More Flower Photographs (Since My Mom Said She Likes Them)

When I planted a few seeds in May, I pretty much just tossed things wherever, and didn't worry much about planting the seeds at the recommended distances.  I figured if anything came up, I could just thin as necessary.  The parsley seeds in the garden turned out to be a bust, although I don't think this is my fault.  My landlady takes care of the lawn and has also done some work in the gardens--including top-dressing with a load of fresh soil directly on top of my tiny little parsley sprouts.  So no parsley.  But I have a box full of skinny little chives, and a barrel of cosmos.  The container gardening is working out surprisingly well for me.

The cosmos are a few inches high, and looked like they needed more space.  I decided to try transplanting a few of the extras into the garden (where my parsley should have been...), rather than just pulling them out.  I don't have much in the way of gardening tools, so I dug up the plants with a kitchen spoon.

This bit of ancestral silverware (the everyday cutlery at home for many years when I was little, and then I inherited it when homesteading during university) worked quite well as a gardening utensil.  And I could entertain myself taking spoon/plant pictures:

Besides putting some of the cosmos in the garden, I also planted a few in cups.  This is grade-school science project gardening, by way of a keg party:

If there are any survivors, I may try turning one into a house plant.  For now they look cute tucked on the bottom of the porch railing:

A few of the moonflowers I planted have sprouted as well, although they are really quite small still (as are the cosmos, in all honesty).  Dawson gardening lesson learned: start seeds indoors early on, or the summer will be half over before they are more than three inches tall.  Fortunately I like macro photography, and the moonflowers have great veins.

The other plants are doing well.  The garden is a wilderness of daisies--so many that they choke out all the other weeds.  But it's not all daisies.  I don't know what kind of plant this is, but it is gorgeous:

Even in bud-form it looks lovely:

There are these crazy long petals that grow off towards the back.  This is the sort of thing that will start walking around and eating us all after nuclear armageddon.

 I also really love the new foliage on this ornamental maple:

The rose is still going strong, and has put out two new blooms.  It is actually getting big enough that I think I should prune it.  Except that I am nervous to prune it.  Roses seem like one of those plants that require actual gardening technique; I'm afraid that if I prune it wrong, I'll lose the whole thing.  I'm growing rather attached--besides being so pretty, it was a present from Ben--and would hate to kill it.

His mint is still going crazy.  It's a total jungle, with the chocolate and orange varieties threatening to overwhelm the spearmint and peppermint.

According to one of my sisters-in-law, it's "big" that Ben moved his mint in, but really it reminds me more of a little kid who begs and begs and begs to get a puppy and promises that he'll feed it and walk it and brush it every day and please please please can I have a puppy canIhaveapuppy canIhaveapuppy???  Except that once little Rover is part of the family, it's Mom who ends up doing the walking and poop-scooping.  Ben has watered it a couple of times, and will sometimes make himself a mint julep, but really I'm the one responsible for the mintbaby.  It's hard to complain, however.  The watering (when necessary--we've had more than enough rain lately) is rather relaxing, and I have been drinking gallons of mint water.  So tasty and fresh!  And mojitos are definitely going to happen this weekend...

I don't know what it is...

...but it sure is pretty!  I am loving taking photographs of it all (although there are a few mystery flowers out there--I am not so good at identifying).

After a spell of hot weather in May, June has been cool, with patches of clouds and rather frequent rain.  Everything is very green, and even the seeds I planted are finally poking up through the earth.  These little green nubbins are the (particularly exciting) first signs of the chives:

There are irises in bloom:

And the formerly indoor rose is flourishing outside--not only just lots of new foliage but also new flowers in progress:

There are wild roses, too:

And there are all sorts of lovely mystery flowers.  There is a shrub covered in dozens of these tiny pink flowers:

And these are all over the place:

These yellow flowers are also on some kind of shrub:

The mint on the porch is rampant--especially the orange mint: 

And whatever this plant is, it sure has interesting foliage:

It may even be some kind of thistle; the stem was quite spiny.

There are also poppies and fireweed, and lots of daisies and columbine (maybe) and delphiniums (I think).  Also weeds.  There are many weeds.  I'd say that I would take care of that this weekend, but I did get roped into working tomorrow and I have agreed to do some writing for What's Up Yukon this summer that needs to get started this weekend and we're working on residency selections this Sunday and I have my radio show to do and a sewing challenge to live up to, plus some reading I really want to get done, so...  Weeding is a little low on the list, I guess.  However: admiring the flowers remains high on the priority list.

(Almost) Midnight Sun

It's getting more difficult to sleep every night.  I should be sewing blackout curtains and not skirts!  It's just after 11 pm and the sun isn't even behind the hills yet:

The irises that are just about to bloom are really the only midnightish thing outside right now...

More Gardening

I think I may be too impatient to handle waiting for seeds to germinate.  I only put my parsley and chives in the ground on Saturday, and am already eagerly scanning the ground for signs of life.  And agonizing a little: what if nothing grows?

On Sunday I put my moonflower seeds into the ground.  Right now it looks like I planted sticks:

And I am not sure that I am going to have much more luck than that.  In retrospect, a plant that blooms at night may not have been a good choice for a place with 24-hour daylight.  I think I will have to wait until August before I can even hope to see any blooms, and by then frost will be a concern.  Also, a little bit of reading on the internets about moonflowers leads me to think that they require rather more delicate conditions and care than I can provide.  I did put my fourteen seeds in various spots around the garden, so hopefully something will stick somewhere.

Fortunately there are enough other hardier plants already out in the garden that do just fine on their own.  This lovely poppy joined the party yesterday.

Green(ish) Thumb

I was genuinely shocked when I returned to Dawson last Saturday and saw how green everything was.  When I left the buds were barely out on the trees and while it was summer in my heart, it looked like we had a long time to go before Nature was going to catch up.  But I almost didn't recognize the place when I got back.

It's growing like mad out there.  Lovely poppies like these have started to appear in my yard:

And whatever this is, it's blooming in the garden:

I hadn't thought I would do much with the garden this summer.  While this is the first time that I've actually had my very own outdoors, I don't see myself as much of a gardener and figured that I'd be happy to just let things go (with my landlady keeping the worst of the jungle weed-whacked).  But then last weekend Ben put a big planter with different varieties of mint on the porch, and I figured that if I was going to have to water that, then I might as well add a couple of pots of things I like.

I couldn't find any basil, but did get lavender and oregano.  I also put the rosebush outside because it was getting in the way on the windowsill.  It doesn't look like it plans to bloom again any time soon, but the new foliage has an equally lovely colour.

These few pots sit at the top of a slippery slope.  On Monday my landlady's partner showed up and did all sorts of raking and tidying up outside.  The yard looked so much better, I started to think about clearing out the dead flower stalks from last year and other debris from the flower beds.  Today the weather was so fabulous, and I was revelling in having an actual real weekend, and just... kinda sorta... bought a few seed packets and spent a few hours outside making things prettier.

I'm not sure it shows, but this is an "after" shot.  While it is still rough around the edges, and I didn't do nearly all the weeding I could have, it is a vast improvement.  Besides clearing out last year's dead stuff and some weeding, I planted flat-leaf parsley in the garden, added a planter of chives to the collection by the door, and planted cosmos in a half-barrel at the end of the driveway.

Cosmos must be lovely, if even the seeds look this interesting.  I also have a packet of moonflower seeds soaking in a cup of water (as per the package's directions) and will put them out tomorrow.  I also spread around some mystery seeds.  Some kind of flower that bloomed in the garden last year had all kinds of seeds lurking in its dried out pods, so I planted those.  And I discovered wildlife in the garden, too:

I'm not sure who belongs to this cat, but he was awfully affectionate--if very dirty from rolling around in the dust underneath the bench.

I don't really have high hopes for anything I planted, and fully expect my attention to wander to other projects long before the growing season is over.  I will probably keep watering the porch plants, if only because it is so refreshing.  It was a hot hot day today, and getting my feet all went in the early evening was remarkably refreshing.  And Ben did say something about mint juleps and mojitos when he planted all that mint...

Springtime

I remember feeling an actual, genuine physical pang in my chest when I saw this post on Jane Brocket's blog.  Those crocuses--outside, in full bloom, in February--seemed like the most remarkable and beautiful thing imaginable.  On that particular day in Dawson, the temperature was hovering around -20, and I'm sure we were all walking around saying how balmy it was outside, because -20 is so much warmer than -35 or -40.  Everything here was under a deep layer of snow--but somewhere else in the world it was warm enough for flowers to be blooming out of doors!  I realize that there are many, many places in the world with quite mild and even quite hot weather in February, but seeing those crocuses... just... gave me that pang.

Fortunately, I think it is finally time to say that it's spring in the Yukon, and we've got crocuses of our own in bloom.

These lovelies grow wild on the trails around town--particularly out on Crocus Bluff, where I found these one day last week.

I particularly liked the little fuzzy ones, not yet in full bloom.  Amazing texture.

An interior view...

There is actually a lot of colour in the woods these days, even if nothing is actually green yet.  These bright rosehips from last year are all over the place, and the newest buds have the same brilliant colour.

The birch trees provide great colour and texture, too.

While not much is actually green out there, the ice on the river broke last Saturday afternoon and the bergs on the riverside are melting quickly.  This photograph is from earlier in the week, and today on my walk there was less than half the amount of ice on the far shore.

Ben bought us a little grill in Whitehorse.  He's scheming to get me to cook more dinners, I guess (and I do usually do better than hotdogs--it was a craving!).  I think it's a good excuse to stand around in the sunshine.

And if it isn't green enough outside yet, this lovely pot of miniature roses--Ben thought they would travel better from Whitehorse than cut flowers--is brightening things up indoors.

Chill Day

It's really winter up here now--yesterday and today temperatures have been around the -40 mark.  Thursday is usually laundry, but my normally infalliable 1988 Toyota Tercel station wagon, the Inconvenience, ain't goin' nowheres today.  The car was plugged in for about two and a half hours, and still no luck--just lots of noises that didn't sound like they were doing anyone any good.  I'm quite surprised; last winter I never had any trouble with the Inconvenience.  Although last winter using the car was much more optional, as I was living in a room in the hotel where I worked, and everything I could possibly need with the exception of groceries was right down the hall.  Now that I am in an adorable little cabin, I am forced out of the house much more often.  The laundromat--and my boyfriend's house--are both about ten minutes out of town, so the car is getting pressed into use much more often.  I am already planning to walk out to my boyfriend's house more often (about 45 minutes on a packed-down but not plowed trail along the highway) and suspect that I should begin being prepared to hike out to the laundromat with my big packsack instead of driving.  It looks like the boyfriend will be coming to my rescue this week.  He got his car started and, provided the transmission wants to go, I'll be able to use his old beast to run out to the laundromat and back.  As much as I hate driving his car, there is no way I can survive without laundry.  My work clothes are a mess.

This morning I met with friends for breakfast and ran some errands (well-bundled up, I assure you), and meant to head out to take care of the laundry and visit Ben in the early afternoon.  When the lack of ignition derailed those plans, I got sucked into the vortex of the couch and started internetting.  Ignoring, of course, all the chores I could do around the house.  In the process of my lookin' and clickin', I found a couple of blogs I like.  Aesthetic Outburst, Door Sixteen and The Vintage Cabin have been great eye-candy on a bleak day.  They've actually almost guilted me into working on all the things around my place that need doing--but only almost.  I am still basking in the glory of a finished project:

It's not exciting to look at but hopefully will help keep the heating bill down.  I covered the back door (currently unused), as well as the bedroom and bathroom windows with sheets of pink styrofoam insulation (which is, yes, almost the same colour as my towels; they used to be a lovely smoky purple when I bought them almost ten years ago, but in the interval have faded and I doubt I will replace them until they are worn to shreds).  The door definitely needed to be covered, and as the curtains on the windows were never so much as shifted out of the way, covering the windows as well just seemed logical.  I may cut a peep-hole into the bedroom window if it gets claustrophobic-feeling, but for now I don't mind.  There is this consolation, at least:

The Magical Mystery Plant has put out new blooms (again!), and is a welcome touch of life and colour.  I have no idea what this plant is, but it seems to be thriving under my lacksadaisical care.