FURTHER RESTRICTIONS….BUT MEANWHILE

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Dandelion coffee

Yes we are all experiencing more restrictions because of a recent increase in covid cases. We find ourselves living in quite a changed world these days, but the most important thing now I think is to look after our mental health, and the mental health of our loved ones and of the wider community if we can help in any way. Staying positive and finding things of interest to do where we don’t have to travel, as even taking a journey to other areas of Ireland is now not possible. And this is something that requires some pondering over, and adjusting to, for many of us.

So far for us personally it has not caused a problem as it seems we don’t get time enough to do all the things we want to do. Ian has started on his book again and bought some new software to help him understand more about writing using characters, personalities and settings. It is complicated and hugely interesting he says, and he is busy with it all day. His book is progressing well and he’s enjoying himself.

  • To where I moved the lemon balm
    – Bed 7
  • Winter vegetables and Mullein
    -Bed 7
  • Some of my review work
  • Comfrey plant
    -Bed 12
  • Late Rudbeckia
    -Bed 9
  • Another planning page
I for my part have been busy too, not only with my course, but I’ve also made a detailed (15 pages) illustrated review of what is happening in all of our 12 raised beds in the garden, noting what is going on, what has to be changed, what is growing well, what is not doing so well, what topping up of nutrients my soil needs (which is slightly different for each bed). And finally what my plans are for the next season. It’s been such fun putting this together and it has given me a very good oversight and a vision that I can work toward in the coming months.
  • Morning coffee with Ian
  • Still wildlife about
  • Young Mullein plants – self seeded
  • Sweet peas are still going strong
  • My Herbal course involves a lot of hands on work….

Last year I let our garden do mostly its own thing. No wild plants got pulled up and it all ended in a delightful wilderness. It also ended up in quite a bit of work and in a huge pile of compostable plant material. I decided to keep a little more order in the garden this year and have been pleased that I am finding quite a number of wild plants still growing which I am now learning about. Plants like plantain, cleavers, nettles, mullein, evening primrose, borage, dandelion for example, are all there for the picking. I find it such a luxury, and it makes it easy for me getting material for my herbal course. We study the plants in detail, having to draw the different parts of the plant which makes us more familiar with the whole structure, including roots and seeds. A very absorbing activity it is.

So that is one small part of our lives here in West Cork. I hope that wherever you are, all my dear readers and friends that you are well and that you stay well.

Blessings

Oh and I enjoyed that cup of dandelion coffee very much indeed 🙂

A HOUSE FULL OF HERBS

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Just lately it’s all been about herbs, harvesting them from the garden, drying them, putting them in oil, making powder and so fort. It has been a busy but rewarding time. I’ve learnt a lot more about Dandelion plants and this means that the Dandelion is now been promoted to a primary plant in our garden. Luckily we have a lot of them as I’ve always been reluctant to pull them up from among the other vegetables. Now they have gained a firm status of valuable nutritional source. So far I have dried roots and leaves. The roots are for tea and the leaves are for either a soak in water overnight making a cool drink, or to be grinded into powder to add a touch to soups. I am looking forward to spring when I will use some of the flowers when baking biscuits, only some though as they are earmarked mainly as food for the bees. Nettles are another good source of minerals and they have been growing so well this past summer in our garden. I’ve harvested many and again grinded some into powder for the soups and will use the leaves for a green drink.

Dandelion leaves
  • Powder made from organic orange peel
  • Dandelion root
  • Dandelion roots ready to dry
Sometimes I hang my herbs, but mostly now I dry them in the oven with the pilot light on and the oven door a little ajar.
  • Variety of leaves drying
  • Flat leaved parsley
  • Rosalee’s book
  • Borage and Calendula flowers drying
  • Nettle leaves drying

Just recently I had bought the long desired book by Rosalee De La Foret: ‘Alchemy of Herbs’, and I am finding it a brilliant work. So much information, and beautiful photography too. As well as this book I have once again signed on to Herb mentor from Learning Herbs, it’s an amazing informative website and course, a hands on type of learning which is great fun as well as being very interesting. (It’s online; https://learningherbs.com/herbmentor/)

  • This one is for cleaning
  • For making an ointment during winter
A start in making use of Dandelions in different ways.
  • Young Mullein plants, just appeared
  • And a good harvest of Evening Primrose
I’ve got two different types of Oregano and they grow so very well. There is the variegated Mediterranean type with white flowers, so loved by the bees, and the all green regular one with the pink flowers, which this one is. A lovely herb.

All these herbs are humble plants, many of them are even considered to be weeds by some people. I’m so very grateful that they come growing in my garden. Some, like the Yarrow, plantain and violets grow in the boreen close to where we live. On my walks I always keep an eye out for useful wild plants in case I should ever need them, then I know where to find them.

We may be very thankful for the wealth of wild plants and herbs in our gardens.

A SINGULAR BEAUTY

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This is a flower of one of the hypericums and it came growing in our front garden sharing a tub with another shrub. I only discovered it a few days ago and it’s made me very happy because I thought that this plant, which I used to grow many years ago, had totally disappeared from our garden. My flower identification app tells me that it is hypericum perforatum. A first I could not see the little perforations in the leaves and there was no reddish juice to be seen when I crushed a leaf. So there was a question of whether the identification was right. But when I enlarged my photos of the leaves I could clearly see the little perforations, so yes I agree that it is H.perforatum. Decades ago I used to make hypericum oil and we used to use it for nerve pain in the legs, the hypericum would colour the oil slightly red. I love this little plant and I think that it will turn out to be very useful.
Its leaves.

LATE SUMMER COLOURS

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In the hedgerows the colours of the heathers and other wild flowers are adding spice to the landscape.
Finally my Mexican Tarragon is flowering. The leaves are very fragrant and it’s a lovely plant.
  • Last of the Calendula
  • Bell and ling heather
  • Rowan berries
A collage of the colours of our garden at present, and a late small tortoiseshell butterfly.

A LATE SUMMER EVENING SKY

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When summer gathers up her robes of glory, And, like a dream, glides away.     
Sarah Helen Whitman

I took a walk this evening and felt a real bit of a chill in the air, but it was still lovely and the breeze was actually refreshing after I spent the day painting inside. And I did find some time to check a few herbs in the garden. I also include a couple of photos from a few days ago. I’m busy with my new herb course. I am also learning more about the wild plants that come growing into the garden, at this time of year the woundwort is still in full bloom and much desired by the bumblebees, lots of them. The flower bud on my ginger plant has not changed for the past two weeks, I wonder if it will reach actual flowering but I fear not as already there is not enough sunshine and we are slowly heading into the fall season.

Stachys palustris – Marsh Woundwort
Tagetes Lucida, Mexican marigold ~ I think.
Our endive plants are flowering, a lovely blue display.
  • My ginger plant is so hard trying to flower
  • Chilli, garlic and ginger ready for us in kitchen
  • More late summer produce

ON A HUMID SUNDAY AFTERNOON

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“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”
― William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

There is a light breeze gently moving the tops of the trees, but otherwise it is very quiet on this restful day. West Cork has seen warmer than usual weather recently, though the last two days we have also seen very much rain. The humidity is high of course and I quite like that. You go outside in the garden and the scents and colours are intense, everything is fresh from the rain and the heat makes it almost feel as if steam is rising from all the plants and foliage. The garden is very lush at this time and I counted very many bees, hoverflies and some butterflies while I was out earlier. Autumn is actually not far off and the garden spiders are busy. Some of the decorative trees are already shedding their leaves. The hawthorn and the chestnut tree are beginning to look a lot like autumn too. The ‘turning of the seasons’ is starting to happen.

Ian is back home, his troubles are not over yet but he is slowly feeling better. It’s great to have him home, he’s my soulmate and the best of companions.

“KEEPING THE HEAD”

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PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE

Sitting under our hawthorn tree, drinking a cup of tea, surrounded by our vegetables and flowering shrubs, my mind focused on what I was reading on my mobile phone.

Last week Ian was brought to hospital and has been there since. The answer to his health problems seems to be a long way off. Doctors are working on it. I receive messages or calls via my phone so it never really leaves my hands much.

Having said that, I have delighted in getting lots of maintenance work done around the house and garden and we have been having summer weather for a change which is absolutely great.

“Keeping the head” which to me says; ‘Staying calm and pragmatic’, this is defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as ‘to remain calm in a difficult situation’. I guess that as well as ‘keeping the head’ it’s important to ‘keep the head up’ too.

There are of course lots of ways to keep positive. I find that my gardening is helping me to de-stress at times like this. And of course counting my blessings helps very much, and we have so much to be thankful for. I have to wait to hear results of tests, meanwhile doing some research too, going on what Ian tells me. As he also has a very enquiring mind we both try and look for answers as well as looking for professional help, and help from our extended families who have great medical expertise, all in their own fields.

All in good time I will be more inspired to write and blog about our natural surroundings and life in West Cork. Right now my mind is too preoccupied.

EARLY IN THE MORNING ~ LENTICULAR CLOUDS

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It was very early in the morning about a week ago that upon opening the curtains I saw this surreal sky out of my bedroom window. I had been hoping to see Lenticular clouds for a long time and I still don’t know what woke me that morning and gave me this amazing spectacle, because everywhere I looked I saw that the sky was dotted with these shaped clouds, I am not sure why Salvador Dali came to mind.

And so I walked out in the early morning air to check over the garden. Lots of lush growth has been happening since the rains started some weeks ago, the more delicate flowers and the lavender have been affected, but there are plenty of new flowers opening.

  • Lots of plants in containers this summer
  • My favourite hydrangeas
  • And wonderfully scented honeysuckle
  • A lighter colour hydrangea
  • Feverfew
  • Last year’s poppy
  • Some type of hypericum
  • New to our garden, Rudbekia
  • Love those colours
  • Marrows growing well
  • Our earliest potatoes
  • Making some calendula oil
  • Endive, beetroot and broadbeans doing well enough
  • An age-old jasmine plant
  • Types of allium
We have had some garden produce, but the broad beans did not do too well. The endive grew very well and the leeks that I sowed back in spring with weeks in-between the sowings are really thriving, which is great because Ian and I love leeks and eat them everyday in all sorts of dishes. I did set quite a bit of potatoes and soon they will be ready to dig up, but that is a job that I will share with my youngest grandchildren as they love that. It’s wonderful to see their eager faces as they dig up the spuds! One big but delightful blunder I made this season is that I sowed plenty of peas, but also sowed sweet peas at the same time, and when I planted them out I thought I was planting edible peas only to discover just recently that they are all sweet peas, we will have plenty of beautifully scented flowers, that’s for sure.
Some of the landscape around the lovely little town of Skibbereen, how beautiful it really is.
  • My calendulas in the old bath tub!
  • And the children learning about a wild type of hypericum

And so the summer is passing quite fast. We are not cocooning anymore but life is not yet back to normal. Nicest of all is that our grandchildren have been allowed to visit us again, and as we just heard that schools are to start again next month we are making the most of our times together.

At the moment I am working on an inventory of everything that grows in our garden, firstly because parts of it is very overgrown and I want an overview in order to plan better for next season. And secondly I like doing stuff like that. I find creating a word document with added photos works well, and I print out a page per raised bed and some pages besides for the rest of the garden. It’s a nice little project. I plan to grow at least some more flowering shrubs and right now I am checking out which ones would be most suitable for our smallish garden. I’m reading up on pruning too to look after the shrubs that I set last year. It’s such an absorbing activity. When I think of it my garden is my gym, it gives me a cardiac workout, it gives me fresh air, sunshine (sometimes), it de-stresses me and gives me plenty of possibility to meditate and enjoy its beauty and it even gives us organic and delicious vegetables.

What a fantastic blessing.

REMEMBERING

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On this beautiful, calm and wind still morning the garden has been transformed into what reminds me of fairy land, the reflexion of light in the dew drops makes the spider webs shimmer and reminds me of fairy lights, or even the Christmas tree and brings me back to early childhood days, to innocence and happiness. I wander around the garden taking in this beauty and allowing these feelings to be. Autumn leaves have been brushed up yesterday, but it is the spider webs that really herald the beginning of autumn here in West Cork. There is not a sound to be heard, all the neighbours are still asleep, then a robin takes the floor and cheerfully sings its heart out.
Wind still and glorious, another day has begun.
My heart fills with gratitude.

I wrote these words some years ago but because we have recently been living with so many raindrops, not dewdrops, and we are all quite saturated with the damp and the darkness ~ I decided to give life to this post again as the beauty of watery drops really is something incredible and we might as well enjoy them.