It was a phrase we used, this “walking the property”, when we lived in a previous house with a very small garden. It was in a suburban housing estate and our first home. We were so proud of it and loved our garden and would walk around to check on this and that plant most days. Without the stops to admire and talk about various plants, this walk would have taken a minute or less.
Nowadays, the garden is larger and the walk takes a little longer, with the many stops to see what has changed since the last walk around – which could have been on the same day or the previous day – and the many pauses to take photographs, for that is what I do most days and oftentimes several times each day as something catches my eye, as the light changes or a ray of sunlight catches a flower in an attractive way or a plant is just at its best. Walking the property is now as much about photography, about catching the moments and having them to look at again, to enjoy again and again.
The start of this morning’s walk: Immediately in front of the house we have two small joined garden spaces which we call the Square Lawn and the Round Lawn. 
When I look at trees we planted – and so many grown from seed – and take in how big they now are I begin to think I am getting old, that the years are passing but, very importantly, I have enjoyed growing these plants. 
Looking down on the Round Lawn 
The Round Lawn – The garden has a natural slope but I levelled this area some years ago. 
A blue Iris germanica, bearded iris, and the big red flower stalks of the Mexican Beschorneria yuccoides. The white flowers under the beschorneria is Dianthus ‘Mrs. Simpkins’ and the whole area is filled with its fragrance. 
Looking through the arches to the lawns. 
Beschorneria yuccoides.
Of course, photography is a lie, a deception or, at the very least, a selective view and recording of a moment. Garden and plant photography is all about catching both at their perfect best but, given that, it is an enjoyable pastime both in the act of taking the photographs and in later looking at them at leisure and in detail. I find this especially when photographing wildflowers, orchids in particular. Outings to see them and admiring and examining them in the field is only part of the enjoyment – reviewing the images at home often reveals details nor seen earlier and allows for greater examination of the flowers. Photography in the home garden might sound repetitive but the garden changes from day to day; flowers develop, open and fade from day to day, the light will vary and with that change, everything in the garden will change also.
The brightness of Acer negundo ‘Kelly’s Gold’ always catches the eye. This leads into the Oval garden and on to the Shady garden! 
But, I’ve turned downhill with a small chestnut tree on the left: Aesculus mutabilis ‘Induta’ and down to the bottom of the garden with the treehouse on the right. 
Looking back up the garden 
Variously called The Bulb Lawn and the wildflower patch – nothing so presumptuous as “meadow”! It has a variety of bulbs in spring and is left to grow afterwards before being cut in early August. 
The low hedges frame Mary’s White Garden. The Shady garden is above this to the right. 
Going into the shady garden. Euphorbia mellifera on the left – beautiful fragrance when in flower. The flowers are nearly finished now and the flowering branches will be but back to reveal the new growth. 
In the Oval garden – Hakonechloa macra aureola with iris germanica ‘Jane Phillips’ behind.
The weather has been glorious and today was the hottest day of the year to date. Temperatures reached 22C here in Waterford which is about the limit for this old man. If the mercury goes above that I begin to melt. At the end of the day I felt exhausted, worn out as an old man becomes worn out. It was not that I was working especially hard today or that the work was particularly heavy; it was simply being under the sun all day. A good night’s sleep, a good rest and we will be at it again tomorrow and feel grateful to have the good fortune to have a garden to pass these days so pleasantly. My son said this evening that we were lucky to have our pastime on our doorstep and that is the truth of it; we are very fortunate indeed.
We spent yesterday and today working in the vegetable patch. I was repairing the frames of the raised beds while Mary was weeding. We also planted out young bean plants – climbing French beans and Runner beans – along with lettuce plants. 
That scarecrow is badly in need of attention – not least, the addition of a trousers. 
The strawberry bed is promising this year. 
Potatoes, British Queens, are coming into flower and we will be eating the first of them in a few weeks time. 
Garlic is doing well – six varieties – and leeks have just been planted in the bed in the foreground. 
This year we are growing a small type of tomato, one suited to hanging baskets, just to try something different.
A quotation from Life in the Garden by Penelope Lively: On the 31st of May 1920 Virginia Woolf went gardening. Here’s what she wrote in her diary: “The first pure joy of the garden…weeding all day to finish the beds in a queer sort of enthusiasm which made me say this is happiness. Gladioli standing in troops; the mock orange out. We were out till 9 at night, though the evening was cold. Both stiff and scratched all over, with chocolate earth in our nails.”
A favourite side of the garden for me, The Ash Beds – under the ash trees on the garden boundary 
The inner side of the Ash beds with Lysichiton americanus thriving in the moisture of the dykes on the left 
The Lane
These photographs are today’s moments with today’s thoughts and reactions and all are fleeting and perhaps insignificant and tomorrow will be another day with different experiences in the same place.
Some recent posts:
Paddy Tobin, An Irish Gardener 
Paddy
Your garden looks wonderful. I enjoy all your posts and photos. Keep up the good work.
Best wishes
Helena Jackson
Sent from my iPhone
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Many thanks for such a kind comment, Helena. Everything looks well on a sunny day – even myself! (Well, at the start of the day anyway. By the end of the day I was a bit the worse for wear!)
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