Month: December 2015
Its a night for the great indoors up North here, as we have gales and heavy rain. I think there may be trees or branches down by morning.
On a brighter note we have a lemon scented broom in full bloom over the christmas period. I keep it in a pot, sheltered in a porch as it is a more tender than other varities. Its a bright beem of colour in winter, even if its completely out of season.
It’s hard to belive as I listen to the wind and rain outside that the morning started out as nice as it did. I got stuck into the area I started yesterday, and finished right on time as the winds picked up and rain started at lunchtime.
It really was so good to get stuck in after many weeks of non interest and not been able to due to the recent weather. Just watching the news, your heart has to go out to the people effected or under threat from the same weather of recent weeks.
I managed to complete a tidy and clean up of the Border 50 area in full. It was so good to get back out and get stuck in to gardening once again. To finish up I even got all the plants I have promised people during the year tidied up and into a crate ready for the 9th.
I’m adding an album of todays work to add some interest to the site which as we all know has been really quite of late.
Stay safe tonight and tomorrow folks.
I decided that I had pushed my luck with leaving Salvia Fulgans outside any longer for this year. So it was moved into the ‘greenhouse’, get to see such a great colour in the garden at the end of December.
Hope to get lots of cuttings from this one next year.
…..Someone gave me this lovely little pot of Irises, you might recognise your writing on the label!
We came back on Monday from spending Christmas in Bath with our eldest daughter and family. Lovely to spend time with our 2 little grand-daughters. I went out to have a check that pots at the back door werent blown away and was delighted to find these in bloom, so I brought them inside to enjoy. So whoever gave them to me Thank You. They have such a variety of shades of blue and then a beautiful patern of dots on bright yellow splodges, the flower is a very unusual shape too.
I hope you are all faring ok in the floods. So many people have been devastated; Midleton down the road was very badly hit this morning. Like most of you my garden got a bad hit but thankfully the house is fine so I count myself lucky.
A few photos of my new rivers and lakes!!
I hope everybody has a healthy and happy 2016 and take good care of yourselves.
I have two young students from Germany staying with me for a few days to help me with the garden. We were lucky enough to get a few hours in yesterday and a full day today – (well, THEY did a full day while I did more pottering than anything else!)
I am so thrilled with what was achieved.
One of the feature beds in my original garden design was the Potentilla Garden where I planted as many different shrubby potentillas as I could find with a Tipperary Sandstone mulch – and even though it should have been limestone mulch I still fancied that it reminded me of these pretty shrubs growing in the Burren. I hadn’t got round to pruning them the past few years so last year it had become more of a mess than a feature. The lads cut the whole lot back for me and even shredded the cutting too!
I did the cutting back on the main heraceous too but wisely let the weeding till another day!
Today we also gave the Himilayan Blackberry a proper “scientific” pruning and tied in the branches properly so I’m hopeful that I will have a decent crop of blackberries this year. Last year I lost patience with it and just cut the whole thing down so ended up with lots of branches and no fruit!
The roses in the Rose Garden also got pruned – just hoping we dont’t get too severe a frost now!
Another wet and windy morning from the sunny south east. It seems like it will never stop but as we start a New Year we have to be positive and not let this weather deter us from all the hopes we have for the coming months.
The Lane is looking it’s worst at this time of year and the only colour is from Rhododendron ‘Christmas Cheer’, which has pretty pink flowers. It is flowering a month later this year than last, but very welcome all the same. The snowdrops and daffodils which are planted on the margins of The Lane are well up, but it will be another six weeks before any flower.
Best wish to all on the site for a great 2016 and I am looking forward meeting you during the year at some of our garden visits. Happy Gardening for 2016.
Woke very late this morning. Suffice it to say that breakfast and dinner were not widely separated! Despite a very heavy shower or two I got out after dinner and spent two hours digging and levelling the spot just above the stone steps where the Pwincesses Chair now stands. There were a good few cyclamen corms there and some snowdrops so I took them out and replanted them. Now there’s a level area there which takes the seat nicely and I look from it down a path to Carraig Mor and the river. I dream of sitiing there with a good book in the warmer days but know I will be busy then! That whole area came together, the path (grass) the edging (Stones [granite] on one side ,long pine tree trunk on other).The Pwincesses chair, the newish shrubby beds near it, the other large stones…they all make a whole with which Scrubber was quite pleased and a fitting end to 2015. The only fly in the ointment is that I have lost my camera. I’ve searched and searched and even blessed/saint Martin has fallen down on the job. I’ll have to learn to translate my pics from my phone! Anyway here’s to a great New Year and to all our gardens!
p.s. I have to take pot luck with my photos i.e. download them to journal without knowing what they are!!There were autumnal ones. I am amazed I never heard Poseidon comment on anything in the garden. maybe in 2016?
Nasturtium! Also eranthis hyemalis, which I’ve had for years but it hasn’t done any spreading or self seeding, and Hellebore.
Happy New Year everyone!
