Just a reminder to anyone in the Toronto area on Sunday April 25th, that my garden is open to the public as part of Open Gardens Toronto. Check the link or email me for details.
Wow, just missed visiting you by a week, just got back from a trip down east. Those three containers are great, really tough finding great pots like those in Calgary.
Good luck with the Open Day. A propos of animation, I can recall seeing wonderful abstract animations made by scratching exposed film, which bore the legend, Film Board of Canada. It's a terrific medium and very powerful.
Hi Gardener, Too bad you can't make it on the 25th. However please contact me if you're in Toronto in the future, I'd be happy to show you around the garden.
Thanks Is, Interesting that you should mention the NFB. Did you know that the first commisioner and champion of the Board was John Grierson and that the genius behind the scratched on film animation was Norman Mclaren, both Scotsmen!
Hi Mothernature, Thanks for the good wishes. Just checked out your site, and see we grow some of the same plants ( except that you are a few weeks ahead of me). I also have Trillium, Dogwood and white Dodecatheon.
John Grierson hosted a TV programme when I was a tot, showing these and other short films, including many political cartoons from behind the iron curtain. He seemed a very wise old chap to me. Hope you're now tired but happy after your Open Day.
Actually, my Open day is next Sunday. This ffrom Wikipedia: "In 1945 Grierson was dismissed from his post as Commissioner of the NFB after allegations of communist sympathy regarding several of the films the Board had produced during the war. Following his dismissal, and the dismissal of three of his coworkers Grierson returned to Scotland. From 1957 to 1967 Grierson hosted a successful weekly television program on Scottish television, This Wonderful World, which showed excerpts from outstanding documentaries. In 1957 he received a special Canadian Film Award." [edit]
For a person visiting San Francisco from "The Great White North", one is struck not only the weather but also by the plant life that flourishes in this ideal mediterranean climate. I've just returned from a week in this lovely city, and again I was impressed by the quality, variety and creativity of gardening that I found there. In this post I am paying particular attention to the gardens I found in the front gardens which often overflowed onto the sidewalks and boulevards. Many of the plants that I saw there are the same that I grow outdoors and have to move indoors from November to April. And since the San Francisco plants are grown in the ground they are huge compared to my container grown collection.
Last year I had a rather autocratic message from the UK suggesting that my love of limey, gold and chartreuse plants could lead me down the path to "brassy" tastelessness.
I bristled at this, but tried to ascertain whether this was a fair comment. My critic, perhaps had not taken into account that I live in a completely different environment from her, and that the quality of light and extremes of climate affect our reaction to colour in a different way.
In our hot, humid summers and brilliant sunshine, I find that these yellow/greens are actually cooling and rather than being strident, are very subdued and complimentary to other colours in the garden.
Well, judge for yourself. I'm showing here an arrangement of plants at my front door, which I find very pleasing, A cooling vignette in the last few days of a very hot summer.
Plants at my front door.
Durantia, Angelonia 'Purple Stripe' and purple Callibrachoa.
Coleus 'Fishnet Stockings...
Comments
A propos of animation, I can recall seeing wonderful abstract animations made by scratching exposed film, which bore the legend, Film Board of Canada. It's a terrific medium and very powerful.
Too bad you can't make it on the 25th. However please contact me if you're in Toronto in the future, I'd be happy to show you around the garden.
Interesting that you should mention the NFB. Did you know that the first commisioner and champion of the Board was John Grierson and that the genius behind the scratched on film animation was Norman Mclaren, both Scotsmen!
Thanks for the good wishes. Just checked out your site, and see we grow some of the same plants ( except that you are a few weeks ahead of me). I also have Trillium, Dogwood and white Dodecatheon.
Hope you're now tired but happy after your Open Day.
"In 1945 Grierson was dismissed from his post as Commissioner of the NFB after allegations of communist sympathy regarding several of the films the Board had produced during the war. Following his dismissal, and the dismissal of three of his coworkers Grierson returned to Scotland.
From 1957 to 1967 Grierson hosted a successful weekly television program on Scottish television, This Wonderful World, which showed excerpts from outstanding documentaries. In 1957 he received a special Canadian Film Award."
[edit]
I'll look forward to that.