Month: July 2009

1. Abraham Lincoln became America’s greatest Precedent.  Lincolcn’s mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands.  Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the proclamation. On the night of April 14^th 1865 Lincoln went to the theatre and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show.  The believed assassinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposedly insane actor. This ruined Booth’s career.  

2.Meanwhile in Europe the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltaire invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy. 

3.Gravity was invented by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn when the apples are falling off the trees! 

4. Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children.  In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in the attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel.  Handel was half German, half Italian and half English. He was very large.  

5. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music.  He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him.  Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.  

6.The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened and catapulted into Napoleon. Napoleon wanted an heir to inherit his power but since Josephine was a Baroness, she couldn’t have any children.  

7. The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the west.  

8.  Queen Victoria was the longest Queen.  She sat on a thorn for 63 years. She was a moral woman who practiced virtue. Her death was the final even which ended her reign. 

9. The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine.  The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of one hundred men. 1

0. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species. Madam Curie discovered radio and Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers.  11. The First World War caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by an anahist, this ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.   

Hope to God the weather isnt going to be like this for the whole month. It doesnt look like its going to clear up any time soon. Not much will get done in the garden today.  It hasnt stopped raining all night. If it doesnt stop, my new pond is in danger of overflowing into the garden. The upper pond has a distinct advantage being raised.

Our garden is not even a work in progress,we’re @ the very beginning!!

We’ve just started building our house, but with a dream of developed shrubs and trees for when we move in, we’ve planted a few of our favourites, primarily our orchard. Because we’re limited to how much of the "garden" we can develop until the house construction is complete, we’re just using one corner of the 1.5 acre site @ the moment. Currently at the research stage so that we might have help from our builders with larger constructions like the split level circular patio and perhaps starting a pond.

Would love any advice you can over to us….

I’ve had a few very lazy days over the last week, not to much gardening done. Just thinking of it now I still done the watering, weeding, dead heading, potting on, cut the grass, and potted up some aquatic plants. I suppose because I had no project to do I thought I was lazy. O yes I also had five bbq on thoes lovely evenings, and sat out untill all hours.

In work I was still looking in at all your progress in your gardens, and all the great things been done..

Starting on Saturday I hope to rotavate the lawn that was all destroyed when the pond went in, and maybe put in some paths to define the borders. If I have it done in two weeks I will be very happy. I sprayed the whole lot over with roundup last week to kill off everything before I start. Everything is turning a lovely shade of brown now, hope not to many weed seeds are not left there. I will put up some photos tomorrow, forgot to take some in daylight.

Our garden is not even a work in progress,we’re @ the very beginning!!

We’ve just started building our house, but with a dream of developed shrubs and trees for when we move in, we’ve planted a few of our favourites, primarily our orchard. Because we’re limited to how much of the "garden" we can develop until the house construction is complete, we’re just using one corner of the 1.5 acre site @ the moment. Currently at the research stage so that we might have help from our builders with larger constructions like the split level circular patio and perhaps starting a pond.

Would love any advice you can offer to us….

As our initial attempt to garden proved we were able to manage, we decided to get a garden shed in order to start off some perenials & shrubs for next year. A small garden shed from Woodies has since been transformed with paint & has turned into the nicest little space to work in…

As it was out first burst of creativity, its been added to on a daily basis, with shelves an extra long window, co-ordinating work benches, hooks , battery operated lights and of course a pretty little sign.

Its now either full of or surrounded by our latest editions for the garden, an abundance of lavender, peonies, wisteria, tree peonies, hydrangeas, clematis and more.. If we dont stop "picking up a few things" for it, there will be no room left to work in…

 

As I live in an estate I have a very small garden at the front of the house and another at the rear.  I designed the gardens myself and  employed  a  firm of builders to build the walls, paths etc. I planted and laid the lawn.

The front garden has place for 3 parked cars, no grass, and two shruberies, one with a pebbled area.

The back has a small circular lawn and raised beds at different levels with shrubs and a water feature. The garden also contains my garden shed while at the side of the house my husband has his shed.

Down-sizing had diffuculties and both of us had to be ruthless as to what we wanted to keep or throw away. 

In winter we enjoy watching the birds feeding from feeders hanging outside the conservatory windows. 

Not much can be done in the garden with all the rain. At least we dont have to water at night. Took some more photos. Hope you like them. I was always delighted with a small garden but now I’ve got the "bug" I wish I had a bigger one.!!! When you see everything growing and the lovely colours, you want to plant everything ,but when you dont have the space there’s nothing you can do. Anyway I’m enjoying what I have and once you enjoy doing something thats all that matters.

Last night I watched some of "Nationwide" which focused on gardening, allotements and chickens. There is a lot of comment in the papers about returning to growing our own veg and fruit. The government has even aided schools in setting up their own gardens and teaching the kids the benefit of gardening. Everybody through the media is being asked to garden for their own benefit, except one branch of the media, TELEVISION. I know evey so often they show a programme about chefs growing their own, farmers setting up allotements and people returning to nature, but there is no dedicated gardening programme for the Irish gardener on an Irish channel. You would think now that tv stations now having to cut back on their budgets would invest in a programme like this. I am sure the outlay for a gardening programme would not be as great as buying some of the foreign tripe they show and pay a fortune for. There is medical dramas queing up to be shown, more police shows than criminals, talk shows to drive you round the bend, but not one show dealing with gardening, the fastest growing trend to hit Ireland since the vikings popped over for tea. It is time we demanded to be shown what we want to watch. Look at the success of BLOOM, and the crowds that attended and it only warranted 20 mins of airtime, again by the "Nationwide" programme. It is a pity some of these tv planners looked out on the real world and created a gardening programme for us.

Has the last thing at night become logging on to www.garden.ie? Has it replaced saying your prayers? I always have a quick look around midnight to see who has updated their journals. The plan is to only spend 5 minutes – it is, after all, supposed to be a “quick” look.  

I start with the person on the right hand side of “most recently updated” and work my way across to the left hand side. But I am finding that when I have had “the quick look” at the person second from the right that the two remaining have now moved over to the right hand side and I have four to view, instead of two. This isn’t a bad thing, by the way – quite the contrary. The result of this is that the plan to only spend 5 minutes goes out the window and before I know it, it is quarter to one in the morning. Is it that all of you are out late in your gardens due to the long summer evenings? Is it that your house is nice and quiet because everyone else is in bed and you can sit down and take your time posting your journal? Or maybe it’s a seasonal thing as there is so much in bloom? One way or the other, I am getting to bed later and later because of all the wonderful photos and information put up. It’s a bit like going to the pub for one drink with colleagues.One of my friends and I came to the conclusion years ago that there is no such thing as one drink with colleagues because the crack only starts after the third or fourth drink. I suppose I could always not have that “quick” look. But then I would be missing out on so much. Dilemma, dilemma……….

Finally got round to uploading photos I had taken in June.

These are photos of gardens I have visited. The picture of the garden is my parents lawn before I got my muddy paws on it!!and the hedgehog was in Leitrim last summer,my Dad reckons it’s not a good sign to see a hedgehog out and about in the day-time,but it seemed healthy at the time. Oh and sorry about the upside-down photos, I still haven’t mastered uploading!!

Did lots of work today in the garden.

Did plenty of weeding and clipped the buxus hedge.

I also supervised the assembly of six vertical posts as supports for my Charles de Mills roses, which like to lie about on the lawn if allowed. They are supposed to be a hedge but aren’t really suitable for the job. I then had to attach the roses to the posts with plastic coated wire and dead head them. What a job! Most of the roses were brown mush after the rain. Ran out of the wire so will have to continue the job tomorrow when I get some more. This will be a good permanent solution to the floppy rose problem and they look better already. I saw Helen Dillon had the same rose in her garden but she had strong metal hoops to support them.

Anyway, it was getting dark by the time I’d finished so there was no chance of taking any photos – really unlike me!

But – good news – my pond lily has flowered. I’m really pleased. They are getting better every year. The first year the lily produced a bud that never opened before first frost. Last year it flowered on 31 August. And this year it flowered on 2 July (and I didn’t fertilise it this year). So they seem to improve with age. I’m not taking it out to divide it until I absolutely have to otherwise I’ll be back to square one again!

I use the Yahoo service and when you log in there is a few news items on the home-page. One of them this evening was about a guy in Germany who used a flame thrower to do the weeding. He set fire to the hedge, garden shed and his house which burnt to the ground. It is cruel to laugh at anothers misfortune, but it is a lesson. Hoes are for weeding, flame throwers are for cooking burgers. You should only use the tool for what it is designed for.

My garden is small I have fruit growing in it. There is gooseberries blackcurrants strawberries and rheubarb in it. I also put onion sets and leeks in, beetroot and white turnips. I have made a wheel with a tractor tube, and in it is scallions and lettuce . I also have a glasshouse and in it is grapes tomatoes strawberries.

I have much to learn still but I will enjoy the experience.

The strawberries are nearl y finished in the glasshouse, I did not have alot this year,The box Martin made has helped I don’t have to bend to reach the fruit.

I put in cane support today for the tomatoes. The first blossoms are beginning to appear. I am going on holidays next week, so Frank will keep them watered.

I picked the gooseberries today and made 8 pound of jam, from 3.5 pound of gooseberries.

I gave the grapevine a summer pruning yesterday. I do hope I have not taken to much off the branches ,they were blocking the light into the glasshouse, and with tomatoes as well as grapes in it the light was necessary.

Greetings from the glassman! As the name suggests my interest is my 30 feet by 12 feet glasshouse.  The house faces east to west which at this time of year means it gets up to 9 hours of sun. It is free standing and is steel framed. I grow standard vegetable but would like to branch out (no pun intended) into growing a vine tree for grapes and bulbs.

Any ideas/information would be gratefully accepted. Thanks and all the best.

Such terrible showers today. No need for watering these evenings. I intended cutting the grass but it was too wet. Instead I replanted some lettuce I had growing in trays and repotted some flowers. Got a good bit of weeding done in the flower bed and staked up anything that needed staking. Saw the first flower on my sweet pea this morning. I only planted them a few weeks ago.

Well, what a day. Sun, rain, more sun and much, much more rain. Don’t you just love summer in the Irish midlands,J

I hope everyone will be attending the garden show on the 18. Marie and I are looking forward to it immensely and it will be good to put faces to the profiles.

 

have reduced my gardening. In fact it was a bit like living in Africa in the wet season here last week! The humidity was humungeous so the growth was rapid – one of those weeks. Hence my gardening yesterday was mowing and mowing and mowing….. 

The sun is shining and its tanking it down with rain as I write – shouldn’t this happen in March? My hanging baskets are sulking as they don’t know what is happening.  However the astilbe is looking good, its happy out with the climate, as is the rodgersia, the ligularia is almost gone. 

I was to start rotovating the garden yesterday but it lashed rain untill lunchtime , and if i started it would have just turned to muck. So far today we had a coulpe of showers so I don’t know if I’ll start. But the good news is two of my friends said they will come next weekend to give me a dig out, which is great.

So we just spent the day pottering and dead heading and doing bits and pieces, which was very pleasent to do.

After an early start (frenzy!) of seed sowing and watering and excitment and pushing and shoving (from my husband) for room in the greenhouse its finally Summer… albeit a very wet one so far. Maybe its just my natural tendency but I started to feel a little let down that my garden was not bursting with flowers and looking like the gardens in the masses of Amateur garden books I have been buying.  Although everyone who visits loves our garden – and it is lovely I have to say, I still had this disappointment lingering.  I think this proves at least one very important point about me – I have no patience whatsoever, I want it all to happen now!  It was really only when my husband took lots of photos that I could really appreciate the difference we have made in a very short time and also the absolute beauty of some of the flowers in OUR garden!! I’ve just posted some photos to my album of my favourite shots and my favourtie flowers we have grown this year – most of them for the first time.  Our children are loving the garden too, not just the flowers but the vegetables again this year.  So its a huge success really, even if it does rain too much here in the Sunny South East…

We have had thunderstorms here for the last three days and the heavy showers that accompany them have left the poor roses all droopy.  I miss not being able to chill out in the garden during this wet spell.  My husband dug up his first new potatoes yesterday and we ate them for dinner, they were delicious.  I am not into growing vegetables but I love the results.  Hopefully this wet spell will end soon. 

All work was in the polytunnell today.Not the best of days with the weather.During the day some showers,and from 7pm a washout.Picked some nice early rooster potatoes in the old bed this evening before taking it from the tunnell and then installed some new single beds.App 15 small beds were fitted on the left hand side of the tunnell.

is it me or is anybody else having problems adding comments, posted 5 comments yesterday for 4 different members, the site tells me the comment has been added but nothing comes up!! anybody else come across this? 

Squeezed in an hour this evening in the garden between work and children;s bed time. Really pleased to see my dierama had bloomed it is a lovely plant and I divided it earlier in the year and thought I might have done some permanent damage but all ok. I planted the Iris;s that my mam gave me on Sunday have not had any previously so will be keen to see how these go for me. I really like getting "bits" from friends or relatives rather than buying in a garden centre and that not because i am a cheapskate ( Not originally from Cavan i have heard all the jokes!!) but I like to think of plants continuning on from home to home, generation to generation and plants that have a story or a memory linked to them. I have a pullmonoria that my mum gave me when we first moved here and she brought it from her own childhood home. Got good news to-day that our landscaper is coing tomorrow to look at our "island" project. I mentioned in earlier journal entries that we have a large bed in the middle of our drive that is planted up with very large trees – we want to put in a natural looking water feature like a stream running into a pond surrounded by lush planting- we are hoping to do the work ourselves but get good advice and guidance from the landscaper. I will keep you all updated on progress. Another very exciting development this evening spotted my first 4 tomoatoes – well it was like a new birth in the family with all the congratulations going on – you see this is the first year I have ever grown tomatoes and I was despairing – Watch out Dave you now have competition!! We also harvested our first head of cabbage exchanged it with our neighbour for a home made fruit cake yummy. We keep her supplied with eggs, salads and vegetables and she bakes lots of nice goodies for us. lastly I took slips of my penstomon any tips on best wasy of bringing these along. Happy gardening let;s hope the weather improves as I am off on my holidays next week DunGarven – any good gardens in that location please let me know