Showing posts with label weeding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weeding. Show all posts

Monday, 20 August 2012

Gardening-Oh My!!

What IS it with gardening?

What person in their right mind voluntarily goes out for hours on end in order to get dirty, hot, sweaty, burned (wind, me dears, NOT sun), scratched, bitten, stung, blistered (fingers) and end up aching all over?

And yet here we are in love with and possibly addicted to our gardens...out of all proportion to their beauty or usefulness!

Is there any other sport, hobby or activity which causes such bodily discomfort and damage for so little material gain????

Flowering montbretia on the driveway.


Boring old day lily, but so beautiful while they last.

This has a lovely yellow flower, but I can't remember what it is called, apparently I've been calling it the wrong name for years so of course I cannot get the correct name into my head now!
I've just spent hours on a stint of very satisfying destructive gardening, and the cherry on the cake was discovering a rose I thought was well deaded alive and flowering merrily under all the weeds!

Sunday, 12 August 2012

I WorkWorkWorkWork...

....work the whole day long...

Isn't that the dwarfs song from Sleeping Beauty?

Well believe it or not, there have actually been enough dry spells in the last ten days for me to get some work done in the garden! A few drenchings too when I had my head down amongst the weeds and didn't notice the growing blackness of the sky, but maybe if I stand in the rain often enough I'll grow.....? Faint chance at this stage!

Firstly I weeded all along the montbretias, front and back, and was a bit disappointed when I realised how much of the growth was weed, not flower! Oooops! However in the last five days they have come along beautifully and are now just about flowering.
The grass and weeds along our verge were almost waist height as the strimmer is banjaxed. I took out the good old 'slasher' and hacked them down to a reasonable size. Its still all weeds, but its tidy weeds- a step in the right direction!!
 The blackberries are flowering ever so late; if we don't have an Indian summer nothing will ripen, but if we do we'll be inundated. Last year's crop was very patchy so we could do with plenty for jam!
 And I detest pulling up thistles even worse than nettles as they always seem to get me. Mind you, I was plenty stung too- anyone would think I was growing a nettle farm here. I lined the thistles up to put on the fire in the hopes of killing off any potential seeds, so alas alack but this fella is no more!
It doesn't look much does it, but the growth this summer has been something else with the wet and warm temperatures. I've done a fair bit of work around the patio and the beds along the walls but you can't really tell.

Oh well, I know everything is a bit tidier!!

Tuesday, 22 June 2010

Drain Snorks and Things Which Go Bump...

In some houses (probably yours?) when a door slams, is stays shut, and that's it.

In our house when a door slams it bounces open again and the handles fall off...

In some houses (also yours probably?) when one flushes a loo, it stays flushed, end of story.

In our house when one flushes a loo its the signal for the Drain Snorks to come galumphing out and gallivant round all the loos and drains in turn, whooshing as much water as possible out of the S-bends and generally causing noisy mayhem in the water system...

Yesterday (on and off) I spent weeding the patio gravel; temperature was 24 degrees in the shade- stinking hot for here! Four years ago I decided gravel was a more eco-friendly option to the house surround than tarmac with its drainage problems, but I'm beginning to understand why most people just go for tarmac. I could spend the entire year weeding the gravel and it would still look untidy and I'd have missed bits.

But I tell you what the perfect antidote to weeding is?
Strawberries, warm from the sun, picked and eaten right in the veg patch! So, guess that's the jam out the window, I ate four of the strawberries yesterday!!

Last night was St. John's Eve, Midsummer, Summer Solstice- whatever you want to call it, bonfires everywhere and much partying. I don't know whether its a rural custom, or just the West, or just the Irish, but Midsummer is really big here.

Town was very quiet this morning, so I guess there's a lot of sore heads being nursed!

Friday, 17 July 2009

No water, horse visitor, and children.

It’s been a quiet day, literally and figuratively.

Dilly rang this morning for a chat which was unusual, but it was slow at work. I put the mobile on speaker-phone so Sos and I could both talk to her, and from time to time her work phone rang and she had to deal with customers. Sos and I were in kinks listening to Dilly being polite and efficient! Then the dogs heard her voice and came galloping in looking for her, so she had to talk to them. They are always baffled when they hear her and she’s not here. B is going to Dublin next week to stay with Dilly so we sorted details.

Sos and B went into town again this afternoon, Sos to have a hair-cut and B to meet a friend for coffee and chat. Sos’ new cut looks very smart and apparently the salon owner asked the trainee and Sos if they’d like to try out dying it next week, so they are both happy about that. Sos also bought tickets for her and B to hear Eoghan Quigg sing tomorrow night (he was an X-Factor finalist).
Talking of Concerts, Dilly was given a ticket to Bruce Springsteen at the RDS last weekend and said he was fabulous. He played for three hours twenty minutes straight and the atmosphere was amazing. When everyone got out (round midnight) she said a good many of the 20,000 strong crowd walked back towards town taking over the whole road and re-singing all the songs they’d just been hearing! Dilly thought it was a real time to remember.

I weeded the big flower bed for an hour this afternoon as the weather turned beautifully warm and sunny. I think I need to plant more in there as the gaps between plants are too wide and weedy. When things spread I can always dig up and divide them I guess. I’m wondering whether the skimmia is happy though as it looks kind of scorched. There’s full sun all day and perhaps that’s not what it likes, have to look it up.

I’ve been playing with the photo editing on the computer today, without much success, but I learned quite a lot. I took some more photos, was trying to make a collage but haven’t figured exactly how to position them. I will!

We’ve been without water most of the day, looks like the road-works people have broken the pipe again, but it’s at least a month since it happened so it’s bearable. The problem will be if they don’t get it fixed early tomorrow. Since our water supply comes off the cattle trough of the next farmer’s field the line is a bit dodgy at the best of times.

And to top it all, Billy the kicking, biting, bad-tempered pony from down the valley is grazing our garden and clopping round and round our house for fun. Which means Ben and Bertie are racing round inside, leaping up and woofing whenever Billy passes a window. Aagh! Dublin Zoo would be more tranquil…

We stopped off for an ice-cream on the way home from town and tried the ‘Magnum Temptations’- absolutely WICKED!

As a Postscript, we went outside to watch the International Space Station pass overhead last night: I’ve wrtiien about it in my Timeless Treasures blog at http://heartwarmingtreasures.blogspot.com.

Sunday, 28 June 2009

Messy Drawers and Woodworm in the Piano

What sort of silly eejit goes out to the garden and starts watering, raking beds and weeding in her best trousers? Mind you, in the middle of the Service this morning I suddenly noticed they weren’t as clean as I thought they were (melted chocolate?). What sort of an example is that to be giving? Well, as the fridge magnet says, ‘If you can’t be a good example, be a terrible warning.’ ( My girl’s favourite).
It was the Sunday School Prize-giving today so the children sang and presented a Drama, all ten of them. Although 14, and well past Sunday School age, B was hauled in to play the villain, along with a 2year old who needed helping up and down the Chancel steps, it was unintentionally quite funny, the Two Ronnies or something. Still they all did a good job and it was a simple, pleasant, if slightly chaotic Service.

The woodworm in my piano seems to be multiplying, or at least, popping out to say ‘hello’, like the rhyme about the burp. The piano tuner sloshed woodworm chemical all over the piano innards in April but I think I’m going to have to dismantle it and repeat the job. He said it would be necessary but it does stink so. I don’t appreciate them one bit. Granny was always waging war on them and there were frequently pieces of furniture out in the yard when we arrived, but I guess it’s only really a problem with old furniture, and second-hand pianos. Ah well, a job for the morrow.

Before Church, when I was preparing the music, words and pictograms for the children, I was rummaging in the jua kali drawer for decent markers and found several items I’d mislaid. It made me think about something I read online the other day about tidy people with messy kitchen drawers, and perfectionists who sometimes judge their disorganised brethren. The point the article was making was that crafting in all its forms is about loving the recipient. An analogy which occurred to me this morning is that we are all a bit like messy drawers, full of treasures, useful but forgotten things, precious things to be kept safe, hidden items, and yes, rubbish too! (Speaking personally my rear end is almost as square as the aforementioned drawer, and that melted chocolate could have something to do with it, or rather the rest of the bar…) That would make an interesting sermon, ‘Messy Drawers I Have Known’. Hmmmm…..actually sounds a bit risqué…

B decided we’d have frankfurters for lunch, so after Church we headed in to the supermarket. Unfortunately we noticed a special on books, and even more unfortunately it included a Nora Roberts and a Jill Mansell. Blew the budget, what –ho! Two favourite authors in this house and B ‘bagged’ the N. R. for when she’s finished ‘My Sister’s Keeper’, which is making her very angry! Its good to have to consider the premise at the centre of that book, strong meat for a 14 year old perhaps but she is a Thinker.

All the recycling was loaded into my car-boot earlier, tomorrow is going to be some exciting day!

It’s just rained quite heavily, thank goodness, so I went out and weeded the veg beds. The scent of the broad bean flowers was lovely- I wish my sweet pea seedlings had germinated. Whilst weeding, the French beans explained why they aren’t doing so well. It’s because they are too exposed to the wind, and the onions have smelly feet. It was a bit difficult to understand them as their accent is so strong. Now I am wondering whether to dig them up and plant them in the (now ready! hooray!) sheltered box, or are they a lost cause. I think they are still sulking about their Six Nations defeat, but we mustn’t mention the Rugby!

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