Bursting into Bloom

Warmer weather arrived late last week, and people began thronging to the garden center to load up on their bedding out plants, shrubs and trees. In fact, we've been so busy that I haven't sewed a stitch since last Wednesday. I'm really itching to get back at it again, but since the warm weather is here, the outdoor things NEED to be done NOW!

I've finished planting onions, which were started in April. We're growing WallaWalla sweet onions for eating, and probably some sweet Spanish for storing for the winter moths. We love onions, and I use lots in my cooking.

Also planted eleven 8-foot long rows of peas, Green Arrows. When they are up and growing, we'll put up the fences for them to climb. That keeps them up off the ground, and helps keep down the slugs that love them. It also keeps the pea pods dry and clean, and makes them much easier to pick.

The Prunus family are bursting into bloom with the warm weather. Here's a view of some double flowering plum bushes in the landscape outside the back door. Just in front of them beside the little mugho pine is a new Muckle Plum that Jim planted last fall, just come into bloom. These all have blossoms before they leaf out. The pink is actually more intense than shows in the photo.

We have a lot of Schubert Chokecherry trees in our landscape. They bloom white in the beginning

of the season, then leaf out green, and later in the summer their leaves turn a dark maroon, very attractive! It's said that chokecherries make the best wine, so I tried making some one year. I guess I didn't use enough sugar--it wasn't drinkable. They are called chokecherries because they are so bitter. If you eat them, you feel as if they've choked you. (So they say, I haven't tried it.)

Spring is not early in Alberta, but when it comes people rejoice in it. The road in front of our place

becomes "jogger's alley" or "walker's row" as so many people get out to enjoy the fresh mild air. We have a short summer season, so we make the most of it.

One benefit of living this far north is the length of daylight we receive this time of year. Already the sun lingers until sometime after 9 p.m. At the latest, in the third week of June, it will set just before 10 p.m. with light lingering in the sky until at least 11 p.m. This goes by the lovely name of "noctilucence, " after the Latin words for "night" and "light."

The evening light seems especially beautiful, and often when the sun is low in the sky the colors, not only in the sky, but also across the landscape, are the most attractive, soft greens, smokey blues, and distant amethysts. The camera does a very poor job of capturing this beauty, but I can't resist trying again and again.

When we go to bed around 10, the sky is still light, and when I got up this morning at 5, the sky was lit in the east with deep colours of the coming sunrise. We live in a world full of beauty!