Archives: journal

I’m captured with splendid idea. I’ve just red about it in landscape design journal.

It’s about bed with only conifers of different shapes and heights. For example, Pinus mugo, Picea abies and P. pungens, Pinus peuce, juniper, thuyas (Thuja occidentalis ‘Smaragd’), decumbent coniferous. 

Between this shrubs and not very tall trees – various heathers and bulbous flowers. The soil is covered with bark pieces and needles (coniferous forest’s effect).

The most impressive thing is contrast of conifers and tulips. I’m charmed! And this choice is very suitable to our climate – conifers are slowgrowing, winterproof and unpretentious, and so do many kinds of tulips and heathers.

After failing to grow in several other parts of the garden, my husband and I dug up 2 gunnera yesterday from a holding bed to find out that 1 of them had a fantastic root system and looked very healthy. The 2nd one looked like it did when it came out of its original pot, but still not too unhealthy.  We decided to split them (I read yesterday now is the time to do this!) so created 4 new plants.  We planted them in the bottom right hand corner of our garden where its very poorly drained, in fact its a swimming pool this last winter.  It rained all night last night and hence the Gunnera that were planted yesterday are submerged today.  I wonder is this Bye Bye Gunnera??  Hope not, but have posted a picture of my swimming pool this morning and what you can’t see is that only one of the plants has its head poking out of the depths of water sitting in our garden!

I’ve found lovely sprouts of Astilbe arendsii today and have already planted it.

I wasnt lucky enough with seeds of astilbe – only 2 plants from the pack. But I love astilbe and hope to find more astilbes that are ready to be planted.

 

This plant is spreading like mad. I am pulling bits of it out everywhere. The book says ‘may be invasive’ !

Each day I pull up dandelions from my grassy areas ( I hesitate to call them lawns ). Seeds blow in from neighbouring fields and each day sees a new crop of emerging yellow flowers! Another real menace is hairy bittercress. It comes as an unwelcome visitor with lots of bought pot- plants and in days matures and seeds. What a pest and especially on gravel paths where it’s difficult to spot before it seeds . Another beautiful day today – you can almost see the plants growing this last while. Each day something new appears and the tulips are brilliant this year! Bye.

Nothing wrong with todays weather after a showery start earlier.Good patches of sunshine came through during the day.Moved out some more veg trays to the greenhouse.Gave the g-house windows another quick rub.[cant avoid it im afraid]Set up some more brown tubs in the  garden 2 area and hopefully with some luck the final filling of clay etc will be completed as early as possible.[hopefully some evenings in the coming week] Moved the final few yellow tubs to the garden 1 area also.Had a look in the tunnell to make sure all was well.Delighted to see the dwarf beans coming on well there.Having been moved on from the room just under a week ago.

Yesterday was a day of plants. So many thing to do and after all – so much more must be done later.

But first of all, I replaced little geraniums to personal pots. I hope I didn’t mix varieties 🙂 

Other 2 things – to repot gift plants and to replace seedlings from propagator to balcony boxes.  I used all compost I have and about 7 kilos of fresh compost (was bought yesterday). But only one box is ready now – with petunias. I think, I planted petunias too close to each other, but I will correct it later. This seedlings owergrow their rooms in propagator and I had to hurry.

By the way, compost business looks very profitable….

If only all the other plants in the garden grew as well as the weeds!  I was almost despondent today at the thought of all the weeding there is to do and I was thinking how attractive a nice small suburban garden, that I would have more chance of keeping on top of, would be.  The ‘lawn’ is filled with patches of dandelions which we will never get rid of without spraying and if we sprayed it, there would be nothing left as I hate to admit there is very little grass in it.  And all those creeping buttercups, docks and other weeds I would love to forget about, they just keep on keeping on!  I consoled myself by taking photos of plants that are doing well inspite of the competition from the weeds and picked a nice little bunch of kerria and forget-me-nots.  Actually, the forgt-me-not seeded themselves so I guess they are doing as well as the weeds.  At least they are on my side!

After reading on a website that dandelion leaves are higher in beta-carotene than carrots, and richer in iron and calcium than spinach, contain 5 B vitamins, magnesium, zinc. vitamins C,E and D, isn’t it a little crazy that we don’t eat them??  They would be so easy to grow as a crop and they would have the advantage of being a perennial and would definitely thrive on neglect.  I did make dandelion coffee a while back which was pretty good and caffeine free to boot. Most gardeners absolutely hate them but I’m beginning to see the value of them, so I probaly won’t be spraying afterall.  It was just a moment of weakness.

Non stop rain today so I’ll keep going with my journal!  I got this pretty geranium from Future forests last year and I love the colour of the flowers and the maroon marking on the leaves. I had planned starting work on some new veg beds for the kids, and I hope to get himself to knock up the surrounds.  We have sown french beans ‘purple queen’ as well as peas, kale, broccoli and leaf beet to plant out when the beds are ready. I would have planted some courgettes and squash today but I have run out of pots….

Still a little damp and wet today.Nothing much done,just a brief look aroung at any new veg etc,and how seeds were coping.Afternoon the thinking cap was back on to see where i can place my bargain concrete boots in the garden.[shop soiled Just a small touch up with some elbow grease, but all should be ok along with trying to have them as suitable for the job as possible.Thats all that went on today.

Mrs. Doheny was my first school teacher.  It was a two roomed school, in Clontubrid, Co. Kilkenny.  She taught junior infants to second class and her husband taught from third class to sixth class.  During the education years, there are a few teachers who have a substantial influence on your life and she is one of those.

 

There are a couple of things that stick in my memory of Mrs. Doheny.  One day, I did my homework perfectly for her.  It was beautiful.  When I gave up my copybook, she got excited and my copybook was being taken into the master’s room.  I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about as I had written out my homework perfectly but I wrote from the right hand side of the page over to the left.  She needed a mirror to read it.  To this day, as I drive, I can read licence plates of cars behind me in my mirror.  In those days, there was no name for what I had done or if there was, it was never mentioned.  About 20 years later, I came across the word “dyslexia” and I realised that was what was “wrong” with me. 

 

After that, she gave me extra books to read.  I remember the first book.  It was “Black Beauty”.  Every inch of the 1.4 miles walk home, I cried.  My sister, Mairead, did everything in her power to console me but I could see, by just flickering the pages, that there were words in there that were “too big”.  However, Mairead promised me she would help me and she did.  So 3 weeks later, when I had to return the book, I knew every page off by heart because I had read it so often.  After that, every 3 weeks, I had a new book.  I dreaded being given a new book and I hated returning it after the 3 weeks.  But Mrs. Doheny was right – it was the best thing she could have done for me. 

 

I don’t know how she knew I liked gardening.  In those days, everyone grew their own vegetables and flowers were a luxury.  She gave me a pot with bluebells.  In our garden, my mother had allocated different areas to all of us so the pot of bluebells was grown in the area which was known as my garden.  There wasn’t much minding on them – they came up every year, flowered and died down.  But they were lovely.  When we bought our house, my mother divided them up and gave me a pot of them.  I planted them and they do exactly as they did all those years ago.  The real beauty of them is that the bridge the gap between the daffodils and tulips. 

 

So, to Mrs. Doheny – thank you for the bluebells and thank you for the education you gave me. 

Thanks to this month’s Irish Garden magazine, I now know the name of this plant that flowers well at this time of year. It is the blue one I have, Camassia leichtlinii, I think – I cannot remember where I got it from but it survives well and flowers well though only for a short time, so perhaps it’s better kept in the background. The rain arrived this afternoon, a nice excuse to relax and read the papers. Bye.

Whenever I have a free moment these days I pot on some of my annuals. They are in 24 cell trays but need to be potted on individually into 4" pots. There are a lot of trays.

Today I had to go out to collect my eldest so, as a joke, I said to my husband to pot on some annuals for me. "Okay", he said and asked me to show him what to do.

When I came back from collecting the kids, I went to the greenhouse and was delighted to see a complete tray done, labelled and watered. Then I noticed the smell… The greenhouse smells like a brewery!!! Apparently my husband took a glass of beer with him to assist in his potting on task and somehow managed to spill it : )

Castle arrived at 9.00am yesterday- kids started arriving at 9.05am – and stayed. Party due to begin at 3.00pm. Ha. Party a huge success. Big game of soccer on the green – about 30 kids involved – while they were on the green , all the tiny kids from the neighbourhood came for their bounce and goodies with the girls who were not playing soccer. We had a chocolate fountain which was a huge mess and a huge success. They covered everything with chocolate when all the fruit and marshmallows were gone. glad they were not all staying with me.!!!!9.30pm last night I pulled the plug on the castle – Enough !!! Please go home !!!!!!

 Went out this morning at 10 when the castle was collected to view the damage!! Only mud at entrance to castle – grass gone – hopefully will come back.  Loads of lilies that my brother gave me wrecked.  They even put the generator thingy down on them. Most other plants on right had side of garden are squished but should recover except for my climbing Fuchsia – gone – no sign of it!!  Am so disappointed  — was just starting to climb the wall.

On a happier note – my tulips from Amsterdam are just starting to bloom. They are beautiful – photo soon – deep pink with white frilly edges. Have to go now – ER coming on.  Almost the last one ever.!!

What the hell – kids grow up!! Garden will be there still. 

 

 

 

 

 

To be honest I didnt get much done with the garden over the weekend. Had a big spring clean out in the house, its spotless now after much effort anda skip. Also have 3 new additions to the family, Larry, Curly and Moe my african dwarf frogs. They are the first addtion to my tropical fish tank.

 

Hope to get more done with the garden this week and perhaps buy a few plants at the weekend (I have my eye on Poppies and Foxgloves I saw in B&Q).

Also eagerly awaiting my bird boxes and feeders, I know I am probably too late for them for this year but at least the birds will know they are there for next year.  I have had several visitors to the garden since we emptied the composters. The abundance of fresh worms has come to the attention of every bird in a ten mile radius I reckon. Thankfully this is going mostly un-noticed byBenji (my border collie) unless the bigger ones who seem to have an interest in his dog nuts torment him.