Before there was Richard & Leah's wedding, there was... Canada Blooms! I actually did make it! I even made it to Sobey's this morning to buy the "advance" ticket to save $2. The trip cost more than $2, but whatever...
Anyway, here's what I bought and/or picked up along the way. Sure doesn't look like much when you see it all spread out like this. And I am astonished once again this year that there aren't more giveaways.
Honestly, Seedy Saturday was way better for giveaways, even from the commercial tables and booths. I guess that's more the mindset there.
Canada Blooms is more the mindset of paying big-time Landscape Architects (God forbid you hire an unauthorized professional to design your garden... who knows what the heck kind of mess you could end up with back there...?) to design a full outdoor retreat, with individual rooms, water features, hardscaping and whatnot. Like I can even afford a fraction of that.
Give me three beds full o' veggies and I'll try to be a little content, tank you veddy much.
Okay, so here is what I came home with:
~ Bunch of flyers, official show guide, etc. The most interesting being a new mulch product called Nincompoop. Maybe I just like the name. ;-)
~ Mini sago palm which was an impulse purchase for my mother's front window - once I pot it on as it's too confined at the moment. She didn't seem overjoyed; there you are...
~ Two Downsview Park bookmarks with a planty bit that you stick in soil and seeds in the papery bit sprout. Reps at the booth couldn't tell me what kind of seeds they were. "Some kind of herbs?"
~ Three cancer-related gift items: two daffodils for my sisters and one ThingamaBoob keychain for me.
~ Seed packets (details below)
~ Flexi Flowa Planta (details below!)
~ Free sample of worm castings from a company that is just starting out distributing worm castings.
Blah, right? Pretty blah, in terms of swag, anyway. Feeling kind of envious right now of big-time shows like the Chicago Flower and Garden show (covered here by Mr. Brown Thumb, a blogger I enjoy reading...)
But it was nice seeing all the green.
So here are my two most exciting take-homes:
THE FLEXI FLOWA PLANTA!
This thing easily has the potential for being the most kitschy garden thing ever. I couldn't even find a website. Basically, it's like the kind of shoe bag you throw over your door and it has many many pockets for your shoes... only it's green... and instead of shoes, it holds plants.
Oh, outside - not really over your door. You can use it where you might use a windowbox planter or wrap it decoratively around your rain barrel, as illustrated here on the package.
I do not have great hopes for this thing, but they were 3 for $10. I spent $4 and bought one. If it is amazing, I can always buy more next year, right?
OK, and now to the SEEDS...
I tried not to go overboard, because really, I have almost every kind of seed I could possibly need. (Hey, that rhymes). So here's what I bought:
~ Sprouting seeds: broccoli, garlic chives and beet (beet! wow!)... these won't take up room in the garden, so they don't count. Technically, you can sprout regular seeds, but it's not recommended that you eat them because most seeds are treated in some way. Seeds sold specifially for sprouting are fully edible, from what I understand, even the seed part.
~ Pepper: Anaheim Chili. I want a spicy pepper this year for sure, but have been rethinking the jalapeno, because our tolerance for great heat is not that high. I just want something nice that can hopefully end up in a chili; not something that will land us in the E.R. with mouth burns
~ Eggplant (black beauty). Giveaway from Thompson & Morgan. Nobody here likes eggplants, but they might be nice in a container. Or I can give them away.
~ Cutting celery. I have been steering clear of celery in the garden because it's fussy and takes a long time to grow. But this is marked as "cutting celery", meaning, I think, that it is mostly for leaves (the packet shows lots of nice leaves and no stalks), for celery flavour, and not really for stalks. And I'd never really heard of that, but thought it might be pretty in a container. I do love the green bits of celery.
~ Peas - Sugar Snap Pole. I do have lots of pea seeds (okay, they are just plain peas - it feels weird calling them seeds), but they are a few years old. The bush peas never did much of anything, and I figured since peas are our most successful veg crop, I may as well put in a buck-fifty every couple of years to ensure a high germination rate. We LOVE love LOVE our peas around here...
So: Canada Blooms.
Oh, there were lots of interesting gardens and exhibits and it was all great. Certainly nice to get out and have a morning all to myself.
But now I'm exhausted, as I ended up triple-booking and there was a meeting of our local garden group this evening on top of everything else.
Tomorrow is merely double-booked, as we have a yeshiva interview in the morning and then I have an adults-only workshop at the NFB that I'm going to with Sara; Elisheva's supposed to babysit - yikes. Maybe I'll leave pizza for the kiddies and bribe them with a nice movie they can watch...
Ted's working 'till 8, so at the very worst, he will get home and have to put them to bed. No, okay, the very worst-case scenario is that Ted gets delayed at work until 9 or 10, like happens more often than you might expect from a company that bills itself as family-oriented, and I get home first and everybody is overtired and there are smelly diapers everywhere. That would be the absolute worst-case scenario.
Must hie me abed now - or something - to gird myself for the morrow. Or something.
Anyway, here's what I bought and/or picked up along the way. Sure doesn't look like much when you see it all spread out like this. And I am astonished once again this year that there aren't more giveaways.
Honestly, Seedy Saturday was way better for giveaways, even from the commercial tables and booths. I guess that's more the mindset there.Canada Blooms is more the mindset of paying big-time Landscape Architects (God forbid you hire an unauthorized professional to design your garden... who knows what the heck kind of mess you could end up with back there...?) to design a full outdoor retreat, with individual rooms, water features, hardscaping and whatnot. Like I can even afford a fraction of that.
Give me three beds full o' veggies and I'll try to be a little content, tank you veddy much.
Okay, so here is what I came home with:~ Bunch of flyers, official show guide, etc. The most interesting being a new mulch product called Nincompoop. Maybe I just like the name. ;-)
~ Mini sago palm which was an impulse purchase for my mother's front window - once I pot it on as it's too confined at the moment. She didn't seem overjoyed; there you are...
~ Two Downsview Park bookmarks with a planty bit that you stick in soil and seeds in the papery bit sprout. Reps at the booth couldn't tell me what kind of seeds they were. "Some kind of herbs?"
~ Three cancer-related gift items: two daffodils for my sisters and one ThingamaBoob keychain for me.
~ Seed packets (details below)
~ Flexi Flowa Planta (details below!)
~ Free sample of worm castings from a company that is just starting out distributing worm castings.
Blah, right? Pretty blah, in terms of swag, anyway. Feeling kind of envious right now of big-time shows like the Chicago Flower and Garden show (covered here by Mr. Brown Thumb, a blogger I enjoy reading...)
But it was nice seeing all the green.
So here are my two most exciting take-homes:
THE FLEXI FLOWA PLANTA!This thing easily has the potential for being the most kitschy garden thing ever. I couldn't even find a website. Basically, it's like the kind of shoe bag you throw over your door and it has many many pockets for your shoes... only it's green... and instead of shoes, it holds plants.
Oh, outside - not really over your door. You can use it where you might use a windowbox planter or wrap it decoratively around your rain barrel, as illustrated here on the package.
I do not have great hopes for this thing, but they were 3 for $10. I spent $4 and bought one. If it is amazing, I can always buy more next year, right?
OK, and now to the SEEDS...I tried not to go overboard, because really, I have almost every kind of seed I could possibly need. (Hey, that rhymes). So here's what I bought:
~ Sprouting seeds: broccoli, garlic chives and beet (beet! wow!)... these won't take up room in the garden, so they don't count. Technically, you can sprout regular seeds, but it's not recommended that you eat them because most seeds are treated in some way. Seeds sold specifially for sprouting are fully edible, from what I understand, even the seed part.
~ Pepper: Anaheim Chili. I want a spicy pepper this year for sure, but have been rethinking the jalapeno, because our tolerance for great heat is not that high. I just want something nice that can hopefully end up in a chili; not something that will land us in the E.R. with mouth burns
~ Eggplant (black beauty). Giveaway from Thompson & Morgan. Nobody here likes eggplants, but they might be nice in a container. Or I can give them away.
~ Cutting celery. I have been steering clear of celery in the garden because it's fussy and takes a long time to grow. But this is marked as "cutting celery", meaning, I think, that it is mostly for leaves (the packet shows lots of nice leaves and no stalks), for celery flavour, and not really for stalks. And I'd never really heard of that, but thought it might be pretty in a container. I do love the green bits of celery.
~ Peas - Sugar Snap Pole. I do have lots of pea seeds (okay, they are just plain peas - it feels weird calling them seeds), but they are a few years old. The bush peas never did much of anything, and I figured since peas are our most successful veg crop, I may as well put in a buck-fifty every couple of years to ensure a high germination rate. We LOVE love LOVE our peas around here...
So: Canada Blooms.
Oh, there were lots of interesting gardens and exhibits and it was all great. Certainly nice to get out and have a morning all to myself.
But now I'm exhausted, as I ended up triple-booking and there was a meeting of our local garden group this evening on top of everything else.
Tomorrow is merely double-booked, as we have a yeshiva interview in the morning and then I have an adults-only workshop at the NFB that I'm going to with Sara; Elisheva's supposed to babysit - yikes. Maybe I'll leave pizza for the kiddies and bribe them with a nice movie they can watch...
Ted's working 'till 8, so at the very worst, he will get home and have to put them to bed. No, okay, the very worst-case scenario is that Ted gets delayed at work until 9 or 10, like happens more often than you might expect from a company that bills itself as family-oriented, and I get home first and everybody is overtired and there are smelly diapers everywhere. That would be the absolute worst-case scenario.
Must hie me abed now - or something - to gird myself for the morrow. Or something.
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