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Volume:11 Issue:8 Web site address: www.squamishgardeners.com Date: September 2008 |
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Letter from the Editor: "Down the Garden Path" by Ellen Grant“A road like brown ribbon, a sky that is blue, A forest of green with a sky peeping through, Asters deep purple, a grasshopper’s call, Today it is summer, tomorrow it is fall." Author unknown September is a time to look both backward to summer and forward to a new season in the garden. Our closing season has had its ups and downs. The lovely weather in July faded to much needed rain in August. But as usual in this valley we seldom get just the right amount of everything. Camelot we are not but very close! I had a few gardening disappointments this year. My Stag horn sumac, that guarded the entrance to the driveway, developed a strange problem. The leaves unfurled this spring but they soon shriveled and died. I had hoped it was weather related. I left the branches on and soon the second batch of greenery started to develop. But these too curled and dropped off. I began trimming the dying branches off. All summer I looked for a renewal of the lush, tropical leaves to sprout, without success. I spoke to other gardeners from other areas of the province and I guess my tree was not the only one to suffer this fate. Even new shoots arising from the base seemed affected. I now notice that I may have one good new shoot coming. They are fast growing trees so if I can get this one to mature enough to start again next year I will be overjoyed. I do have other sumacs in the back yard but this variety has such huge flowers and later maroon seed heads. Another tree that has considerable die-back this year is one of my Japanese maples. I suspect that it suffered from a virus that these trees are susceptible to if their roots are disturbed. We spent most of the summer installing a bricked walkway around Don’s workshop and we may have cut some of the roots. I hope that it will come again next spring.
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Many of the plants that I feared would be a wash out after our poor spring, like the hydrangeas and the summer bulbs that I waited so long to plant this year, actually have surprised me. Although a little late in blooming, they have suddenly burst forth. The begonias and dahlias, the cannas and the callas have brightened the late summer scene. My vegetable garden was non-existent this year. All my good intentions to the contrary, I did not get the old raised beds cleaned out and the new soil added. I was waiting to see what my neighbour was going to do with the space he cleared by our back fence. It opened up our back yard to much more sunlight and I had planned to move some of the plants in the holding area in the old vegetable plot to a new home near the back fence. However, instead of putting a garden in the cleared area, my neighbour has decided to build a 20x20 foot workshop. Shade again! I’ll be able to move only a few of the plants to that region and try to squeeze the rest into existing beds. I do have a great success story to tell though. The two old rose bushes that I rescued early in the spring have survived! One had only a few roots and the other had none, only a knobby stump where the roots usually originate. I watered them daily and sometimes just let the water trickle all day. They have both bloomed now. One I think is a Queen Elizabeth with pink flowers and the other has coral red blooms. The roses too have been quite healthy this year. One of the compensations on having a defoliated sumac in the front yard was that the plants at its feet grew better, a sweetly scented rose among them. Usually the plants beneath the trees bloom only in the spring (and/or sometimes the fall as the lower sun rays illuminate the area. The sparse canopy at that time also adds enough light so that flowers may offer a few highlights to the area. This year I added several potted plants to that section of the yard and voila, an instant bed! I also managed to visit Perennial Gardens this summer and add a few huecheras to my collection. My interest is turning more and more to leaf colors and shapes. They seem to keep any grouping more uniform and interesting. You aren’t always changing the contents of containers through out the season. But now as the nights grow cooler and the days shorter attention must turn to the approaching autumn.
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Page 2 Newsletter |
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Yes, the Fair was a major community event before the highway was put through to Vancouver. It marked the end of summer, just as the 24th of May heralded the season. With most families having a vegetable garden and fruit trees the competition section of the Fair was a keenly anticipated event. For years it was held in the P.G.E. Hall and had many sections. Pre-television the long winter evenings were spent in handicrafts. Families specialized in woodworking, spinning, knitting, quilting, painting and all sorts of preserving spent the time between harvest and planting producing products to show at the Fair. Almost every household participated in some way or another. When our valley opened up to the world with a rail and road link to Vancouver the Fair suddenly took a back seat to the Logger’s Sport’s Days. It faded away but was revived by the Brackendale Farmer’s Institute about ten years ago. It still captures much of the community spirit that it had in the past with friends and neighbours who had spent the summer holidays away from town catching up on local gossip and exchanging news. Today there are more vendors than exhibitors although there was a better representative of skills and crafts than there has been for several years. The music was more ‘sing along’ than just loud rhythm and the food was simply fair-seasoned. And I am sure the Fairs of my youth did not include llama rides! To those who organized the garden club booth and answered visitors’ questions “thank you”. I know that it is a fun way to be part of the day and everyone is so friendly that it doesn’t seem like a chore. It does take time and commitment however so again thanks for representing our club.
As sharing comes to mind please remember that as you divide your perennials, cut back your geraniums, divide your dahlias, clean out your beds, set aside extra plants for our October plant exchange. Sharing sometimes ensures the survival of plants. You may end up having to one day beg back a cutting or a baby from a plant you gave away at the plant swap. Heritage plants need to be spread around to friends to keep the species alive. Autumn is the pick up time. Pick up the apples. Pick up the leaves. Pick up the children. Pick up the activities that you left for the summer months. Add pick up your camera to that list. It was so great to see Lise Hamilton, Colleen Winterburn, Dave Colwell and Anna’s photos on our web site. I’d love to see some of our Tour gardens in their autumn splendor. Nature provides the vivid background for this season’s most memorable pictures. Get out and enjoy your gardens and the surrounding landscape. Record your experiences and share them with our members. |
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Page 3 Newsletter |
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President’s Report
Hello and welcome back to the fall session of Squamish Gardeners meetings. Yes, our next meeting is September 15 because it is the 3rd Monday of each month. Remember to come at 6:30 to weed at the library before our meeting. Treats and a very short business meeting at 7:00 and our speaker Master Gardener Shirley MacKenzie is at 7: 30.
The Brackendale Fall Fair was exciting and our table was a wonderful place to chat with old friends and meet new friends. A number of people were pleased to learn about the Squamish Gardeners and will, hopefully, join us at our meetings this fall. Dave Colwell’s greenhouse has been giving him tomatoes since our Garden tour. Dale, Leanne, Robbie, and Wesley Embree’s 9 ½ acres provided the produce for Dale to win the aggregate BFF Merv Honey award for the second year in a row – well done Embree Family! My own garden made a fairly successful transfer from mostly flowers to garden greens. Squamishites are eager for locally grown food and our greens sold out within two hours each Saturday at the Squamish Farmer’s Market. We didn’t have a lot of product but it was fun. We might want to consider a Squamish Gardeners booth at the Farmers Market next year if a number of people each have a few things to sell – you know we could use some of the knowledge that Carolyn Herriot encouraged us to use in her New Victory Garden presentation last May.
Treasurer’s Comments
Dorte reported that we made just a few dollars more this year from the Garden Tour than we did last year. We briefly discussed the disbursement of these funds at our July gathering. The main decisions will be made at our September meeting as is the custom. The bulk of our funds usually go toward providing speakers for our meetings. If you have any suggestions please let the program committee know. It is especially important that we find local talent to fill in the winter months as speakers are reluctant to drive the Sea-to-Sky highway if the weather threatens to be poor. Besides the fee for travel expenses has risen due to the cost of gasoline. If you have friends or family in the gardening business who would like to combine a visit with your family and give a talk, slide show, demonstration etc. for a modest honorarium we would be interested.
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Every time has its joys and jobs. I am already busy picking up the apples to keep the bears at bay. We have a bumper crop this year but they still are not ripe. We have enjoyed a couple of batches of apple sauce and the horses down the street are fattening up as my granddaughters cart bags full of the culls to pass over the fence. I remember the past Septembers when my grandparents and my own parents taught me to pick the crop at the farm on Judd road. When they raised apples for sale we had to be very careful to gently ease each piece of fruit off the tree and into soft cloth slings. They were never dropped or tossed for fear of bruising them. My mother was an expert at placing and climbing the tall wooden ladders so that she could reach the highest branches where the ripest and biggest apples seemed to always be. It helped that she weighed no more that one hundred pound. Apples had to be picked when they came off the branch when you lifted them skyward and gave a bit of a twist to the stem. If you picked the leaves with the apple you were reprimanded. Every week a different variety was ready. And when apples weren’t on the agenda then it was the time for the pears. For decades the Judd farm produced orchard fruits for MacKenzie Store, for sale to neighbours and for entries at the Fall Fair.
With the new season I must remind all members that we also have the community commitment to weed the Library gardens. By arriving 20-30 minutes early for the meeting we can usually have the beds looking neat and tidy before 7pm. It is a great time to chat with other members too. We have discussed making this task one of the executive positions so that someone is responsible for organizing our work group and seeing that it is completed. It would work somewhat like the refreshment committee, the garden tour organizers or the program committee. The more we spread the club tasks around, the easier the work becomes. We still all participate. It just means the responsibilities of organizing them are shared.
