A Short Post on the Longest Day of the Year

Dear Philip,  

Happy first day of summer!

We are long overdue for a blog post. This is due in large part to me being in Toronto at the start of the gardening season here followed by a blasted two week isolation period that side-lined me well into May (truth be told, it was actually a quiet time of reflection. And drinking: Hand in hand etc.) I’ve been playing fervent catch up ever since and I think I’m almost there. Certainly laying down the arborist chips in some of the gardens made the job easier.  Chips = Huzzah!

So, where did we leave off? Oh yes, a plaintive ode to a hard and complicated 2020. Lo and behold, 2021 isn’t much of a cracker either so far but I stepped out the door in Beach Meadows on this first day of summer and my mood lifted in a way it hasn’t in a long while. Who knows: Maybe this summer day will herald calm and ease and the joy of simple pleasures we have been blessed with in the past. 

Okay, lots of photos of the seaside garden and allium and iris. I’m very happy with how this is coming along.

And then there are the gardens. The winter might have been hard on us mortals but it was a mild one in Nova Scotia and boy oh boy, did the gardens like that. What an explosion of early and fecund bloom.

Rosa rugosa with our own persistent and stalwart Joshua tree out near the point.

Part of the reason I thought I should get my arse in gear and post something is some small insecurity of mine that you’ll arrive (yes, and soon thank the stars!) and there won’t be a thing left in blossom. I reckon we’re about two weeks ahead. So to that end, please find some snaps of the gardens, preened, hussied and gussied up for your viewing pleasure.  Get here quick before the action is over! A limited time special offer!

Love to you and Cyn and of course, dear Misty, too. Lynn

I know how much you love the Laburnum from Virginia. It’s doing swell. And the beech, too.

Dear Lynn,

Your pictures show our gardens now to be gardens of great beauty. They seem, in a mysterious way, to suddenly have come into their own. Perhaps the beauty of nature will save us in this tumultuous and often miserable world.

Our peonies making a very flouncy show of it.

I write this in downtown Toronto, but in less than two weeks we will be in Port Medway and I will be able to gaze on the real thing rather than rely on your scrumptious photographs.

Camassia, including a new addition, alba in the cottage garden. Below, one lone lupine. What’s up with that? Bottom, Brunnera with Japanese forest grass.

Even quarantine allows–I think– a walk in the garden. I look forward to that more than you can know.

Persicaria in full glory and random grasses in the pollinator garden with Molly’s iris which have made a play for it, finally. Below, Timothy grass, brindled before seeding.

Soon…Love, Philip

And look who came crawling back for another season!