A visit to Bloom in Dublin

Bloom in Dublin

Having procured 2 bus tickets to go to Dublin for last Saturday from Freecycle, Jim and I took full advantage and went to the the 'mini Chelsea' called Bloom in Phoenix Park, Dublin. It was a cloudy/sunny day, just perfect for our visit.

We started with a coffee and perused the leaflet, trying to work out where we were and where we wanted to go! There was a retail stalls area nearby and I rather took a fancy to this bench:


Although very attractive, it didn't leave much room for anyone else to sit there!


I like the idea of this regal stag in my garden. I tried to photograph him without people but it was just too busy.

Jim and I homed in on the crafts tent. There were woven baskets outside on the grass and Jim headed there to chat with the weaver. Hanging outside were these lovely quilts:




And inside there were more displayed on the walls. I had a chat with the quilters but they are based in Dublin, as were most of the crafters there.


Aren't they just lovely?

There were spinners and dyers, felt makers and mixed crafts too. They all had fabulous works on display.


This rather strange chap was by the the willow weaver's stall.


Willow baskets on display and I'm there too!

We went off to find the display gardens - the main feature at the show. There was a large queue for one garden in particular and it turned out to have been judged the best in show. I particularly liked it as it incorporated mosaics all around:



I particularly liked this one. Most of the gardens used some water and this was no exception. I loved these 2 grass filled heads too:


Isn't that brilliant?


Someone's having a bad hair day!


That striking yellow grass is brand new and not yet released. When it is, I'll be in the queue! It made a fantastic contrast with the black one.

It was much easier to wander around the other gardens and you could get better photographs. Specsavers sponsored this garden:


Along the front of the central 'lawn' it had 'Should have gone to Specsavers' in silver wire. The joke was that the lawn was actually made of succulents instead of grass and the shears had been abandoned nearby!


One of the cooling water features. Can you see the drops of water - frozen in time?



This was a lovely natural garden full of foxgloves. I liked the wood cut to different heights.


This was a Japanese style garden. They always have superb clean lines and water. The best part for me was the black fence with red sections (see below) behind the acer.


I might have to use that idea in our garden somewhere.

Another of my favourites was the next garden called 'Islands'. It had gorgeous sweeping lines:



Spot the garden's designer!

I think I'd better split this post into 2 parts. One of the gardens in tomorrow's blog had real ducks on the pond!

A New Rockery in Progress. Moths. 8th June 2010

The New Rockery

The new rockery is being built where we used to have the grotto. When the barn was demolished the grotto was filled up with stone! First, I had to remove the stones and pile them up above the area where I was about to work. This took some time, as you can imagine.


I barrowed some of the stones to where the wall is being built and the rest were piled behind me in the photo. Buster is resting of course!


I had this pile of boulders to go at!!


On the left is the rockery site. Here the first stones have been laid. Below is a better photo:


You can see the line of the bottom stones better in this photo. They took some moving, I can tell you!

Now the 2nd row is also on but then we had a rainy day and also my back was aching, so I had to let it rest a while. When there is more progress, I will take further photos. It will be good to get this area, which was basically a heap of stones, sorted out at last.

Flowers

Just a few flower photos. Jim took some of the clematis, which seem to have enormous flowers this year:


The ever reliable Nelly Moser


The President.


I love this deep scarlet of this one.


The blue iris are now fully out. They are such delicate flowers.


This weigela was a really scraggy thing but this year it is beautiful. The blooms are like apple blossom.


The first rose - utter perfection.


Jim took this of me admiring the lupins. They really are amazing this year.


This red one is so striking, especially against the dark leaves of the sambucus.


Jim also took this of the rather unusual cloud formation. Oh look, there I am working away!

Wild Life

The moths and butterflies continue to appear. We had a peacock in the garden yesterday. It was a bit scruffy but still a pleasure to see:




I picked up a ball of sting and noticed this very strange creature:


It is a moth - I don't think I've ever seen one so well camouflaged. It's called a Buff-Tip and looks like a broken twig. How clever is that?


This is the back. Amazing.

Then we saw this incredible moth in the porch.


Look at that amazing colour pink. It is another Hawkmoth, this time an Elephant Hawkmoth.


Here it is from the top.


Here it is taken from the side. Forgive Jim's dirty nails - he had been working!

We popped this magnificent creature onto one of the hanging baskets and it crawled onto a leaf quite happily.

ATC

I have just made my 'V' for Variety and here is the result:


Violets, vases, viola, violin and viburnum - what a busy card. It is heading off to Marianne in Sweden. I hope she likes it. Only 4 more to go now.

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.

The Great Chain Saw Massacre at The Deenery

The Ex Eircom pole!

Here we are in sleepy County Clare, nothing much happens. It was a beautiful day and Jim and I had been happily gardening in the sunny weather.

Suddenly, we heard a chain saw and it sounded close by. We thought it was coming from the access road to our neighbours' house. Then we both noticed the telegraph pole was wobbling, it wobbled some more and as we rounded the corner, there was farmer Martin with chain saw in hand and a big smile on his face. The pole crashed down - right onto our gate. AAAAH!


Now you may know that we've had a few disagreements with the couple who use our road to get down to their property. All is well now, which is great. It seemed one of their biggest problems was opening and closing said gate, which is a huge farmyard type gate and it used to drag on the floor - making it quite difficult to operate. Jim spent 2 days rigging up and concreting a new post and fixing and the gate now works perfectly, so all is good with the neighbours, which is a huge relief.

The gate now had a large dent in it and an even larger telegraph pole sitting on top of it. We were worried that it wouldn't work again. Now Jim and I, not surprisingly, lost it with Martin. I shouted at him to turn the chain saw off, which he did, fortunately. Martin owns the field next to our property - the other side of the gate. The telegraph pole in question was on Martin's land. 'Why have you cut down an Eircom pole?' 'It's on my land' he mutters, very drunkenly. 'But it belongs to Eircom, not us'. 'It's on my land'.

Now this pole had been on Martin's land for some 11 years! However, something in his head and a few cans of beer, had made him decide he didn't want it on his land any more. Jim went and fetched the neighbours. Amazingly, their phone was still working, the line was stretched taught but not broken. Sandra went and phoned Eircom and explained the situation. The chap on the other end of the phone couldn't stop laughing! I guess it's not everyday someone takes a chainsaw to one of their poles! They said they would send some chaps out to 'make it safe'.

Jim rang the Garda too. A very friendly policeman came along fairly quickly and stayed, chatting, for about an hour or so! He knew Martin, of course, as do most of the Garda in the vicinity. He said he'd call back the next day and take a statement and see the neighbours and try and find Martin.

It was almost dark when the 2 Eircom vans pulled up and the chaps scratched their heads at the scene confronting them! 'Why did he saw it down?', 'It was on his land'. They didn't understand it, naturally. You have to know something of the Irish psyche to understand their feelings about 'their land'. For many years they were not allowed to own any land due to laws passed by the UK government. When the republic was formed, the land was 'shared out' in a rather random way it seems, and thousands of often obsessive Irish landowners were created.

Martin owns many many acres of land but he didn't want this pole - 2feet into his field - on his land. Now the reason it was put there (with Martin's permission) originally, was that the previous owners of our cottage wouldn't allow it on their land. Ye Gods, it gets worse, doesn't it?

Anyway, back to the events of the evening. The 2 jolly telephone chaps lifted off the pole and fixed the line temporarily until a new pole could be erected. 'Anyone want a telegraph pole?' they asked. 'We'll have it for gateposts, if you can cut it in half for us' said our neighbour, happily. Off went one of the workmen, and yet another chainsaw swung into action. Behold, 2 gate posts were created! Sandra was dispatched back to her house to check that the phone was still working, having been disconnected and reconnected again.

When she returned, she said she thought someone had been in the house as the kitchen floor was covered in water - or something - and very muddy footprints. Our friendly Garda was called and the neighbours waited in our house until he arrived. Cups of tea were called for. The Garda decided it was, of course, Martin who had waltzed into the neighbours' house while they were up with us and the eircom workers. Jim took photos. Pete's 5 bottles of beer had also vanished. That confirmed it.

We were all sitting in our kitchen, us, the neighbours and the Garde, when Martin wandered past the kitchen window! Off went the garde to tackle him about today's events. I don't think he got much sense out of him and he decided to take him home.

Sandra was very nervous about being at home and didn't sleep at all that night. We felt that once Martin was home, he'd probably collapse into bed and stay there. So the next day (yesterday), Jim and I were working away in the garden as usual when our garde arrived. He went off and saw the neighbours and had a long chat with Martin, who realised how stupid he had been, the post and its position having nothing to do with us!

We decided not to prosecute for anything as Martin has enough problems already. It's possible that Eircom may bill him for a new pole but as he hasn't any money they'll be wasting their time. In the meantime we await the arrival of a new pole - which will be erected on OUR side of the fence! Oh, the gate is still working, although you now have to lift it slightly to start it off. It's still annoying but, in the scale of things, not exactly the crime of the century.

All we wanted was a quiet life......


Jim fetched Pete to inspect the damage.