Month: August 2011

I am loving my grass path right now

Someone left a circular metal cake tin in mine last Saturday.

It came with an enormous apple pie in it.

Can you please let me know who owns it as I’m sure you want it back?

I sent a mail to the Irish Wildlife Trust to help identify our little friend  this is the reply I received 

"What you have actually found is not a lizard but a smooth newt. They are  very
 similar and are often confused with one another. The newt is an  amphibian and 
at this time of year they are leaving their ponds, where they  mate. 
They will eventually find a log or rock under which to hibernate for  the winter."

 

Decided to sign up for the 1 year Plant Person course. Place looks so beautiful and highly recommended that I couldn’t resist.

 

The lilies are in full flower.  the alliums have gone. All the colour now comes from the crocosmia and potentilla fruticosa and it is magnificent. Deep red lucifer, orange masoniorum and yellow solfaterre. The potentilla is in a range of colours, but mainly goldfinger with some pink and white. They are undersown with crocosmia lucifer and the colour combination is wonderful.

I recently created a new bed and have planted it with roses. Peace and chinatownn with some pinks and a couple of climbers. It will be another source of colour. there are some crocosmia star of the east among them and the contrasting shapes are interesting.

Everything is so dry. To plant the roses I dug down about 50cm and the soil was very dusty, even at that depth. Look out for signs of distress and water when needed at the moment. If possible use non mains water recycled from some other source.

Other source of colour at the moment are monarda and rudbeckia. I planted some of the monarda under trees. It is doing well and the deep red is enticing just where the bluebells shone in spring.

And the arbutus is coming again from the roots!

I will take some photos this weekend.

 The photos are up as requested.

could only look out at the garden today.It rained all dayand has only just stopped.It has played havoc with the plants,wind and rain are the two worst possible conbinations.a few nice plants have been brought down, but it,s too wet to go out there , so will have to wait till tomorrow hopefully.going out withgarden club for half day outingon Saturday so hopefully it will be better than today. 

Up to about 3.30 p.m. it was pleasant although not sunny. I decided to attack a piece of ground which had nothing growing in it last year, due to a hernia. Now that piece of ground is looking much better. When Rachel visited me this time last year, I was ashamed of the condition of it. This year thank God things are different. We have drizzle for over two hours but perhaps it will clear. I plan to put onion seed and strawberries in it. I would have put potatoes in it in the spring only that I have been informed that I may have eel worm and the ground should be free of potatoes for four years.

I am planning a new shrub border in the Lower garden, mostly to cut down on grass cutting, as I am beginning to feel I have too much of that to do.

Before I went on holiday I sprayed the area with weed killer and that has done its job; so now I am wondering if there is a good easy way of cultivating the soil without digging? Or with little digging? Thinking of putting a thick layer of farmyard manure over the whole area and leaving it over winter, anyone had any experience of doing this? Any other suggestions would be very welcome.

 

Heading to Tullys Nursery in north Co Dublin tomorrow. It a great place with so much stock and great value. Going to fill the car as much as I can. Have a list of things that I want but will see what looks good when I get there.

On their web site they have a 20 euro off discount if you spend over 60 euro.

Will let you know what I get.

I have received a FRIEND request from  PEEE2009 which is bogus — I have declined and am going to inform Craig now.

I just updated the photo album of the building of the steps, excuse the pun "step by step" đŸ™‚

I was out in the garden today and noticed some changes.On our patio there used to be a very small Nasturtium flower which has grown 10 times the size it used to be and is climbing out over the sleeper edging.The Verbascum(given to mam by Rachael)is almost taller than me and is coming on great!Our Hollyhocks are great too!We have pink purple and white ones.I’d have loved to be out in the garden more this week be me and Mam are busy,busy,busy minding our non rooted flowers(the babies)and can’t wait to get our hands on the weeds in the strawberry bed!The three ‘Tom Thumb’ sunflowers are are great attraction to the babies and the Budeila bush is swarmed with butterflys(even without the millions i rescued from the greenhouse)!:-):-)

Did some repair work to plants damaged yesterday in the wind and rain.Bit of a job trying to straighten up a huge Rudbeckia.Made a great discovery in the shrub bed in the front garden. Found not one but two Astelias.that I yhought I had lost over the last two winters. they are only about 6 in. tall but better late than never. I won’t be losing these again. I just to prove—-leave what you might think you’ve lost for at least a year then just when you least expect it they just appear — just like that. they have made my day.

bogus friend request from a chancer.

 i may irish but im not green. if peee2009 is tuned in – please do not bother myself or my fellow garden.iers again.

 your info has been passed on to higher authorities.

I did a Real "Gardener" thing today.  I actually collected seed!.  My lupins were rattling like a bunch of castanetes so I cut off the old flower heads and up turned them into a paper bag.  Loads of small black seeds fell out.  Some of the pods havent fully dried out to release their seeds but should do so in the next day or so.  Mainly purple/pink colours but I actually love the mix of them in the border. 

Can anyone advise me how/where to store these over the winter?

 

The whirring of saws and grinding of chipping machine echoes around the peaceful countryside where I live.

And it is my garden where the massacre is taking place.  Nine Hawthorn trees are going to their maker as well as numerous branches from huge Ash trees. One side of me garden is nekked and the bottom is presently being denuded……..sounds rather odd that sentence.

The fields are visible again and no doubt the wind will hurtle down the hill but the extra light is excellent.

This performance is costing a mint next time I will shop around. However this company has done work here on two other occasions and have done a very good job. The previous jobs were bigger though so take heed and get a few estimates. I could have said ‘no’ so all my own fault. No more plants will be purchased for quite some time.!!!!

Really nice guys doing the work and they have cut up the wood into blocks for my wood burner which is most kind of them. Almost time to serve afternoon tea so better go!

Hope I may be able to show before and after pics withing a day or two.

Despite the forecast for rain, I was able to make a bed for the onion seed and sow the seed. What was sown was White Lisbon Winter Hardy. The Alliums I reported on some time ago were up in the air. These ones are more down to earth.

i am still not the better of what happened an hour ago. when hubby and i are here we let the hens have a run around the garden. my next door neighbours dog ( a husky attack my hens, HEN wasnt so luck to get away and was pounced on by the dog. by the way this neighbours other dog killed one of our rabbits over a year ago, thank god HEN is ok, when kieran went over to tell her she said that is in his nature. i am disgusted at that attitude. i love animals and hate to see anything happen to my girls or rabbittes. i did not go over to her because if i started i wouldnt stop.

all i can say is thank god my girl is ok. watching her like mad in case she dies on me. 

hopin to go to tullamore show on sunday for a day out. it is supposed to be brilliant. if any of you are going would love to meet up with you let me know

have any of you got a friend request from a pee2009 from USA. i decilined it but i did not email craig. it looked like a scammer

I began this garden from scratch in May ’10. The picture on the right was taken two months later. Not bad going, eh?

My garden experienced a min of -7C during the 2010/11 winter which is very low for here. I lost a lot of plants so my garden will look very different this year. Lets hope we go back to having the mild winters we had gotten so used to.

thank god HEN made it through the night and is doing fine, mind you she is a bit deshevelled. got a good bit of work done in the tunnel, still some more to do but i came in for dinner and got lazy and havent gone out since, that was 3 hrs ago. i am just going to fed plants in tunnel and leave it at that for the day.

Now I feel that I am getting nearer to what I planned to have in the garden. 1. Pruning: at this time, I tackle the apple trees. The young shoots have been growing and they were cut back to day.One tree did not really require much pruning while the other did. 2. Yuccas at the back which are rooted were cleaned around and in the case of one plant which seemed dorment there were four shoots, in another there was one shoot. 3. Tackling the weeds around the apple trees, half of this work is complete. 4. The hedgetrimmer was brought out to trim a whitethorn hedge. This hedge was not touched this or last year as far as I remember. Now the back garden looks much better. 5. Cabbage Offenham is well overground and before long it will be transplanted. 6. Picked a few tomatoes. There is a very good crop but they are a bit slow to ripen.

hi there, can anyone tell me the name of the plant in my profile picture

The best antidote to this recession is gardening.

For a few euros you can buy seeds and fill your garden.

It may be escapism but we can all do with a spot of that every now and again!