This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Feb. 4, 1939.
Talking about people behind their back is reprehensible, I know, but I am glad January has gone. It has its good qualities, I know, but I am thinking of the flowers.
On a year like this they are at loose ends in January. They do not know whether they are going or coming. They look like tired little children who have been let sit up too late to entertain the company. Tired, draggled and limp, still trying to bloom.
The prairie flowers are never left in doubt. One good frost and everyone goes to bed for a long night’s sleep.
I have a dining-room bouquet now of geraniums in bud and flower; sweet-scented stocks (that’s the name, not the description) and anemones, that have bloomed all summer, all fall, and carry on now in 1939. They all look jaded and spent, and the colour in their faces is a flush rather than a bloom.
Two flowers look healthy: the winter jasmine and calenduilas (marigolds). They can snap their fingers at even a January day — having some mysterious inward heat, or invisible fleece-lined underwear. Not a trace of weariness shows in their yellow faces.
I have been discouraging the others by cutting off the blooms as they appear, but they get ahead of me.
In February, if the weather is good, real growth will come and the wallflowers will begin to stretch themselves; the snowdrops will open, and some of the flowering shrubs. That will be lovely, but I wonder about these weary little toilers of the night, who still think it is 1938.
Now the primroses are beginning to show, one clump with magenta blooms is out, the blossoms not so large as they should be but they are there, holding up a little hand with out-stretched fingers. They are the first clump to bloom out of the whole row, and if they could talk I am sure they would shout “Home Free!”
The onions are up. They were sowed in my absence, but even so, were well done. In straight rows stand the little green threads by the hundreds — close enough to be able to stand some thinning later on. The variety is Yellow Danvers.
Another good deed done while I was away was the bringing from the bush of eight little flowering currants, all standing up well, and which will probably bloom this spring. They are one of the loveliest of shrubs, with a good crimson flower and a pretty serrated leaf, and grow wild in the woods.
The little Coronation oak, still carefully guarded by stakes, has grown to be a foot tall since it was planted two years ago next May. One hundred and twenty-three of the acorns from Great Windsor Park came to Victoria, and we were favoured with one of them in a pot. We planted it, with the proper ceremony, on the 10th birthday of one of our little neighbours, who will be its guardian. Some day the acorns from this tree will help to bring more of the stately oak of England to Vancouver Island.
In Uplands, great gnarled oaks spread out their arms over the shot blue and yellow carpet of camas and buttercups every spring, and the legend is that Drake and his men planted them on one of his voyages.
I gave the little oak a bit of fertilizer today, when I read about the Record Book, in which I hope this little one is entered. The book will sell for a guinea, I read, and will contain a drawing of the Queen, and 680 pages. Ten thousand trees are recorded in it, from all parts of the Empire.
There is one feature of January that is pleasant — the birds come around the house looking for food. There are junco birds in the cherry trees now, taking their turns at feeding on a table where we leave breadcrumbs and oatmeal. The junco bird is a quaint little thing, grey with a black “wimple.” The quail stride by in companies of 20 or so — not saying a word. Usually they are noisy and insistent, but January seems to keep them in a thoughtful mood. The meadow larks are entirely depending on “relief” when snow covers the ground and have to either leave or starve. A little care from people everywhere would increase our supply of birds. I am sure. Many must die in the winter, especially in the colder parts of Canada. Indeed the wonder is that so many survive, they are so small and helpless.
They have so many enemies, so few defences.
Birds are fascinating little things, so frail and yet so strong and resourceful. I look at them in wonder, so intent are they on their small affairs, and full of the joy of life. There are no European complications in their lives, no threats, no horrors, no hatreds. They live for today.
I have been hearing from English friends of scarlet oslers, which apart from their use as basket markers, give a touch of colour, when the winter days are heavy and grey. Then in the January number of that delightful publication called the Countryman, published at Kingham in Oxfordshire, there is a story about them.
The scarlet oslers were used first to hold peach trees to the walls, and have many relatives of different colours — yellow, silver, purple. And these can all be started from cuttings. Best of all is that salix daphnoldes, the violet willow, with rich plum coloured stems, covered in spring with large “pussles” which turn to bright yellow as they grow older.
Osler growing is a failing industry, the writer laments. But there is a government bulletin telling all about them, and gardeners should send for it. These willows will grow anywhere in naked clay or stony banks. But the gardener must remember that the colour is on the south side of the young growth, and so it is advised to plant them north of the viewpoint, or better still, to the northwest, where he will be seeing them with the golden light of the afternoon sun coming through them.
I wonder if these coloured willows would grow on the prairie?
