Plants and quasi-plants

We stopped mowing next to our driveway and we keep getting interesting flowers as a result. This pink (or God's flower, dianthus, if you like) is one of them. Though "pinking shears" is a modern term, the verb "to pink" (to puncture, perforate or make ragged edges) is indeed older than either the adjective or noun referring to the colour pink. *Maybe* -- only maybe: the OED is very cautious on the point -- maybe the flower pink was named for its petals' ragged edge. Maybe. But the best etymologisers are not sold on the idea.

Fifty-some years ago, a good friend of mine lived behind the door numbered Four. His father ran the college whose service entrance was the door numbered Three. We partied there a lot. No one lives there now and no one worries about the dock established in the crack between the foundation and the asphalt. I doubt there are parties in there now.

The blackberries are exuberant in their showing their wares to the bees. The bees are being compliant. Our yard is abuzz. We await the fruits.

Around here the chuckleypear (Amelanchier of some sort; known elsewhere by a half-dozen other names like serviceberry and Saskatoonberry) is well loved by people. But it is as well-loved by a fungus that prevents people from eating about a quarter of the berries on most bushes. Generally, if you have chuckleypears, you have the chuckleypear fungus. Or rust. Or whatever it is.

Every year we leave a box or two alone to see what comes up. Sometimes we can recognise what's there, sometimes not. This box primarily has these two plus some white clover. It's a good thing we like the surprises.

This morning, this is what I saw on the deck beneath the potted dahlia -- the petals of one flower. Overnight they'd dropt out and fallen, with no wind to scatter them.

Neither my wife nor I am very averse to weeds. We like lots of non-native plants but we figure the ones the bees and other bugs like best are the ones that have established themselves in the wild. So we are not as picky about weeds, or as energetic about weeding, as some people. And we tend to tend the weeds, succouring them somewhat rather than pulling them out at first sight. For a month or so, this plant has been growing in a pot with my 40-year-old pet pine. I think it is Senecio vulgaris, common ragwort. But I'm not sure. I like its looks.

Last night was a friend's seventieth birthday. I've known her for 55 years and I've known her husband for 65 years. A half dozen of us gathered on their back gallery ("deck") for a celebration. Her Clivias next to us were in bloom in perfect time for the celebration.

We feed the birds sunflower seeds in winter. The bluejays and chickadees stick them in various places including in our flower pots. In the spring a few come up. We have three getting ready to bloom outside our kitchen door and this is the biggest of them.

The ant did a good search of all the crevices looking for something. Probably food. Maybe ants he disapproved of.

We didn't plant any sunflowers. The birds eat the seeds all winter and some of them, notably the chickadees, poke a few away in various places. Like in our flower pots. So this year we succoured our gifts and this one is the first to open.

My father planted what his father called "The Orchard" next to their house just beyond the outskirts of Town in the early 1930s. They got a few apples and pears but, Dad told me, by the time I was born "the rabbits had eaten all the trees." I wasn't sure whether to believe him that the trees had produced. But there were a few stalks of pear and apple trees taller than me there when I was young and every year they produced a few weak leaves. No fruit. In my imagination, based on what I could see, only tiny sour crab-apples grew around here. I was an adult before I saw full-sized apples grown hereabouts. I was surprised. But of course they grow all over the place. Even in downtown St John's. Here, on the right, is a Gala from the supermarket, ultimately from Chile. On the left are two downtown Townie apples growing on our ca-sixty-year-old tree, flourishing by our fence line, in the shade of much bigger trees. Same size apples. With a bit more rain, warm weather, and sunshine beating through the upper trees, they may get to be just as ripe as and perhaps even bigger than their Chilean cousin. By the way, I don't know what variety ours are. I used to think they were Yellow Transparent. And some of our apples do look like Transparents when they are ripe. But others are redder with a few line-markings (like on the Gala but less so). Last year, I ate a bunch of them and they were crisp like a good Gala, almost as sweet too, and they seemed to keep much better than Transparents do. I don't know what the historical antecedents of the Gala were, perhaps Honeycrisp and others like it, and maybe that is what got thrown as a seedy core into the fence sixty years ago.

We keep dozens of potted plants in pots when they really should be in the ground. We moved some day-lilies five or six years ago, or longer, and several ended up sitting in little ten-cm-wide pots. This is one. It sits out in the open in summer and in a dark corner of the garden in the winter. And a few weeks ago I noticed it had started blooming. So I brought it up on the deck where it has continued to offer a bloom every few days. Here is today's bloom.

Not quite friends but, despite carrying different passports, at least sharing the same sunflower on our deck: a honeybee and a bumblebee.

Well, I know it's an allium. But beyond that I don't know what it is: onion, or whatever. It came up unbidden in my community garden plot, a gift from last year's user of that plot. I've pulled others like it and they appear to be shallots. However that may be just the stunted growth of the bulb as a result of having gone into proper flowering and seeding mode.

This summer produced a bumper crop of hops on the old plant outside our house in Ganny Cove. Maybe this is the year I start making beer again.

I am a kind of passive gardener. When edible things appear, I take advantage. But I like the old proverb "Nut trees are gifts from the past; plant them as gifts to the future," so I do set things growing that have little chance of doing much for me. These are gifts along those lines. The three garlics came up in my community-garden plot this year, left invisibly by last year's plot holder but already coming up when I got the plot in June. The two apples are the first pickings this year from an old tree at the fence in our back yard, planted there, perhaps accidentally, sixty or seventy years ago.

My carrot harvest is up. In my little, two-by three-metre plot, I'll get about ten kg of carrots, maybe more, like these. Mmmm.