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Winter Berries
for the Birds26 December 2020 Storm Bella is on the way and I have been providing the birds with double rations of bird food to help them through the next few days. My five-year-old hedgerows are providing some shelter, but many of the small birds seem to live in the acres of gorse and brambles on my…
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Semi-dry-stone walls
7 December 2020 I don’t know why I am consistently surprised by the weather because I have learned that the one constant here is that nothing is constant. Yesterday I awoke to a hard frost. The temperature reached a heady six degrees in the middle of the day. The robin almost pushed me out of…
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Fungi
20 November 2020 October was a relatively dry month all things considered and mushrooms were noticeable by their absence. This was disappointing, as I have had a full fairy ring on the driveway for three years in a row. Last year there were two intersecting rings with two different fungi species and I had high…
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A Rocky Start: Creating a Garden
2 November 2020 The early years When I bought this property nine years ago, the site consisted of three acres of land used mostly for grazing and silage coupled with some small areas of mature trees. A long track took a straight path to the house at the top of the rise, so that not…
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Autumn Colour on Roaringwater Bay
12 October 2020 Growing up in the south east of Ireland I never took vivid autumn colour for granted. Most years the leaves were a dull brown and only remarkable for the amount of time it took to rake them up. For my twenty years in the north east of Scotland the exact opposite was…
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Hedgerow treats
2 October 2020 Fruit cordials Five varieties of crab apples growing well in the garden I am still suffering from the loss of my entire season of soft fruits which were destroyed when the freezer cut out in a recent thunderstorm. I rely on the cordials made from blackcurrants, red/white currants and rhubarb for my…
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Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness
16 September 2020 The air has been thick and heavy for the last few days and this morning the garden is shrouded in a dense fog. On my morning round I could not fail to notice that the spiders have been very busy overnight. Almost every shrub is cloaked in not one, but dozens of…
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The Aftermath of Storm Francis
28 August 2020 I finally managed to visit one of the mature gardens on the West Cork Garden Trail shortly after storm Francis moved away from this area. Started thirty-one years ago by Eugene and Hazel Wiseman, Carraig Abhainn is hidden behind some houses in Durrus and is approached by a narrow lane which gives…
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Storms Ellen and Francis: A Gardeners Nightmare
Autumn has arrived with a bang. With two bangs actually – in the shape of storms Ellen and Francis both rated orange and both bringing a deluge of rain. With the usual contradictions in this garden, much of it has been decimated by the wind and salt while some areas and plants seem unharmed.…