A Sunday Selection

We have begun preparing for winter. The dahlias tubers have been lifted, dried and stored until spring. Garden furniture has been brought into the garage and the glasshouses have been prepared to store the tender plants. The last tomatoes have been picked, some still green, and brought inside, stored with a banana, in hopes of …

Days when the Grass Don’t Dry!

Our garden is north-facing and in a river valley where fog is common and dew persistent and, as the angle of the sun drops lower and lower, there are many days when the grass does not dry at all, even on what we might call a "good drying day". This is also the time of …

A Game of Two Halves…and a lookback at the week.

Waterford, southeast Ireland, 21st November 2020 There were moments during the week, moments which gave hope that the gloom, fog, mist, rain and downpours might desist long enough for us to do some gardening. We managed a walk on Wednesday, a full day in the garden on Thursday, and half a morning on Friday. That …

A Wet Day and Ten Pretty Things.

Rainfall today has varied between heavy and torrential with the gutters failing to contain the flow from the roof on several occasions. Gardening is out of the question! What to do on days such as this to pass the time? When the weather is not quite so bad; when rain abates for a few moments, …

Looking Back on the Week that Was, 10/10/20

On Wednesday morning I thought, "this is it; this is going to be the extent of our gardening for the week. It'll be like that quip, summer fell on a Thursday this year". Monday and Tuesday had poor weather and not a thing was done outside. Wednesday morning had started dark, breezy, cold and generally …

Six on Saturday, 05/09/2020

It was not an especially good week for gardening. I seem to have been occupied with other things, some garden-related but I feel I have done little hands-on gardening this week. Nonetheless, the grass was cut and edged and I made good inroads into tidying up the vegetable patch in preparation for winter. The damsons …

November 1st Garden Walk

We are enjoying a wonderful break in the weather today – yesterday was a day of persistent heavy rain; tomorrow will be a day of persistent heavy rain with strong winds while today is a day of persistent light rain, such a relief! Pfffffffff! Any thoughts of actually going outside and doing some gardening is …

My Favourite Plant

Our local garden club hosted Des Doyle of Lavistown House, near Kilkenny, last evening when he delivered a talk on his favourite plants – a total of forty plants as it turned out! Des showed an admirable reluctance to narrow his selection and I imagine that if time allowed he could have continued to list …