Month: February 2015
Bought 2 Hibiscus for €5 today in Woodies. Small though they are they look strong.
Had to laugh when I discovered the ground was still frozen when I went to plant them.
Hardly ideal but hey we are a mad lot arent we ?
Anyone know the name of this plant please, I had it 2 years ago but did not appear last year so I’d like to get it again. I am deleting photos from my phone and laptop as they have both got very slow.
Your earliest gardening photos! I found this one in an old photo album, shoved away in the back of a cupboard. Taken in the mid ’80’s, I must have been about 22 years old. We lived in a hundred year old cottage, ‘Comfrey Cottage’ and with our acre of land, we had aspirations of ‘the good life’, self sufficiency and all that! This is me rooting around in my veg patch in the middle of winter. Hopefully someone was indoors looking after my 2 babies 😉
So come on, I’ve shown you mine – now show me yours!
Thursday week (Feb 12th) they have birdboxes for sale for €10.99. Seems a bit pricey for Aldi, but great styles on offer. They look a bit tacky, but for that price, the quality should be quite good. So they might actually be nice in reality. And I’ll double up on the tubs of fat balls for €9.99.
I have noticed some of you putting up some lovely photos of euphorbias so I took a photo of mine!
Clare gave me a cutting of this lovely plant and it is now really looking lovely and will soon flower.
I was walking past this house last year and took photos of 2 very large Echium’s inside the gate ….and yesterday could not pass this by ….oh! and tomorrow will take another photo it would be sad to see these die ………..and plenty more around the sides of the garden…
I never seem to tire of making new paths in my garden. You know how it is – there is always somewhere that is not easily accessible so the only solution is to make another path!
When Brendan and I designed our new home and he set me the challenge of a garden without a lawn he also wanted to have paths that could be walked all year round so that is what we have.
But I noticed that there was a part of the garden that never got walked and an area that had bits and pieces that never got attention – even from me! So that started the planning of this particular path – along by the shrubbery. Although there was a grassy area beside this it obviously didn’t invite people to pass that way.
As well as that, the “no lawn” directive meant that I want to create a new area the other side of that path – my Tropical Paradise!
I started to dig out the new path but it proved to be a it much for me so I enlisted some help and this is the result!
Now all I have to do is put manners on the mound of earth the the right of the path and then I’ll be ready to plant up the Tropics …… Plans! Plans! what would we gardeners be without them!
And that leaves only one small patch of grass – not really worthy of the name lawn – that my son wants his daughter to be able to roll on !!!!!
Nearly there!!!!!
I have just uploaded an album of some photos which I took in the garden this morning. As you can see we had widespread frost and some of the plants looks really interesting with the frost on their foliage.
Some were falling down with the cold but as the day progressed and the sun was shining it turned out a lovely day if a little chilly in the shade. It was a lovely day to be outside but I didnt get anything done in the garden as the ground was so bad.
It got very cold again this evening and we are in for another cold one tonight. But on the up side of things we are guaranteed lovely bright sunny days to follow 🙂
Well at the Parcel motel that is!!! I ordered Cannas and though I was not saving much decided to try the PM. Very smooth except you need finger nails to tap in your PIN and as my nails are short had to ask another customer to enter my numbers!! Most exciting when your locker pops open . So 6 new Cannas all potted up , four are green leaved and two the dark leaves one. Five are orange and red and one Lolita is pink. I have an urge to plant them all together , well not the pink one, and make a splash. Will have to think about it. No Electricity here all day so very cold and no TEA to drink, well it did come back an hour ago. …the ESB not the tea the latter is always here!!
This has to my favorite Euphorbia.
I think it may be a combination of the new growth and cold weather that really brings this plant to the fore in thegarden at the moment.
Check out my latest attempts to video!
I was out in the garden the other day and my little robin friend was trying to get the worms as fast as I was turning the soil so I thought I’d take a video of him to send to my granddaughter.
When I was checking the videos I realised that I was talking away to the robin – do other people do this or am I losing the plot altogether?
Had an early lunch today and straight out to the grennhouse i went ,to get my gardening gloves.After putting my gloves on i felt a terrible pain in my thumb! On closer inspection i found a wasp had crawled into the glove!It was sore!
Anyway after putting some vinegar on it i got straight into cutting back and was pleased with what i got done .I did have a little helper and i am pleased he seems to have an interest in gardening .He helped put the debris in the wheelbarrow and sat on it while i pushed it to and from the compost heap
At four oclock i decided it was time to go in and prepare dinner ,but Harry wasnt having none of it and had a bit of a tantrum!
I wonder if anybody has experienced the same problem with the garden.ie site recently: when I try and upload photos, it crashes, sometimes after just 1 photo, sometimes after several are uploaded.
What usually happens is that one photo appears to be uploading normally, then progress stops, then I get a message “Page unavailable” and I can no longer access the garden.ie site, then no other site as well, and the only way to sort this out is to turn off or reset the internet router in the house!
It happened once last week and I took no notice, but has been happening repeatedly since last night so there is definitely something wrong, but what? I just tried uploading photos to facebook and it worked fine, so I don’t think the problem is with my internet connection or computer. Has this happened to any of you?
While I am not of the opinion that spring starts on St Brigid’s day, there are definite signs of what’s to come out there.
Roll on spring!
Veltheima bracteata is in full flower now and seems to do okay in the greenhouse, as opposed to the house, in winter.
The common snowdrop is flowering a little earlier than normal this year. With the heat from the sun today they were all open and looked lovely in the grass. It is so nice to see a good spread of the common snowdrop and I am pleased with the result from the work that we put in last spring. Hopefully they will seed away and increase in numbers over the coming years.
Yesterday I spent a good long time tidying the greenhouse.
The messiest things are the pelargoniums.
I also gave water to drooping plants and others.
Very frosty and cold today!
To day, Lá ‘le Bríde and Spring is here. While it was quite cold last night, to day, not a cloud to be seen in the sky. At the back of the house, facing south, it is not cold. The snowdrops are quite abundent. At about 11 a.m. I was taking a photo of same when along came a robin and perched beside me and like saying “What about my breakfast?” That was served in the bird house. Next I saw a second robin. Now it is rarely I see two such birds, surely a male and female, probably the mating season has arrived. In the greenhouse, the temperature reached 19 C. it has rarely gone above 10 degrees before now, so the spring has arrived Buícheas le Dia. At Mass this morning, we had the usual ceremony, of three girls making the St. Brigid’s crosses. I bought two, the money for the missions.
today is just glorious, comapred to yesturday which was very showery and cold, today would have been welcomed as yesturdays weather.
i spent a good hour just walking around the garden and tunnel just looking and planning in my head what i was going to tackle next BRIARS came to mind, i bought a pair of good gloves to tackle this job and looking at them this morning i have a hard days graft in store might get hubby to give me a hand as it is a tough job then i can start on the other bed where the shrubbery is going then the paths can be worked out. i was going to put in a box lined path but that would look to formal for me so i am just going to dot the box around as evergreen back drops to other planting.
roll on next saturday, it bloody better be nice or i will be pulling my hair out.
the scent from this saracoca is just devine
Taken from our garden just an hour ago …..and love the way it catches the light .
Have a great day for the first of Spring ……
Love the colour on the new growth on this plant, a great euphorbia to have. I have it out the front and out the back. Love Euphorbias.
Seems like the site is suffering another glitch, albeit a small one.
When you click on ‘more’ in the Recent Activity list, that’s where you’re prevented from seeing older journals. I’m sure it will be sorted soon.
On Thursday, I got slightly more that half of the lawn cut. I had not used the mower for about a month. You may remember haw June was warm but dry. June 30 was warm with 26 degrees regestered in Carlow. Then July still warnm but you all remember that the weather broke and the temperature fell. Saturday was a lovely day like the previous Saturday when we went on the outing. The mower came out and the mowing was complete. Some fertilizer should go on the same lawn. For certain reasons, it had not been fed for some time. I have now fed the Musa plants an. Thanks for the advise. I believe the weather is going to be generally like July, this week. The grapes are now ripe and people who got them were pleased. I get about one tomato each day. By the way the theory about tomatoes being the cause of the alergy I had, seems to be incorrect. This year it came before I could eat one, so it is a case of whence the alergy?
