My early July garden

I'm happy with my garden this year--happy with the way it looks, with the different plantings, with the perennials that have now grown high and wide. The latter take up space and fill in the gaps. I will probably need to divide some of them next year. Despite a chilly and rainy June, the garden is thriving. That's because it got off to a good start during May when it was warm and sunny. By warm I mean temperatures in the mid-70s. The pumpkins are the only plants that have been slow to grow. I doubt there will be many pumpkins this year, but there will be a good amount of zucchini, potatoes, and garlic. I tried two different kinds of garlic for the first time, and the plants are doing well. We picked a lot of strawberries and we'll have a lot of raspberries, gooseberries, black currants and red currants. I'm especially looking forward to harvesting the black raspberries; they always take longer to ripen than the regular red and yellow raspberries. 

As far as flowers go, I experimented a bit and put together flowers that I might not have put together otherwise. I cut down on vegetable growing since our growing season is so short, and used the extra space to plant an allium garden, which the bees love. I also planted astilbe, anemones, cornflowers, dahlias, lilies, sanvitalia, and rose mallows in the vicinity of the allium plants, and bladder campion flowers (wild) have grown up in the vicinity as well. It's a nice mixture of different flowers. Plus I had planted loosestrife a few years ago, and it has just taken off, so I'll have to control its growth in the coming years. But it's lovely. 

My garden is my happy place, and it's where you'll find me most days when the sun shines. Here are some recent photos......

the beautiful loosestrife

black raspberries growing in a cluster 

From winter to summer, just like that

We're now in summer mode here in Oslo, even though the summer season hasn't officially begun. All it takes is a few warm days when the sun shines brightly and the temperatures hover around 70 degrees F as they have done for the past few days. That's the signal for everyone to exit their apartments in order to be outdoors. Restaurants, cafes and bars with outdoor seating are packed and the lines of people waiting to be seated are long. 

I always enjoy this time of year--May and June--because those are the months when my garden takes off. Up until around two weeks ago, we were still experiencing chilly winds and chilly temperatures. And then suddenly, whoosh, they're gone, replaced by warmer temperatures that define summer in Norway. We rarely if ever get temperatures in the 90s, nor is it very humid here. That's good in one sense, because even though summers in New York were/are warm, they could often be brutal due to the humidity that made it hard to breathe. My family and friends in NY keep me updated on the weather there, among other things. Interestingly, we've had similar unstable weather patterns this year, especially in April--some chilly and windy days, followed by warm days, then chilly again. It's rained more there than here; last year we had a very wet July and August. We'll see what this year brings. 

I worked in the garden for the entire month of April, cutting down dead plants, pruning the fruit trees, cleaning and raking. I did some planting as well (potatoes) as well as starting seeds in the greenhouse. I'm always amazed each year at the miracle that is a garden. The perennials return at the same time every year (hence their name); you see the new growth amid the dead stems that have been cut down very low. The snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils, tulips, hyacinths and forsythia make their appearance in April and usually bloom until around mid-May. The forsythia bushes are now turning green. The magnolia tree is blooming, and I see buds on my wisteria. This past week I planted my zucchini and pumpkin seedlings outdoors; so far they're doing well. Night temperatures hover a round 45 degrees F, which is fine. As long as there is no frost, they'll survive. 

Here are some recent photos of the garden. Enjoy.......

Snowdrops are the harbingers of spring

I can't wait for this miserable winter to be finished, done, over, caput. Hopefully it will soon be a distant memory, once spring comes and I can return to my garden. Today is a beautiful sunny day that reminds of spring. In the garden, the harbingers of spring are the humble snowdrops--so beautiful. It will be a while before they pop up in the garden (most of the snow has to melt first), but they don't seem to mind the chilled ground. 

I'm posting a a very nice little poem about snowdrops and a photo of them that I took some years ago. 

Have you heard the snowdrops ringing

Their bells to themselves?

Smaller and whiter than the singing

Of any fairy elves.

–Sydney Thompson Dobell (1824–74)

Autumn garden update

Autumn is upon us. In truth, it was already upon us at the end of August in terms of how the garden behaved at that time. The pumpkins, potatoes, and tomatoes were finished growing by then. I've never had pumpkins turn orange that early; they were however quite small. I think the plants understood that there had been too much rain this summer and not enough warmth and sun. In order to grow in size, vegetable plants need warmth and sun. Not this summer.

The perennials and annuals did well, however. I'm not even sure why, because we had so much rain in July and August that I felt sure that there would be a lot of root rot, problems with mold, and other similar problems. There wasn't. Of course I'm very happy about that. The flowers grew quite high and seemed to do quite well. Go figure. Every time I think I understand how it all works, I understand that I don't. The old adage is true--you learn something new every day. 

Bird tales

The arrival of spring means the return of birds to the garden, birds of all kinds. Sparrows, brown and black thrushes, crows, magpies, wagtails, robins (the European ones that are smaller than the American ones), ring-necked doves, and (Eurasian) blue tits. Sparrows are most prevalent and spend most of their time in one of two huge bushes in my garden, the kaiser bush and the red currant bush which are more or less opposite each other. When I am working in the garden I can hear them quarreling and chattering; they fly back and forth between both bushes, with stops at the birdbath to drink water and to take a communal bath. Watching them flap around together in the birdbath is a hoot. And when it's really been hot during past summers, they share the birdbath with the bees that line up on the rim to drink water. 

This year there is a large crow that saunters around the garden like he (she) owns the place. My garden neighbor calls her Clara, so we assume it's a female bird. Clara struts and shows off for us; she is not afraid of very much. It is the neighborhood cats that are scared of her; she has chased them out of the garden on numerous occasions. This year she has discovered my neighbor's small stone birdbath that has been placed at ground level. Clara and several of the magpies enjoy drinking water and plucking insects from this birdbath. It's amusing to watch them. She sometimes walks around my garden as do the brown thrushes, looking for insects (mostly earthworms) to eat. The brown thrushes remind me of little dinosaurs; I call them the little raptors. They have a menacing look in their eyes that strikes me as primeval.

As I walk to and from the garden, I pass Kiellands plass with its large pluming fountains whose water descends via small successive waterfalls into at least six small pools lined with smooth medium-sized stones (NLA - Alexander Kiellands plass (landskapsarkitektur.no). Oslo's birds have discovered these pools, sharing them with small dogs and toddlers who like to wander down to the water's edge. Sometimes the dogs take a dip, but mostly the birds have the pools to themselves. They include mallard ducks, pigeons, and seagulls for the most part, but also thrushes and smaller birds. This morning on my way to the garden, a mother duck crossed the sidewalk in front of me followed by her five little ducklings. The UPS driver who was delivering a package nearby stopped to watch them as well, and we commented how sweet it was to see them. Here we are in the middle of a large city, and the ducks are raising their families here. Nature adapts to all sorts of situations and seems to do so readily; that is definitely the case for mallard ducks. There must be a reason that the ducks stay put; one of them must be that people feed them bread. But there are also droves of insects surrounding the water pools that you can see in the late afternoon summer sunlight, flitting about in the warmth. There are probably also a lot of earthworms and other ground insects. The ducks also eat seeds and the nearby plant matter (roots and tubers) that abound.

A less happy story is what happened to the magpie nest outside our bedroom window. The magpie couple spent a lot of time earlier this spring enlarging last year's nest of twigs and branches. The nest seemed to double in size and looked to be spread over two levels. This pair of birds comes back every year to raise their young. Alas, this year it was not to be. Last Wednesday, I heard a crack and took a look out the window; I had already guessed that it had something to do with the branch. The branch holding the nest had cracked off and fallen to the ground. My best guess is that the nest was too heavy and that the birds had built it too far out on the limb. This year's addition to the nest certainly did not help. I felt so bad for them; they don't always assess the situation correctly and this year they lost out. We don't know if there were eggs in the nest, but if there were, they were destroyed along with the nest. The birds disappeared for a few days, but yesterday morning I heard them chattering in the yard again. They'll be back next year, but there won't be any baby magpies this year unless they overtake an abandoned nest. 

We are moving toward summer now--the season of sun, warmth, growth, new life, and easy days. I look forward to lounging in my garden and dozing off to the sound of bird chatter. It's a wonderful part of summer. 

Spring report from Oslo

It seems as if spring is finally here. Dare we hope? Each time that we've had a few consecutive days of nice warm weather, it's been followed by the return of winter's cold, as was the case for the past week. I read the weather forecasts religiously now, because having a garden makes one more attentive to the weather (and lack of good weather). My fellow gardeners and I share our frustrations about the lousy spring we've had so far; the only spring flowers that have bloomed are the snowdrops, crocuses and violets, and they didn't bloom until mid-April. The tulips are in wait modus, and even the forsythia has not bloomed. The one plant that has grown and will bloom soon is the Helleborus Snow Rose, which has lovely flowers as I remember. The grass lawn is another story. A thick layer of snow topped by ice covered the garden until mid-April, compacting the grass to the point where I am unsure if it will grow back during this season. Time will tell. I am prepared to reseed the small area of lawn that I have in my garden. 

It's pointless to be irritated at a season, I know, but I have been so irritated that winter just keeps hanging on. It won't let go this year. Weather is the main topic of conversation in the garden; questions arise about global warming. We are worried that the growing season will be too short this year. The joke is that we'd love for there to be more global warming in Oslo so that we had shorter winters and longer summers. The reality of course is that global warming will lead to cooling in some parts of the world due to the changes in weather patterns caused by the melting of the polar ice caps. Who knows where it will all lead or end? As one of my friends in the garden says, we can talk about all the problems in the world, and there are a lot of them, but in the end, she looks forward to going home to google 'how to prune a rose bush'. That's her way of relaxing. Mine is similar; I love looking at online garden catalogs and some of the ones that arrive in the mail. I love going into garden stores to wander around. Sometimes I have specific plans about what to buy, other times no. And I do google a lot of garden-related issues; right now I'm reading about how to aerate a lawn and how important it is to do that.  

Today is one of those lovely sunny days in Oslo that foretell the imminent arrival of summer. But again, I, like the tulips, am in a wait-and-see modus. In some parts of the country south of Oslo, where there are often two growing seasons for the farmers (e.g. grains), it snowed yesterday. Luckily it didn't snow in Oslo, it only rained. The garden needs water, so I won't complain. But it seems odd to me that I leave the garden after a few hours work, come home and make myself a cup of hot chocolate--a winter drink if ever there was one. I worked for two hours cleaning and cleaning out the greenhouse yesterday, throwing away old baskets and plant containers, since it was too chilly to do anything else. I noticed that there is a different type of spider that has taken up residence in the greenhouse; these spiders look like tiny brown crabs scuttling across the floor of the greenhouse when they scurry for cover. There are not a lot of them. The usual spiders are the larger white ones with spindly legs that remind me of daddy-longlegs; they run away at the slightest sign of trouble. There are also the pill bugs that spend most of their time hiding; you find them in the compost bin if you turn the contents, but also under watering cans and the like in the greenhouse. They eat decaying plant matter, which is a good thing. I've also begun to turn the earth in the planting beds; there are a lot of big earthworms this year. During the few warm days we've had, the bumblebees and honeybees were out foraging for pollen. The insects are doing their jobs, and the garden underground is teeming with life. The garden is just waiting for the 'go' signal so that the plants can bloom and do their jobs. 

What a difference a week makes

What a difference a week makes! This is how the garden looked on March 29th--still a lot of snow on the ground and ice patches here and there. Pretty, but I was getting impatient because I wanted to get started in the garden. As luck would have it, we've had nothing but sunny and warm days this past week. So the snow and ice are gone. Next week it's supposed to rain every day, so I'm glad I used this week to rake leaves and dead plants and fill the compost bin with them. I'll have a lot of good compost to add to the soil in the autumn. 

The snowdrops are blooming and the crocuses, daffodils, grape hyacinths and tulips are starting to poke their heads up from the soil. Spring is here, and soon it will be time for planting this year's vegetables and flowers. 

And this is how it looked yesterday, April 7th--

April garden update

Today, the first day of April, was an absolutely beautiful day in Oslo. No joke (since it's April Fool's Day); the temperatures were in the forties, the sky was blue and cloudless, and the sun shone down and warmed everything it touched. That's a good thing, because the garden has gotten a late start this year due to all the snow and cold we've had. I cannot remember a winter during the past thirty years that has had so much snow as this year's. There are still snow patches in the garden, and ice in the places where the sun hasn't reached yet. But if we have a week with the temperature we had today, the snow and ice will melt and we'll be on our way toward a real spring. And from what I can see of the weather forecast for the next week or so, no more snow is predicted, thankfully. I hope that is the case; you never know. 

I sowed out seeds in the greenhouse this past Wednesday and Thursday--pumpkin, zucchini, cucumber, cherry tomato, sunflower, cornflower, pot marigold, nasturtium, and rose mallow. I will sow out string bean seeds on Monday. I decided to sow out now rather than wait two more weeks. The greenhouse is nice and warm during the day, even though temperatures at night still dip to around freezing. But the seed containers are on raised benches, nowhere near the ground. So they'll be fine; that has been my experience in previous years. Some of my fellow gardeners call me an optimist because I sow out so early. But last year I waited too long--to mid-April--and the vegetable plant seedlings were a bit too small when I planted them outdoors. So it took time for them to grow large enough, which delayed their vegetable production. 

When the ground is completely ice-free and I can work the soil, I'll plant my seed potatoes. That will probably be somewhere around mid-April. I've already started cutting down and removing dead stems and leaves, and I've pruned the rose bush that adorns the garden arch, as well as the ninebark tree near the greenhouse. I'm hoping that pruning the rose bush will force growth on the stems growing on the sides of the arch so that when the roses bloom it doesn't look like a bouffant hairdo at the top of the arch--piled high on top and little on the sides. 

The snowdrops are finally blooming, and the grape hyacinth and daffodils are starting to come up. I haven't seen any crocuses yet, but I guess they'll bloom soon. I'm looking forward to my forsythia blooming; I have three bushes planted in different areas of the garden. They are one of my favorite spring flowers. The cherry tree and lilac bushes survived the winter, as did my wisteria and magnolia tree. The berry bushes always do well--black currant, red currant, blueberry and gooseberry. They come back each year without fail. 

I'll post some photos soon. In the meantime, for all the gardeners I know and for the gardeners who read my blog--happy gardening!

The Gifts of a Garden

My gardening philosophy

I saw this today and had to laugh. This is my gardening philosophy exactly and my standard comment to my fellow gardeners in the allotment garden when we discuss what plants have grown and thrived and what plants haven't. The quote is by Janet Kilburn Phillips, an environmental educator, gardening expert and coach (Plant Harmony); I am not sure who took the photo. 

 

The Gifts of a Garden is available on Amazon

My latest book, available on Amazon in three formats: e-book, hardcover, and paperback. 

The Gifts of a Garden: De Angelis, Paula Mary: 9798435180572: Amazon.com: Books

(front and back covers shown; design by Paloma Ayala) 

Late summer garden--photos

As promised, some recent photos of my garden (August and September). Autumn is approaching here in Oslo, and gardening season is winding down. I went to my garden today after having been traveling for almost two weeks. The summer asters are in full bloom, the climbing rose bushes have bloomed for the second time this summer, the coneflowers look beautiful (see photos), likewise (some of) the gladiolas (see photos). The giant sunflowers grew very tall while I was away; their height is impressive, at least eight feet (see photos). The other photos were taken during mid- to late-August, when gooseberries, red currants, black currants and raspberries were harvested. The Folva potatoes were harvested at the beginning of September. 

yellow coneflowers

coneflowers and gladioli

giant sunflowers

the (mostly) perennial garden

garden project for this year--assembling and painting a garden bench

a lot of zucchinis (as usual)--they're easy to grow

a good year for gooseberries

pumpkins 

a lot of potatoes (one type--Folva)

Autumn is almost upon us (saying goodbye to the bumblebees)

The garden has an autumn feel to it these days. Outdoor temperatures are still around sixty-five degrees or so during the early to mid-afternoon, but once evening comes, it's chilly in the garden. And it gets dark much quicker now. I had my annual garden party for my friends/former colleagues this past Wednesday; it was a lovely sunny day but after 7 pm it got very chilly. We had a very nice time, and when they left, I cleaned up and headed for home (around 9:15 pm), at which point it was very dark in the garden. I kept expecting to meet the badger family that lives somewhere in the vicinity of the Gamle Aker church; I can always tell when they've visited my garden because they dig little holes in their hunt for insects and worms to eat. I don't find them bothersome, but they have been known to kill and eat chickens, which is exactly what happened recently to another allotment gardener who kept hens. We are not allowed to have hedgehogs in the garden for the same reason--badgers. 

Autumn is also the time of year when dead worker bumblebees are more visible, I assume because their lifespans are so short (about two to six weeks). That means many of them have been working beside me in the garden since late July/beginning of August. I have grown to love bumblebees; I call them the jumbo jets of the garden, as I've probably alluded to before. They are so bulky compared to honeybees and their buzz is louder. You hear them coming. There were many more bumblebees than honeybees this year, probably because the garden no longer has honeybee hives. Bumblebees are great little pollinators, and I love seeing my garden flowers covered with them. 

Last night, near my greenhouse, I came upon a rather disoriented bumblebee on the ground. She was clearly struggling to walk and fly. I picked her up carefully, put her in my palm and patted her gently. She clung to my fingers for dear life. I knew she was dying, so I found a pumpkin flower and placed her gently inside it and placed the flower under some larger leaves so she wouldn't be disturbed. I gave her a few drops of water and left for the evening. Today I came to the garden hoping against hope that she had only been tired and had flown away, but that was not to be. She had died. All part of the natural cycle of life and death, I know, but the death of this little creature tugged at my heart. I buried her in the pumpkin flower in the coral bell patch. I wish it wasn't so sad to lose them. Bumblebees work so hard collecting pollen that they bring back to the hive, they do their jobs, they don't live long, and they often die alone outside the hive. Not much of a life really. Perhaps that's why my heart goes out to them. I am always gentle with them, and I love watching them flit from flower to flower. Their little lives are precious to me, as are the lives of honeybees and most of the other insects in the garden. 

Who knew that having a garden would change me the way it has? I am sure other gardeners feel as I do. I don't want to kill insects for no reason. I don't want their needless deaths on my conscience. I know there are some readers who will ask me if I feel the same way about hornets and wasps. I don't know, honestly. I do know that I don't kill yellow jackets if I can help it. I swat them away but I don't kill them. They are irritating, but they are also little lives. They buzz around in search of food, and it's not their fault that nature outfitted them with a taste for barbecued meat. Trying to peacefully coexist with nature's creatures is the best policy in my opinion, although I know that it isn't always possible to do so. But we can do the best we can to not destroy their habitats, and in the case of bees and other insects, to create gardens that are inviting to them. Gardens that welcome their presence. 

Garden update--August 2022

June and July were busy months in the garden. I wasn't there as often as I would have liked due to vacation and family get-togethers (all enjoyable), but when I was there I was efficient. My project for this season was to rearrange/transplant many of the perennials from the main garden to other locations because they have grown so much in the past few years and need more space and increased air circulation. The hostas especially had grown quite big, but they were almost not visible because they were located at the back of the main garden behind some taller plants. Since I had to take up all of the strawberry plants this year to plant new ones, I decided to allocate some of the 'strawberry patch' space (two patches separated by the entrance path) to the hostas. When I took up the four hostas, they naturally split into three plants each, so that I was able to plant twelve new plants, six in each patch. They are doing quite well and are flowering. I also bought eighteen new strawberry plants and divided them between the two patches; I planted them below the hostas. They too are spreading out and doing well. I also transplanted an astilbe (false goat's beard) as well as a forsythia bush, and both are doing well. Online gardening sites don't recommend transplanting in the summertime, probably because temperatures are too warm. They suggest the autumn for such activities, but here in Oslo the summer temperatures have hovered around 70 degrees Fahrenheit. That is an optimal temperature to do transplanting; warm enough without being stifling hot for the plants. I water well before and after transplanting and for at least a week following transplanting. We've also had quite a bit of rain during early August, so that helped the plants to adapt and thrive in their new locations. 

The crane's bill plant had also become quite large and was starting to crowd the nearby Phlox and peony plants in the main garden. So I took it up and divided it in half, planting both halves along the street fence. The other crane's bill plant was transplanted from its location at the entrance garden arch to a place further along the path fence. All of them are doing well. 

I bought two new Phlox plants, a new astilbe, and a new coral bell plant--all perennials--and filled in the empty spaces with them. I really like Phlox plants; they come in many colors and have a lovely mild fragrance that you can smell when you get near them. I divided the summer aster plant in two and planted both in the main garden where the hostas used to be. One of them is flowering and the other is on the verge of doing so. 

Of six pumpkin plants, three have produced pumpkins of a good size. A fourth plant has just started to grow a pumpkin, but the growing season is winding down here, so I'm not sure how big this pumpkin will be. It was a banner year for raspberries, gooseberries, black currants and red currants. Ditto for the zucchini plants--how many zucchinis they produce--it's amazing! The cucumber plants have given us some nice-sized cucumbers, and the tomato plants are loaded with ripening tomatoes. My string bean plants did not do very well and I'm not sure why. Likewise my gladiolas; some have flowered, most have not. Those that have bloomed have 'faded-looking' flowers, white at the edges. Strange. I've never seen that before. I googled it and the online info said that the corms could be too old. Or that thrips may be a problem (but I haven't seen any sign of these bugs). My blackberry bush is not productive either, but it doesn't appear to be suffering from any infestation. Only one of my two American blueberry bushes produced berries, which I don't understand and have to read more about. The Norwegian blueberry bushes both produced berries. Both yellow coneflower plants are big and beautiful; I love them. The rhododendron bush has also grown larger this year; it's been more or less the same size since we rescued and planted it in the garden back in 2016. The magnolia tree is starting to grow taller. But the true beauty in the garden this year was my wisteria--it is growing and expanding like crazy, and flowered early on. I cut it back a few weeks ago and it still keeps on keeping on. My pride and joy. 

I have grown very fond of ground cover vegetation--pachysandra and hostas, for example. Pachysandra grows so well in my garden and is a hardy plant. It's also lovely to look at. Hostas likewise. The bumblebees love the hosta flowers, as do the honeybees. There were a lot of bumblebees in the garden this year and that was good to see. Some honeybees as well, but not as many as in previous years since the hives were removed from the garden. The bumblebees do a great job of pollinating plants, so there's no worries there. 

My final project for this gardening season was to assemble and paint a chemically-impregnated pine wood bench that I bought from an online garden store. I painted it a forest green color and am happy with the results. Both the impregnation and the paint are designed to withstand all sorts of weather conditions, so I'm hoping that bears out. August is nearly at an end, so it's just to enjoy the rest of it, which I plan to do now that most of the heavy garden work is done. Put my feet up and read a book!

Gardening season is winding down. Of course there will be a lot to do in the garden to prep it for the winter months, so I won't be out of work during the autumn months. I've cut down the old raspberry canes already because for some reason the new cane growth for each plant has been vigorous this year. I'm not the only one who has commented on that. 

The beauty of gardening is that from one year to the next there is always something new and different to tackle, understand, accept, and work around. There's never a dull moment in the garden. There's always work to do, and when you sit down to relax, the sparrows fluttering around and spraying water here and there in the birdbath will entertain you, as will the jumbo jets of the garden (my pet name for bumblebees). Watching them land on and take off from flowers will make you smile. If I am in a bad mood before I enter my garden, I leave with a better mood, a grateful heart, and a smile on my face. Nature has a way of centering me and making me realize what is important here in this life. And what is important is not what society says is important, that is for certain. 

I'll post some photos of my garden in my next post. 

My new book, The Gifts of a Garden, is now published and available for purchase

My new book--The Gifts of a Garden, is now published and available for purchase on Amazon: The Gifts of a Garden: De Angelis, Paula Mary: 9798435180572: Amazon.com: Books

As the back cover of the book states--'gardening has become my passion and my form of meditation'. The text and photography in the book are my own. The book cover design (front and back) as well as the book's layout are the work of the talented graphic designer (and my friend) Paloma Ayala. I love the front cover design and I know you will too. You can find Paloma on Instagram at @paloma.photo.nature

Garden update--photos

Here are some recent photos of the garden, which is always a work in progress that incorporates new ideas and new additions to the garden family.......

Wisteria growing on the fence

Wisteria flower in bloom--a heavenly fragrance

The new addition to the garden family--a cherry tree

The forsythia bush blooming happily

The magnolia tree also blooming 

How the garden looks behind the greenhouse and the adjoining fence

Another forsythia bush planted between the birdbath and the cherry tree

the part of my garden facing my neighbor's garden--separated from mine by a large trellis

facing the greenhouse

pumpkin and zucchini beds covered by fiber cloth