Into the Woods

Wood lots have such interesting sightlines even though there is nothing at the end.  Or is there?  I guess that is what makes them interesting.  These images have the addition of colour effects using Topaz Lab's Black and White effects.

Seasons' Jump

The mums are now blooming at the garden centres.  The pop-up stand at 3rd Street and the QEW has  discount mums on the flatbed truck - a welcome transition from the kalanchoes that have been there all summer long.  So now,  the bright orange-red geraniums at my front kitchen window are now replaced with red-rust mums.  They signal the change of colours in the landscape as we move from the the lush green with fiery reds of summer to the autumn tones that are more integrated. Our photos today were taken in Marion Jarvie's garden.  The first two show the entrance in April and then in early June.  For me, it demonstrates the transition from the browns of spring to the lush greens of summer.  Isn't it interesting how the white trellis picks up the greens  around it in the second photo. I didn't notice it at the time, yet now it seems striking. The visit in Spring was April 28, a time when people are starting to garden.  So it was easy to take pictures without people.  The visit in June was with the Garden Bloggers Association, and the garden was full of people and plants.    Marion is a collector of the distinctive and the unusual so the garden writers were abuzz with discussions on everything around them.

Return with a Shrubbery

Ladew, in Maryland,  is considered the 'most outstanding' topiary garden in North America, and one of 10 incredible topiary gardens around the world.   I think the (Monty Python) Knight would have definitely passed if he'd returned with this one - all those peaks and rows in formation. The picture below was a topiary found in Niagara-on-the-Lake at the beginning of August - a delight of whimsy.

Lilycrest Gardens

Just a few more lily images from Brian's Lilycrest Gardens hybridizing field.  The first one is a Marathon lily - one of the first to bloom in June.  It has small down-facing flowers, and is one of the delicate little lilies to bloom.  It is quite a contrast with the lilies that follow in the season.  In July, during the peak blooming there are beautiful bold colours, huge flowers and some of the plants reach up to five feet tall with 10 or more flowers on them.

Port Dalhousie Beach

The Port Dalhousie beach is a perfect summer spot.  I was struck by the pretty umbrellas and have highlighted them in this picture. It seemed there were so many stories in this waterside scene - my favourite is the man lying on his back in the foreground, with the dog looking my way.

Koi, The Living Art

Marilyn's Photo of the Day When it comes to Koi in the pond, it seems to take thousands of pictures snapped to get a few that are enduring.  This top picture seems to be one of those to me.  The combination of the Koi in a circle along with the abstract sense created by the distortion of the water.  These Koi were at the Marie Selby Botanical Garden, in Sarasota, FL.

The Lotus

Lotus are blooming at the Cole's Pond store.  This lotus was captured over the span of two days and you can see the spots on the flower petals in the third photo.  I drove by yesterday and a second lotus is blooming - it looks like a darker pink.  However, Coles isn't open on Sundays so it'll be today that I get to find out.    The Lotus is a revered flower and plant from ancient times.  Its meaning was creation and rebirth and "was a symbol of the sun because at night it closes up and goes beneath the water and at dawn it climbs up above the water..." How about this 'fun fact':  the lotus flower is a very popular tattoo.

Orchard Rendezvous

There was a lot of traffic on the August holiday weekend, heading to Niagara to see the sights - Niagara Falls, a drive along the beautiful River Road, Queenston, and on to Niagara-on-the-Lake.  On my travels, I found these geese at Lincoln Avenue and the QEW, perhaps making a pit stop on their way to visit the tourist sights.

Lilycrest Gardens - The Hybridizer's Harvest

Lilycrest Gardens is my brother, Brian Bergman's lily hybridizing field on 5th Street near the QEW in St. Catharines. It is transitioning from its glorious floral display into its crop of hybridized lily seeds.  Here is one of the pretty crosses from previous years.

Sheep in the Lawn and the Wild West

Today it is sheep in the lawn.  This was a display in one of the gardens on the Grimsby Garden Tour in July.  The second display was at another house on the tour - I had no idea that we had The Wild West here in Grimsby.  This is a tool shed!

In the Garden of Imagination

The garden of imagination is the perfect phrase to describe this garden captured here.  Located on Heath Street in Toronto, it shows how plants are artistic expressions in the landscape.  I showed this garden's sculpture of the picture frame and glass vase in an earlier post. This is a calm moment given today's headline in the Daily Mail:  "School holidays' August 1 is the day parents reach 'breaking point' with their kids." It is followed with these sub-headlines: - Survey reveals 50 per cent of British parents have had enough by August 1 - On average more than half of the holiday budget will have been spent then - Only one in five parents actually look forward to the summer holidays We in Ontario celebrate this half-way point with a Civic Holiday.  The holiday has many different names at the municipal level, so I guess the half-way point of the summer in Ontario has issues and not everyone gets the day as a holiday.  It seems like Ontario is ambivalent about the mid-way mark of Summer. Who would have guessed all this?