Month: May 2009

Despite a fierce windy night all is still in place.Fears were for the polytunnell but all ok.Some fierce heavy hailstone showers today,with things been a little on the cool side temperature wise.This evening some of the final touches were made to the new pathway in the bottom garden section.No way was rain going to upset plans in that area anymore.Some new mini tubs need filling in that area. Last of all just a quick check on watering and feeding in the veg garden.  

On the 9th of May we celebrate Victory Day – the end of Great Patriotic War. This year is 64th anniversary of the day.

We celebrate to remember all people we lost in that war, celebrate for all people survived in that destroying war. And celebrate for hope that be no more such horrible wars.  

Happy Victory Day!

Lets keep our world in peace! Lets think about our planet is not a field of battle, but lovely colourful garden!

When your 10 – Happiness is bouncing and playing wrestling on your trampoline!! So we donned the waders – well wellies and raincoats and off we went this morning to put it up.  To be honest Tom had it mostly done before I came to supervise!!! The safety net was the most difficult bit – what can I say – he couldn’t have done it without me. Just as we were securing the last section – hey presto – the rain stopped.

As you can see from the photo’s – a huge success!!!

The plan for today was to cut the grass. Not a chance!!! Rain Rain Rain…Summer is here at last. Instead of cutting the grass I went into Kells to get a haircut. While there I dropped into the saturday market which had also been rained out There was a guy there selling plants and after a half hour chatting and bargening gave me these two Japanese Maples for €50. I have been looking for two matching shrubs for a while now and the nearest  I got was two maples in Balliskillen which would have cost me considerably more. Driving home I hardly noticed the rain. Although I didn’t get to do anything in the garden today I don’t feel as hard done by as I usually would when I am rained out.

I got home from work early today, the sun was shining and I said to myself to the garden I go. In I went and changed, out I came, took out all the tools and set myself up for the job in hand. Just ready to get stuck in when it started to rain. I stood in the garden in the rain, temper rising, and decided I would-nt be bettered by the rain. The family thought I was mad, and herself in doors thought I had lost the plot when I told her it was a grand soft day. Sure it was only a few drops of rain to keep the dust down when I be digging in the garden was what I told the neighbour when he was speaking to me from the upstairs window. I was praying the rain would stop before the neighbours and the family had me commited. Begods it did, the sun came out, and I got a lot done. I got the carrots in, the brussel sprouts and the leeks all have new homes in the garden. I even got a few weeds evicted from the garden. I was not going to be got the better of and I perservered and won. I have now taken to the bed with lemsip but I can now look out the window on me veg growing and say I did-nt let the weather get the better of me. No fair day farmer here.

I sowed seeds of lagurus ovatus in the pot with codaeum. Only one seed germinated, but now it seems to me that I’ve got not what I expect!

Lagurus ovatus must looks like cereal, but this plant surely not. I don’t think this is weed. But what’s this in that case?

Leaves have soft smell if being touched. This is similar with smell of faded orange peel. Is it a kind of salvia or mint?

 

In the lovely sunshine this morning the s. nigra purpurea ‘Black Lace’ looks very pretty.  Because it was small I only trimmed it lightly in March.

 

This is a lovely plant, so fresh and clean looking and grows from little bulblets and multiplies quickly. Im not sure of correct name. Its leaves etc are like Kaffir lilies.

Nowadays, we need passwords for everything – from banking pins, Facebook and ebay, not to mention garden.ie.  That is before we even go to work and when we attempt log on, we need the password.  The most common password is “password” – not terribly original and very easily thought of.  Where a password requires alpha and numeric letters, the most common is “password123”.  Apparently, those who steal computers / laptops have a ball because of these very commonly known passwords.  One very simple way to significantly increase the strength of a password is to simply put a dot somewhere in it.  So “password123” would become “password.123” for example.  One day, a computer technician and I were having a chat about passwords.  He is a firm believer in the “dot” being included.  I have to say I fully agree because the “dot” can be put at the beginning, middle or end so it makes “password” or “password123” more awkward to break.

 

In the nature of my work, I have to call to different offices.  When I come across an area which requires a password which didn’t require one before, I start with the 2 most common ones.  After that, I put in the users name which in 90% of cases gets me in. If that doesn’t work, I try their children’s names, if they have children – the pets name if they don’t.  Failing that, I move to birthdays.  That does prove a bit tricky but a bit of thought usually gets me around the problem.  Before the recession, there were 25^th birthday parties, 30^th, 40^th and 50^th.  When the invite arrived, I asked the birthday boy or girl their actual birthday.  So, now I have their date of birth!  Mind you, that might become a little bit trickier now.  At this point, you might be wondering why I might need someone else’s passwords – I may need to log into different software packages to do my work but I may only need a report out of it and then log out.  There is no point creating a password as I am not amending anything.

 

Any banking on line business (with any of the banks) require multiple passwords which must be changed every 90 days so there is always a need for creative thinking when it comes to passwords.  One man I work with uses different names from the various Star Trek movies.  I don’t even bother to guess those as I was never a fan of Star Trek.  I heard the other day that another new one is coming out.  I know he will go to see it and I know that all his passwords will change – his passwords will encompass the name of the ship, leading characters, different gadgets used and the Lord knows what else.  If I need to use his passwords, when he is giving me it, he gives me the storyline relating to that particular word.    

 

Another man I worked with was a constant reader.  His passwords came from books he read.  To try to guess his passwords was absolutely impossible as he read all the books from the “Tubridy book club” plus he was a member of 2 book clubs – one in the area of Dublin he was currently living in and one from the area he used to live in.

 

As for me, I use my plants as passwords.  I suppose most gardens have certain common plants such as roses, tulips, daffodils, dahlias’ and so on.  If my work colleagues wanted to, they could make a reasonable stab at my passwords.  I add a bit of spice to them, however.  I use the plant name, followed by a dot, followed by the first 3 letters of the place I bought it followed by the last 2 numbers of the year I purchased it.  So, for example, “peony.bir08” was one such password.  I purchased a peony at the BBC’s Gardeners’ World show in 2008.  Now my colleagues have more than a problem.  My local garden centres are Jones Garden Centre, Donabate; Rolestown Garden Centre, Swords and recently opened to the public, Tully Nurseries, Ballyboughal.  Then there are Woodies, B&Q and Atlantic Homecare in Swords.  On my way home to Kilkenny, I sometimes call into Johnstown Garden Centre, Kildare.  If I go to Kilkenny via Carlow, I may call to Arboretum Lifestyle & Garden Centre, Leighlinbridge or Hennessy Garden Centre, Coolgrange, Clare (just north of Kilkenny city).  That is before I go to any shows – Bloom in the Park is coming up shortly and BBC’s Gardeners’ World show is two weeks later.  After that, there are garden club talks and the Sunday drive!  A very simple system makes passwords unbreakable.

 

Of course, the logic reader among you would ask – how does she keep on top of her passwords?  No-one could remember all those.  I simply keep a spreadsheet, divided into categories (work-banking; work-spreadsheets; home-banking; home-garden; home-buy&sell; etc), followed by business name or site name, followed by user name (as this sometimes is your email address), followed by the password.  The password is shown as follows:  “peony.(place of purchase)(yr)” so even if someone got into my password file, they still don’t have my passwords.  Do I keep the password file password protected?  Yes.  With a telephone number!

 

It was just beautiful outside this weekend. 

Yesterday I started off by cleaning up from the last few days – broken branches, destroyed greenhouse, dead-heading tulips etc. It was really a little sad, but the garden looks nice once again. 

Once all was tidy again, I spent most of the weekend planting.  Made hanging baskets filled with begonias, planted a border of marigolds as pest control, trained my snow peas to use the fence, planted three new jasmine plants and went to town on containers/seedlings by planting pumpkins and back up corriander and sunflowers in the green house.  We also have a nice new olive tree (named Oliver) join our container garden this weekend.  He’s fantastic. 

Things are looking really pretty nice right now, especially the herbs and veg seedlings.  I put new photos in the "Spring 2009" veggie and flower photo albums if you’d like to see.  Gave the lawn a mow to top it all off. 

Of course, I had to stop by the garden center earlier today.  Bought two delphinium, an iris, a lupine and two lillies.  They’ll go in this week. 

hi  everyone hope you are all enjoying your garden. decided to turn half of my tunnel an extra veg garden after seeing how rachel had her greenhouse layed out. thank you rachel for the idea, i idint want the tunnel to be almost empty when all the stuff was gone out want to sow anther crop of carrots and a few other bits and pieces. i also want to make an outdoor nursery bed just outside the tunnel for some lupins, delephiniums and wallflowers. i am putting up photos now of the new veg patch and some of my tulips allthough weather beatin. going to mums tomorrow to help her plant all the stuff i gave her. i am hoping to finish my veg patch tomorrow eve. well bye for now and happy gardening everyone  

this is another view of my patio

here are  more tulips

A neighbour of ours passed away a couple of months ago.  He was in his 80s and was great character.  Walking by his house today I took this picture.  I thought the bluebells that grow by his gate and around his house were a lovely sight.

This is looking good now – it is a little invasive and tends to flop out from the centre as the season goes on but it is a great mound of colour at the moment.  If anyone wants some just let me know as it seeds everywhere – but be warned, it may take over!

Had a very enjoyable and interesting woodland walk and talk with Lorna Elms at Turlough House yesterday afternoon.  We all received a lovely handout of photographs of wild flowers courtesy of Jenny Seacroft of www.irishwildflowers.ie. I also got a lovely surprise when my friend gave me a piece of her Chatham Island Forget me Not as well as some other plants. Quite a few people had bought this plant at the ‘Rare Plant Fair’ which was held in Dublin yesterday.

 

So to speak!

Remember when we bought the new gazebo and I planted up the corner planters with climbers – Well one was Romantica. A beautiful deep purple flower – so says the discription and the picture. Not exactly what I got. Dont know what type of Clematis it is- I am not complaining though as it is very beautiful – Just curious. I have uploaded some photo’s of it and label. If I hadn’t of kept the label, I would have thought I was loosing the run of myself!!!!! Maybe it is a SIGN.

Are plume poppy very invasive? Somebody gave a small plant to me last year and it grew very tall very quickly, and has come back this year, already nearly a metre tall.

I like its leaves very much, but reading about it on the internet a few days ago, it sounds like these multiply very very quickly! And looking around my plant, I found another little one close to it, so it looks like it’s already started colonising the garden…

I have a nasty head and chest cold and haven’t the energy to go out into the garden.  There is so much to be done before we go on holidays but I’m just not able.

There are trays and trays of pots to go out into the garden, netting to be put up for the peas, cells to be potted on and pots to go into the cold frame.

Its the worst time to go on holidays! But circumstances won’t allow a holiday any other time.

The kids spent sosme time with relatives who live on a golf course recently.  They came home with golf clubs and bags, pink balls and great enthusiasm.  They were both out in the garden with their new kit but there wasn’t alot of swinging going on. I went out to see what the problem was. I was greeted with a 6-year-old face that was utterly frustrated.  "We’re trying to play but some thing is not right. We can’t roll the ball because the grass is too long"  So now we have to get the lawn up to putting green standard –  I think a few games of pitch and putt would appease them and perhaps more frequent visits to Uncle Dan’s.

Definitely one of my favourite sights in the garden is the flowering of the white tree poeny – the buds and flowers are so beautiful,  and each year there seems to be more of them. It’s quite un-exciting for the rest of the year but earns its keep for these few weeks! A few more photos of it soon in photo album.

With the sunshine the lilac has opened its flowers and is spreading its gorgeous scent all around!  There are three varieties here.  My native lilac didn’t flower at all this year, not sure why as it has been there a couple of years now, but it is flowering well along the road nearby.

We have finally made the heart-wrenching decision to move!  We have been thinking about it for a while but have been putting it off, but there is no point in delaying the inevitable as country life no longer suits us.  My other half comutes to Dublin four days a week which is not sustainable, and we want to be closer to family and friends.  So, while I am saddened to think of leaving my garden, I do relish the thought of a blank (much smaller) canvas.  The truth is I could probably completely furnish a new garden with plants that I have in pots and ones that are overcrowding this one.  This picture shows a common mistake – I planted three shrubs way too close together about 5 years ago and now they are all growing in to each other and at least one will have to be removed, but not before I take lots of cuttings!

This poor thing is still flowering inspite of getting frosted about 5 weeks ago. Ive had this Choisya for years and this is the first time its happened. I won’t cut it back until after the flowers are gone, which by the way smell delicious. Ive put up some more photos of this mornings colours.