False Positive

Last year I had spread a package of Chocolate Lily seeds amongst the shady and protected areas between the ferns. The Chocolate Lily is a very native species to the west coast and very difficult to find. So I was very excited when I discovered a sprikle of shoots popping up all around last year's dead fern fronds. But now that the leaves have spread out, they are not the wisps of the Chocolate Lily, but the broad and flat panels of False Lily of the Valley.

I really shouldn't complain, because a garden can never have enough lilies, in my opinion. But False Lily of the Valley? They're just so...common(!). Big sigh.

Rufous Hummingbird

A rufous hummingbird visited the red-flowering current breifly today. It's a cold and rainy April day, the grey skies making the bright pink flowers attractive. It landed on a branch for a moment and then took off.
It came back minutes later and got busy with the flowers. Then it whirred off.

It's a windy and blustery day. It feels as though the hummingbird got blown in a little earlier than it expected. But the expert sources I consulted (BC Royal Museum) assures me that it's just the right time for the females to be showing up, arriving here on the coast 3 weeks later than the males, who arrive in March. I wonder if this one is a male, considering it's dark red crest?

Skunk Cabbage

The boggy wetlands of the westcoast are marked by the musk of skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanum) in the spring. In the soggy and darker parts of forests and in the shaded estuary sloughs, the tiny yellowy-green flowers cover a spike that is enveloped by a bright yellow bract.

I bought these three plants from a fund-raising Native Plant sale at the Richmond Nature Gardens five years ago. I planted them in the wettest and shadiest part of the garden. A couple of years ago, my kids thought it was best to pick the flowers as soon as they opened so I was never able to enjoy them. And then we had quite a dry period last spring so that the flowers dried out and died off quickly. They are doing well this year.

I laid stones on top of the soil to improve the retention of moisture. Actually, I'm really not sure if the stones work, I was just copying the ecology of where the plants grow in nature and it seems to work.

Degrees of Nativity

I've just pulled out two native Rosa pisocarpa, or at least that's what I was told they were, because they had taken over the tiny space in the front and were extending their long arms into the pathway of unsuspecting pedestrians. I felt like a traitor. I did leave a much slower growing, very compact Rosa nutkana though.

This experience makes me wonder about purity and native gardening. I'm thinking of replacing the two with a rugosa, which originates in North Asia. In fact, I'm lusting after a rugosa, its scent is heavenly and attracts swarms of bees. I guess I'm not a purist when it comes to native gardening. Perhaps I should change the title of the blog?

I can approach this issue from different angles: if we want to protect the diversity of local ecologies, we have to allow them to thrive and restrict the introduction of harmful foreign species. However, if we want to encourage the evolution of diversity, the introduction of the foreign species allows for mixing. I think it's when we push monoculture, when we suppress native species, promote introduced species, and allow those introduced species to replace the native species that we run into danger. Large agrei-businesses see that they can dominate by heavily marketing a certain aesthetic, and that aesthetic works its way into the common vocabulary so that it seems 'normal'. It's 'normal' that roses no longer smell, that they grow in neat bushes, and that they require a great deal of pesticides in order to thrive.

I guess I'm a liberal gardener - I'm working native plants into the mix but also diversifing with plants that also fit with the natural ecology of my garden (acidic, sandy and boggy soils, soggy winters, mini-droughts during summer).

Upstairs view

I was sitting at my kitchen table which is on the second floor of the house. A top branch in the cedar hedge that seperates by house from Jim's was moving in the opposite direction as the others. An extremely localized micro-climate? A bird, maybe? The branch waved back and forth vigorously. And then it stopped. After some minutes, it started again. I moved to the window above the kitchen sink which was directly across from this strange branch. A nose needled its way amongst the branches. A blur of brown and black fur. But I didn't think that the lazy cats in my neighbourhood, the ones that don't even bother to bury their mess but just dump it on top of my bulbs as if waiting for some congratulatory praise, I would never have thought that this lazy bunch would have made their way up such a dense and dangerous hedge. But I was mistaken. The tell-tale fuzzy brown and black striped tail whipped across amongst the branches. I clapped my hands and it stopped and peered across at me for a moment, while it listened for the source of the sound. Funny raccoons!

I wonder if it was making a nest there. Jim told me that he found a huge wide nest last year at the top of his back hedge, and guessed it belonged to the raccoons. I thought that raccoons preferred more hidden locales. I suspect that it might have been raiding a bird's nest however. I'll keep my eye out for it as I wash the dishes.