And looking just as lovely as last year Wendy. Will never ever get bored with seeing these in that wonderful scene. Love it.
We went on a beautiful hike at Middle lake yesterday looking for orchids in Bow Valley Provincial park - near Canmore, Alberta. So happy to see these 5
Here are some shots from Nitobe Memorial Japanese Garden last Thursday. My friend mentioned that every vista is supposed to be a beautiful composition.
I don't usually go for riot of colour plantings, but this Park Board display along English Bay is very eye-catching. We had one raindrop today. I hope another one fell here, two blocks from me.
"Guerilla garden" : I like the idea, and the alliteration too. We don't have an equivalent in French, I think. Perhaps l'Office Québécois de la Langue Française will coin a neologism, but so far, I only got this reply : Aucune fiche ne contient l’objet de votre requête. But I know that some in Paris for instance plant herbs or vegetables wherever they can find a place. We tend to borrow a lot of words from English, sometimes it's a form of snobbery (a lot of people say "challenge", when "défi" means exactly the same). But most of the time it's because they're shorter than in French. Here "Guerilla garden" is a long phrase, but "Jardin guérilla" ou "Guérilla d'jardin" would sound quite odd. What's more the idea of "Guerilla" implies a conflict, and even a form of violence, which is, to my mind, totally contrary to the ideals of thos who just plant seeds where no one cares in fact. I'd really like to know how we could express the same notion in French... ;°)
The conflict is there, in the encroachment on land that one does not own. Usually, no-one cares in fact, but sometimes the garden disappears. One happier result was a guerilla garden on an empty lot in my neighbourhood that has been turned into a community garden (in which people sign up for small plots). I'm a bit unclear on whether it's city property. I'm almost certain that it's temporary. Do you have a term for appropriating (taking ownership of) something that doesn't belong to you?
I used to think myself an anarchist, not a communist or even a troskyist like many of my friends. "Property is theft" was my motto when I was 15 or so ;0) Yet, because of my education, I never ever stole anything. But planting seeds in places that belong to no one, what's the problem anyway ? As long as it can benefit someone, and doesn't harm anybody, what's the f...problem ? I still have a strong penchant to the Makhnovist ideology, though I'm now an old bourgois. I got married, had children, bought a house, forged more and more links to my chains, and became to like them, or think I would be unhappy without them... The kind of song I'd like the people who will attend my funeral to listen to. I can imagine the look on the face of some who will feel obliged to attend :
That's a wonderful recording by Jacques Marchais. I had to look up the Wikipedia article on the Makhnovist movement, which I knew nothing about. Here is an article on Guerrilla Gardening: Guerrilla gardening - Wikipedia, giving notable examples from several countries, including one in Vancouver. There nothing mentioned in France - something for you to take on, perhaps.
I should just mention that we had several hours of rain on Friday night and Saturday morning. It seemed like good rain - not so hard all at once that the just ran right off, but enough to sink into the ground, which still looked moist today.
One of my sons spent a year in Portugal. He wanted to make a rooftop garden at the top of his building, but the owner refused. There are some initiatives in France but apparently they are not as popular as in other countries. I recently saw a report on people working with kids, they showed them how to make "seed bombs" : moist balls of earth and flower seeds that they throw wherever there is a place where they can germinate. Not vegetables, but I'm sure there are some people who do that somewhere. I also tasted some wine made from a "vineyard" that is planted on top of the building of my former union in Paris, just at the bottom of "Parc des Buttes-Chaumont". There used to be vineyards there until the 19th century. The wine was as good as any wine "from various countries of the EU"... ;°) There are also lots of beehives on rooftops, in Paris, in Orléans, and I suppose in other cities : the air is less polluted than at street level, and most cities here now use no, or very little pesticides. But that's a good idea for a pensionner with a lot of time on his hands like me. Waliking is also a very healthy activity, so that an opportunity to spot the places that can be used. Next year, maybe...
I should remind people that last year's Featured Plants in August 2020 in the Neighbourhood - UBC Botanical Garden blog is still useful this year.
Here is a Solanum dulcamara climbing a street-tree pine in the Kitsilano neighbourhood. These are supposed to have at least 25 common names in English; I don't know what it's most commonly known as here.
This is new to me, and surprising - a pepper, Capsicum annuum 'Black Pearl'. I didn't even realize that I'd got a photo of the peppers (4th photo). It's at the Park Board Office in Stanley Park, next to a Centennial Plaque.
The building that has the Taiwania posted last winter also has a group of what I assume are Musa basjoo, the Japanese fibre banana, one of the most cold-hardy bananas. According to Banana Plants in BC - BCLiving, "Almost all of the fibre bananas on the coast today are pups of a mother plant belonging to longtime Vancouver landscaper Gerard Pury." These are on the south-west side of the building, right up against the building. They have been there for many years - the current volunteer gardener has only been looking after them for four years. They never really ripen, and the referenced article says they are unpalatable. I was told that they would be happy to give away the three new pups (last photo).
I didn't take a habit photo of the many passionflowers on this vine in a laneway in the Kensington-Cedar Cottage neighbourhood, and a few fruits, which my friend said she doesn't remember seeing here before. They were strange, though - like hollow rubber balls, very light in weight, and easily depressed with my thumb, though that's not so evident in the photo. I assume this is Passiflora caerulea.
It is Passiflora caerulea and I've had my vine do the same thing on occasion (one original plant and MANY suckers). The plant is not normally self-fertile so it does need a second vine near by to be cross pollinated. The fruit is partly hollow with a small amount of dark red pulp surrounded by a large amount of seeds....and not very tasty. The native Passiflora incarnata is also known as "maypop" because of the sound made if you pop the fruit (native to the eastern US). This plant is also often used as rootstock for other passion flowers because of its hardiness.
Here are two photos I took on July 31st of the same plant - I was amazed to see the fruit! (I'm the friend Wendy mentioned)
Yay me, I inadvertently photographed this while it still has leaves. It's not helping me any, though. Sorbus koehneana in Flora of China @ efloras.org says leaflets should be 8-12 paired (but allows rarely more) and these are more like 14-15 pairs (plus the single one at the tip). I think "margin coarsely serrate except at base, with 10–14 teeth per side" should rule out this ID, with this having 4-7 teeth per side, though I see a few leaflets with 9 or 10 teeth on a side. The leaf and leaflet and petiole dimensions are in range for this ID. I think my leaves look more like what Nadia posted at Perfect time to see Sorbus fruits | UBC Botanical Garden Forums as Sorbus aff. microphylla and the dimensions are close to those given at Sorbus microphylla in Flora of China @ efloras.org. The fruits on this do not flush to pink, though. I thought Sorbus koehneana because of how similar the infructescences look in relation to the 10th photo at Perfect time to see Sorbus fruits, including the colour of the stems, though now in the photos, I see that some stems are red, others are yellow.
Here are a few in a planting at a co-op building near me. My favourite fuchsia colour combo; Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Nigrescens' (I think) - black mondo grass, with fruits; and Nicandra physalodes, which I posted last year saying it was new to me, but I see that posted it in a nursery area at UBCBG in 2015. The thing is, I can never remember the name, and it takes me an hour to find it. I know it's Solanaceae - I should just start there.
Yes, I did name it. I had already put in the required hour. :) If I had known you'd be able to tell me, I'd have just posted it!
Arboretum des Grandes Bruyères : https://en.arboretumdesgrandesbruyeres.fr/ It's a 45 minutes drive from where I live, but I started late and missed a turn. I have no GPS and I got lost in the small roads of "Forêt d'Orléans". I finally found a shop in a village where I could buy a 5€ map. I only explored a small part of the park, the "Asian garden". The visit begins with a "Jardin à la française", with Buxus (perfectly healthy !) and Taxus around a pond : When walking in the park, I saw a dog, probably the model, or his parents, for the fountain in the pond : And another metal sculpture, a tribute to a former gardener : (to be continued)
