Month: October 2016
travelled to big match today and the boss was driving . Imagine my delight when she suggested a stop for something to eat in the Garden center !! Big mistake by the boss . Had to tell her the stunning blue Orchid was in a sale though !! € 25 so wasnt cheap . Some Orchid food and compost too as a side order .
This garden will become better over time…but, a long time. I’m suceeding in getting shelter belts established. In a few years from now there will definately be a very noteworthy large garden which will be enabled by the mature shelter belts.
The location is suberb, great view of Balycarbery Castle ruins, also a view of an old stone fort, mountains and close to the ocean. BUT!!! The wind, the wind is this garden’s biggest enemy.
I expect to bring possibly a couple of acres into my “Great Garden” plan. But for now I must exercise enormous patience and slowly develope that much needed shelter. What I will lose in external scenery, I hope to make up for within the garden itself.
APRIL 2009. Got a chance to check out on how the shelter is progressing and unfortunately, I had to plant numerous pines to fill in the huge gaps left by failures. This is a big setback. Although there are several individual pines and some alders growing well, there is not enough consistency to privide an adequate filter of shelter from the prevailing South-West winds.
In the area where there is established shelter at the rear of the house there is now a great stand of birches, ash (fraxinus) mountain ash and sycamore. These trees are looking terrific and pretty soon will cover this area of ground with a full canopy. The outside row of pines are now getting bare at the base so I will have to add a hedge (probably Hebe) atthe lawn side of this in order to provide a nicer finish.
Still alive DG but the problem lay in communication. The old hard drive in the computer was giving trouble, so a new one was installed. It is far ahead of the old one but takes time to get used to it. A new printer was also acquired. For some time now I can do word processing but communication has been the problem. The problem eventually was solved, getting a new modem which had been giving trouble for some time and eventually had to be replaced. So I am back on the air DG. While the computer is an Apple, it is interesting that I have a very good crop of apples, both dessert and cookers. My birthday was 16 th September and my niece Joan called to see me. She brought along the birdbath, shown. It was actually a Christmas present but as I travelled by train, I was unable to bring it with me from Dublin. The photo shows it close to the Musa plants which have really grown a lot.
I lifted the roses, from cuttings, which had been in the ground for about a year, and all are well rooted. On Friday 23 September they were planted in the rose bed nearest to the road. A fair number of Hydrangeas have been rooted and need to be repotted. They were slipped in June. Now that October has come, it was time to lift and pot the Pelargoniums. They are all lifted and potted, about 60 pots with one to four in each pot and the pots are standing against the house, some at the front, more at the back.
Some spraying of lawn was done for moss. Tomatoes were picked in greenhouse and compost spread on ground outside, then dug in. Frost expected on Thursday night. The old heater not working so a new one was bought for a mere €9.95, good value. On Friday 14 October I got at one apple tree. I got about 5 stone of cookers (Bramley) picked. I also got a fair amount of dessert apples from the same tree and over a stone of dessert off the other tree. The weather was just right for the job with no rain although we had a heavy shower on Friday night . I have planted plenty ofs bulbs .
I’m sure the Tobin family is very pleased that Waterford won the under 21 hurling. They should be a force next year. Who will win the senior football replay on Saturday? Mayo were given no chance in the drawn game and the mentors thought the same again. Did you hear that Diarmuid Connolly won an American state ? The answer is of course New Jersey. No he didn’t defeat the other two. Remember when he and his opponent were tugging out of one another, his jersey was torn and he got a new one in the drawn game. They need to make them stronger! I now know that the Dubs won by a point after a replay. More power to them although I was hoping that Mayo would win. While Cillian O’Connor was the hero for Mayo in the drawn game, I felt sorry for him in the replay.
Has anyone loaded a photo album from iPhone recently . I can’t seem to add the photos having created the album ? Very annoying .
I have had this cactus for a couple of years and now it’s really bulked up!! I love it!!
It got trampled on by various men working on cutting down and killing off the trees that used to be at the bottom of the garden, and now the poor thing is being crowded out by Eupatorium, japanese Anemones and everything else, and still it is showing a nice bit of Autumn colour.
Most of my indoor plants have suffered a lot of neglect during the summer months. So today, everything got a light watering and tidying up.
Delighted to see this Cactus, for which I have no name, flowering away. It gets bathed in morning light in the living room each morning. And surprise, surprise, the first photo was published the right way up!!
We have to have a new septic tank installed, so last week the contractor arranged to meet the council engineer to do a percolation test. Your man from the council, who was one of the least civil or or forthcoming individuals I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting, stood where I was standing to take the first of these pictures, completely oblivious to the fact that it was planted up, and casually announced, ‘The tank will go here and you will have six eighteen-meter pipes across there.’
We looked across at two beds full of trees and shrubs, a pond, a rill, a wildflower meadow full of orchids and the soakaway for the sink waste, and almost told him where he could put his six-metre pipes. He then dismissed us as irrelevant and ignored us for the rest of his visit.
Finally, after much discussion with the contractor during which it was clear that the engineer was pretty much incompetent, he admitted that we didn’t need that big a system at all and that the system the contractor had quoted us for, which involved a mounded percolation area a fraction of the size, was quite adequate. And our taxes are paying this bloke!
So we’ll have to move the compost heaps and the comfrey beds and will have a mound there instead. Which, in a year or so, will be backed by native trees and planted with grasses and prairie flowers. So a bit of an unsightly mess at first, but do-able and an opportunity to try something different.
I normally cut back the flowering stems of Crocosmia long before they’re looking their worst. But not this year. The seed heads are so pretty.
I absolutely love this time of the year. The chill that’s in the morning air, the colours and above the wonderful light that a lot of people don’t even notice. What a wonderful September was, October hasn’t started too bad either.
Have a good day, I know I will 😉
My salad leaves went over a while back, but now I see they have pretty blue flowers. Thought I’d try my luck with photos, but no go, like everyone else!
Are you an organized person around the garden? Do you have one of those hose reels to keep the hose from cluttering up your patio? My answer to both of those questions is ‘no’!!! The hose comes from the tap up at the house. It gets stretched down the garden occasionally to water plants in planters down at the end, and then it’s into the greenhouse with it when I need to do a quick and thorough watering. But afterwards, I just coil it up on the patio. A bit of an eyesore to say the least. And I usually end up tripping over it.
But now Steve is in the process of creating a cleat that will be bolted onto the garage wall. And next year when/if we get our new extended patio, things will be much tidier, and less cluttered. David had great fun afterwards throwing all the sawdust up and dancing underneath it. 🙂
These are the photos that go with my last journal.
The Amaryllis are almost over, but now the Nerines are coming into flower. I’m delighted with them as i had few if any flowers the last year or two.
Tons of them … now what to do with them. I think Monty recomends storing for some days in the dark then leaving out to ripen on a window sill ? I will need a lot of window sills . Anyone any other advice as I normally just write off the pears and leave them to the birds each year !
Rhododendron ‘Christmas Cheer’ just starting to flower and plenty of flower buds to come. It is very early this year and with the dry summer we had this year it is very surprising how early and the number of flower buds on the plant. It will keep producing flowers until February next.
I thought it might be an idea to do a bit of shopping today. I really should have been out weeding and chopping back and tidying up the shed and the yard. Shopping won the toss.
On my list were some alpines to go into a bit of a gravel bed. I came home with one that might do, Sedum Cape Blanco. The rest of the plants are destined for other places in the garden but I did spot a pot of Coleus canina that Jacinta told me about the other day and just had to try it. I don’t know if it is hardy but winter will tell.
Anyway, here’s the list of goodies:
Begonia ‘Silver Splendour’
Helleborus sternii ‘Silver Dollar’
Helleborus sternii ‘Silver Star’
Helleborus argutifolius ‘Silver Lace’
a dollop of spring bulbs and a nice pot of Cyclamen.
I came home with fewer dollars and less silver in my pockets.
This really caught my eye today, such beautiful Autumn Colour!! Great day today!!
Got this Brugmansia from someone on this site a few years ago. Not sure whether it was from seed, or a cutting. Not even sure who gave it to me.
The first and second year, all it did was produce foliage. Last year it produced a solitary flower bud. One morning I went out to open the greenhouse door and found that the unopened flower bud was on the ground. So disappointed.
This year things are different. I’ve been watering, feeding (should have been fed more), watching and waiting. I’ve been almost manic in the last week to rush out and see if it had opened. Well, today was the day. Are the flowers on a Brugmansia not supposed to hang? Maybe it’s a Datura. Hopefully someone can clarify this for me.
I’m over the moon that I had enough patience to see it through to flowering stage. What do you think?
This Coreopsis only started flowering in the last week or so. I had another one earlier which had a few flowers but then died off. As far as I could see the main stem hadn’t broken, as that happens sometimes because they are quite brittle. Ive noticed other years too that they tend to be late starters, but this is a bit extreme!
Iam leaning towards storing these Calla Bulbs that I dug up today but was considering planting the small baby bulbs in pots . Anyone ?
Planted out some Laurel Hedging I grew from cuttings so I then had to plant another row for next season . They take really easily too. I expect I’ll have Laurel hedging everywhere shortly .
I put several different seeds into this container, maybe in June, plant where they are to grow ones. Eventually these came up, but I’ve forgotten what i put there! I had a look back at the seed packets and the only thing i can think of is Sunflower “Teddy Bear”, a dwarf variety. Any ideas would be welcome! Anyway, I guess I’ll just leave them and see what, if anything, happens.
It’s time that I got out and sorted out the future of my garden in Co Louth. I spent a week earlier this month in Devon digging up a friend’s garden so that she can move to Wales and take many of her plants with her. Last week I spent in Cork weeding the garden of another friend. It’s high time I did a bit of work here at home.
At the moment I am playing with the idea of growing some alpines and getting to know them better. I thought that I might take a run up to a nursery in Co Down during the week. It seems to specialise in alpines. What I really need is a greenhouse. Hmmmmm, I’ve been thinking of one of those for so long. I just wonder if I would make use of it or if it would become another shed to dump all the plastic pots in. What I see in my mind’s eye is a wonderful display of cute little things that flower for a week or so. You know the kind of thing, sitting in a low pot set in sand.
Maybe I just need to get real and head out tomorrow to confront the neglect here at home. Watch this space.
Some time ago, I picked all of the tomatoes. Most were green. With the aid of a few bananas, I had them ripening in a bucket ( the type in which I bought bird seed and nuts). from time to time, they were ripening and now as you can see, I have four punnets of them, all ripe while they went in green. The other type of banana, a somewhat tender variety of Musa, went into the greenhouse as it was to be quite cold to night. Of course they will be out again and around Wednesday the temperature will be such as a result of the change in the direction of the wind, it may be some time before they go in again. These plants have grown a lot this year.
The ground was a joy to work today so the task was completed in double quick time . Early and late varieties now in the one trench along with a new Tayberry . Left over canes delivered to big brother who loves these fruit . I lined one side of the row with surplus roof slates to prevent runners . It may keep them orderly for a while at least .
