Keeping up with the world and the garden these past weeks has brought visions of Alice’s dilemmas to mind. The magic of the Olympics with all the different nationalities has been so much more inspiring than this cynic could have imagined. The weather itself was one for the record books. I actually mowed my lawn on the 20th of February! One of the commentators said that he didn’t know of any other place in the world that could successfully host both the winter and summer Olympics simultaneously. It was unfortunate that there was so little snow at Cypress and there was fog at Creekside but those glorious days when the world saw our peaks while the sailboats ventured out and visitors golfed made up for it in spades.

Vancouver was golden, not just with metals but with forsythia. Now we have a few days of rain forecast so perhaps I’ll manage to clean house before the paralympic games fill my time. I have picked up some seeds from the various local outlets and a bag of potting soil. I am still looking for a good source of rich, well rotted manure for the garden beds. I imagine that we will have to go to the Fraser Valley for a load. The leaves that I use as mulch during the winter did not break down like it usually does under a coat of snow. This spring I am busy pulling back a heavy mat of leaves and filling up my compost pile. Underneath the perennials are trying to push their white stalks through the barrier of leaves. Usually the robins come like a bobbing army to toss the mulch around as they search for worms and slugs. They are like little aerators that help turn the mess into compost. This year the robins are just now arriving back to find that spring has already sprung and they seem to be more intent on finding nesting spaces than turning over my leaves. Darn it!

I’ve already ordered my new plants from the catalogues. It is always fun to talk to gardeners back in Ontario or the Atlantic provinces when I phone in the order. We usually have better weather than they do at this time. I gloat a bit! This year we talked about the Olympics and they all seemed to be impressed with our scenery as depicted on T.V. One person even wondered that we had time to garden with so many opportunities to enjoy “nature’s Garden” at our doorstep. Sometimes we don’t appreciate what we have until we view it from other’s eyes.

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I see that our speaker for March (check the Member’s page) will be discussing invasive plants. I am sure that I am an expert in this field. I am sure that at one time or another I have found all of them in my beds. I have succumbed to the lure of “fast growing” advertising. I have bought many plants that were touted as been “foolproof” only to discover that I was the “fool” to plant them. Some have snuck in by way of loads of top soil or in the bird seed. Others were gifts of well meaning friends who had different growing conditions than I have in my area, Other obnoxious plants just randomly appeared perhaps in droppings of birds or spread by the wind. At any rate I do hope that our speaker will be able to tell us how to rid our gardens of such plants once they have taken hold and spread. I have the wild geranium called “Poor Richard” all over the yard and several hanging basket fillers that I tried to compost but instead I spread them all through the yard.

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The sunroom continues to produce a great display this winter. The clivia, that usually has only a couple of stalks of rick melon coloured blooms, has six in flower now. Even with the western aspect however, the orchids have not fared well this year. Last year I placed them right beside the windows and got lots of flowers but they faced outward so it was difficult to view them. This year I moved them to the other side of the room next to the living room windows but about six feet away from the western light. There were very few flowers. Maybe I will have to install some grow lights in that room. The greatest winter flowering success has not been indoors.

After Christmas, when we didn’t seem to be getting our usual cold spell, I took a chance and planted up some planters to set outside the family room’s French doors. I reasoned that on cold nights I could pull them inside. I planted the usual spring bulbs but I topped the containers off with hellebores, pansies, evergreen ferns, cyclamen, boxwood and primrose. Later I added a pail of water filled with cuttings from flowering shrubs that I thought I was forcing for arrangements in the house. The whole grouping has provided us with great pleasure for two months. I have added a few bought tulips to the pot of water and they have kept far longer that if I had arranged them in the warm house. The flowering shrub branches have slowly unfurled their blooms and now the bulbs are starting to come out.

I, too, have discovered an interesting book. At the last meeting an array of books and magazines were left on the table. They were donated by a gardener from Vancouver named Roseline Sturdy. I brought home a volume called The Gardener’s Guide to Growing Hellebores by Graham Rice and Elizabeth Strangman. It is so topical now as these great winter flowers reach their peak of bloom. I have just started reading it and have discovered that these plants need a light feeding of lime twice a year and a rich dressing of composted steer manure in the spring. I’ll just put them in the routine that I use for clematis care.