esther's blog

It's hard camping at the usual campgrounds. Maybe if you live in the city it feels like you are 'getting away from it all', but when you live out in the boonies, like outside Kerwood (pop. 200), you don't want to go to a bush where you are forced to be 20 feet from other grumpy people's tents and conversations. So for the second year, we headed up to Algonquin, where you canoe away from facilities, roadways and plug-in coolers. Read entire article »

A second day at the Pinery, at the southern tip of Lake Huron. First hike of the morning is to the Black and White Oak Savanna (apparently one of the rarest habitats in North America) and the dunes. It is a 2.3km circular trail, with the option of shooting off for a 1km hike through the dunes halfway through the loop...who'd say no to another trip to the beach?

This was a beautiful walk, especially early in the morning before anyone else was on the trails.

The heated greenhouse is almost empty. We leave the plastic on the hoops and clear out all the newly propagated material into the uncovered holding houses.

This place is a burning sauna in the summer - you kind of hold your breathe - run in and get what you need - and run out. Read entire article »

The last two weeks in the garden have been all blue, the mystical colour that everyone wants...and the gentians haven't even started to open. A plant people are reluctant to grow is the blue corydalis. I remember the days when my dad badly wanted blue corydalis (years and years ago), and as a rough rule of thumb he had to kill it 3 times or so before he had success. My guess is it has nothing to do with how he grew it becuase they are still given the same treatment - most likely it's just the species. Now we have seedlings of varying shades of blue scattered all over the garden.

This one's actually named: Corydalis turcz. 'Gorin', not some bastard child of the garden. To the left and below are most likely straight c. turczaninovii.

We live in an area that some call "the barren wasteland." Flat cash crop land that is thankfully interrupted with a small bush (woodlot, for you Americans!) here and there . The odd ditch, or maybe a river is a novelty.

Not that this bothers me...I kind of like it (or am comfortably used to it). It's small town rural Ontario, and so are the people - Alice Munro's short stories nail it good. Read entire article »