My Garden

THE GARDEN ~ LUSH AFTER THE RAINS

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We have had quite a mixed summer this year. First it did not rain for many weeks and that while it was warm the result was that naturally the soil became very dry, but just as we were getting worried about this and that the government decided to put a ban on hosepipe use, it started to rain and we have not looked back since. In fact we did get rather more rain than necessary. The nice thing about this is that it felt today as if we are living in the tropics, so humid and warm and the garden so very overgrown, quite splendid.
  • Cabbage flowers
  • Our fern
  • Young marrows
While having lunch on the patio there is a nice view over the garden and it is good to just sit back and take in what’s growing, and to delight in all the different colours and the wealth of scented herbs. Vegetables are growing, beans are being produced, and we are waiting for the hydrangeas to start flowering. Times are full of expectations, and reflections too.

During the afternoon I found the cool air in the garden conducive to looking over my notes. I’m doing the second part of ‘Fundamentals of Plant biology’ course and am finding it absolutely fascinating, if a little challenging too! Keep the old brain working 🙂

So the solstice came and went and we are enjoying midsummer weather, it is all good, and life is feeling a little more like normal again. At least I hope it is for everyone else too.

THE GARDEN IS A BLESSING

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Yes it is great to be able to get out into the garden and see all the young growth, as well as the insects that are about already. So far I’ve seen two butterflies, small tortoiseshells, a bumblebee, a bee and some small fly types. The photo above is of an hoverfly if I am right. It is great to see the return of the insects. It gives us hope during these surreal days.

Minature tulips, primroses, and three cornered leeks all in flower, or almost.

I actually spent time in the garden to plant out my 14 broad bean plants, and as today we had a lull in the stormy and very wet weather of recent times, it was ideal to do my work. Two broad bean plants the only ones left of what I sowed in the autumn are in flower.

Kale, forsythia and more broad beans, everything is coming alive in the garden.
We have now got two canary birds in an enormous cage. Seeing that it is a male and a female and there has been mating going on ~ we have one egg! It is the second one she lays, the first one we found destroyed and we hope that this time we may be looking forward to a baby canary! It i great fun to watch those birds, they can be funny and lively. They are beautiful in colour and when I put my face to the side of the cage and speak to them they come sitting very close and listening, so very sweet.

We have been self isolating for a week as a precaution against the corona virus because of our age. For us it is not a problem as we are both retired and we can shop online for food. Of course as this whole situation is developing sometimes it feels to me like a surreal film that I am watching. Stay safe all my friends and followers. Much love to everyone.

SEASONAL ACTIVITIES IN NATURE

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Look at this most beautiful Blackcap which has been visiting our bird feeder for the last few weeks and finally I got a good shot of it. This is the male Blackcap, we also had the female feeding for a while, see: https://gaiainaction.blog/2020/01/19/blackcap-female-bird/ but one day it fell off the feeder, I picked it up and brought it inside and after less than a minute it started to move again and I let it fly off, we never saw it again! The male visits every day. I so hope that the female is still around, maybe the male is feeding the female if she is sitting on eggs? No, I just read that their nesting season is April to mid-June, so it would be too early for that.
And here also are our residential Dunnock and Robin, they are always available to pose for photos 🙂
I saw my first hoverfly yesterday on a dandelion, a few days ago I also saw my first bee of the season on the grape hyacinths.
And spring has definitely sprung all over the place here in West Cork, even the sun has joint in the magnificent display of fresh new growth.
Inside our canary birds are showing nesting behaviour. At the moment the female is filling the nest with bits of paper that she tears off the newspaper at the bottom of the cage, or she uses bits of tissue that we give her, but the male often takes all the nesting material out of the nest again, not sure what this means as I am new to canary care. We do think that they are very funny in their behaviour. The past week the male has stopped trying to sing as well. He is trying to get her attention and trying to mate, she won’t have any of it, although I cannot be sure of that. I would love to see some eggs and young ones.
These are some foraged vegetables from the garden, and some that I grew. They will be incorporated into some of our dinners. There is plenty of three cornered leeks, fine young nettles, some delicate sorrel leaves, some sprouting broccoli, and tender young spinach, it is all for the taking and so fresh, a delight to the palate.
And last but not least, I have started to seriously work on one of our sheds. It was so full of stuff that I could not even walk into it. Well yesterday I just started and after a few hours I was very pleased with the outcome. There’s nothing like a good day’s work in the open air and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I think spring is in the air, the birds know it, the flowers show it, and we certainly feel it! I am excited and really happy at the start of another season.

I hope that everyone stays clear of the Covid-19. Take care dear friends and followers.

THE WINTER GARDEN

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Gathered in the garden ready for cooking chicken broth is wild three cornered leek, cut and come back celery (a plant that is two years old and doing great) and oca which I have been growing for some years and which is a Peruvian root vegetable.

Due to all the rough weather we have been experiencing lately, and also due to the indoor work which we were completing I had not been much in our garden to check on things and certainly did not do any work in it. But between the two latest storms I did go out and took stock of what needs doing and what is growing right now and it seems that we have quite a bit going for us, there is more food to be found there than at first one would think. And so I have become encouraged and excited to get going. I plan to grow as much as I can fit, because my plan is to preserve some surplus harvest and to that end I bought some Kilner jars today. When I was growing up every housewife used to preserve a variety of foods in those jars. My mother did this until she was well in her eighties.

  • Dandelion root and oca
  • Last year’s spinach among the three cornered leeks
  • Young nettles
  • Winter greens – kale
I found lovely fresh and young nettles growing at the back of the garden. I was reminded recently of how wonderfully full of minerals and vitamins this plant is and I mean to make more use of it this year, even for tea but also in soups.
  • Young sprouting chives, I am very happy to see these as they suffered last summer
  • And young dandelion leaves, if we only half knew how nutritiously valuable this plant is, we would use it a plenty
I am very happy to see that the dandelions are going to be as plentiful as always. I mean to use a lot of them. Even our canary birds like this wild plant 🙂
  • A young broad bean plant
  • And elephant garlic is sprouting too
I planted a number of broad beans in late autumn, too late really and several were eaten by none hybernating slugs or snails, but two or three plants survived and that has got to be good.
  • Three cornered leek
  • Celery that just keeps growing
The few celery plants that we have in the garden are the type which stay green and grow even during the winter, you just cut leaves off the plant and let it go on growing. I love celery I use it especially in soups.
I am chitting our potatoes, last summer my grandchildren and I dug up the potatoes that I had grown, the excitement this caused was so much fun that I decided to grow some more this season!
  • Thyme growing real well this winter
  • Mediterranean oregano
The herbs have also grown very well during the past winter months despite some frost. The oregano especially is very lush and I love using it in the kitchen. The thyme and rosemary too are thriving, and so is the sage. As well as that the lemon balm, hypericum, tansy, sorrel, and comfrey are all coming up beautifully.
I hope that wherever you are that your gardens are growing well too and that my friends in the UK have not been affected by the most recent floods and storms.

CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL

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It was the beginning of spring of this past year that I decided to let our garden become an Ark, and to let everything that wanted to grow be there without interference from me. And it worked, the garden became one large ecological wonder, Thistles, Foxgloves, Nettles, Comfrey, Dandelions, and so many more wild plants seemed to be in competition with each other to produce the most foliage and flowers. Needless to say the garden became a haven for insects and the butterflies were found in abundance too. Everyday I was out there filming and taking photos of all these delightful creatures, too many of which I don’t quite know the proper name of. First time seeing the Orange tip butterfly and also the Meadow Brown. At some point the Leek flowers were visited by several Peacocks, Red Admirals, and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies. Besides the ordinary Whites I also had a visit of a Green Veined White, and of course not to forget the Painted Ladies of which there were several this past summer. I had a Meadow Brown which was also a first here in the garden, and of course the yearly Speckled Wood. Such a delight!

  • Red Admiral
  • Speckled Wood
  • Small Tortoiseshell
  • Green veined White
  • White butterfly
  • Orange Tipped butterfly
At some stage there were numerous Tortoiseshell, Red Admirals and Peacock butterflies on the same plants in a rather smallish area, they seem to love the flowers of the leeks which I had let grow out.
And then there are the Hoverflies and the Bumblebees, and the honey bees, I am afraid that I still have issues with identification, maybe I might have some time during the winter to look over my photos and do some identification, I would love to know more about them all right, and there are good websites to help me.
Our Mediterranean Oregano plants are absolute winners when it comes to bumblebees.
Several times during the summer I have had to step in to help rescue bees. A little honey later and they fly off again.
Some more insects, we had so very many shield bugs, various types, and some other creatures that I am not sure what they are.
Caterpillars galore, one or two of them became chrysalis, interesting to watch.
  • Cinnabar moth
  • Hoverfly
  • Hoverfly
This photo shows what was like a little invasion of creatures but my photo is too unclear to identify, it was an amazing happening I thought.
  • Wasp

And even though we had such an abundance of creatures in the garden in this past year, I am having to re-think my gardening plan for this coming season 2020, the reason for this is that by now the garden is totally overgrown. I have let it get out of hand and now will find it hard to find space for vegetables, the growth has been so enormous and so I will be planning differently but still with insect life in mind.

Let me know please what you do in this regard, do you just let every wild plant grow where it wants, or do you keep some order in your garden or plot. I would be very interested in learning from your experience my friends. Thank you.

MIDWINTER FROST

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A few nights ago we had frost. I awoke to a white world, where every blade of grass, every flower, and every leaf was beautifully decorated with glittering ice, it looked as if during the night a fairy had strewn sugary crystals all over the garden. It was wonderful. And it was cold. A clear blue sky stretched out over the houses to the west and in the east the sun was already shining making everything glitter.
These flowers reminded me of the sugared violets used in cake recipes during Victorian times.
Every year I leave some of the hydrangea flower heads on the shrubs and they never fail to be of interest all winter long in many different ways.
Some of my favourite winter foliage would be conifers, pines, firs. Some have a lovely scent, especially around midwinter, and at Christmas time the warmth of the lights bring out this scent from our live tree right inside our living room, wonderful!
These are the trunks of privet bushes, they rise up high and grow by about 50cm every year which means a lot of cutting down, by now and after 30 years their trunks have grown so close together that they are now more of a fence than a hedge.
My newest garden plants are brightly coloured Gaultheria procumbens (Wintergreen). I am delighted with them. By the time I took this photo the ice was melting a little because of the sun, but most of the garden stayed white all day long. Quite unusual for the area, but much appreciated by me.

In a day or two it will be the winter Solstice and it is also the time that Ian celebrates his 80th birthday, yes we will be celebrating!

SEASONS MIXED UP OR IS IT ME

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So right, we live in S.W. Ireland, and that means that we experience a micro climate due to the gulfstream passing by these shores, and normally we do have a mild winter, it seldom snows or freezes here, though we do get some light frost during or after January.

Even though it is quite cold just now, and the mountains in the distance have their tops covered in snow, in the garden the plant growth reminds me more of early spring. The temperature of the soil seems normal enough, it was 6 degrees Celsius the other day, and at night the outside temperature is between 6 and 8 degrees Celsius. And even today the cold wind made it feel very chilly. But yet something seems out of kilter, and I cannot actually put my finger on it clearly. Questions like; Is the planet really warming up? Is the climate changing? beg for answers everyday and all around us now. Here are some of my own observations.

And taking stock of the garden the other day here is what I found.

  • Dandelion
  • Primrose
I found dandelions in bloom, and my favourite blue double primroses (early spring blooms!)
  • Calendula
  • Oxalis
I found marigolds blazing like the sun, and sweet pink oxalis.
  • Purple Sage
  • Sage
  • Lemon Balm
My herbs are absolutely thriving, the two types of Sage, and the Lemon Balm are full of new growth.
  • Thyme
  • Oca
  • Rosemary
Thyme a plenty (not enough ‘time’ though), and Oca, a Peruvian root of the Oxalis family is thriving, not to speak of the Rosemary bush which has been flowering all summer and still is.
  • Dandelions
  • Nettles
  • Foxgloves
Dandelions and nettles, thriving and ready for use in the kitchen. One of my beds is full of already fine Foxgloves plants, they came to grow there during summer and are going from strength to strength.
I did put down a few bulbs for spring time, they did however, start to shoot up immediately! And finally the Oregano is still fresh and keeps growing even now in mid-November.
And even while you would not think so, it is late autumn now, another few weeks and it is Christmas. Am I perhaps imagining that the season is out of kilter? All the same I am delighted with so much growth in the garden. As it stands I have not been able to work in the garden since September because we have been working inside the house and I have had no time. Needless to say I cannot wait to get going again, meanwhile I am using my herbs in my cooking. Oh and I bought a Camelia shrub yesterday, can’t wait to give it a lovely spot where we can see it bloom from the window later in winter.
Have you been busy in your garden my friends? I’d love to hear your stories.

PS actually Oca is only harvested after the first night frost, they are a reddish sweetish little potato-like vegetable. I have found them relatively easy to grow but hard to peel or clean before eating. They are a nice plant though. Check this website if you are interested in them. https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/how-do-you-grow-oca-3113951-Dec2016/

LATE SUMMER IS MAGICAL

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Today the temperature went up to 28C which is very warm for West Cork. Beautiful sunshine and blue sky added to our pleasures, and a little breeze made it so that I could work in the garden. Our very overgrown and wild garden, our Ark, has attracted an enormous number of insects and butterflies during the summer months, and still there is a great number of hoverflies, a fair number of bumblebees, and many smaller flies, as well as butterflies visiting and making life very pleasant especially knowing that we are helping with the upkeep of biodiversity in Ireland. Very necessary.

A delicate thistle seed landed among some of the late flowers.
  • Type of fly on the marigold
  • A young shielbug
  • Garden spider, so beautiful!
  • And another type of garden spider
Nasturtiums have overgrown the Lavender and the Mellissa, flowering beautifully, giving bright colours.
  • New young Mullein growth for next year
  • Seeds of the Stachys or Woundwort plant, grows wild in the garden
This is my favourite photo of this summer, so lovely to see the insects feeding on the dandelion flower.
The Oregano is almost finished flowering, from my observations these flowers have attracted the most insects, they have flowered all summer and have been buzzing unbelievable.
I guess that it will take me a great deal of time during the winter to identify all my insects, I have so many photos of them and such a variety. Fun for rainy days.

Wishing each and everyone a very nice September, my month, this month I will have my 70th birthday! Again unbelievable 🙂

WHEN SEEDS ARE STARTING TO FORM

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It is that time of the summer when the garden has about half of its plants in bloom, and the other half is busy forming seeds and dispersing them too. Summer breezes are helping. And despite the cooler weather and the rain, or maybe because of it, the garden is very lush at this time, and seeds are starting to be plentiful. Personally I find many seed-heads very beautiful and usually want to take them into the house for the winter, this far I have only photographed them in the past few days.
Above are the seeds of one of the Willow-herb plants (Epiloblum). I grow these in the garden, that is to say, they come growing by themselves, and this summer I just let them be.
  • Seeds of one of the many grasses
  • Even some wheat came growing in the garden, probably work of the birds
  • Plantago major seeds
  • Chelidonium majus seeds

The photo to the right above are the seeds of the Greater Celandine (Chelidonium majus), a medicinal plant that I grow in the garden, it is not for use as it is a highly toxic plant and not suitable for self-medication. The flower is pretty though and I get satisfaction from growing any herbal plant. The photo on the left are the seeds of the broad-leaved plantain (plantago major) I have one large one growing in the garden and it is beautiful. I use it mainly for treating insect bites, as a compress.

  • Ceanothus, Californian lilac seeds
  • Seeds of the Buttercup Ranunculaceae –
  • Seeds of the Chives plant Allium schoenoprasum
So this is what happened to all my glorious poppies, I have now a myriad of seed-heads and will be able to share many seeds, and use a few of the beautiful seed-heads as winter decoration inside.
  • Palomena prasina – green shield-bug – nymph
  • Nettles seeds Urtica dioica

While looking over the garden for seed-heads I found this green shield-bug nymph, and not only one of them, the garden is full of these beautiful little creatures, and that is no wonder either as earlier this summer there was a multitude of the adult type mating all over the garden. This common shield bug is native to Ireland and feeds on tree and plant juices. They are harmless.

The nettles grew very tall this summer, they are now in seed. I used quite a few in cooking, but mainly I grew them for the caterpillars of Red Admiral butterflies.

  • Seed-heads of the Forget-me-nots, Myosotis
  • Ripening seeds of the Parsley plant Petroselinum crispum
  • Seeds of Marigold plant Calendula officinalis
And this is a most recent photo of part of my garden. It has been and still is a truly wild experience. I would go into the garden and discover more and more wild plants and many insects and creatures. The thistles are easily 3 meters high and not yet at seed stage. I will have to contain them a little when they do seed as otherwise the garden will be impossible to walk in. I firmly believe that nature is very strong, it will never be totally destroyed, it will always survive.
Apart from everything else, the beauty of nature is what we need to survive mentally and spiritually.