Tuesday, April 02, 2013

 The goldfish, Elvis lives.  This is at least this fish's fourth year in the water tub on the deck.  It is slowly growing bigger.  I don't see any fish in the pond, though.  The one in the tub in the woodland area is living too.  I have had to top up the water in the pond recently.  Yesterday I tried to slow the flow of water over the water fall, so maybe this will fix the problem.
 This phalenopsis is in bloom on the light garden.  It is a lovely white, that opened just in time for Easter.  We were at Marlene and Art's for Easter dinner, along with the family.  Was a nice dinner and visit. 
 I was looking at a few photos from our Rideau canal and St. Lawrence cruise trip.  This is the Montmorency Falls just outside of Ottawa.
 This is a copy of Michelangelo's Pieta that is in St. Anne de Beaupre Basilica.  From Wikipedia:  The Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré is a basilica set along the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada, 30 kilometres (19 mi) east of Quebec City. It has been credited by the Catholic Church with many miracles of curing the sick and disabled
This is a bracketed shot merged in Photoshop hdr and a few other adjustments.  This rodanthe is in a pot on the deck.  The flowers open in the Spring along with the Deffodils.  It does well with morning light and shade in the hot part of the day, and good drainage.  It is doing well on the deck.  it is evergreen. 
The daffodils are up with a nice boquet in the house.  The little rockery at the back is slowly starting to fill in.  The lewisias are not the showy ones, but I like how they look.  There is a very nice evergreen campanula, a daphne (has buds this year!), a couple of little evergreens, a saxifragia, a huge pink that I need to keep trimmed back, and about 4 other tiny ones.. the douglasia is in bloom. 
Yesterday I mowed the grass, took down a few more limbs off the cedars at the back by the veggie patch.  This should let a bit more light in.  I also took a couple of feet off the yews, but now wish that I had not done it, as I can now see the top of the fence between our properties and this fence is not a pretty thing.  Ah well, the yews will grow again... quickly, I hope.  There are two blue windflowers migrated to the veggie patch and I think I will leave them there.  The bluebells are crowding everything out in the woodland area.  I have to get after them this year... at least make sure they do not go to seed.  They are everywhere in the garden.  I can only find 4 lupines in the garden... and I had at least 20 seeds germinate last spring.  Well, I shall do them again this year.  The plants don't live very long and they never seem to go to seed in my garden.  They look great with Foxgloves blooming together.  I should like to get more hollyhocks for the rectangle spaces at the front.  I have a nice dark maroon one.  A yellow one would look good with it.   There is lots of weeding to do before I put down the compost all around. I only have 5 bags of it  to use.  Its great for holding in the moisture.  The Japanese quince has survived its move out of its pot and into the front garden by the roses.  I hope it blooms this year.  The magnolia has huge buds ready to burst open  The plum tree at the back is a mass of white.   I did a bit of a repair to the stepping stone path at the back and may need to do some more.  The reason I put the stepping stones in was because that area of the garden gets very wet in winter.  The stones have started to sink into the soggy soil, so I will need to lift them a bit and perhaps add a layer of sand.  In the spot where I lifted the stones yesterday, I got rid of the grass that was growing between the rocks, dug out the rocks and added a layer of cardboard, then more clay soil around the rocks to hold them in place.  This spot was really low and should now be good for a few years.  There is corsican mint growing around the stones and it looks  and smells really good in the summer. 
I am reading the Harry Potter books again.  I rushed through them so fast the first time around that I seemed to have missed a lot of stuff.  Still a good read the second time around.  I am not getting anything done on my old web page.  I shall have to set my mind to getting a few photos tweaked for it each day... and that is the way it gets done... a bit at a time.  The review of the Rideau Canal trip photos has got me fired up about it again... but there is the gardening... which is far more fun, now that the sun is out.

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