Planting Weekend

Gosh, it’s already the Victoria Day long weekend.  Didn’t we just celebrate Labour Day?  We used to think of Victoria Day as the gateway into summer when we were younger.  These days, in my world, it signifies that it is now time to plant the window boxes, clean the windows (both sides), and also clean the window screens so we’ll be able to actually SEE the flowers growing in those boxes.

The (very) late Queen Victoria, whose birthday it is that we are celebrating, is said to have been a big fan of flowers so I can spin this annual window box planting event as a tribute to the monarch who is acknowledged as Canada’s “Mother of Confederation” due to her help in getting this country’s moving parts vaulted into countryship back in 1867.  It’s a loose tie-in but it’s still a tie-in.    

Although the extent of my gardening these days is pocket-sized, it does add a bit of bling to our side of the house, so I’m happy to continue with this tradition.  Since we are blessed and cursed with having 3 of our 4 window boxes on the north side of the house, with the fourth one having the daunting job of facing west, we are limited as to what we are able to plant in these boxes.  When we first moved into this apartment, I naively and enthusiastically planted a wide variety of plants in our north facing window boxes–the sort of flowering plants and greenery that would have provided both a riot of colour and a bounty of textures, had they been plants that enjoyed living life in the cool dark shade. Most ended their tragic lives as sad nubs or stringy colour-drained versions of what their identifying sticks suggested. 

The plants that I tried to force into the west window box during those early attempts, don’t even bear speaking of.  Poor little crispy things. 

As experience was gained and reality reluctantly embraced over the years, the choice of window box posies dwindled to the point where I now only plant Impatiens on the north side (though I insist on as wide a range of colours as is available) and, for that full-sun west facing box, I am relegated to the common geranium.  The clincher for that choice is that common geraniums are known to retain moisture during droughts, which is handy because I often forget to water them.

I picked up the geraniums for this year’s planting extravaganza while I was out this morning running errands that had nothing whatsoever to do with buying geraniums.  I will save the rest of my gardening requirements for a trip to the gardening centre that I’ll make with my husband, who can carry more than I can.  Five geraniums fit comfortably into that west window box (and, as I found out, my reuseable shopping bag) and each year I try to get an array of pink hues, which look charming against the white of the window box and window trim, and the blue/grey of our house.    

I have found no information indicating that Queen Victoria liked geraniums (her favourites were violets, and who can blame her?) but geraniums were introduced to Europe through the efforts of a Dutch botanist who picked some up in 1689 when he was studying (and clearly stealing) plant life in South Africa.  By 1724, our common geranium, known professionally as zonal geranium, was being coveted by gardeners all over Europe, so she must have at least known about them by the time she took over.

Queen Victoria took great delight in the language of flowers, as did many of her era.  Although it must have been a complex endeavour to keep everything straight, there were meanings given to most species of flowers, even to the colour of that flower, and this information was used as a covert way to convey implied messages and insinuations by merely sending a person a bouquet of flowers.  There seem to be a couple of different interpretations given to geraniums.  Some say they stand for true friendship (awwww!) and others say they represent folly or stupidity (oh).

For cats, dogs, and horses, the language of geraniums is DANGER.  This plant is toxic to them so if you know any of these animals personally, be vigilant.  Geraniums will also paralyze any Japanese Beetle foolish enough to nibble on its petals, but I don’t find myself sufficiently sympathetic towards them to bother mentioning it when they’re around. 

There is an entire branch (so to speak) of the geranium family that have lovely and very individualistic scents.  Those scented-leaf geraniums are the ones used for oils and potpourris and as flavourings in cooking.  Some of the scents are of apple, coconut, nutmeg, Old Spice (THAT Old Spice?), raspberry, and hazelnut.  One is known for its scent of celery.  Celery?

The zonal geranium does not sit in that section of the geranium choir.  In fact, for years I entirely avoided geraniums because I never liked the smell (diplomatically described as “pungent or herbaceous”), but the scent has grown on me—likely because everything else I have tried to grow in that window box has died an untimely death. These days, geraniums smell like success and relief to me.     

Today, as I was setting my 5 newly purchased pots of geranium seedlings out in the dormant but waiting window box of our west facing bedroom window, the box that will become their permanent home by the end of this Victoria Day long weekend, Barb, the neighbour who lives next door, happened to see what I was doing. Barb, it should be noted, sees everything that everyone is doing.  She called over to me to say that she was delighted to see that this year’s geraniums were soon going to be planted in.  She said that she enjoys the show they put on. She also said that she takes photos of our window box every year. 

Barb-from-next-door takes photos of our bedroom window every year? Well, that’s a bit creepy.  I’ll still plant the geraniums, but in the apocryphal words of our Birthday Girl and the Mother of Confederation, we are not amused.