My lovely visitors! So lovely to see N and E and so nice to be able to have visitors again.
After thunderstorms all morning.
Diary of the Plague Year: Day 91 14 June 2020: Thunderstorms and Visitors
Tag: Irish Garden
Diary of the Plague Year: Day 90 13 June 2020: Transplanting
Rain. At last. Woken in the night.
Decided to transplant the cornus kousa, which has been looking more and more unhappy in the gale force winds lately, and replaced it with a cheap and cheerful dwarf cherry from the pound shop.
The cornus went into the orchard by the hedge and already is looking much happier. Time will tell. The cornus is billed as able to sustain wind but I don’t think these categories allow for the West Cork variety.
And managed to snap my spade in the process.
Diary of the Plague Year: Day 87 10 June 2020: New Garden Plants
Rain at last.
New plants in the garden:
Astilbe Chinensis “Glitter and Glamour”
Astilbe “Happy Spirit”
Astrantia “Hadspen Blood” Masterwort
Geranium “Daily Blue”
Veronicastrum virginicum “Red Arrows”
Aruncus “Misty Lace”
Worm Wood Artemisa “Powis Castle”
Catananche Caerulea Cupid’s Dart “Amor Blue”
Sisyrinchium californicum
Heuchera “Black Beauty” Coral Flower
Salvia nemerosa “Sensation Pink”
Salvia Concolor
Phlomis
Diary of the Plague Year: Day 80 3 June 2020: A North wind
After a week of heatwave, a riotous North wind has arrived. It is rampaging through the garden and luckily I staked the new Delphinium I bought yesterday. The wind turns the leaves on the trees and they shine with a silvery light in the sun. The last time we had a North wind like this was last March when all the leaves on my new trees were burnt. This wind feels relatively warm in comparison so I hope the trees won’t be damaged.
Read a bit of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” – we had been asked to find some dialogue that had had a profound effect on us and, having not read it for 3o years, have been lured into reading it again.
The first para:
“Our is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over he obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”
Diary of the Plague Year: Day 74 28 May 2020: Airing the winter duvet – Summer is here!
Bit by bit I am planting in the flower garden. It is surrounded on three sides by fuchsia so is the only part of the garden with any real protection from the wind, and even so …
Diary of the Plague Year: Day 74 28 May 2020: Mowing paths in the orchard
One of my favourite jobs in the garden. The weather, after the gale force winds, is lovely so I took the opportunity to mow paths in the orchard grass.
Diary of the Plague Year: Day 69 23 May 2020: New Plants
PLANTED 2Oth MAY 2020
Papaver Royal Wedding. Will die back and reappear in autumn. Perennial
Verbena Buenos Aires. Hardy Perennial
Bell Flower Campanula poscharskyana Alpine. Evergreen.
False Lily of the Valley Maianthemum bifolium. Spreading perennial.
Globe Thistle Echinops bannaticus “Blue Globe”. Perennial.
Dragon’s Head Dracocephalum grandiflorum. Perennial
Erigeron Glaucus “Sea Breeze”. Hardy perennnial.
Digitalis Purpurea F1 Dalmatian White. Hardy perennial.
Lamium maculatum “White Nancy”. Spotted Dead Nettle.
Lawn Chamomile Chamaemelum nobile Treneague.
Catmint Nepeta “Six Hill Giant”
PLANTED EARLIER IN THE YEAR:
Cherry
Fountain Grass
Cherry Hedelfinger
PLANTED LAST YEAR:
Viburnum Tinus (Laurustinus)
Magnolia Stellata
Lavandula Augustifolia Hidcote Blue
Eucryphia cordifolia Ulmo
Drimys lanceolata “Red Spice”
Euphorbia amy. Purpurea
Rose Blanc Double de Coubert
Iris Bearded Iris English Cottage
Lonicera caerulea Duet
Cotinus Royal Purple
Diary of the Plague Year: Day 67 21 May 2020: A summer storm
The start of fierce winds that lasted through the night and into the next day.
Diary of the Plague Year: Day 63 17 May 2020: Rain?
Breakfast today was the delicious porridge bread from Pilgrims. The bread is so tasty I have it with just butter. Brown bread and butter and a cup of coffee – one of my favourite breakfasts.
Then it was out to the garden. Most of the really big jobs have now been done – the mowing and clearing.
I spent most of last week digging up the bluebells – ‘lifting in the green” to move them to the Dingly Dell. They are in actual fact, thugs. They have taken over all the flower beds and I decided enough was enough. They are beautiful though so I am hoping they will like their new home under the tree. I also planted my elderflower cuttings and the sea holly.
We could really do with a downpour and it looks hopeful. Cool and cloudy so, maybe, rain today.
Later today a Skype with D and the gals in Sussex.
Diary of the Plague Year: Day 56 10 May 2020: Mowing again
I feel the garden sometimes tells me what to do – whatever I decide to do, it means doing a lot with very little. It means using my imagination as I simply cannot afford to go mad buying plants. The tension between order and anarchy is something that I love and is something that occurs in my work as well as in the garden. I love the contrast between a sharply mown line and blowsy wildflowers. It feels like doing earth art, drawing in the grass. I have mown a semicircle with a wildflower bed surrounded by a path. I may plant a tree there or one of the white hydrangea cuttings I am growing in pots. I also put cardboard – to stop grass growing around the roots – around the trees and shrubs by the wall. Planning another cherry tree in the corner. And another tree by the boiler-shed.
Lots of little wildflowers are appearing as well as much more clover than last year.
Unbelievably, I need more lawn seed.
THE CREEKSIDE HERMIT 