Month: March 2014
…… when Steve comes home from work and says ‘Hello’ to the froggies before he says ‘Hello’ to me. LOL
For some time the ladybirds have been all over the garden. I saw four of them to day on a Geranium. Later on I saw lots of bumble bees. Such a contrast trying to take photos of the two. The ladybird hardly moves and taking a photo so easy, but not in the case of the bumble bee. It reminds me of that piece of music “The Flight of the Bumble Bee” Yesterday I spent some hours at the Hurling Club digging a flower bed which was not dug last year and it put up some resistance. I will have to think of what to put into it. To day, I spent some time working in the greenhouse and got more tomato plants potted on. They are Alicante, 65 in all. I also have Gardeners Delight coming on. I was well attired for the work in the greenhouse. The temperature reached 32 degrees C before I got it under control. Two great sunny days this week.
I know everyone will have been out in the garden today, unless they were working.
Isn’t the weather brilliant!
This is mandrake, a plant used in many superstitious rituals and concoctions in the past.
It is highly poisonous but was supposed to cure a variety of ails.
Those with kids may remember the Harry Potter film, where the students at Hogworts had to repot the screaming mandrake plants!
If I am lucky these flowers will now form into large green fruits, as seen in Helen Dillon’s garden.
I can’t believe the amount of ladybirds out there, there are hundreds everywhere, here are a couple of photos, not sure whether you will be able to see them all!
Spotted this early (lady)bird today. She seemed a little shy or maybe unsure, after all its March and suddenly the sun is shining brightly?
She eventually came out fully and began basking on the Polymonium.
Welcome 2014
What a beautiful day yesterday was! I took a few photos of plants enjoying the spring sunshine
The meaning of:) privacy thing or have I missed the plot again. sorry to be a pain.
I too have one or two n my garden, although not up to much!!!! 😉
Gidday all,
decided to do abit of prunning & hedge trimming while the lawn was drying we,ve been getting really heavy dew,4hrs later still at it,how times fly when you,re having fun.It got to hot to mow the lawn 29*
regards roofy
Fran posted recently about his chaenomeles that is starting to take off, which made me wonder just how long we have had these plants in the garden here, as they seem to have always been with us.
There are two the same colour, one either side of the front gate, though this is the one I always seem to photograph as it is taller and gets more sun, so it flowers well even though its leaves are poor nowadays, perhaps due to old age? The leaves on the second (slightly younger) one are fine. In a mild year they will start to flower before Christmas, then pause through the cold and burst forth again at the first sign of spring. A plant well worth growing … this one I reckon could be thirty years old.
Sometimes it’s fun to get low down and dirty with the camera in hand 😉
You never know where gardening is going to bring you.
I have two Belfast sinks that I am going to turn into stone troughs.
I was moving them into what I think will be their final position yesterday. One of them had a lump of plaster stuck to the side of it. A few taps of the hammer and off it fall.
I picked it up to throw in the bin when I noticed a piece of metal in it. The plaster was old and crumbled away.
I was left holding a spoon. Soon enough I knew it was silver and had letters engraved on the handle.
I spent ages last evening looking up Hallmarks.
The spoon is Irish Silver from Dublin and was stamped in 1875. Still have to trace the Silversmith who made it.
Interesting side to gardening.
My Double Ellen ‘Rose’ from Lidl opened today.
I didn’t have much time to look at the site for the last few days. The week-end was very busy with the usual kids activities, and in addition to that, birthday parties for Lucie and a friend of Sophie visiting from France with her Mum from Saturday till this morning. Best friends for the past few years, the girls hadn’t seen each other since June, so you can imagine the excitment, giggles and all of the fun that they had. It was a lovely week-end, but some peace and quiet was also very enjoyable today!
I didn’t spend a huge amount of time in the garden as I was busy doing some tidying up after the week-end, washing of clothes while they could dry quickly, etc, but I enjoyed very much the time I spent outside. I mainly did some “minor” tidy up of one corner of the garden, the part that was dedicated to herbs and is now quite untidy. I want to resurrect the herb garden, in a combination of pots and ground plants. I have a thyme plant doing well, an ever reliable chives plant, a completely invasive oregano and a struggling sage, which I hope will do better this year, and a…wild strawberry plant! I had a big rosemary bush there, but last summer it dried out while I was away and never recovered, so I bought a little one which I will keep in a pot and can put in the shade if needed. I will divide the oregano and might also move it in a pot to contain it, and will sow some parsley at least. I’m also planning on sowing some French marigolds. A while ago we were discussing them on this site I think, and as much as I am not mad about them when they are all in a line or even in some flower beds, I love them dotted here and there among herbs.
No photos of the area yet (will try tomorrow), but more primula photos!!! I love the heart of the one in the first two photos, it’s really pretty I think. The third one is Primula June Blake, just opened today!
I was looking at this Primula to see if I culd start dividing it and wow! look at the amount of buds hidden behind the large buds ………I don’t think I will be dividing it in the near future …..
Met up with Jackie this morning for a quick visit to Homebase and a cuppa. I haven’t been to Homebase for at least 6 months so I was dying to see what they had to offer for the coming season. Not a whole lot really. And the multipack bedding looked like it had been there a while. However, that’s not what I was looking for.
I bought Astrantia ‘Primadonna’, Echinacea ‘White Swan’, Gladioli ‘Green Star’, Lily of the Valley and another nice primrose ‘Suze’.
I had great intentions of getting lots done today but unfortunately I was really feeling the effects of lack of sleep over the weekend so decided to do very little. Hopefully tomorrow. It’s good that we can now rely on the weather a bit more at this stage.
My tomatoes didn’t survive my absence over the weekend so I was hoping to get some seedlings in Homebase. But they didn’t have any. Normally these come in around the 1st March. So I sowed some more this evening. Now that light levels are increasing, they should have a better chance of survival.
In Ratoath on Friday I bought Bergenia ‘Baby Doll’, Dryopteris sieboldii, Eremurus himalaicus, Primula ‘Zebra Blue’.
Plenty to keep me busy tomorrow. And the soil is drying up noticeably too which can only be good.
I celebrated my 80th birthday last September and I am still wondering where the past 80 years have gone. Granted I cannot remember the first 3 or 4 years and my memory now is getting very erratic. I worried about getting alzheimers so I paid a visit to my doctor. He asked me if I had been lost anytime in the past year or so. I said that I had been lost during the bad spell of snow we had two years ago. I said I had. Then he asked If I had been aware that I was lost. Of course I knew that I was lost was my reply. He laughed and said that if I got lost and didn’t know I was lost then I would really be in trouble. He then asked me to count back in 7’s from 99 and I did so satisfactorily. He reassured me that I had nothing to worry about. Forgetfullness affects everybody and the older we get the more forgetful we become. So that is a bit of advice to all you old folks out there who like me are haeding for the “Last Roundup”.
Now for some garden news. I kept my greenhouse plants well protected during the mild wet winter we had and we were not troubled by floods. Raheny is well above sea level and the walk from here to the sea is mainly downhill. I hope those of you who were affected by floods are recovering and that the coming summer will be as good as last year’s one was. I am looking forward to returning to Seefeld in Austria for a holiday in July. Seefeld is like a second home to us and the weather in Austria is somewhat similar to our weather here. The main difference being that rainstorms and thunderstorms in Austria are more spectacular than anything we experience here.
I wish you all the best of luck with your gardens during the coming year and the best of health too. Enjoy your gardens while you can. I’m sure that God will have the best gardens we have ever seen just waiting for our arrival. God bless you all.
I got lots done in the garden today and i am feeling well pleased with myself this evening .I top dressed all the acid loving shrubs with ericaeous compost ,swept th patio ,planted out hellebores from Lidl ,repotted some houseplants and some stuff in the greenhouse,and while i was doing all this my dog millie enjoyed the sunshine 🙂
The frogs have done their business. Now, really looking forward to having them hopping all over the garden for the summer.
There’s a super ‘foxy smell’ going on in the far right of the greenhouse at the moment.
I just love the odd scent of crown fritellaries.
The one in the greenhouse is Fritellaria imperialis ‘Aureomarginata’ and it’s a variegated one with creamy yellow edges to its leaves.
The second photo shows Hacquetis epipactis ‘Thor’, which is also variegated and a great little do-er.
It just minds its own business and comes up when its supposed to, no messing!
We all hate the messing!
If you visit me, I found an Alligator in the garden today, lying on the wall. He seemed a bit short in the dental area so I gave him some more teeth.
What a fabulous day , wonderful and hope it was the same for you all. The third picture is to put on record the first day of 14 when the sky and the water were blue.
Both of us are very achy after a busy weekend. Met Eireann promised a nice day yesterday but it was dull, damp and occasionally wet so we got pretty muddy, but we got a lot done. All the green manures in the veggie beds are dug in, most are mulched and they’re all covered and waiting for sowing later this month or next. Between showers I sowed more lettuce and flowers: Antirrhinums, Cosmos mixed and ‘Purity’, Dierama, Cerinthe (Thanks Myrtle and Hazel!) and Nicotiana.
We were going to start on the changes and extension to the boggy border by the pond, but because the frogs were busy spawning we left them in peace and tackled the front garden. The soil there had been awful, compacted stony builder’s clay under black weed-supressant mesh with old bark mulch on top. We’ve gradually got rid of the plastic layer and as we’ve put in plants the holes have been dug wide and had lots of compost. It was great to see the worms have already been at work and the old mulch is being absorbed and improving the soil. So we planted the Johnstown perennials, divided others and then dug over all of the border. Alan managed to get half of it mulched with peat dust and compost before rain (and age!) stopped play.
I’d put a casserole on to cook slowly all day and it was just as well as we didn’t have the energy between us to peel a spud. Boy did we enjoy that glass of wine! Really good to look out as I’m working and see it all looking so tidy. The beds are full now and it’ll be wonderful to see it all growing this spring.
I was looking forward to posting some pics of all our work at the weekend, but it’s still quite foggy so here’s a nice indoor shot. There were days when we nearly got to the Y in Stormy over the winter, but we survived. This is nice and long may it continue…. though I wonder how long it would be before we started saying, ‘The garden needs a drop of rain’?? 🙂
The garden is really starting to take off at the moment with things starting to fly up up or open. My Euphorbia Amygdaloides Purpurea was looking great yesterday with loads of flowers opening on it and also it is bulking up so well since planting out last year. Just near it is my Photinia again which is going to burst with a load of red leaves pretty soon. A great time for the garden as this is going to continue right unitl october at least.
