First Day of School

It's quiet here on the farm this morning, there's some fog so  you can't see Mount Nemo from our house, which gives us a feeling of isolation from the rest of the planet. It's just me and our dog Molé, and maybe a few customers. The rest of the family is back at school (Rebecca is now in grade 3, Alex grade 6, and Wendy is teaching at Nelson once again). The buses for school were late, typical for the first day, new drivers and all. Alexander's driver asked me for directions, so who knows if they made it to school!

I took the photo just before Alexander and I headed off to the end of the driveway to meet the bus. This is our bed of Tidal Wave Petunias, which I posted on this blog earlier in the summer. As you can see they are doing great. If you want a carefree bed of flowers, you can't beat the Tidal Waves. Water as needed, they fill in quickly so you don't have to do much weeding, they're maintenance free to!

Sorry about the picture quality, I hadn't noticed my camera was set to "night time"....oops!

Views of our Garden

Here are a few highlights from our garden this year. I guess you can say we do a pretty good job of growing flowers in our greenhouses, but I must confess to almost completely ignoring our garden. Here is an assortment of flowers we're growing this year that are doing well, in spite of neglect!


Mini Cascade Red Hanging Baskets: These are simply the best hanging baskets you can possibly grow. Almost all you can see is colour, the pot is completely covered with a profusion of blooms that last from May until October. It's completely maintenance free, with an invisible wire hanger, all you need to do is water (and they like it on the dry side which is great if you're not good at remembering to water!). We even add slow release fertilizer so you don't need to bother with that.




Sparkler Cleome: This tall background flower is another of our maintenance free favourites. Plant it. Ignore it. Extremely drought tolerant.






SuperBells Dreamsicle Calibrachoa: Commonly known as "Million Bells", these flowers bloom and bloom all season. They're easy to look after, all you have to do is water them. In this planter, we've combined them with Horizon Orange Ice Geraniums.














Tidal Wave Petunias: Best flower bang for your buck!

The wave watch begins

If you've been to our farm in late April or early May, and taken a look over at our house, you might have noticed our bed of daffodils. One of the dilemmas gardeners face each spring, is having to wait for the bulbs to die back, before planting other flowers in their place -the sooner you replace the bulbs, the less well the bulbs will do next year. We plant Tidal Wave Petunias between our clumps of daffodils. The daffodils are happy because they aren't cut off, and just wait to see how fast those Tidal Waves out grow the daffodils!