The New Pole Arrives. Garden Progress.

Over the wall, we could see a huge pole:


We decided on the site between us and the workmen got straight to work drilling the hole:


Up and down went the drill. One chap operated it from the lorry and the other cleaned the drill each time it came up.

Some people just watched! L - R. Jim, Pete and Eircom man!


The pole is maneuvered into place.


Up in the trees! He had to cut the branches from around the pole. Buster wondered what he was doing so high up. The pole in situ (you can just see it in the trees), the workers packed up their gear and were on their way. A second team will come and fix the telephone line!


Garden

Jim's allotment is coming along just fine:


It won't be long before the strawberries are ripe - they're in the bed opposite. At the top of the allotment we planted a few fruit trees. One of which is a cherry and - such excitement - we have three cherries on our cherry tree!


Here you can see 2 of them. I hope the birds don't eat them.

Jim grew some foxgloves from seed last year and they are now in flower. They are beautiful:

This is a 'natural' section of the allotment, almost on one of our borders. There are foxgloves, aquilegia and rose bay willow herb here.


A close up of one of the foxgloves with blue aquilegia.


One of the pink 'spotty' ones.


And a delicate cream one.

We had a visit from a humming bird hawk moth. These amazing moths hover like humming birds and whizz about at great speed. They are so difficult to photograph, but I did manage one that wasn't too bad:


It was feeding from the aubretia flowers and the pinks.

We also spotted a gorgeous little iridescent butterfly. I have now identified this as the Green Hairstreak. It rests with its wings closed and rarely shows the brown upper wings.



It fed on the chives for some time. I have never seen one of these before.

ATCs

My 'U' came from Lisa and is a Unicorn Caterpillar


It's so beautifully painted. Lisa also sent me some goodies!

Mmm, lovely. Thank you Lisa.

My 'T' came, appropriately, from Teri and it's T for Tiger. Each of Teri's ATCs in this alphabet of ATCs comes with a haiku on it:


Isn't it great? lol. Teri knows I love Zentangle ATCs and enclosed this one for me - saying I have to do one now!

I don't know where to start! The butterflies came too.

I have made another ATC to swap. Do get in touch if you'd like it.


'Wedding' is the theme here.

I do hope you've enjoyed today's post. I have too much to blog at the moment. We have built a new rockery (almost) and spent yesterday in Dublin at the 'Dublin in Bloom' show. A bit like a mini Chelsea. It was great.