Garden Bloggers' Fling, 2015

I'd been aware of the annual Garden Bloggers' Fling since the first one, back in 2008 when it took place in Austin, Texas. I didn't think I'd ever get the chance to go to one, but when I realised that this year's was in Toronto, I jumped at the opportunity.

I wasn't disappointed. The event was superbly well organised and in total we visited 30 gardens and parks in the three days that I attended. Those doing the optional Niagara excursion on the fourth day would have seen even more. It was a real pleasure to spend time with so many passionate gardeners and designers. I feel like I have learnt a tremendous amount and have definitely made some new friends.

It's hard to know where to begin with describing the Fling: there was so much crammed in to the three days. I'll just pick out a few themes from the 563 (!) photos I took.

There was an interesting variation of scale, from the huge formal garden of the Aga Khan Museum

 to the intimate gardens of Cabbagetown, once home to Irish immigrants.

The Toronto skyline was ever-present throughout the Fling, either up close when we headed by ferry to the Toronto Island gardens on Friday,

or glimpsed from a distance as it was from the Aga Khan Museum

and from the Hugh Garner Co-op roof garden.

This coming weekend is the Peony Festival in Oshawa, and peonies were a noticeable feature in many of the gardens we visited. From the subtle and understated,

to the bold and beautiful,

and the downright outrageous.

There were a lot of Alliums around, too,

The importance of pollinators was another theme of the Fling: we learnt about the Fairmont Royal York's rooftop garden and bee hives on Friday and at the Toronto Botanical Garden on Sunday we were told to plant up our containers to 'attract guests'  like this honey bee who was busy visiting the salvia 'May Night' at the TBG.

We saw some interesting human-made objects, too, in the course of the Fling. I completely fell in love with the reclamation work going on at the former Don Valley Brick Works, where an industrial site has been turned into a fascinating space for people and wildlife. The 'Watershed Consciousness' artwork on the site is amazing.

I also (inevitably!) loved the way that archival images have been used to tell the story of the site's past.

You don't need a lot of space to make effective use of objects. I'm not generally a huge fan of garden art (or of city skylines, now I think about it) but I did rather like this little elephant in a Cabbagetown garden.

All in all, this has to be one of the most exhausting three days I've had. It was packed full of sensory, social and learning experiences; I will be thinking about this event for days and months to come. A hearty thanks to the Toronto Fling Committee for all their hard work!

Works of art

I'd noticed signs for the Quilt Show around the county in previous years, but had never attended it before. With Mike's mum staying with us, it sounded like the sort of thing she might enjoy so we went along to it this morning.

I was amazed at the scale of the event - quilts as far as the eye could see, taking up the entire floor space of the arena in Wellington.

I know nothing whatever about quilting, but even as a complete ignoramus I could not help but be impressed at the intricacy of the designs and the time commitment that each quilt represents. They really are works of art and I have huge respect for the creators of these pieces. I loved the way that they varied from the very traditional to the more modern and abstract.

The vendors' displays were beautiful, too.

It was almost enough to make me want to take up quilting.

Ice-sketches

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know that I'm fascinated by ice formations. The first photo I took this morning was of one of the artefacts left behind by the weekend's freezing rain:

Come, let me clutch thee.

Much more interesting, though, were the live ice-pictures being created at the edge of the stream by air entering below the layer of ice. They were just mesmerising:

Temporary installation

Art Gallery of Ontario: first impressions

It's hard to do justice to a gallery or museum on a first visit - there's always far too much to see and my legs always give up before I feel I've done the place justice. My overall impression of the AGO was positive, and my response to the physical space that was the Galleria Italia (below) was one of 'Wow!'.

I had time to visit the current exhibition on the Maharajas (worth seeing for the amazing restored Cartier diamond and ruby necklace towards the end, alone (the photo in that article doesn't do it justice)), the Canadian artists section, most of the European section on level 2 and the ship models in the basement. These are watched over by a splendid lion figurehead. Which I wasn't allowed to photograph and which isn't online anywhere, so you'll just have to imagine it. You can see highlights of the Canadian Collection on the gallery's website. It's a shame that you can't click from one image to the next, rather than having to go back to the list all the time, but at least you can see some of the artworks without having to visit Toronto.

My favourite piece of art in the Canadian section was Franklin Carmichael's Cranberry Lake (1931) - the way he's captured the sun on the water and the eerie shapes of the dead trees in the foreground. In the European section the image which caught my attention the most was James Tissot's The Shop Girl
- I love the tangle of ribbons on the counter. I was also fascinated by the carved items in the Thomson Collection - some of them quite macabre, such as the rosary pendant showing a skull being eaten by worms and lizards. The incredibly intricate wooden carvings in prayer beads were also amazing - such detailed work in such a tiny space.

I paid a visit to the basement café, which was rather a disappointment after the rest of the gallery. Like having a cup of tea in someone's basement, in fact. I think they could have made it a more interesting space. But, perhaps, as so often happens, the money ran out before the basement could be properly finished. ;-)

Compost comme de l'art

This installation took me seven hours today. I'm thinking of selling it: I'm sure I put just as much thought and effort into it as many more conventional artists put into their work.

I recycled the posts and wire that the cucumbers had been grown on for two of the three sides, then filled the structure by clearing up the remains of the squashes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, corn and beans.

We needed to work on the drainage of the lower vegetable garden, after this July's tomato disaster, where the entire area became waterlogged. I realise that I've never really explained what is where in the garden/barnyard, so here is a not-to-scale diagram to record the current layout. There is a gentle slope from north to south.


Today, Mike dug a trench along the southern end of the upper vegetable garden and connected it by porous piping to the trench that he dug in the spring to the east of the lower vegetable garden. We're hoping this will divert some of the excess water away from the eight vegetable beds that are periodically drowned.


I also dug some sand into the tomato bed (the only one of the eight lower beds that's empty at the moment) to bulk it up a bit and improve the drainage. This was suggested by one of the solar panel guys (who happens to be an organic farmer), but I also took heart from reading Kate's article about using sand, even though the soil here is not clayey like hers (and the comment about sand plus limestone making concrete did give me pause, but what the hell). A big heap of fine sand was left over from the pipeline-laying that the solar panel work needed. It's been well watered by the dog, but I'm guessing that dog urine is probably good for the garden too. Sorry, was that too much information?