Today is winter solstice which brings the shortest day - and the longest night - of the year. The good news is that after this the days will start to get longer. 
Does Canada only have room for one national magazine devoted to gardening? It now looks that way."Well, just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, they did. How typical of life. [On] Friday [Nov. 14] I was called to be told that Gardening Life magazine was folding. Right now. No advance warning, no time to write a final Back Talk, nada. No time to figure out what to do in the future.A dramatic drop in ad revenues is to blame, according to GL's publisher:
Since 1996, as the central part of my life this wonderful magazine is gone like a puff of smoke. There will be one more issue. I guess it’ll be a collector’s item. But there will never be another garden magazine started to take its place. It’s the economy, stupid old me — I didn’t see that coming. I had the usual journalistic focus of deadlines. But no more."
"The global financial crisis has triggered such a dramatic decline in advertising markets that prudent media companies around the world are evaluating their portfolios and making tough decisions about those brands least able to withstand the downturn. Announcements of closures and cutbacks from Canada, the US and Europe in recent weeks are testimony to how widespread these conditions are."
Meanwhile, there are changes at Canadian Gardening, where I've also been a writer — doing a column geared to newbies called "Novice Gardener" — at least until recently. Asked whether she [Deborah Trepanier, group publisher for CG, Home & Country and Style at Home] thought doing “more with less” would affect the editorial quality of the respective publications, Trepanier replied, “No. Not at all. I think our quality will remain as high as it is now…Obviously there’s a lot of work there but there are a lot of talented people associated with both these publications and they’ll certainly be able to manage the job.” The frequency for both titles will be reduced next year, Trepanier said: CG will go from eight to seven issues per year, while Home & Country will drop from nine to six.A few weeks back, I had dinner in Toronto with two old friends, who have both moved on from high-powered jobs in magazines. One was editor-in-chief at Chatelaine for a decade, while the other held the equivalent position at Canadian Living (where I got my start in national magazines more than 20 years ago). One thing we were all in agreement on: it was a good time to be out of the magazine business.
“As professionals, we should know, use and promote the common names to simplify and make the buying experience more user-friendly. To think that my daughter Heather is ever going to learn Chaenomeles instead of quince, Baptisia rather than indigo, and to think she will ever get her tongue around Calibrachoa is ludicrous; she hasn’t the time or the interest. We should know those names, but yes, we should be using common names. Absolutely. Not as a substitute but as a way of making Heather feel more comfortable.”You can read the whole post here. The comments are interesting too, with people weighing in on both sides of the issue.
In the 1950s, callery pear emerged in U. S. commerce as a promising new ornamental tree, leading to massive landscape plantings. By the 1980s, concerns about both overplanting and structural weakness (limb breakage from wind, ice and snow) began to surface. ‘Chanticleer’ (synonymous with and also known as ‘Cleveland Select’, ‘Select’, ‘Stone Hill’ or ‘Glen’s Form’) is considered to be one of the best of the cultivars currently available. It is a tight, narrow, pyramidal, thornless ornamental pear tree that typically grows 25-35’ tall and 15’ wide. Some specimens appear almost columnar in habit. Oval, glossy dark green leaves dance in the breeze due to long petioles. It is susceptible to limb breakage or splitting from strong wind, snow or ice, but is much stronger than some other cultivars such as P. calleryana ‘Bradford’.Most of the trees we have planted on our property are native oaks, maples, ashes, pines and spruces, but close to the house I have planted a few ornamental pets like this pear tree. So far, so good: it's beautiful year round - it has glossy leaves in summer and a nice branching structure in winter - but I particularly love it covered with flowers in spring, and right now, as it glows with exquisite color.
It was a foggy morning, so I grabbed the camera and went out before breakfast. I didn't even need my gloves it was so mild. These pictures show the misty morning light, and the glow from the sun rising. Today's temperature went up to 21 degrees C (69F), so it was a delightful day to be outside. 
When my friend Sandy emailed me to say, "The beautiful month is here at last," I was surprised. I thought I was the only person (or maybe just the only Canadian) who really likes November. When I asked her why, she replied: I love November! At least the first two weeks. It's quiet and calm, but still has plenty of color. And I don't have any guilt about not doing garden chores.I couldn't agree more. That's exactly why I love November too. The inner voice that keeps saying, "I must get to that" whenever I see something amiss in the garden is almost silent.
We had a thunderstorm here aournd 6 this evening. Then the sun came out and there was the biggest, most intense rainbow I'd ever seen. I grabbed my camera, and here's what it looked like from my front porch. It was still thundering when I took this. 
Although there are still golfers playing at the course across the road from us, Toby and I have been able to start having morning walks there. If we get there early enough, we done before there's any danger of balls hitting us. The course has some magnificant trees, such as the oak above.
We are at the peak of fall color. A good wind yesterday saw leaves falling like rain. They look so pretty on the ground along the laneway that I'm reluctant to mow over them or rake them up. 
It was garden designer Piet Oudolf who taught me to see beauty in plants during their fall dying away. Here are two examples from my garden, the button-like seeds heads of Rudbeckia 'Goldsturm', and a hanging seed head of giant sunflower planted by birds, which grew beside our pond.
For more information on Piet Oudolf, I have a page on my web site about his garden design ideas.
Fall is best time of year for me. Here are my reasons for loving autumn:
4. Fantastic leaf colors 
I was away last weekend in Killarney, not far from Sudbury, where I joined a fun group of people for a photo workshop, and had a lovely time. The pictures here were taken at Killarney Mountain Lodge.
Since then, I've had a kind of writer's, or should I say blogger's block, and so I haven't posted. Figured I'd better start again, and break this dry spell with some pictures from the fall garden. We've had a dry spell too in terms of rain, but the soil is still moist on most of the property, except on our south-facing hill, (below).
The New York Times recently had a good article in their Home and Garden section about creating a perennial meadow:"A perennial meadow in bloom, its colors constantly changing with the play of light and shadow, may be nature at its most alluring. Yet, as random and natural as a meadow looks, there is nothing haphazard about creating one. Planting a meadow, it turns out, is as rule-bound and time-consuming as planting any perennial border, according to Larry Weaner, a Pennsylvania landscape designer and one of the pioneers of meadow design in the United States."Read the full article here to find out what's involved and how long it takes to get the plants flowering. The description is very similar to the process we went through to get our own meadow, pictured above, established.
We've had a bit of a love affair with succulent plants. This variegated Agave americana collection began with a single plant, the biggest one in pot on the ground. It was much smaller when I bought it six or so years ago. Since then it has had many offsets, and my dear husband keeps propagating them. 
Over the weekend I drove to Michigan to visit my hort buddy, Sandy, who lives near Lansing. At the border they always ask where you're going, and when I say to visit a friend, the next question is: "How do you know her?" 
Sandy's solution to racoons destroying birdbaths by climbing on them and smashing them is to set large clay saucers (found at Ikea) on a solid foundation of bricks. It works and makes a nice garden focal point. Love that golden yucca - it just glows.
The very charming entrance to Sandy's herb and vegetable garden, fenced off with chicken wire to keep critters out.
Flowers from the garden: I just love Sandy's gorgeous arrangements. (I'm generally too lazy to go out and cut flowers.)
"One must often search high and low for its presence in American gardens. One the other hand, it is one of the architectural building blocks of British gardens. People with whom I have traveled overseas in the fall always wonder why our native plant is so well used and cherished there and so scorned and ignored here." (Herbaceous Perennial Plants, 3rd Edition, 2008)Commonly known as Joe Pye weed, to my mind, this plant doesn't merit the "weed" part of its name. Yes, it can self-seed, but I haven't found that to be troublesome, and this is easy to prevent by deadheading.
"Joe Pye is said to have been a North Carolina Indian who used these plants to cure many ailments, including typhoid fever, and the plants became known as Joe Pye's weed. Perhaps changing the name to Joe Pye plant would enamor it to gardeners a little more."
