Month: November 2018

I’m just thinking that it might be an idea for people to start thinking Johnstown Swaps. This is a great time for lifting and dividing plants and if we plan ahead a bit we can manage to share our “spares” with our friends!

Just sayin’ ……..

And since Terri and Alan are off sunning themselves I’ll be standing in for them this year!

So what do you think? Is it a good idea to get sorted for plant swaps at this time of year?

Replies here please!

I’ll put something up for the Facebook people as well!

I notice that both this site and Garden.ie Friends on Facebook have a few regular contrbutors but even combining the two sites there are considerably less regular contributors so I wonder will there be interest for our annual gathering? On Facebook I can set it up as an “Event” which people can say they will attend or not.

And this one is for Dick! The flower on my Yukka that I got from you many years ago is still surviving despite a few frosty nights – I’m hoping it might get to show me even one proper flower before it is demolished by the frost!

Its 6 days since I last felt like doing a journal – the weather has been pretty atrocious so even when it cleared for a short while I was completely bogged down in leaves! Even using the mower to chop them and lift them it is still a never-ending chore at this time of year.

It just seems that every time I am about to go outside I am met with a downpour! However, I did manage to get a photo of the most spectacular colour in the garden at one point.

But today, with a beautiful bright sunny morning I was sure my luck had changed! Alas no! But I was determined to get outdoors this time. Well, even if the greenhouse is no more, there is still the shed. I lifted a big clump of Iris Sibirica Silver edge  last week and although I replanted at least 20 of them there were still two large clumps left that I just put in plastic bags in the shed – and today I decided to tackle them!

 

Here they are – three plants to a pot – and a dozen pots!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This photo is how this iris looked in June!

And how sad is it when tidying the shed seems like gardening!

Well, with all the storms battering the garden recently, and ever-decreasing light levels, my enthusiasm to be outdoors doing stuff is diminishing. But it’s at this time of year that I get the most satisfaction out of witnessing which species of birds are coming and going in the garden. They’ll probably always be around during the summer months, but with natural habitats being wiped out over the years, let’s hope that some of the less common garden birds won’t disappear. Yesterday, the garden was being given the once-over by this beautiful sparrowhawk, surveying all that lay before him in the garden . Sparrows and bluetits were in abundance all day so I hope he didn’t dine on too many. If he did……well, c’est la vie!  It’s survival of the fittest.

One of the best features of any garden is the ‘borrowed landscapes’ that are often on offer. And for us in the middle of Dublin, we are so lucky where we are living now, as it  has the most beautiful trees at the back our garden wall which then backs onto a small green.

Tall Silver Birch adorn that wall and in the Summer months when full of leaves they look stunning and it gives a great backdrop to my garden. But now here in Autumn when the trees take on their Autumn coats they look even better.

Yesterday morning when we had some brief sunshine, the trees looked amazing with the November light. We are lucky that we face East/West so we had the early morning sunshine beaming on them and making them look just fabulous!

 

I’ve only had this indoor plant for the last 10 or 11yrs. It has been so neglected in that time, and has been brought back to life so many times when it had had lots of near-death moments.

Today I noticed it flowering for the very first time. It really deserves much better treatment than that.  For those of you who say you constantly kill indoor plants, maybe this is the one for you. It’s Rhipsalis pilocarpa.

I tried something else with my latest Blog entry. I just copied the whole thing including photos and then opened a new journal and pasted it. Photos can’t be zoomed but that seems to be the only down-side.

There is a big cloud down over Sunny Laois today so I’m not able to work outside. I am like a caged animal staring out at the drizzle. There are 6 lb of apples draining to make apple jelly, the house is tidied, beds changed after visitors. So what will I do now? I know! I’ll write a Blog.

So looking back at some recent photos I found one of the Four Seasons border before I got at it the other day! This border used to be wall-to-wall Japanese Anemones but last year I did a re-vamp and replaced them with a variety of plants all with different seasons of “star quality”!

I’m afraid that the Anemones were not prepared to go quietly! I left one clump because I really do like them – but too much of a good thing is a bad thing!

So I bit the bullet the other day and did a major clear-out. This involved cutting back the herbaceous stuff – even the ones that weren’t quite finished. My thinking here was that it was unlikely I would get back to that border again before next year so they had to go! When I cleared that border I found that the mulch of shredded Willow I used last year had done its job – there were very few “normal” weeds – just lots of Anemones coming up from bits of roots left behind!

The wonderful hand-tools I got as my Kris Kindle last year (thank you Margot!) are absolute winners in getting down deep to get much more roots than previous attempts!

The latest issue of the blog can be seen here

November flower survivors

I hope you like it. It features a slideshow of flowers actually still flowering today!

And it only took about 5 minutes to upload the whole album and I’m afraid it just confirms me in my decision to use this means of connecting with my friends here.

Two days ago despite that it was quite cold, I moved out into areas where the leaves lay. I cannot fathom how there could be so many leaves. During the 2nd half of October (and November has just arrived) leaves from the trees have been coming down. In the case of some trees possibly all of the leaves are down with a few exceptions. A large sycamore in the middle of the lawn and the Liquidambar are generally the exception. It is going to be some job to move these leaves and then when I stack them to make some type of compost, it should be interesting.