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 WoundwortTagetes Lucida, Mexican marigold ~ I think.Our endive plants are flowering, a lovely blue display.
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.
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.
These brown and white false turkey tail fungi are presently growing on the cut off but very much alive trunk of our chestnut tree. They surprised me this Sunday morning while taking a stroll around the garden, and I thought they looked beautiful. The garden at present is very wet, but to my delight tender new growth is appearing everywhere.
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/
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 🙂
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.
A look at our garden through the conservatory window on a rather dark day this summer, but it’s all good. This spring and summer I let all the wild plants grow wherever they wanted as first and foremost on my list was to give as much food as possible to the insects. It has worked too, we never had so many insects before. Some of the thistles at the back of the garden are now taller than myself, as are the poppies and some of the foxgloves.It has worked, yes. At first we had a huge quantity of borage, then the kafir lilies started to flower and the marigolds, then in the beginning of May so many more flowers followed. Soon bumblebees, bees and hoverflies started to arrive. Honey bees seem to favour the kafir lilies, the bumblebees are partial to the foxgloves, the comfrey, and the borage. By now the lavender is also visited by all the insects.
Great lavender harvest this summer
A type of catnip
Plenty of bees and bumblebees
Lady’s mantle
Oxalis
As you can see, the garden is rather wild. My patch of garlic is totally overgrown with foxgloves and thistles. Unused leeks are growing and coming into flower soon, they are allowed and I am looking forward to see what they will add to the garden.
Lavender
Feverfew and Melissa
I love the sage plant and flowers
One of the mullein plant is now in flower
Apart from the kafir lilies we are having a super crop of red poppies which we are enjoying very much, as are the insects.Foxgloves grow wild in Ireland, and so they just come to grow in the garden too. I love them and they are never without some insects visiting them.
Wild purple loosestrife
Strawberries
Black currants
Mostly herbs here, sage, oregano, lavender, Melissa, thyme, and some celery too.
I guess it is – or rather – the gardener is awakening! Because a good crop of herbs and vegetables was growing all winter long in our little garden. But today I started getting organized because there is lots to do, and I cannot wait to get going!
Vegetables in abundance – overwintering colourful Chard, Rosemary, Kale and Celery.
Young Foxglove plant
The Lavender is in good condition after the winter, and the Rosemary bush is getting larger by the day.
Thistle and Mullein
An almost ready crop of Kale
Andive
Much of my space is still taken up by winter vegetables but some of the beds are ready, one for potatoes, and another one for flowers, this season the emphasis is going to be on food for the insects, that is so important today.
Helleborus
Primroses among the grass
Oxallis
This book I took out of the library, lots of information on what to grow to help butterflies survive, great for ideas.
Oca is another crop I’ve tried over the last few years, not very successfully.
Wild growing three cornered leeks
Green leaved celery grows very well here during the winter
Wild growing Cleavers in my garden
So yes there is lots going on even as early in spring as right now. We have enough food coming from the garden, and that helped me make the decision to grow a lot more flowers seeing that insect population is under such threat. But personally I am also very happy with this decision because I am very fond of flowers.
Grass needs cutting
A few of the raised beds surrounds are in need of repair!
I planted a Forsythia bush today!
Dear friends, followers, and readers of my blog, I would like to thank you for all your encouragement. I’m coming up to 800 followers now and I treasure everyone of you.
