Canada Blooms 2006

James (the b/f) and I went to Canada Blooms here in Toronto on Saturday. It was a lot of fun, although I'm not sure if I'll go back next year. There were a lot of neat stores there, but there were a lot of companies selling gazeebos, conservatories, irrigation systems, chemicals... all things that I'm not really interested in; although I must confess that I did hum a little bit of "If I Had a Million Dollars" while walking past some of the greenhouses and conservatories. What I'm really interested in, however, is vegetable gardening. Yes, I can use a greenhouse for that. But the degree of fanciness of these things reached the excessive.

This picture is a portion of the Toronto Parks and Rec. display in the "artsy garden" area of the show. Trust me to freak out about the only 20 sq. ft. of the whole show with veggies in it!!! I don't have much of a garden here (I have to use my balcony and plant in containers), so I liked this example of efficient use of space! Although this looks crowded, it's actually possible to make a garden like this produce a lot of veggies. Some day I'd like to make my roof look like this... or maybe I'll just buy a house with a decent yard!

Speaking of plants, my garden is starting to grow! James' mom (a.k.a. "The Landlord") is adament that I use all the growing space here for grass and flowers. This is because (as far as I can tell) she thinks our tomato-growing Italian neighbours are going to think less of us if we also grow tomatoes. Anyway, my crocuses (crocii?) and a few other bulbs are starting to grow. They'll probably get hit by frost a few times before they bloom and end up with funny deformed leaves, but at least the squirrels didn't get them!