Me On A Monday - July 16th

Good Morning - I hope & trust everyone had a good weekend.  In this part of the world the heat & humidity shook hands again & gave us a summer weekend.  It's not good for the gardens or the crops, so please Mother Nature some rain, soon, for several hours, please & thank you.

On Sunday Mr Man & I went out on a mission to find some items for the SPSH.  When the list for SPSH 2018 was set, I had decided that I wanted to capture the finds of things not found in my garden - I wanted to get off the patio.    

Returning from the dentist last Wednesday, I had seen one idea for re-purposed. So we decided to take the afternoon to capture that particular item & to visit the university grounds in search of some more items.   The University of Guelph has its roots as a agricultural college with a world renowned vet college but now can boast several other major programs taking in the humanities, the sciences & technology;  There has been some recent grant money for grounds improvement throughout the university. University buildings are intermingled within the city of Guelph.

I saw this magnificent tree & thought it looked like the weirwood tree from Game of Thrones, although it's not white like the weirwood tree ... or the party tree from The Lord Of The Rings.

We wandered about the conservatory gardens.  These are gardens that over the last 10 years  have been designed, built & improved upon to show off the renovation of the university's original glass conservatory.  For us, this was the first time the building has not been locked so we were finally able to wander inside. It's small & doesn't take more that a few minutes to walk around but it did take us over 30 minutes because we stopped at each planting & made lots of oh & ah sounds.  I did find several items to tick off my list at the gardens & at the art centre also within the campus grounds.   
The conservatory gardens are divided into 4 sections;  each section is planted with one of the four seasons;  spring, summer, autumn & winter.  Each show cases plants, trees, shrubs that have their moment of glory in one particular season.  There are also gardens bordering all of the parking lots & the central university bus depot.

 The pond's water was rather cloudy but we did spot several large carp (goldfish).  There were lots of baskets with dirt in the bottom of the pond so maybe the intention is eventually to plant water lilies.

 Inside the conservatory

From the front of the conservatory, the walk that leads to the four gardens.  The large urn has dedication/donation plaques. 

Outside the gardens were full but looking a little thirsty.  The lawn was bristley & brown.

Red Explorer Roses bordering the walk to the bus shelters

Blue Russian Sage

Some of the newer glass university buildings

A dying pine in the winter garden - an invader beetle killing Ontario pines

An entire grove of Rhododendrons in the spring garden

Summer roses - most are Explorer Roses - developed specifically for the Canadian climate

"Gardening is the slowest of the performing arts."  Max Griswold