Month: May 2011

This is another stolen arisaema from over the water!!!!

has opened, this time it’s Patty’s Plum.  Really like the rich colour on this one.

Paeony ‘Bowl of Beauty’ is nearly open and should look good now for a few weeks. It is about 90 cm high and is slightly scented which is a nice bonus.

Liga, the Geranium you gave me is starting to flower, it is covered in buds. A great one, thank you again. Love the colour.

Spotted this caperpillar on my self-seeded sweet pea this evening. Look how well he is camouflaged. Mother Nature at her best!

All seems to be going well with the nest in the woods and this morning I managed to get a shot of one of the chicks having a good look around for itself.  I’d say things are getting a little overcrowded in there at this stage but it’s great to see them progressing so well.

After much himming and hawing planting up the Island, I decided that it would be the best place for my Atropa Belladonna (Deadly Nightshade). As you can see, it’s coming on really well. So looking forward to seeing its big, shiny black berries later in the year – that is….presuming it doesn’t need a pollinator!

Can’t get over the size of my apples already and the huge amount of them. If we don’t get a June Drop, I am going to have to thin some !

Tomatos are starting to take over my greenhouse. Everywhere I look there are tomatoes growing. It appears that most of the seeds I planted have all survived and I just cannot bring myself to ‘thin’ them out so I try to give them all a sporting chance. If I disappear some day I suggest you check the greenhouse for my wellies as that will be all they will leave behind. 

Cant wait to get my revenge and make some lovely tomato chutney 

I was very diligent over the past few days and decided to tackle all the weeds around my trees. I have a lovely weed puller and as I stabbed into a very large nettle up popped a rabbit. He must have been sleeping there as he very reluctantly hopped out of the weeds and left me to it. I continued and weeded, fed and mulched all around the tree and within two hours guess who came back. Our bunny was looking for his weed filled hideaway. He spend quite a while bouncing round and round the area till finally he settled down to sleep on the bark. More photos in my May album. How cute is that?

At the Get-to-gether in Johnstown Keego gave me a small varigated-leafed geranium. (Its origins we will not mention!!).  Now it has grown into a nice plant and has this beautiful bloom with such a rich colour! I’m delighted with it and want to say a big thank you to Keego.     

It will have the name "Keego" in my house!:) 

Yesterday I planted the sweetpea around the post as planned and as I was popping those lovely little plants I suddenly realised – this is what it is all about – the magic of growing something from a tiny seed and nurturing it to the point where it can strike out on its own!

Thank you Rachel and all my other garden.ie friends for encouraging me when I was depressed about my lack of success with seedlings. From now on there will be no stopping me … now where will I plant out all those dahlias ….

Can you see in the photo those really handy clips from Lidl for holding plants in place?

Am delighted that this apple has set fruit. I got it from Seed Savers in Clare two years ago. It is a dual purpose apple and also a self-rooter. Apparently you just break off a branch, stick it in the ground and it grows! The apples hold on the tree until November but I don’t think they will last that long as I’ll be dying to taste them.

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We recently had a few days away in the beautiful Connemara. It was the first time I was there and would go back there in the morning. We stayed in Clifden and toured the area each day. This must be truely one of the most scenic places in the world. Kylemore Abbey was well worth the visit. The Walled garden was splendid and the gardeners there really do a magnificent job. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t the best which hampered the views, but we got one fine sunny day so took as many pictures as possible. It was amazing to see how much everything had grown in the few days that we were away. Have put up two new photo albums, "Beautiful Connemara" and "Kylemore Abbey Walled Garden"

Really tough day in work today. Legs feel like a 90yr olds. All I did this evening was water everything.

Plans for tomorrow will be planting out the rest of Geraldine’s sunflowers ‘Sungold’ now that the wind seems to have died down, and my own seedlings ‘Earthwalker’. They will all be planted behind my dahlias which are looking very healthy. 

Bought myself a lovely Veronica spicata today just before clocking out, and another perennial Gerbera ‘Sunny’ to go into the ‘hot’ border. It’s to be a great day tomorrow so I hope to get most jobs done in the morning so I can be free to catch some rays on the sunlounger for the afternoon. Happy Days. This is what summer is all about.

 

What persuaded me to buy this one today was knowing that they really are hardy. I bought 2 last year – a white, and a pink. The pink is making a good comeback and almost flowering. Don’t know where I planted the white, but no sign of it as of yet. But just look at this colour. Yes!

 

The saga of the peonies and I continues.  I uprooted a corner in the front garden last year which had heathers in it for years.  While they were lovely when in flower, they aren’t all that to look at when not.  I planted 3 RED peonies into the area.  Last year, one flowered – a pale pink so I gave it away to the school my son goes to.  There were two remaining, both with buds.  One has opened and it most definately is not red.  Look at it – the most shocking pink imaginable.  What colour scheme would you need to get that to blend in?  A deep purple perhaps but even then I am not too sure.  The bud on the other one looks pink too but I’m not too sure if it will be as ‘shocking’ pink as this one is.  So much for RED!

The upside is that these 2 will be moving to pastures new and a red peony will be on my wish list for Bloom.  After all, every cloud has a silver lining.

i visited chelsea and tatton park for the first time over the weekend and had a great time, the scale of chelsea was amazing, i think the monte carlo garden was my favourite along with the tourism malaysia garden.

What a greeting from the garden this evening!

Just in from the garden, what a lovely evening to be gardening.

I finally cleaned up all the leaves from the recent winds. While taking leaves and twigs out of the boarder I discovered seedlings here and there. Different plants have self seeded and new plants are showing around the place.

This is one of the dreams I had for the garden, plants reproducing and increasing by themselves. Really really pleased with this simple but so encouraging  news.

I weeded my Annuals bed today and edged it. I also raked the surface.

The plan was to at least put in the sunflower stakes and plant the sunflowers.

However, I found I only had three stakes left so there were only three sunflowers planted today.

There is a photo in my album. Ignore the grass in the border – that will be moved soon.

But I found this completely unfamiliar seedling while weeding. It looks like some kind of vegetable. Can anyone identify it? Here is what I planted in this bed last year and I’m pretty sure it’s not any of these!?!

No.Plants		Genus	Species	Variety
13		Helianthus	annuus	Earth Walker
10		Helianthus	annuus	Claret
72		Helychrysum	monstrosum	Summer Solstice
21		Coleus	blumei	Black Dragon
28		Petunia	grandiflora	Mirage White
6		Petunia	x hybrida	Strawberry Sundae
3		Ricinus	communis	Carmencita
41		Schizanthus	pinnatus
32		Zinnia	elegans	Envy Double
47		Hordeum	jubatum
18		Zinnia	elegans	Scarlet Flame
26		Callistephus	chinensis	Siam
48		Callistephus	chinensis	red
88		Cosmos	bipinnatus
48		Cosmos	bipinnatus	Rose
24		Cosmos	bipinnatus	Picotée
7		Orlaya	grandiflora
14		Pennisetum	glaucum	Purple Majesty
9		Schizanthus	pinnatus

Last year, my border outside the greenhouse looked so different. I had potatoes planted together with rat-tail radishes (never again), mangetout, peas etc and a row of pots containing blueberry bushes. And a little square for a piddly bit of summer bedding. When I harvested the radishes, I dug out a bigger border and Steve turned the stone circle into a pond. This year the far end of that border is planted up with pinks, blues, lilacs and whites. The nearer end towards the house and patio is planted up with hot colours. Next year, the pinks, lilacs etc will get moved to the other side of the garden so I can concentrate on just hot hot colours. I really love them!

I don’t know why, but I can never remember that I have this white campanula until it is actually flowering. Senior moments are becoming a more familiar occurence!

Its nearing the end of the Rhodo flowering season in my garden and this is the second last one to flower.

Again, it was a productive day at Douentza.

Hubby lifted all the sods off the garden and dumped them, even raking the recently clipped banks and carting off the cut grass.

I’ve put up a few more photos, including one of the ex-Tropical Bed that I finished planting yesterday.

I also put up a pic of the ‘just weeded’ Annual Border.

I can’t wait to get all my annuals down and see the greenhouse clear of plants!