Can you believe this is the last week of August? I can’t, although there are telltale signs in the garden that our gardening season is beginning to wind down. I have actually even emptied out a couple planters: their tired inhabitants finally gave up the ghost and no amount of pinching or pruning could bring them back. I also pulled out our onions, (which, as you remember, decided to lay flat in our garden!) following the lead of some wonderful gardeners and dear friends who pulled their onions and have them drying nicely on plant trays. One fall task done!
If you’re looking for local produce, the Yorkton Gardeners’ Market is your chance to buy or sell local fresh produce. It’s on every Saturday, from 10 am till noon, until September 19 at the north parking lot of Prairie Harvest CLC (Melrose and Simpson Street). If you would like to register as a seller, please call Stacey at (306) 641-4239.
The first meeting of the Yorkton and District Horticultural Society will be holding their first meeting of the new season on Wednesday, September 16 at 7:00 p.m. in the Sunshine Room at SIGN on North Street. Our guest will be Jim Ternier from Prairie Seeds in Humboldt talking about “How To Save Heritage Seeds”. This is a topic that is hot on the gardening charts right now, so we hope you can attend. And remember, you don’t have to be a member to come to the meeting: everyone is welcome! That’s Wednesday, September 16.
And since you have your calendar out, I’d like to tell you about the SHA (Saskatchewan Horticultural Association) Annual Meeting that our Yorkton Hort group will be hosting in October. We’ll be welcoming guest gardeners from all over the province, and this event is open to anyone who would like to attend, whether you belong to a horticultural society or not. There will be a great variety of interesting speakers! We will have a guest from All About Flowers demonstrating how to make a fall arrangement; Warren Crossman will be speaking on his garden experiences; Sonja Pawliw will be telling us about her beautiful Healing Garden; and Don Stein from the Godfrey Dean Gallery will be instructing us on how to take better photos in our gardens. There will also be a banquet with entertainment provided by the effervescent Jackie Guy. If you would like to attend any of these events, you are most welcome! Just log on to www.yorktonhort.ca for full details about the SHA meeting and other Yorkton Hort Society events.
I’ll just mention our Fall Plant and Bulb Sale on Friday, September 25 from 9:30 a.m. till 5 p.m. at the Parkland Mall. By now we can all see those little empty spaces in our gardens that need replacing or rejuvenating, and this sale gives us the perfect opportunity to find a new plant or two or three!
If you and I could have taken a magic carpet ride earlier in the month, we could have attended the Shrewsbury Flower Show. We were in England earlier in the summer, and signs were already posted in Shrewsbury about the show. It is one of the premier flower show events in the country! I wish we could have been there! We visited an amazing garden in an old quarry: it was absolutely stunning (except for the fact that the day we were there, it was the hottest that it has been in 160 years!) This dazzling garden is the site of the big flower show, with rows of tents set up to display all kinds of floral exhibits. If you want to check it out log on to www.shrewsburyflowershow.org.uk Next time we have tea, I’ll tell you about that amazing garden in Shrewsbury. Till then, have a great week and be sure to wear a hat!
