2019 In Review

     In keeping with a kinda disappointing decade 2019 also let us down but did have it's moments! February was recorded as the coldest in 82 years and this cold trend continued thru April which seems to be a trend for spring in most of this decade too. We had to wait well into May to see the snow finally go for good and get a few spring flowers weeks behind normal.

These early tulips usually bloom in early April but this photo was taken mid May.

Spring begins with these grape hyacinth and tulips.

The end of May saw some rainy and humid weather, this would be the trend for the rest of the summer.

Taking advantage of some warm days, time to repot this prickly pear cactus started from seed in the early 1990's. It had been living in the same pot for the last ten years, time for a change!

Plenty of rain saw  Nose Creek rise a few dozen feet above normal, almost touching the train bridge.

Pansies loved the cool wet early summer.

This native prickly pear cactus sprouted two new paddles which grew  exponentially!

So much rain and cool weather saw mushrooms everywhere including this local "little library" made to look like a tiny house. A curious tiny mushroom almost the color of the stained wood popped up.

Vegetables struggled this year and did not do very well. What did do well was this wall flower, the thing kept growing and blooming until about the end of August.

This Oriental lily did quite well and bloomed nicely for a few weeks in the mid summer.

     Some stats from Global News on the summer; we had 71 days of rain out of (I assume) 90 days of meteorological summer, although it wasn't constant rain like previous years it was more like some rain almost every day with some sun too. The rainfall was 23mm above normal which was really bad for gardens and farmers all over the Province with late and non producing crops but was likely great for trees in the City, see, I always find a silver lining! Tornadoes recorded at 23 which is double the average which seems crazy to me as I have never seen or heard of them in our area until this century! This stormy weather also brought us 2 times the hail and wind as well. So it was a pretty wet and cool year but it did have some sunny moments which we cherished, after all Calgary is supposed to be an arid climate and the 3rd sunniest major city in North America! 

Why did I take this in portrait and not landscape? The stats show how chilly the summer was, another bad year for growing tomatoes!

In late August we took a day trip to Dinosaur provincial Park where we learned that cottonwood trees can live over 200 years and become massive. The branches seemingly split off the main trunk  as if one split a carrot into 4 and they continued to grow curling downward toward the ground.

The Red Deer River carved these deep canyons as the glaciers melted in the last Ice Age 20,000 years ago. It makes the place look like somewhere very exotic and beautiful.

I also did not know that liatris grew wild in Southern Alberta, it's smaller than garden varieties but more profuse, who knew?

Just a nice scene near the river with sages and wild cherry, badlands and cottonwood.

This was the first year I ever grew zinnia, the colours are obnoxiously addictive and butterflies go crazy over them!

The backyard by the end of August or September, everything grown to it's potential as the summer wanes.

Regular rain would wash the colour out of these black petunias turning the water dish indigo!

Found this poor dead garter snake in my park and I blame too much cycling in the area. We never allowed bikes in the dog park until recently when the City seemingly went nuts and would bend over backwards for any cycling initiative. As we learned while driving to Dinosaur Provincial Park, cars kill snakes, road signs urge drivers to "Protect our Rattlesnakes" remember where we live, there is not an abundance of reptiles this far north! As cars will kill snakes on a road so will bikes on a foot path. It's my theory and I think it's a good one!

Found this enormous mushroom in September, probably about 8 inches across.

Thought we might get through fall without a bunch of snow and cold like we have had the past few years but no. The end of September brought us 27cm of snow and as in past years it warmed a little and then snowed again, this was devastating to farmers all over the Province. It is also depressing to miss the fall colours once again as this kind of cold snap really puts an end to fall colour for the 3 rd year in a row, I feel robbed!

This is about as much autumn colour as we got in the City this year.

November and December became very mild and this picture was taken after a very unusual rainfall just before Christmas, it was pouring as if we were in Vancouver. The next day was icy and foggy.

December saw a few days of hoar frost, very dramatic on this scotch pine.

Even these humble weeds take on a magical quality with the frost.

All the best in 2020

2019, Better Late Than Never!

 

     You've likely noticed that I haven't blogged all season? One factor is that Google+ ceased to exist, I may be one of a handful of nerds who liked this service but I am not a 20 year old and I despise social media. Google+ allowed those with a specific interest to share within a group, around the world, I won't have access to such things again! The reason to pull the service was that information was being hacked (probably by Russians) which could have been solved by either asking for less information or users not answering sensitive info, I can't even recall what would be sensitive on my Google account but never put it past a Russian hacker or spy to gather info that is widely available publicly! Most people willingly put very sensitive info on Facebook and other sites for free anyway so I never understood Googles reason for this change!

Another reason was our very questionable Spring/Summer, a fairly late Spring followed by hot and cold spells all season with above normal precipitation, raining about 4 of 7 days of the week. Not very inspiring. As a fun social science side note I noticed when walking around this spring during the Provincial election that those who had election signs for the left-wing NDP often have beautiful expansive gardens for the public to enjoy while those with Conservative signs rarely have a garden at all! Go figure?, the socialists are best at beautifying a neighbourhood, Flower to the  people!!! LOL

I appreciate all my followers but I really don't know how I can expand my audience anymore with Google + gone, sometimes I would get readers from the UK, Australia and the US. Hopefully a new medium will come around soon.

     

     Canada Day fireworks started the summer off with a little rainy but warm weather.

Many stormy and rainy days throughout July.

I haven't seen this many kinds of mushrooms in Calgary flourishing but that's what happens with the rain!

Thought we'd try a greenhouse this year, ordered from Amazon. A bit of a learning curve, sometimes too hot or not moist enough or too wet but we did grow some great peppers, yellow zucchini and tomatoes!

One crowded greenhouse!

Some plants that did well with wet and cool weather. A white begonia I overwintered from last year and a pink Astilbe blooms end of August.

Annabelle Hydrangea loved the rain but often got pelted to the ground, this one is bigger than your head!

A challenge of many ageing gay men is often how fast will I turn into an old lady? Apparently this is happening to us very quickly as we become new fans of  Lobelia, Zinnia, and Geranium! If you had told me 20 years ago I would have these plants in my garden I would have not have believed you, but I guess times change, aesthetics too?

Our Aunt C mailed us some Zinnia seeds and having never grown this plant before I tried it in several spots. As with many things in Calgary they did best in pots with heavy watering every day. These flowers are at once everything offensive about 1970's colour schemes and patterns and also completly fascinating. I can't take my eyes off the nuts colours of these flowers!!!

I overwintered this Geranium 'Merlot Sizzle' because I thought it didn't give us our money's worth last summer. We just wanted a little colour hit for the front public garden but it didn't bloom much until this year. As someone who usually mocks Geraniums this is quite the thing for me. This one is so prolific and such a bright colour I like to think of it as a small Bougainvillea instead, I think I'll overwinter it again!

New to me this year; Cerinthe 'Pride Of Gibraltar'

I've seen this plant before but have never grown it, Cerinthe is from the Mediterranean and noted for it's unusual flowers and blue/purple bracts. Easily grown from seed, did very well in this pot but also did moderately well in the ground in a hot spot. I planted this with black petunia, we also had issues about petunias once upon a time and still do but we can forgive this black variety!

It is difficult to find a true black in horticulture, this is extremely close!

Close up of Cerinthe flower, difficult to capture the true colours on camera. Bees love these upside down flowers and the plant becomes quite prolific as it ages, a pair of large seeds are produced between the purplish bracts. These plants are ideal for sunny and hot areas but I found also respond well to daily watering in a pot.

The flower of Datura. I used to grow this all the time and recently managed to sprout some seeds in the greenhouse, nice to see again!

Cannas did well and fit in well with the current orange flower trend.

My collection of craziness.

The Worst of September/October

     This was an average day for almost all of September and half of October, grey, raining or snowing and 10 to 20C below seasonal averages! I love the fall season and like the song Four Strong Winds says of Alberta "weather's good there in the fall" but not this year! This year was pretty hard on everyone after 50 some days of this my emotions ranged from rage to depression, despondency, to "why has god forsaken us", and "have we died and gone to hell?". While there were the few odd days, three or four that did not precipitate, there was always more in the forecast which kept the mood at constant gloom. I blame global warming and if you don't understand the concept you're probably thinking what the hell is this guy talking about!? Well I'm afraid it doesn't always mean warmer and warmer weather in fact a warming planet will have more precipitation. Scientists have also warned us about weaker jet streams like the kind that don't move for 50 days and bring us constant cold weather, also with a warmer ocean more low pressure systems like the kind that sat over the Arctic sending us, in the prairies, very cold air. So, we've ruined the planet, I knew this would happen, it's what science was telling us along! A consequence of all this unseasonable weather was ruining crops, Alberta and Saskatchewan grow a large amount of grains for the world food supply, by the end of September only 40% of the crops had been harvested due to wet conditions. This becomes a concern when it starts affecting the food we eat, if an event like this were combined with other severe weather around the world it could start to affect the entire food supply of the planet, and that is how and why Global Warming affects us , please inform the current dim wit President!

Even though it snowed a couple of times nothing was damaged too much although we lost a lot of fall colour. The effect for plants was kinda like being in refrigeration for 6 weeks, neither turning colours or dropping leaves. More like winter on the West Coast than fall on the prairies!

This was about the extent of fall colour around here, some Manitoba Maples turned very orange this year and it must be due to the weather because this usually doesn't happen.

This Green Ash turned a brilliant yellow for a few days before freezing weather dropped it's leaves only a few days after this photo.

Many birds in my garden this fall, from several Warbler species, Oregon Junco, Wrens and this Downy Woodpecker.

An elusive Warbler, usually very difficult to photograph, I got lucky here!

And then this happened! October started with the coldest weather since the year 1900 and then it began to snow...

and snow.

Here are the stats, it was an obscene amount breaking all previous records, hmmm what did I just say about a warming planet and precipitation?

Now you know why I grow so many plants in pots, during this cold episode I moved everything I could inside, never can say goodbye!

The Dahlias in my living room continued to bloom for several weeks.

And the Ricinus looked great with the mask collection.

I took care of this hanging basket of Lobelia and Calibrachoa for my neighbours back in August when they left for vacation, I fully intended to give it back as a surprise when the weather got warm, and then I waited and waited, and it never got warm. I kept it inside for the entire cold spell and still have it now! It still looks great in November!!! Shhh don't tell them!

Here are some fun facts to peruse, cold and snow!

This is what happened to many trees, leaves turned brown from frosty days and nights and dropped all their leaves at once as soon as the storm passed.

In typical Calgary style the weather turned on a dime and the last half of October had temperatures ranging from 24 to 10C mostly sunny and above average the rest of the month. We even managed to get some fall colour out of this Mountain Ash.

 These Ornamental Kales survived despite being completely buried in a mound of snow and several freezing days and nights.

Even though we had such below normal weather and heavy snow there were a few survivors, many plants buried under the deep snow did not freeze and looked pretty good (albeit squished) the rest of the month. Trees like my Sumacs didn't really turn red or drop their leaves, some got frost damage but by the first week of November still had leaves ranging in the dark green to dark red range, they must be very confused and I don't blame them!

This Burning Bush turned a several weak colours but was still nice considering we lost almost all leaves in the snow.

Halloween turned out to be a balmy 10C, nice warm night for our area.