Darkest Night of the Year

Due to the lunar eclipse lying on one of the longest night of the year, we just experienced the longest, darkest night in 500 years last night. The sky was still dark during the 8 am tee time this morning.

This natural phenomenon makes me reflect on what our ancestors were feeling 500 years ago in 1513 when their sky also unraveled into darkness for an unthinkable amount of time with no t.v. or artificial light to distract them. At a time when King Henry VIII ruled England and was still married to Catherine of Aragon. I'm sure they would have been bewitched by the magnitude of the blackened sky. Planting, harvesting and storing crops was very much dictated by the moon in those times. Early humans noted the effect that the moon's gravitational pull had on water flow of moisture to the soil and how the moonlight effected seed germination. There are early examples of tracking the moon cycle for agricultural purposes as far back as 8000 years ago.  

The Old Farmer's Almanac has been a publication for farmers and homeowners since 1792. This valuable resource contains tide charts, planting information and weather forecasts.  This pubication gets it's weather predictions using a mathametical equation derived from sunspots, tidal activity and moon phases.  A person living in the USA that goes by the name of Caleb Weatherbee is the only person currently alive to have access to this formula (I didn't make that up).  Every year they print out an up-to-date copy to advise people of agricultural and animal husbandry needs according to Weatherbee's calculations.  Here is an example taken directly from their publication regarding some gardening practices in reference to the moon cycle. Maybe you can use some of this advise for your home garden.  Happy Moon gardening!

The Moon's phases guided many a farmer and gardener in the past, and still do today:

• Moonrise occurring in the evening brings fair weather, says one proverb, harking back to the belief that the waning Moon (full and last quarter, which rise in the evening) is dry.
• The New Moon and first quarter, or waxing phases, are considered fertile and wet.
• The new and first-quarter phases, known as the light of the Moon, are considered good for planting above-ground crops, putting down sod, grafting trees, and transplanting.
• From full Moon through the last quarter, or the dark of the Moon, is the best time for killing weeds, thinning, pruning, mowing, cutting timber, and planting below-ground crops.
• The time just before the full Moon is considered particularly wet, and is best for planting during drought conditions.

A Few of My Favourite Things

Christmas is just around the corner.  With all these raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens and brown paper packages tied up with string, I thought I'd come up with a few of my favourite things....gardening video wise anyway.  I've added three videos; a 30 Year Old Food Forest in Australia, a 300 Year Old Food Forest in Vietnam, and a 2000 Year Old Food Forest in Morocco.

A food forest is a agricultural system that is based on a woodland ecosystem.  A food forest has herbs, perennial vegetables, shrubs and fruit and nut trees growing along side each other in a self sustainable manner. It's an edible forest, hence 'food forest'.  These systems are incredibly low maintenance.  The trees lose their leaves and mulch the plants to replenish the soil.  Edible vines climb up the trees reaching for light and increasing their yield. Livestock run freely through the system and fertilize the forest floor. Food forests provide so much back considering the labour required to maintain them.  I went to a Food Forest workshop in Vancouver a few years back from BC expert Richard Walker.  He is the founder of Dragon's Eye Nursery in Grand Forks.  He hosts Food Forest Workshops in the Lower Mainland regularly, I urge you to sign up if you're interested.  They tend to sell out quickly though because of his 25 years of expertise and wealth of knowledge. His nursery is chock full of edible plants that are winter hardy to Northern BC conditions.  There is also a local nursery in South Delta called Tropic to Tropic Plants owned by Ray Mattei that has an inventory of tropical and winter hardy edible plants and trees.  One day I hope to own a piece of land to create my own food forest.  I hope you can watch these videos and be inspired by the possibilities with your own yard.

Inspired by Claude Monet

I have images imprinted in my brain of Claude Monet's paintings in watery blues and vibrant greens from the years of flipping through my Mom's art books as a child.  The movement and romance of the scenes were  recreated through Monet's impressionist strokes.  My bucket list is growing with all the beautiful gardens around the world that I plan on visiting but top of my list is definitely Monet's garden in France. Residing 50 km's North West of Paris in a village called Giverny, sits the homestead of Claude Monet. The gardens on Monet's property inspired his paintings, but his painting also inspired his gardens.  After researching this topic, I've learned that Monet was an innovative garden designer. After travelling to the South of France with Renoir he experienced an inspiration to design his gardens on his own property in Northern France to be the muse of his paintings.  Structures were installed to cast a diffused light on the surface of his ponds to capture the shape of the water lilies on the surface. Lighting and composition was integral to his art, so Monet organized the landscape on his Giverny property to create the ideal painting.

The Giverny estate is divided into two gardens; The Clos Normand and The Water Garden. The Clos Normand is about a hectare of land leading from the front door to the road.  Large rot iron arches are anchored through the center of this garden and are covered with, brambling, blooming climbing roses. The groundcover carpeting the center of the archway is a mass planting of nasturtiums. On either side of the archway a planting of orchards and ornamental trees interplanted with brightly coloured annuals and perennials illuminate the space.  Monet, the master of colour and composition, organized the plantings according to shape, colour and size of plants.  His garden design creates a very breezy balance comprising common flowers of daisies, delphiniums, lupins, peonies, holyhock and poppies with rare varieties of more unique flowers. Take a moment to imagine yourself drifting through the warm paths of rose scented Clos Normand on a Summer's day with a glass of chilled white wine in your hand.  It's enough to make you want to grab a paintbrush and canvas and recreate it, isnt' it? 



As beautiful as Clos Normand likely is, The Water Garden may be the setting of the more iconic memories of my favourite Monet paintings. Monet was deeply inspired with the gardens and art from Japan at the time.  He collected Japanese clay tiles which he used as accents around his house, as well as Asian plants often found in Japanese water gardens that he had seen in photographs and paintings. His water garden really captures the meditative principles of Japanese gardens combined with the romanticism of the French. A very uncomplicated, yet expressive design.  Monet's water gardens featured a passenger bridge, often depicted in his paintings, abundant with wisteria blooms.  Bamboo, azalea, solomon's seal, weeping willow, iris's and of course water lilies are also planted in Monet's water garden.

Yellow Blooming Magnolia

Final Episode Bearded Iris

At pond #18, I've created my own Monet inspired garden. As I was planning it out, I couldn't ignore the sensibility and simple beauty of mass plantings of water lilies and iris's igniting the landscape in the Spring then mellowing throughout the Summer months. A quiet balance of colour and reflection. Iris's are the foundation planting around the marginal garden. Native Western Blue Iris (Iris missouriensis), Douglas Iris (Iris douglasiana) and Wild Flag Iris (Iris setosa) are the mass of the selection.  Additionally, larger hybrids like 'Final Episode', 'Speeding Again' and 'Tour de France' are planted throughout.  A really generous member donated a yellow beared iris variety to the mix as well.  So Thank you!  Additional bulbs used in the planting are Indian Hyacinth (Camassia esculenta),  Hounds Tooth Violet (Erythronium 'Pagoda'), Calla lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica ) and assorted tulips and daffodils. Three yellow blooming Magnolia trees are bordering the West side of the pond and a dwarf Japanese maple on the South.  I can't wait.  In the future we plan on planting the South naturalized side with wild flowers and soft ornamental grasses on the West side to screen the pumphouse.  It should be a great show in Spring!

Wild Flag Iris

Beauty Berry

Have you ever sat through a movie that was ho-hum but temporarily captivated you with beautiful cinematography, brilliant acting from a secondary character or an unexpected plot twist?  Otherwise the movie was nap-tastic. Well, if this movie could be a plant, it would be the Beauty Berry (Callicarpa bodiniera). For the majority of the year, this insignificant plant sidles beside other plants quietly taking up room and just listening.  It may just be the kind of plant that one might not even know exists in their garden...until Winter arrives that is. As the weather cools down and plants start to lose their leaves, so does Beauty Berry. That's when this plant really shines.  As the leaves drop, all that is left are unthinkably beautiful purple berries on the bare stems of this deciduous shrub.  Basically this dowdy plants undresses to expose the most exquisitely constructed French lingerie.

You can spot two Beauty Berry shrubs at the #12 hole garden and another one at the entrance to of the Turf Care Centre. There is over 140 species of the genus Callicarpa from North America, Asia and Australia, but the most common ornamental species is bodiniera which originates from West-Central China. This medium sized shrub has a loose habit with fine leaves and small clusters of tiny flowers in white and pink. Beauty berry is from the Lamiaceae family (same family as many common herbs) and is used for jelly, wine and...insect repellent.  Fortunately, the berries of this plant are one of the last food sources for birds over the Winter, that means plenty of time to enjoy them!

Bufflehead Duck

It's a balmy minus 3 outside. The golf course is under frost delay. The air is still and the ground is frosty and stiff.  Ice rinks are developing out of the irrigation ponds and the morning sunrise has stained the sky for the last hour. It's a gorgeous Winter morning and a terrific day to spend inside writing blogs and staring out onto the frozen landscape. Last week, two friendly female members inside the kiosk inquired about the "ducks or birds" at the #3 irrigation pond. Unfortunately, I didn't know what "duck bird" they were speaking of. I was armed with the knowledge they were black and white and had short necks.  I've been piecing it together over the last week.  Fortunately, Superintendent Jason had snapped a photograph of them and uncovered the mystery for me.

It seems the Bufflehead Duck or Spirit Duck (Bucephala albeola) was paying Quilchena a visit over the last week.  These small migratory American sea ducks range in size from 13-16" long and 9.5-19 oz. The male ducks, or drakes, are larger than the female ducks with an average size of 14" long and a weight of 13 oz.  The attractive drakes have shiny green and purple feathers with white patches as contrast on the head and the body. From a distance these male ducks look black and white. The female duck is a more dowdy grey-brown with an oval white patch on the cheek. The name Bufflehead, breaking down into "buffalo" "head", refers to the oddly large balloon-shaped heads of these ducks, .

Bufflehead Ducks forage for submerged vegetation in shallow, open waters, which may be why they are so attracted to the irrigation ponds throughout the golf course.  These ducks have vigorous appetites though. They dive for aquatic crustaceans, mollusks and invertebrates. In freshwater, they eat flies, larvae, zooplankton, clams and snails. In saltwater, they consume shrimp, crabs, snails, mussels, herring eggs, ratfishes, etc. Hungry little guys!

The interesting fact about this species of duck is they live in tandem with the Northern Flicker bird. They migrate in close proximity to these woodpeckers because they nest in the tree cavities that have been carved out by them. In fact, their bodies have evolved their small size to fit into the small nesting cavities of these birds. This relationship of dependency is referred to as metabiotic. The last few weeks I have been noticing small flocks of the Northern Flicker birds foraging for insects on the ground around the golf course and it has seemed to be perfectly timed to the appearance of the Bufflehead Duck.

Bufflehead ducks may not have roamed the Earth as long as Buffalo. But, there is recorded history that they have been around for at least 500,000 years.  And, there was a fossil found in California that resembles a bufflehead that dates back to two million years ago.  That's one  huge Family tree!  Sadly though, these birds are at risk due to hunting and forestry.  In order to preserve their legacy, Naturalist suggest installing Northern Flicker sized bird boxes for them to nest in. Not only are these ducks ancient, beautiful, buoyant, hungry and resourceful. They also adorn the Coat of Arms for the coastal town of Syney, B.C. Many reasons to protect these precious ducks.

A Quick Season

It's been a while since I've written anything on this blog...eight months to be exact.  I thought I would take the time to reflect on this year so far.  First things first - what a great Summer!!! I feel like everyone's Vitamin D has been replenished and they may be emotionally prepared to say goodbye to Summer soon. I can feel the season coming to a close when the school supply flyers make an appearance on my doorstep and the days grow shorter.  It's been a short season. I came back to work in May after a brief hiatus. My previous work was visibly undone from the year before. The gardens were lush with weeds and the shrubs were looking pretty shaggy. But, it was a quick fix with the appearance of  an Assistant Gardener.  Natasha has gone back to school now, but she worked by my side up until last week. And of course, Sharon helped out when she wasn't needed in the Turf department. We made short work of weeding, pruning, planting and watering the gardens to bring them back to a presentable state. There was a few more plant enhancements at the number 18 bed, iris's surrounding the pond, and lavender near the gazebo.  But for the most part it was a time of general maintenance and a new application of soil throughout.  I haven't had much of an opportunity to come into the office and dream up new designs this year until now. There are a few exciting ideas running through my head.  I'll post information as soon as I finalize the designs and get the go-ahead. Fall clean up should be starting any day now (depending on what the weather wants to do..!?).  It's almost time to harvest those pumpkins, make a batch of pipping hot apple cider and start putting those plants to bed for the year.

A Serengeti Sunrise Subzero Style

Here is the gorgeous view from the South East corner of the golf course this morning.  The sun started peaking out of the horizon in subtle shades of pink and blue. A few minutes later the horizon started to erupt into vibrant shades of orange and yellow.  The sky became so intense at one moment that it started to resemble the Serengeti expanse.  This is about the moment that Josh started to belt out the chorus of The Lion King and resembling Simba running to the top of Pride Rock, Josh ran onto the berm near the Turf Care Centre to snap this shot.   Perhaps, we're all a little sun deprived here but this seemed like a moment worth encapsulating.  I hope you were all able to enjoy this sunsrise from a window near you.