Month: July 2009

Up since seven thirty. So far rain has stayed away. Got some weed-killing done. Not sure what rest of day will bring. Hoping to get a handle on new veg patch. We’ll see.

hi everyone i am back, the weather really ruined my window boxes and baskets even one of my calla lilles got a bit of a tumble. did a small bit today. i sprayed the cabbages today they are riddled with catapillars uch, really douced them, good riddens to them. discovered i have my first green peppers in the tunnel and my tomatoes are ladden with tomatoes ready to go red.i have twelve new strawberrry plants from runners some of them were in pots and others rooted in the grass and new ones appeared where they werent planted at all. i weeded and planted some pot marigold in the tyres at the back where the apple trees are and the oriential cherries are they look lovely now. i had put some pansies in and some other bits and some had died for some reason. now they look less forlorn. hopefully i will get to do the window boxes tomorrow tidy them up and feed them. last but now least i did some damage today at the garden centre. bought violas and french marigolds, lilies and some pots and a book on 1001 plants. cant let him see them, i also bought some ivy in supervalu. well happy gardening everyone must catch up with your journals to see how you are all getting on. 

Nothing done in the garden this evening only some quick pictures taken at app 6.30 pm.Added tomorrow evening to the photos.

 

The only jobs I have been doing in the garden these days is deadheading , mowing the grass and taking some photos and now I find that I have lots of cutting back to do. I think I will take a small area a day and deal with that as I’m inclined to go mad and spend a whole day hacking back and then end up too exhausted to do anything for a few days. I’m a bit impatient and want to get it all done in one go.

Also I got a family of mice in the garden and have been busy trying to capture them and release them in the valley.They were climbing up the bird feeders and stealing the peanuts that were for the birds. We had lots of fun watching them as they were very cheeky and ran up poles and into flower pots. My neighbour had them in her garden also and we agreed not to put out any food so as not to encourage them. I was not  happy as I had to wash all my pots etc that they were in. I hope they like their new home.  

June was not a bad month weather wise and I got to leave my sun umbrella up for a whole week. There were times we could have been in Spain, sitting out of an evening with a glass of wine and a citronella candle to deter the bugs.

Lets hope we get lots more sunshine before the Summer is out.

Have put up some photos, a slow job! If anyone wants a root of the small geranium I can bring it to Belvedere.

I have some Clematis growing on the back wall. I only planted them about two or three months ago. Anyway, they are doing great except one. It was growing quite high and has about a dozen flowers on it but not opened yet. This morning I went out to check the garden and I noticed it is wilting and looking a bit "sick". Can anyone tell me why this has happened and will it come back to life.!!!

Yesterday I pulled up a bush to make way for a new flower bed. More of a little shrub bed. Today I got the front and back lawns cut and was just finished before the rain came. Tomorrow is suppose to be a bad day so wont get anything done.

I have just finished cutting my sweetpeas for tomorrows show. I’m not as confident as I was last week,they have a lot of weather damage to them and a friendly seagull has left a ”donation” on some blooms.Maybe he was trying to tell me something! Oh ,just to add to my troubles I pulled a muscle in my leg yesterday. On the bright side my entry for the all Ireland comp. will be glasnevin(White) gwendoline(cerice on white) Valerie harrod(salmon) baronscourt(mauve) florencecourt(pink) well four of these five.I hope to enter several other classes at the show. Sorry I won’t be able to go to mulligar,but have a great time and remember to post pictures .

hi everyone it was raining or misting most of the day today. myself and the kids decided to eat our dinner in the siiting room and watch highschool musical 3,it wasnt fit for anything else really. promised crap tomorrow. i had to put on a fire today just to dry clothes. well thats it see how i feel tomorrow might do something in the tunnel. happy gardening. with all the rain i will have more free flowers

Got nothing done in the garden today because of rain so I downloaded a few more photos. As you can see I started digging the new bed but cant get back to it as yet. I want to transplant some small shrubs from the raised bed but I dont think its the right time for doing that, is it!!!! When is the right time????

This spring I got my first greenhouse. It is wonderful – 10ftX20ft. As you can imagine, I am now trying different gardening techniques and I hope to overwinter some plants in the greenhouse.

I have also dug a fair number of new borders this year so the greenhouse will come in handy for helping me propagate plants to fill them.

just in from work , no sign of that thing called the sun.RAIN the real name for summer. Ah well,the two shows at the weekend were great. Dublin’s 5 ” heaven scent” had the best quality roses of the weekend, I will find out what the name of the best bloom from pat curtis soon or ”paddy the butcher” as he is known in east wall, oh just in case you get the wrong impression  he is a top quality butcher! the sweetpeas were mostly from the show at rush the previous day. Sadly my blooms were ,well…..Hungovered. But John warren from malahide had blooms that had improved over night and deserved all the honours.He also won most of the other prizes at the show,well done to John. Rush show was bigger than Dublin 5 ,but it was there only show where as D 5 has three shows ,their main show is on 22/23 august. Rush had a massive sweetpea  and home Industries entry, but there veg section was not as well supported .

After saturday’s night stormy weather my sweetpeas look terrible, I will have to give them some TLC or I will have no more descent blooms this year.Next weekend there is a show in marley park , if I have any blooms and organised some transport I will be there. So on with my rain gear and out into this beautiful weather.

 

I am pretty incapaciated at present, I had an operation on my right arm, and it is in a sling for six weeks. I won’t let a little thing like that get the better of me, hope the doctor doesn’t find out. Cannot do as much as usual though, will be better soon, only four to go.

My garden, front and back was just grass, which had never been cultivated, so it was hard work to get it in order.

hi all

just candle the duck eggs(scanned)all sames to be alive,but early days yet.

We are hoping to go to the Rose Festival in St. Annes Park on Sat. with a friend of Barbara’s. and then we will go on to the garden. I have taken Monday off as a holiday so I hope to get some work done, aside from cutting grass. Weather permitting will get some cementing done.

The garden has taken a battering with the heavy rain we’ve been getting. A lot of flowers just battered down. Wont get anything done today or tomorrow by the look of the weather forecast. We live in hope.!!

I bought a small Romneya coulteri, about half a meter high, it has had two flowers out with three more to come. The is a garden in Sutton, opposite the Methodist Church where is a very fine Romneya with about 100 flowers flowering at present.

We have a garden tour on Saturday, going to visit Hardymount walled garden and after lunch in Mount Wolseley we visit Delta sensory gardens both in Carlow. In June we visited Newtownbarry House & garden & after lunch in Bia Alinn we explored Sylvia’s Japanese garden in Camolin in an old schoolhouse.

Today we went over to our daughters cottage, John strimmed the field, then sprayed the yard around the cottage, while I cut her enormous over grown hedge into some order.The sun was hot all the time we were there. When we returned home it was raining and then it started to thunder. John bagged up the early potatoes that we dug yesterday. While i cooked up some of our rhubarb into a crumble.( lovely)

Not much going on at the moment. The weather is so bad, and there is muck everywhere. The sooner the paths are in the better. I was thinking about getting the roll out lawn for the top half of the garden just so I would have an instant lawn. I’m getting fed up with muck and Evelyn is thinking the same. Today I was checking out a few places that supply it, I need about 120 sq.meters of it. Of the three places I tried there was over 200 euro of a difference, a lot of money in anyones language, from 474 euro to 676 euro, that’s some difference. I made it clear to all companys what I wanted, gave them all the same sizes and delivery time,  you would wonder why such a big difference. Has anyone got any experience of buying it?

hi everyone

just a quick note especially all the ladies, i got a txt from my mum today about a scam that is going on, there are people going around shopping centres and shops asking people if they would like to buy perfume they ask you to smell a piece of paper which is laced with a drug which knocks you out and then they rob you. this is serious and not a hoax. it has happened in ballinasloe and athlone. take care when approched and refuse to smell the paper offered

on a lighter note. got a great start on the long border which had become a wilderness till the rain came and spoiled the fun, one good thing about the rain, and only good thing it makes the weeds easier to pull. after dinner it was pouring rain so i started potting up my purchases from a few wks ago.(i will put up pics tomorrow eve if i get a chance.). i still have to do some more stuff in the tunnel tomorrow if it rains, if not i will be trying to finish that long border. my carrots are a disaster they are tiny and disfigured and hairy if any one can tell me what is the reason it would be great or if it has happened, they also did the same at mums they came from the same seed packets johnstons i am so disgusted, i will take a photo tomorrow and show you what i mean. well thats me for now.

tell everyone you know about that scam so that nonone is caught. its really scary the length people will go to rob or worse.good night and happy gardening

Just finished work, thought I would get down to cut the grass, but its raining in Dublin, so I guess that it rained at some stage in Wexford. So I think I will think about wine instead of grass.

hi everyone

got most of the long border done just a corner to do.then put the membrane down,ready for the stone. myself, hubby and the kids took a triop into athlantic homecare this eve, my eyes fell on a glass house for 599 euros would love to get it but thought it might be too expensive for 8ft by 6ft. it is lovely though. maybe another time. well hopefully i will finally finish the long border and put some photos up tomorrow, to tired now. happy gardening

My daughter is coming home from London tomorrow for the weekend so I was busy getting her room ready so not much done in the garden this evening except for a bit of feeding to the plants and staking. Have’nt got back to the shrub bed yet but hopefully next week the weather will be better and something will be done about it. Looking forward to meeting you all on Saturday in Mullingar.

i’m using the site as a diary so that i can compare what i’m doing now with what i could be doing at the same time next year. i had been keeping my own version in paper and pen form but this online site was handier for me. however i have a few observations(questions really!). i’m not a technophobe but i’m not the best at it. maybe you can help me out…..

 

they are not meant as criticisms of the site….

 

1. i’m just wondering do you know where older postings go and can they be accessed. i hope they can.

2. also what is the average time it takes to load up 5photos? for me its about 6minutes-is there a faster way of uploading(it might cut back on the 2hours- a-go i  spend on the site sometimes)

3. maybe its my laptop screen but if i’m viewing your photos i seem to have to scroll down to the arrow at the bottom of the picture before i can move on

4. also i’ve found that if i’m uploading photos i sometimes press the Enter key rather than the upload icon. this allows the photos to upload for about 98% then it cuts out..i’m used to pressing the Enter key on the keyboard for emails etc…

5. can the photos headings be changed or edited?

6. can photos be presented in chronological order or an order of your own choosing. in other words if you upload photos and you find that they are not in the order you want can you play around with them on site

7. is it possible to find out how many hits your site has had? this is not for any vanity reason but maybe it could be an option on everyones own homepage-maybe it could be accessed just by the site owner. just a suggestion!

8. would it be possible for more than one photo per journal entry to be uploaded?

9. i’m trying to change the screen name i have to start with capital letter..i’ve tried but cant manage it..its not a big deal but i cant do it..

10. can little emocions be added to journal entries…you know the yellow smiley faces etc

 

as i say they are technical q’s and not criticisms, i know i could ask q’s on saturday in Mgar but there’s no way i would ask some of these as i’m sure they are far too simple to put to the floor in a public arena so i’m asking you for your expertise

thanks

alan

 

Did manage to get a few minutes in the kitchen garden after lunch, promising day sun shining things looked positive then about 4pm started the rain which eventually became torrential has eased off a bit now. Caroline mowed the front lawn this morning for me and has just phoned looking for the mower to be taken to her house in Monaghan apparently no rain at all 6 miles away. Anyway no chane of doing anything more in the kitchen garden this evening, must try and find out what has burrowed into the side of the potato ridge too much of a hole for a rabbit I think. While I was weeding Connie one of my springers decided to go mooching round the pond as normal she went in swimming trying to find the moorhens, I’m assuming the duck is nesting in the reeds on the east side of the pond because mother duck sort of flapped off drawing Connie away. Hope Connie doesn’t manage to find the ducklings have to try and discourage her from swimming.