Rotten botrytis, and a host of other fungal plant problems such as black spot in the roses showing up lately. I have one large lily bed that did not get weeded before I headed out for a 10 day camping trip recently - why on earth was I surprised to see the weeds taller than the lilies when I returned?? Thankfully, it always looks worse than it actually is when it comes to weeding here and within 2 days that problem was taken care of. However, the botrytis in that bed is running rampant! Since it is already August, I'll not waste my time or money to spray them as they'd be naturally starting to brown off in a week or so anyway.
The lilies started out shorter and coming up later this year, no doubt after effects of the terrible drought here last summer. Once the rains started there was a noticeable improvement in the health and vigour of the lilies within two weeks. One note of interest I found was the Orienpets came up sooner than usual, about the same time as the asiatics as a matter of fact. Typically they sprout later as they are planted deeper and seem to take their time coming up even where they are not planted deeper. I suspect they came up earlier as we had a pretty mild winter overall, with only a night or two lower than -30 and enough snow to maintain a cover all winter long. Since they came up early, they are in full bloom right now which means I shall be able to harvest in a timely manner this fall providing rain does not hold us up in September.
I have received many notes and emails from customers thanking me for adding the letter regarding my daughters current state of health to the recent catalog mailout, it makes me really glad I did! I was himming and hawing about whether I ought to in the first place, but I figured it might save me some time in answering note after note asking about her, and it certainly has. We both are truly grateful for all the kindness and concern shown for her health and well-being. She had a wonderful July with a little setback in August but we hope to get back on track shortly. Unfortunately, this setback results in the end of her treatment extending into spring 2012 now, so I am not so certain we shall open our gates to the public again shortly after as planned - I guess we wait and see what the future brings!
Posted: 2010-08-13
Once again I find its been a long while since I updated - I could have swore I did just after Christmas, but it appears not!
For those wondering about my daughter, she's doing great and has reached the maintenance phase of her treatment protocol. That means we travel to the Stollery Children's Hospital only once a month for chemo treatments now, and the rest of her treatment is now by pill the rest of the month. This will continue until November 2011, we can hardly wait for that date already!
I sent out a one page flyer in the mail to current customers at the beginning of March. It is also available online as a downloadable pdf from our catalog downloads page. Please use the link above in the navigation bar to find it if you need it. Customers who did not receive a print version of the catalog in the mail last summer also received a coupon for a $5.00 discount with the flyer. This was due to my inability to finish printing and mailing after Cassie's diagnosis. Those customers who never received the paper catalog also never had the opportunity to order any of the exclusive varieties we had available and I felt it was necessary to make up for that in some way. I hope by giving a deadline of SEPTEMBER 2011 I shall be forgiven!
Orders were coming in quite briskly considering the lateness of getting the flyer out, and we have sold out of a number of items including TIGER EDITION and SIXTH SENSE, but I did manage to get my hands on a few more so they are listed online once again. If you cannot find them, they are sold out again. Not too many STAR GAZER bulbs left now, fewer than 50 as of today I believe.
Posted: 2010-03-23
My how time flies, wish I could say it was because I was having fun! Our fall harvest was a week to 10 days delayed by my absence while I was in Edmonton with my daughter's therapy. I was not terribly concerned as the weather was certainly warmer than average at the end of September, I should have known it would turn in an instant - which it certainly did!
The last of the orders were ready to go out October 5 and out they went, and the cold, chilly winter weather began the very next day! Fortunately it warmed up after a week or so and is STILL unseasonably warm, although at times it feels bitter with the wind blowing. I trust all who emailed me in a panic regarding the cold when they received their order have now planted them safely in the ground.
I am receiving many inquiries lately from those concerned about my daughters health, likely as I have not been updating the site nor answering the phone much lately. In a nutshell, she is doing OK, at this time going through an 'interim maintenance' phase of the treatment so only sick a few days of the week. This will change around Christmas we expect as the treatment gets intense again and will require chemotherapy daily and weekly at times, until spring. I am glad now that I already made the decision NOT to produce a spring print catalog, it would have been too much to handle just yet. I still trust that we will be back on track with a print catalog and a huge selection of fabulous lilies for Fall shipping! Until next time, take care of you and yours - don't forget to smile, its contagious!
Posted: 2009-11-14
Typically our peak bloom is the 20-30 of July, so we are about 2 weeks behind! How are they looking so far? Well, the majority are half the height of their normal selves but others are just as tall as ever and worthy of noting them as more drought tolerant than the average. Quite a few of the early bloomers were blind as they were frozen hard in early June and thus did not bloom.
Overall a prolific amount of blooms per stem was what I noticed last night - perhaps my friend Terry is correct in his theory that the colder the winter the more blooms we see, we did see a very long period of close to -40 degrees celcius last winter.
The Doctors told us we were in for a rollercoaster ride with our daughters recent diagnosis of Leukemia and by now we know they were so right! She is doing well at home and has completed the first month of treatment with no major issues. Now the intense treatment starts, we pray she will continue to remain stable and have only small issues with her health along the way. It was definitely a wise choice to close our gate to the public, I can barely find time to get outdoors and get any photos of the newest lilies, let along manage business other than the orders coming in at the moment.
My sincerest apologies to those still waiting for return calls by phone - this too is something I can not seem to find the time in the day to do, we have a hectic schedule as it is and the added running for treatments and necessities of our new life takes a huge amount of time. Add to that the family and friends who drop in unexpectedly and I don't get much accomplished in a day!
I have not answered the phone these last 3 weeks to save myself from the constant litany of why our gardens are not open after all. This week we start daily treatments so it may be into September before I can return calls at a reasonable time of day. Please bear with me, I know many of you will from the huge amount of emails, faxes and messages sent to us in support. Some of you have made me cry with your kindnesses, my faith has been restored in the goodness of people once again - THANK YOU!
Posted: 2009-08-08
I have decided to continue accepting orders as the bills must still get paid, and we can only remain positive and show her how very hopeful we are by leading as normal a life as possible. The mail order catalog should go in the mail before the end of the month as well.
Already I see numerous supportive emails in my inbox, very few of which I have had time to answer and I thank each and every one of you for your understanding. I have a plethora of phone messages to return, which I hope to do before the end of the week. Having just returned home we need to get our bearings straight, and make some big adjustments to our lifestyle before continuing with business. Keep up the positive thinking - it is working so far!
Posted: 2009-07-19
For now, I am leaving the online catalog active, although the print version has been printed they have not been mailed and I am not certain when they will be as we do not know how long we'll be at the hospital yet. If necessary, I may cancel all orders already submitted and take the online catalog down. I'll only do this if it appears I cannot do a harvest in Fall and be there for her at the same time. At the moment we do not know how long her treatments will last or what the future will hold. I am a firm believer in the power of positive thinking, so please think positive for us!!
Posted: 2009-07-08
While doing my stem counts in preparation for the lily catalogs, it was soon evident that the late, hard frosts in early June have taken their toll. Many of the OT lilies have suffered frost damage, and although the majority of the asiatics and LA's appear untouched on the foliage, there is going to be many a stem that is blind or will bloom deformed due to the hard frost. Blooming blind means no flower head at all, but that's not always a bad thing! Experience tells me those that bloom blind will have extra large bulbs under the stem in Fall, since it spent no energy developing flowers. The drawback is that new lilies or seedling lilies I have been so excited to see bloom for the first time, will not bloom and I will have to wait another year. Hopefully none of those are affected.
Since its been a relatively dry spring so far there is virtually no botrytis, except on some of the frost damaged lilies. I have sprayed my bordeaux mix (recipe found in the "Growing Lilies" section) on the damaged stems to prevent it going further. Some are still developing normally above or below the damaged areas. Many lilies escaped the damage as they pushed through the ground after the last hard frost, good thing! As of today, there are still lilies starting to poke through, they are a little slow some of them as they lacked the moisture until recently to continue growing.
One of the bonuses to a dry year is definitely the lack of weeds, yippee! But the 2/10 of an inch we got last week has encouraged even those to begin growing, but they are at least controllable. It is so dry here at the moment that even the dandelions in the dead grass are curling up and withering away - and not a slug to be found anywhere. But cutworms are present and doing their damage yet.
Well, time for me to get back at it, the print catalog must be finished and printed in time for our Open Gardens beginning July 10. Hope to see you here!
Posted: 2009-06-25
Spring is definitely much slower to blossom this year than in the past few years here in central Alberta. As of today, we are still waiting for many of the lilies as well as perennials and roses to show some more growth or push through the ground. They are lacking much needed moisture early in the season to get them going, by this weekend I shall have to get out the irrigation hoses to give them a little help.
Our spring shipping season ended on a low note for me, I was terribly ill from about the 20th of April until the last week or so. I thought I got through the last week of shipping without any glaring errors, but it appears I was wrong. I shipped one customer who ordered a large amount of bulbs of one variety the wrong bulbs while I was in my feverish daze of ill health! I guess this is one of the drawbacks to being a small operation basically run by one person - there is no one to take over when you are unable to complete your tasks.
I fully expect our peak bloom this year will be the end of July due to this late spring start. Another 2 weeks and I hope to start my stem count for the fall catalog listing, a task I always look forward to. I am certainly impressed with the size of the 'noses' poking through the ground, especially in light of last years devastating hail storm, which knocked down many stems completely. We should have some fantastic lilies available in large bulb sizes but very limited quantities, these are the much sought after heritage Canadian varieties for the most part. If you expect to get any, be sure to check the catalog listing as soon as it is up!
Posted: 2009-05-26
On the weekend I was able to dig in my lily beds as the frost has all disappeared. I was absolutely delighted to find that the latest of the Crown Series of lilies (oriental x asiatic crosses) survived this extremely cold winter we just came through!
Sunny Crown, my favourite of the 4 varieties we have growing, was planted last spring and, as with all new varieties with questionable hardiness, they went to bed for winter without any mulch in order to fully test their hardiness. With temps dipping from -30 to -40 Celcius and colder for all of December, January and part of February it was a true test, would you not agree? To add to the extreme cold winter, we had no snow to speak of until early March - so no extra protection at all for these bulbs was to be had. I was pretty apprehensive about the state of all the borderline hardy varieties we have here, but Sunny Crown came through with flying colors! I fully expect the other Crown lilies have all done just fine as they have been in the ground 3 years now I believe. Now I need someone in a Zone 2 to try them out and see if they can survive that zone as well as Zone 3.
Posted: 2009-04-15
I am disappointed to say that our supplier canceled the variety TIGER WOODS on us, so we are unable to ship this at all this spring and will be refunding all who ordered it to date. Drat, and it was sold out!
I am finding certain varieties of bulbs as they have come out of the cooler are starting to sprout already - some worse than others! Our EASTER MORN stock is virtually all sprouted and I am not at all happy about shipping them when they have sprouted so much so far! If sprouts break off in transit or any time before planting you will not see a bloom and likely not even a stem this year, and that certainly will not make for happy customers! We have a call in to the breeder requesting new stock so we can ship that instead, and will pot up what is on hand and already sprouted. Hope we get our hands on more so as not to disappoint our wonderful customers!
Posted: 2009-04-02
