The Transformation and Trials of Magnolia "Susan"

The peak of magnolia season has come and gone. In my garden, Magnolia "Susan" spends the colder days of early spring wrapped tightly in fuzzy buds covered in fine silver-grey hairs.

A Magnolia "Susan" bud warm in 
her fur coat

Soon, she is teasing me with hints of what is to come, as her buds break open to reveal the beginnings of a dark purple bloom stubbornly clenched tight against cool spring days.

A hint of colours to come on Magnolia "Susan"

The true drama of her rich and vibrant colours is soon revealed as the sun grows stronger.

Magnolia "Susan" begins to unfurl

Magnolia "Susan" takes her time to fully open

Finally, Susan is ready for her grand finale, opening fully to reveal enormous flowers of twisted pink and purple tepals. She is spectacular—the centre of attention in the garden.   

Magnolia "Susan" in full bloom

The slow transformation—from fur-wrapped buds to gargantuan blooms—takes about a month. For a flowering tree that seems to take such care in slowly unveiling its fullest extravagance, the end comes rather quickly. Perhaps the effort of the build-up to this moment proves to be too much. Perhaps it is the shifting of attention to mass plantings of tulips, camassia, and bearded iris that are waiting to steal the spotlight. Whatever it is, "Susan" drops her showy flowers after just a few short weeks and leaves a mess of brown, decaying blossoms that need to be cleaned up.

Magnolia "Susan" drops her blooms
and leaves a mess

As I watched "Susan" through her various stages this spring, I wondered what she might be like if she were a person. The result was this poem.

Susan

I met Susan as she waited

to make her debut

A genteel lady

refined and unassuming

The definition of demure

Or, so I presumed

The fur wrapped around her shoulders

should have been a clue

It screamed

Look at me

She was captivating in purple silk

sharing stories of travels to Asia

Basking in the attention  

until the pressure of the performance 

exposed a small crack

Or, so I pretended

Her search for validation

disclosed a gaping chasm

the dormant hazard of self-doubt

I knew Susan until she fell apart

Magnolia "Susan" in snow during an
early spring storm

Happy Gardening!

The Wow Factor: Tulips at the Exhibition Grounds

Sometimes a flower display has so much wow factor you just have to stop and take a picture. 

Mass tulip planting on the CNE grounds

That was exactly the case when I came upon these tulips near the eastern entrance to Toronto's Exhibition Place grounds. This particular grouping caught my attention from across the very busy lanes of Lake Shore Boulevard West at Strachan (for non-Torontonians, we pronounce it "strawn" 😀.) It just goes to show the dramatic visual effect a mass planting can have. Plus, if one or two flowers fall victim to a ravenous squirrel, as they inevitably do, there are plenty of flowers still left to enjoy.

The colour of strawberries and 
strawberry ice cream

The shades of pink and light red mixed beautifully to remind me of strawberry ice cream, but there was one outlier.  Can you see it?

The Princes' Gates in Toronto

The tulips are located just outside the Princes' Gates, the gateway to the annual Canadian National Exhibition (CNE), a beloved end-of-summer fair dating back to 1879. This morning, Torontonians learned that there will be no CNE for the second year in a row due to the coronavirus pandemic. So, perhaps it was a bit of good luck that brought me down to these gates on my bike—who knows when I will be here again. I'll never get tired of this archway or of the CNE. For a little while longer, I will have to coast on memories of summers that wrapped up here with midway rides and Tiny Tom donuts. Until I can return, there are tulips to be enjoyed.

One of these things is not like the others

Happy Gardening!

Crabapple Blossoms

Every morning, I take a walk with my dog. This time of year, I change up our usual route. I head south on Gladstone Avenue to just north of Dundas Street. That's where I find the incredible blooms on the crabapple tree in front of St. Anne's Anglican Church in Toronto.

Crabapple tree in bloom

The flowers were not quite open when I walked past a few days ago, but today some are fully open and looking lovely. 

Crabapple blossoms on Gladstone Avenue
just north of Dundas Street in Toronto

Peak bloom is likely still a few days away. Like so much in the world of gardening, the blossoms will be fleeting. So, I'll be taking the time to enjoy these blooms for the next ten to fourteen days. It's a great way to start the morning on a positive note.

Happy Gardening!

Elegy for a Garden Snail

This week, I stepped on a snail—robbing it of its life. The tragedy prompted me to reflect on these often-maligned creatures and on my own effect on the garden.

A snail glides
across my porch handrail

Elegy for a Garden Snail

I stepped outside with the grandest of intentions

To pluck away weeds that through my neglect persisted

But in a careless moment of delusion and inattention

I claimed the life of a gastropod and altered an ecosystem

I had raised my hoe high; it was poised to strike 

Eager to deprive stubbornly rooted undesirables of life

I leaned in with a heavy tread and my footfall triggered a crunch

The sickening sound of slow death to which my invincible mood plunged 

It was a terrestrial mollusk crushed underfoot

Its calcium shell cracked into dozens of pieces

A lazy laggard that in life did no obvious good

A tentacled pest with the teeth of a demon

And yet I felt deep guilt and shame

For my capacity to cause such pain

A broken sphere leaves no place to hide or retract

Exposing the calamity of my catastrophic impact

Nocturnal sluggard loafing in the darkness of night

Sedate under damp pots, verandas, and stones

Night-loving lounger you welcomed the sight

Of rain clouds and puddles and gnomes

Hungry herbivore banded by brown whirling swirls 

Peaceful grazer painted yellow by coiling whorls 

Unhurried in your moonlight travels on silver slime trails

Bathed by the moisture of dawn’s foggy veil

Foraging friend I so do regret

The grievous mistakes I have made

A negligent step impossible to forget

And the arrogance I have displayed

Who am I to attempt to tame the wild?

To bring order to earth’s chaos beguiled

Who am I to declare what is unwanted?

To reap destruction; to be forever haunted

I walk in the garden now to seek solace

In nature’s untamed mastery on a magnificent scale

I try to step lightly among the weeds and land mollusks

A lesson I learned from an unfortunate snail

Happy Gardening!  Remember to step lightly.

The Promise of a Plum

This is the time of year that cold-weather weary Torontonians turn their attention to cherry blossoms, and for good reason: they are beautiful. I love cherry blossoms too, but lately I've been paying attention to a far less glamorous flowering tree: the plum.

A trio of plum blossoms about to open
fully in my west-end Toronto backyard

Years ago, a neighbour gifted me a small plum tree from his backyard. I planted it without too much thought. It was rather unremarkable for several years. Then, in the spring of 2019, it burst into a white flurry of flowers, and later that summer it produced a bumper crop of tart, purple-skinned plums (Damson, I believe.)

Plum Blossom

The harvest produced enough plums to give away to family and friends; enough to make several plum crisps and cobblers; and, enough to make jars and jars of jam that allowed my family to enjoy the taste of late summer all through the winter.

Just some of the 2019 backyard plum harvest

Pitted plums ready for making jam.
The green colour suggests these were 
still quite tart at the time of harvest.

A jar of home-made plum jam.
It did not last long.

This same plum tree is now flowering once again, and I am beyond excited about what the promise of the harvest holds. That feeling inspired the following poem which takes the form of a pantoum.*

The Promise of a Plum 

The promise of a plum begins

amid April blossoms of pristine white
Swollen buds burst from their skins
on barren branches reaching for sunlight

By virtue of blooms of immaculate white

orchards are aroused by anticipation

On barren branches bathed in sunlight
clingstone fruit waits to manifest temptation

In orchards brimming with expectation
Prickly thorns defend plump indigo yields
Yellow-green flesh embodies temptation
In harvests of tartness in late summer fields

Sharp thorns protect smoky indigo yields
Laden branches carry sweetness purple skinned
In harvests of tartness in gold summer fields
The promise of a plum begins 

Plum Blossom 2021

The plum is not a perfect tree. It has sharp, thorny branches that will draw blood if you are not careful (trust me on this). The tree sends up suckers everywhere that need to be managed ruthlessly. The tree drops a significant amount of fruit which attracts wasps. This tree is higher maintenance than I would prefer, but I accept it because of the payoff in flowers first, and plums later.

Plum blossom 2021

Happy Gardening!

*A pantoum is a type of poem that has its origins in Malaysia. The poem, made up of four-line stanzas, can be any length. The second and fourth lines of each stanza (or slightly variations of these lines, as is the case in my poem) become the first and third lines of the stanza that follows. The first and last line of the pantoum are usually the same.