my own light, as February 15th is a long way away. Happy Gardening Friends! Pictures via Pinterest

Happy Halloween!

Good morning gardening friends. Enjoy your Sunday! Via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends. I hope everyone has a great day Pic via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends, enjoy the day! Via Facebook

Because it’s Christmas, we need two. Merry Christmas from my household to yours. Via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends, Monet’s Gardens at Giverney are getting ready to close, but the nasturtiums are putting on a show. The flea beetles always get mine. Enjoy the day! Via Instagram

Good morning gardening friends! Enjoy the day! Via Instagram

Good morning gardening friends, enjoy the day. Via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends, have a great day! Stay safe! Via Pinterest

It is so blah out, this mild weather has got to go. This year has been particularly hard on people, the pandemic has everyone feeling hung over, sluggish and de...pressed. We need a bright holiday season to perk us up, but Mother Nature just is not working for us this year. A lot of people in Southern Manitoba, I mean a lot of people, hate winter. They hate the cold. They hate the snow. They hate the blah. A huge dump of snow is just what we need right now. It will cover this brown drabby landscape with a clean, fresh coat of white. Our holiday pots, baskets and decorations will pop with colour and even the drab colours in them will shine. It will truly close the garden on this year that does not seem to want to end. What do gardeners do in winter? What is there to do in the garden in winter? Some of us rush out to buy a Happy Little Herb pot to be bright and cheery on the windowsill. Others have ‘Tendered Off the plants we want to care for indoors or have taken on the massive insert your beast here for the winter. This is not a post about the Winter Gardener’s to do List. It is a post about enjoying the season. As winter approaches, I am reminded of a favourite gardening quote by artists Barbara Winkler, that puts winter into perspective for those of us that garden: ‘Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl. And the anticipation nurtures our dream.’ We are so lucky to live in an area that has cold winters, it allows for some down time. I think of gardeners around the word that I follow on social media, who are still hard at it, even those that live in climates like mine. I am grateful for the opportunity to slow down and rest. The seed catalogs have started to arrive, and it is time to plan for next year’s garden. The time has come to sit back, drink some tea with your fuzzy warm socks on in front of the wood stove. It is time to reflect on the garden of this past year or even to just reflect on gardening. It is time to dream. Keep on dreaming, gardening friends, keep on dreaming! Pictures via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends! Have a lovely day! Via Pinterest

Happy Saturday gardening friends. Enjoy the day. Via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends. For some, today is the last day of work for the Christmas holidays. Lucky you, if you are one of them. Enjoy the day. Via Facebook

Good morning gardening friends. I hope everyone is well today. Via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends. Enjoy the day. Via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends, have a great day. Via Pinterest

Marcus Tullius Cicero’s ancient quote, If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need., is never a truer phrase. If you are looking to get ...yourself a little something this holiday season or looking to pass along a great gift for the gardener in your life. I would like to suggest the Modern Library Gardening Series edited by Michael Pollan. Like most garden adventures, his editing of this book series started with a pest. A woodchuck to be precise and his desire to rid his garden of the beast. Through this journey he discovered the writings of Eleanor Perenyi, and the rabbit hole went further and further. Verlyn Klinkenborg, a talented American non-fiction writer and academic introduces this first book that I select in the series ‘The Gardener’s Year’ written in 1929, considered by many to be a minor work of Czech author Karel Capek who introduced the world to the word ‘robot’ with his publication R.U.R in 1921. Klinkenborg writes most students of Capek believe that gardening is merely a subset of life, whereas gardeners, including Capek, understand that life is a subset of gardening. As I perused the table of contents looking for inspiration, I skipped to the chapter titled ‘The Gardener’s December’. In this chapter Capek writes The gardener himself hibernates under glass in a heated room, buried up to the neck, not in manure or brushwood, but in garden catalogs and curriculars, books and pamphlets, in which he reads: 1. That the most valuable, gratifying and altogether indispensable plants are those which he has not got in his garden. .... I thought, ‘Now, this is a book I can get into’. Funny and beautifully written with cute cartoon drawings from the author’s brother. Mr. Pollan discovered that as soon as one got past the how-to volumes written by experts, and the illustrated coffee-table tomes of garden porn, the garden bookshelf brimmed with the sort of quirky, sui generis writing often produced by a good mind operating in a small space. His suggestion of books for this series are the crème de la crème of garden essay writing. They are all talented writers of a different genre who fell in love with their garden or gardening and blessed gardeners all over the world with the result. Pollan calls it moonlighting, I call it the natural transition of gardeners. We gardeners write, whether to plan a new bed or border, journal our day/week/season, or to philosophize the ant and the peony. It’s the beauty of the spaces we created that fill our heads with the notion that we can continue this beauty everywhere. That’s why we write, paint, draw and craft. Our gardens have given us the God-like power of creation and we wield it mightily. I picked up the series years ago and like many of the books I buy, they bide their time until the universe thinks I’m ready. This winter, the universe thinks I need this series, and so do you. Happy reading, Gardening Friends! Picture is Karel Capek’s Garden in Prague, Czech Republic

Good morning gardening friends, enjoy another beautiful day! Via Instagram

Good morning gardening friends, enjoy the day! Via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends, best day of the week. Enjoy your Friday. Via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends, it’s going to be another lovely day in Southern Manitoba. Fresh air and sunshine is just what you need. Enjoy the day! Via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends, have a lovely day! Via Facebook

Good morning gardening friends, today is NOT Monday!! Enjoy the day. P.S. You need some fresh air and sunshine today. Pic via Facebook

Good morning gardening friends, enjoy your Sunday. Via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends. I’m totally feeling a Japanese Zen/Vibe thing in my posts lately. I must need a zen reset. Enjoy the day! Via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends. Not so much a garden, but a most excellent inspiration for decking around my pond. And a pretty ocean scape on this cool morning. Enjoy the day. Via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends. I have dreams of expanding my business to a hangout space for garden geeks like me. Thus is what I would like it to look like. Via Pinterest

Good morning gardening friends! It’s Friday! I can’t help but think about Christmas, which is unusual for me because Christmas is usually a December thing. If we all do our part and hang only within our household, only go out for essentials and wear a mask when we do, we might be able to spend Christmas with our extended family. We are in this together. ... Here’s a pretty garden to spend the weekend in. Via Pinterest

Lest we forget. Via Pinterest