Many years ago when we still lived in Toronto and our family was very young marked the first time we had ever seen what is now our most favourite of annual garden plants, begonias. They were planted in a public park in Rosedale, an upscale part of the city. Their pale, waxen petals beguiled us, the beauty of the delicate looking flowers fascinated us, we thought back then they were the most beautiful flowers we'd ever seen. And they were.

We were young, and busy maintaining a household, steeped deep in nurturing three young children with one working parent. Opportunities to seriously garden were rare; our time was given elsewhere. But the memory of the impact of that aesthetic revelation was never forgotten. It was the reason, a lifetime later, we focused as retirees building a garden, on highlighting begonias, those most beautiful and hard-working of annual flowers, closer to eye level, planting them in garden urns and pots.

Year after year we've gone to one particular nearby grower of begonias. And year after year we would winter over some of the begonia bulbs, storing them in the basement to be brought out in spring and re-planted. Last year was the first in many that we decided we would no longer overwinter the bulbs. We also found that some of the most beautiful of the begonias were somehow cultivated to have no bulbs whatever, however that could be explained.

We reasoned that come spring, we would have ample access to the tuberous begonias whose appeal to our sense of aesthetic was so strong. They need little care, other than watering and the occasional addition of fertilizer throughout the summer months. The layered-petal beauty of the flowers are absolutely enchanting. The plant produces its treasured flowers continuously throughout its flowering, its stem and foliage growing all the while to impressive size and height.

The flowers' shadings in pastels and bright, strong colours, from white to pink shades, bright orange, yellow and red are brilliant. They sing to the senses. And we have always valued the huge contribution they make to our garden. They, and perennial hostas and heucheras form a kind of summer backbone to the garden, although the architectural element is expressed largely by the ornamental trees we have planted over the decades.

The Magnolias, the flowering Crabs, the Japanese maple, the weeping Mulberries and flowering Peas, along with the specimen Corkscrew Hazel, Purple Smoke tree and Hydrangea shrubs. The garden beds and borders are also dependent for variety and sequential blooming on Bearded Irises, Lilies, Canterbury Bells, Bleeding Hearts, Geraniums, Poppies, Peonies, Roses, Clematis vines, Mountain Bluet and Monarda.

Each time one of these perennial flowering plants comes to seasonal maturity and bloom, it's another milestone in the season. Filling out the garden, presenting with each bloom period, another aspect of form, texture and colour to the ever-changing landscape. Some things, of necessity have changed as far as the ability to acquire annual bedding plants, thanks to the intervention of COVID-19 in every aspect of our lives.

This was the year we hadn't nurtured begonia bulbs, overwintering them, and bringing them out for spring planting. And this is the year that we discovered that from our usual vendor we could no longer access tuberous begonias as we had long been accustomed to. Their entire stock of any kind of bedding plant was finite this year; they were besieged by people anxious to start gardens to while the time away, unable to work during lockdown. We were able to acquire everblooming begonias and a new hybrid cultivar of Elatior begonias.

They're all hugely productive, producing myriads of small and beautiful blossoms, but we do very much miss those huge, glorious blossoms that spoke to our yearning to produce, year after year, the ideal landscape to reflect our personal taste. We've accessed angel-wing begonias that produce interesting foliage and flowers that seem add-ons, not proudly assertive, large and prominently colour-blazing the conceit of their beauty.

And nor were we able to procure the giant zinnias -- any zinnias for that matter -- that we featured alongside large-blooming marigolds; alternating hot pink and gold that blazed the confidence of their lovely appearance in the sunny garden at the front of the house. There, in resignation, we planted some of those pink-hued-bearing begonias, languid and temperamental and disappointing. Still, the structure of the garden remains intact, and for the most part, it offers and succeeds to please us no end. Most of the beds and borders, enclosed within retaining walls my husband had built have their presence behind the visual buffer of our many trees; for a small urban lot there are plenty of trees; blue spruce and false cypress and cedars and Alberta spruce among them.