By Crystal Trojek – Tillsonburg Horticultural Society

Good Morning, My Garden

I was thinking this week about the arrival of fall mornings, the first time I venture out with camera in hand and think I should have worn shoes instead of sandals, and a coat. I’ve started saving newspapers to pack up dahlias, and started to consider buying more daffodils to plant. I want daffodils because they push green leaves past so much other dirty stuff in the April garden, they conquer the leftovers of the wars of winter, snowflakes fought in the air and on the ground.  Daffodils subdue the stiff and soiled old snowbanks, the soggy ground, the old battered leaves, obstruct the rivulets of melting water that pass by their feet, the garbage the wind threw their way while thoughtfully relocating a few scattered seeds from last autumn. Green, so green they are as they rise in the spring sunshine, streaking into the welcoming arms of the brightest of blue skies. Daffodils, shiny and new, looking so different than everything around them, and they don’t care. 

It takes some prolific and vibrant imagination to picture a spring garden when the dahlias tower over everything just now. Large and wearing my favourite autumn shades, I trust dahlias to outlast the autumn thunderstorms and awaken each morning still standing. Aided by some photos from the previous April, I secure a plan for the location of more spring flowering bulbs.  It’s painful to slice those wonderful sleepy daffodil bulbs with a misdirected shovel, the ones who sang so cheerfully just a few weeks ago in my spring garden, already snugly planted in the ground. I usually purchase two perfectly interesting new daffodils, calmly placing them in the car and even more subtly informing husband I will not buy any more spring flowering bulbs this year. (He knows that is a lie, even though I plant them when he is not home) I purchase pots of fall mums and asters, sprinkling large pools of colour through the garden as a fond farewell, while overhead the leaves begin to turn on the trees and we try to ignore it. A few leaves have scattered their pretty selves across the faces of mums on the barely frosted mornings, edged the sidewalk, they turn colour while we blissfully sleep. Daffodils forget there ever was a winter. Daffodils will paddle their daffodil boat far into the future days of gardening, beyond the rising and wind tossed waves of falling red, yellow, and orange leaves.

We take time touring country avenues as we often do, birding and looking for pumpkins from an enterprising young person who has set up shop by the side of the road. Every year there are more colours of pumpkins, the most interesting cross pollinated ones are purely fascinating, their design and decorating possibilities are endless. I place the last recently purchased pumpkin in the garden or on the front porch, whisper in its ear, “You are the last one I’m buying, I’ll happily keep you until you are frozen solid.” Husband always seeks to hasten the disappearance of pumpkins, “I think that one orange one is rotten.” “You can’t fill the composter with any more than five, it will be too heavy and they won’t take it.” “Two of them are buried under leaves, don’t forget them or you will have five hundred pumpkins growing in the flower bed next year.” ( I wonder what colour they will be? ) A pumpkin looks so cheerful when it first arrives in my garden, so sad as I look at it for the last time in the gloom at the bottom of the composter, sharply closing the lid like I never loved it at all. 

Autumn is a time of gathering for floral artists, my supply of such things from the natural world is often very diminished by September. Time once more to preserve autumn leaves, sort dried herbs and flowers for winter floral imagination, collect pine cones and such interesting discarded branches, bark, and sticks as I can find on an autumn adventure. Who knew the glossy chestnut could be a star in an autumn wreath? Hearty grapevine, I miss the days at the farm when I had enough grapevine in the fence row to perhaps make a rope that would stretch from here to Nova Scotia. Empty seed pods, rose hips, leaves, vines, grass, a glue gun and the front door followed by the fireplace mantel will also welcome autumn. 

There have been some Septembers when I get really depressed. I might write a lot or not at all. I might spread lyrical poetic lines of many autumn words across a page, sometimes the page stays empty. Sometimes my best writing appears in the early morning darkness before you can see if there was a frost in the garden last night. Sometimes the best stories are just buds, waiting for their turn to form a word picture. There are still lots of buds in my garden, and I don’t entertain the idea that some of them won’t make it, I believe that they will surprise me. Gardens are full of surprises every day, these are the garden days of carefully so carefully avoiding personal encounters with large spiders. 

After the sleepy, heat filled days of midsummer it is time to make some decisions and move forward again. I often decide on new directions, new projects, I pause briefly with the memories of the view of the waves spreading across the lake behind our boat for that last ride before storage, beyond the bow of our boats there are new horizons. I look at the distant shore, not the weeds that we pass and leave behind at the lake, or the faltering plants in my garden that know it is autumn. We rise in the present and walk towards the future.  

Good Morning, my garden. Hello daffodils. 

Crystal Trojek 

September 2021

Next meeting of the Tillsonburg Horticultural Society will be October 6 at 7:30 p.m., find us at the Senior Centre ~ Tillsonburg Complex ~ 45 Hardy Street, Tillsonburg (Green awning entrance) 

By Crystal Trojek, Tillsonburg Horticultural Society 

This Dahlia

There was a dahlia who lived well in the arms of the good earth. Its heart beat strong as warm summer days arrived, it met dragonflies and hummingbirds who daily kissed its bright face and green buds, it drank raindrops no matter if they were few or many. It shone in the sunlight on dew drenched mornings, as the days began to shorten. The dahlia was not afraid, it lived gratefully through every joyous minute, and often sang during hot July days with sweet words that spoke eloquently of how beautiful garden life was. The dahlia leaned on bamboo stakes when the winds came strong, when the thunder caused the skies to shiver and the earth trembled. It stood firm when lightning struck the darkened sky and separated the clouds, the dahlia was not afraid as it knew all weather was temporal. A dahlia is wise.

Occasionally birds visited the dahlias, plucking insects from its table. Birds sat on the dahlia’s leafy benches, looking for ants crawling up its thick green stems, or lost earwigs who sometimes slept in dahlia faces. Bees slept on dahlia beds, but they were much more polite visitors. Sparrows often held group meetings, young and old were the sparrows who enjoyed the sunshine and cheerful company of a large dahlia umbrella to shield them from the hot sun or a sudden rainstorm.

Birds were a friendly group in all weathers, and quite sympathetic when the frost warnings began. The night hours grew longer, the time comes when the brightest of harvest moons becomes suspect. When the dahlia plants have donated their loveliness to the last flower show table, when their best green selves have been blackened by the hard frosts, I reluctantly unearth their brown mortal tubers from my garden. A short green stem is all that remains of their summer lives. I attach labels bearing their names to the thick brown tubers, I regret occasionally wounding one with my ambitious shovel.

Packing dahlias for the winter is not nearly so glorious as planting them in the latter days of spring. In autumn I wrap each earth christened one in old newspaper, carefully bury in wood shaving filled totes, carry them down to the fruit cellar. Time, dahlias are suspended in time by their responsible owners. Christmas decor pulled out into the room, dahlias have a particular storage corner, I have concurred with them that they can read old newspapers and reminisce with nearby jars of pickles and jams about the great summer days that were theirs. Christmas is closer to the door. I ask the dahlias for the gift of little green yellowish shoots striving to pierce that old newspaper, next May when I open their boxes once more, promise me this before I turn out the light and leave each one to your restful sleep.

It is just now a fine August morning, my garden awakes in the aftermath of of a recent plentiful and life giving rainfall. The roses are striding towards their second flush of blooms, the dahlias have heard someone comment they are fifty to one odds to outshine the roses. Not me, I do not doubt them, even if I find a Japanese beetle or an earwig has set up temporary housekeeping in a dahlia blossom. I’ve never yet seen a dahlia named, “Air B and B”, but then insects cannot read. I know the days are shorter, moments are not far off when bees will seek the warmth of a dahlia heart. Frost will slip down to my garden in the wee hours of a September morning. It will walk kindly to my dahlias, for they accept today without remorse. They had yesterday, and they lived it well.

In September I will imagine some of my dahlias may make the show benches at the fall fairs, or the design tables where I blend dahlias and imagination at the competitions where dahlias strike their unmistakable mark in autumn arrangements. While they still last, they speak of autumn as the best of thesigns of the fall gardening season. I purchase a few celebratory late summer friends, short mounds of bright garden chrysanthemums and asters, or a collection of mismatched pumpkins purchased from roadside stands. As the days shorten and the garden adapts, they shine.

I should mention I never owned a dahlia during years of gardening happiness. I trusted and took note of other’s opinions of dahlias: they are too much work. “They have to be dug up every fall, if the ground freezes they’ll be toast.” “You have to start them inside, I don’t have that much space.” Or, “you’ve got to plant them all out every year, just like an annual.” “They get tall, you have to stake them or they fall over, or go down in a thunderstorm.” “Earwigs ate all of mine.” “Mine rotted over the winter.” “I bought a few of them and some didn’t turn out to be the colour on the package.” That happens with tulips, but there, we still buy more. One day I realized the answer to the question of great autumn floral material is dahlias. Flipping plant catalogue pages stopped at the dahlia section. I loitered at the newly arrived late April dahlia tubers in the garden centres, about the earliest rainbow of colour on the shelves. Thousands of inspirational little flower seed packets dimmed quickly to insignificance compared to these dahlia pictures. I held the little bag of potting mix in my hand, there is a little sprout on a tuber, that must be a sign.

I took four new dahlias to the checkout counter this year, where I enjoy helping garden centre employees learn about gardening. I once again cheerfully admitted to the student cashier, “I’m not buying anymore dahlias, and that’s the biggest lie you’ll hear all day.” “This is a dahlia, and if you plant one you’ll stand in the late summer sunshine and whisper to its just opened self, “Yes, this is truly a dahlia. Where have you been all my life?” Right here, I am right here.

Crystal Trojek

August 2026

Next Meeting of the Tillsonburg Horticultural Society will be September 1. Our Speaker will be Paul Gellatly, “Daylilies and Their Care”. Join us at the Tillsonburg Senior Centre (45 Hardy St.) at 7:30 p.m.

By Crystal Trojek – Tillsonburg Horticultural Society

Fireflies 

Fireflies, a drop of the summer sun, blinking in the thick darkness of a summer evening. I first imagined them described in the pages a book, their tiny lights swimming without boundaries, leaving without remorse from unknown homes to unknown destinations. A firefly was the magic of imagination, one of the things other kids encountered in other places and times. For me their description was a tiny spark living in the secret depths of summer story book pages, never seen in person.

Years ago my Dad decided to go fishing at the conservation area on a sultry summer evening. We packed up as a youthful moon began to stir a few sleepy stars while reaching for the darkening clouds that dappled a reddish sunset sky. Stepping quickly towards the car in the creeping darkness I saw them in person. Fireflies, hovering above the long and dusty grass and weeds that lined the edges of a gravel road. I almost missed them, so quickly was I escaping from the black tide of a summer evening that threatened to encircle me. I jumped onto the cool seat of the car, pulling my feet inside while quickly reaching to safely close the car door when I noticed them. Fireflies. For a few brief moments we watched them dancing and blinking along the now almost abandoned road, until the car headlights divided a small portion of that gravel path from the now sunless sky and showed us the way home.

I did not see fireflies again for many years, I didn’t expect to see them. I thought fireflies were quite selective of where they chose to dance in the summer air beneath a cloud filled sky, or under a bright full moon. Their tiny lights flashed in the solitude and peacefulness of a natural world, far from many humans but close to the green earth that welcomed their bright hearts whenever they chose to visit. A few summers ago I was “drawing the blinds” as my Mum used to say, just at dusk my weary eyes paused for a last look at the back garden disappearing into the darkness, and there they were, in my little town garden. Fireflies had found me once more. I walked outside to view them from the safety of the upper deck, wondering if their small troop was wandering through on their way to another pleasant and suitable destination of quiet woods and pleasant waters.

I asked if they lived in the cedar hedge, snug during the day from the heat of the sun, or rested in the cool trees. I imagined them living under hosta leaves, or dangling from ferns, exploring coral bells and bleeding hearts, introducing themselves to rabbits and other creatures who frequent my garden, or resting in the coolness of the mulch that covered the ground. I wondered what they ate. How did they know when to creep from the summer vegetation, and happily dot the garden with brief drops of sunlight? Did they pass the days of autumn and winter with ladybugs and such insect friends beneath the fallen leaves, beyond the frozen reach of arriving snowflakes. They must wait for their moment to rise in the thick night air that was liberally flavoured with the scent of multitudes of roses in my sunnier garden places.

A bit of scientific research revealed nothing so carefree as I imagined those tiny lights rural road. Fireflies are a mere dot of blinking light, seeking a chance encounter with another dot of blinking light, males and females flash looking for mates. The eggs are deposited amongst the gardens debris, preferably leaves and the damp recesses of a shade garden. The hatched larva might also light up while hunting such fine meals as earthworms, just another tiny creature residing in my botanical spaces. I wondered if a passing bat might eat a firefly, since it advertised its whereabouts so readily. I wondered if a toad might scoop one from the ground. I chose to happily linger and witness its present occupation, just a moment in the garden to be glad one is alive.

I can see them beyond the window in my summer garden, examining the plants. Perhaps they are oblivious to everything, concentrating on their tiny lights, as tiny fairies travelling through a tiny moment in time. Fireflies are absent from my morning walks in the garden, or perhaps they are not. As with many things in my garden perhaps fireflies are never absent, perhaps they are just waiting for me to get to their unnumbered page and write of them before recording another chapter in the open book that is my garden. The book that owns no last page, and it is mine.

Crystal Trojek – July 2021

The Tillsonburg Horticultural Society is on summer break from meetings. Members are invited to the Summer Social on August 4th. Regular meetings resume on September 1st at the Senior Centre.

By Crystal Trojek 

Tillsonburg Horticultural Society 

Doubt

Pruning roses is difficult, and painful. I don’t like doing it.

It has been a hard winter in my garden, we have been discussing if the results this spring are from too much heat and drought last year, or rabbits, or a polar vortex that arrived when they should have been long gone until next winter. I have had to resolve myself to the fact that I must do much cutting, dead wood serves no good purpose to roses. It’s also depressing to look at day after day. I have purchased new pruners, sharp and lively they are. Mixing buckets of water soluble fertilizer, dumping each hopeful pail on rose feet. Ground is dry already. Scattering water soluble fertilizer to tempt rose roots with a healthy snack. Hoping for growth and blooms like no other year, I have great expectations.

I remember each rose as it looked last May, the time of year when disease has not yet discovered its leaves, insects have not yet attempted to defoliate rose canes. I imagined how the rose looked covered with green buds, how often I checked each one for the first sign of colour, the way the first rose looked as it began to open on the finest of spring mornings. I dreamt of how rose perfume sometimes came hunting me, when the dawn was shy and new, when the scent of that first rose stepped out into my garden and wandered the earth, young and cheerful. I clipped dry canes away from roses, some with multiple brown rose hips left behind on frosty autumn mornings. I imagined the canes struggling to hold all the blooms, how the rain filled roses drenched in a spring shower reached for the earth. Almost upside down they were, they danced a little, swaying in that fresh bathed breeze that follows the rain when everything is clean once more.

I walk with roses on fine spring days. I pull old brittle leaves away and uncover rose feet. Ladybugs are waiting there in the remnants of autumn, the speckled predators climb the green canes that are dimpled now with the anxious buds of new green leaves. They will discover aphids there, a favourite snack. The heart of the rose lives, it beats green in the weeks of May. The waking leaves stretch out, the green buds follow, new rose canes streak towards the sun, laughing with the spring daffodils.

I have left some of the larger canes for further thought, distributing time for more signs of sprouting rose leaves. There are some thick, gnarled rose branches that I do not like to sever with the loppers, but I must. I thin rose branches that have been knit and purled together, already a dappled greening blanket without rose embellishments. It will come. I remember ‘The Crocus” will send them in deep shades of cream. An opportune break from pruning rosesfound me, the new roses have arrived at the garden centres. The air is still winter scorned, but the sun shines brightly scoring the air with warmth. The roses huddle silently waiting for adoption. I choose three more Austins, because I doubt the strength of a few of the roses I have in my garden to survive. I fear I shall not see them again. We visit a few other garden centres, early shoppers get the best selection. I buy two more roses. All of them wait for me on the lower deck.

It is almost three weeks later, one rose waits to find the ground in my garden. In between May planting, we have been blessed with two good rains that deliver fertilizer to the winter worn roses. They rise. The canes spring into the warming air, in multitudes. They soar daily for the skies, I ask for forgiveness that I doubted their rose hearts. The leaves stretch and yawn by the light of the moon and under the deep and pleasant care of the sun. Each new day more roses awake, they are coming, they are coming for me in June. They are coming in numbers, the tiny green buds are peeping out amongst the leaves. I purchased one rose named ‘Amberness’ this year who already carried flowers, because it called my name as I was passing by, shivering in a cold breeze. I wandered into one greenhouse, a new clematis hopped easily onto my cart. I went back for the sweet rose, and purchased a floribunda companion.

Today I have my camera with me, documenting the spring garden for the grey winter days when I forget what lies sleeping out there under inches of snow beyond a frosted window. The winter days are long, pictures of yesterday comfort those who remember the lost and provide hope for tomorrow. ‘Amberness’ does not speak of the ravages of winter, but of the sweetness of spring. There are buds, many buds, on all my roses. I whisper their names out loud as I pass, as if meeting a long lost friend. When the roses take their first breath and begin to sing, I walk amidst their sweet perfume and listen to every note. I carried them the year before, and now they carry me, when I walk with roses.

Tillsonburg Horticultural Society members will be opening their gardens to society members during the upcoming Garden Tour July 7. It’s not too late to purchase a membership and enjoy all the society events, monthly meetings, and discover just what is being accomplished in the community. Visit our Facebook page or the website www.tillsonburghorticultural.ca for more information. New gardeners, seasoned gardeners, all welcome. Come garden with us.