School Garden Chores

The bumble bees were sleeping in this morning when I went to water the school Art Garden. Sadly, I couldn't get water to the garden because for some reason the tap is turned off, most likely due to work on the water mains by the city. On Monday I'll have to water, even if it means a bucket brigade from the kitchen sink.

In the mean time the weeds are thriving, so I put in an hour of weeding and gave myself a classic weeding blister in the middle of my palm under my glove. Ouch!

This looks like a very snuggly place for a nap.

I'm thrilled the garden has become a haven for the bees.

Now that the August plants are blooming, some surprises are showing up in the flowers. Some of the rudbeckia are smooth-stemmed, like this one.

Some are hairy-stemmed, like this one and some are actually echinacea. I think that's great. I like surprises.

Most of the blue-eyed widow grass is blue, but....

this sisyrinchium is yellow and the bees love it!

August means we have some scarlet red flowers to pop out against the green foliage.

I know hummingbirds love these crocosmia, but this is the first time I've seen a bumble bee take a dive inside one.

This is from the garden created by the VSB gardeners that wraps around the school. I love the scarlet of these blossoms against the blue grey of the grass.

The thread-leaf coreopsis is blooming.

And we have some echinops, which are great plants for children's gardens. Luckily we have a summer camp using the school so they can appreciate all these August blooms.


On the way home I passed by my neighbor's spirea which is an excellent native bee plant for Vancouver.

Fall Flowers at City Hall

Captain Vancouver looks over the community garden and gives out healthy eating tips.

Meanwhile, we are harvesting some zucchinis which will be raffled off at our school tonight.

Many plants have powdery mildew now, but the lupins don't seem bothered by it.

As I was pulling out the rotting tomato plants the chickadees kept flying to the sunflowers and plucking out seeds. Can you spot the chickadee in this photo?

These tall plants are mullein in the Aboriginal healing garden.

The amaranth is such a rich color.

A very soggy bumble bee is drying out in the sun in a cosmo.

Even the syrphid flies are a bit slow this morning.

The white garden is one of my favorite spots at city hall. Let's hope the sun sticks around and creates dry conditions for seed saving.

How Big is Your Zucchini?

It's been a pleasure to help look after the school garden this summer. Yesterday I decided it would be fun to measure the zucchinis so the students could keep track of the rate of growth. This one's about twenty one centimeters and the smaller one is thirteen. Wanna lay any bets for how long they'll be in ten days? I guess I should have measure the circumference as well.


One of our sunflowers fell over so I had to cut it up to put it in the compost. I had to bring out the big tools!




We've still got amaranth volunteering from last year. They seem to germinate every week.

The lemon cucumber plant is incredibly prolific.

The tomatoes are going to ripen soon and the basil is ready to be harvested and made into pesto.

These tomatoes are definitely indeterminant and I have begun topping them to contain the growth and trimming branches to give the plants some room and circulation.

We've got a bitter melon plant in here but it was slow to bloom and I haven't seen any fruit.

Here's what these "White Rabbit" tomatoes look like as they ripen. Just in time for school!