See How The Garden Grows

I'm feeling a bit like the sorcerer's apprentice. I keep acquiring things to put in the garden. Plants, plants, more plants! I am not alone. Suddenly there are native plant sales, neighbourhood plant swaps, and a mini-garden centre that has sprung up at the corner store. There is a fevered quality to gardening in Canada, perhaps because the growing season is so short and concentrated; it doesn't really start until late May. A couple of weeks ago I cycled over to Christie Pits Park to attend the North American Native Plant Society's annual sale, with the main aim of collecting some milkweed seedlings for a friend. I came back with not only the friend's baby milkweed (good for attracting monarch butterflies, yet another species whose population is declining) but several more specimens to wedge into my own pocket-size patch. They included a small tree. It was an interesting bike ride homeward, accompanied as I was by a number of children and the dog. We stopped, precariously, for ice cream on the way:

The tree, a grey dogwood, is now the centre-piece of the back garden, along with a little stone path, built by eldest child, which is bordered with sweet woodruff.

Last weekend our neighbourhood, Harbord Village, held a plant-sharing event, in which neighbours with too many plants donated to those of us in need. I turned out to need strawberries (ordinary and wild), nasturtiums, sweet peas, and a wild yam vine. Also I learned about burying sprouted potato chunks to improve the soil. We have tried to plant mostly native species, both for political correctness and for ease of maintenance. (It's so nice when those two things coincide.) That said, I have been yearning for bamboo, of which I had a small collection in England. It was difficult to find any here in the True North (England, at higher latitude, must be the False North), but I finally sourced some specimens at a mega-garden-store way out to the west of the city. After clarifying to the sales staff that I wanted actual, live, growing bamboo plants, not bamboo canes, I took the plunge and bought one, genus Fargesia, the favoured food of giant pandas. According to the pot label and a gardening website, it is hardy enough to survive in Toronto, but we shall see. Planting it is my expression of hope that the next winter can't possibly be as tough as the last one. Right? Right? To be on the safe side, we won't adopt a panda just yet.

In the front yard, with its little expanse of overgrown lawn, we are trying to attract hummingbirds and butterflies, although not with milkweed, as it's poisonous to dogs. And our dog, sure as shootin', would try to eat it, sweet foolish beast. I wonder whether a panda would have more sense.