Honeysuckle Sky

We had a lovely sky the other day, and I loved the way the honeysuckle looked against it. This is taken from 3 pics, and photoshopped together.

Trees in St. Stephen's Green

I've been working on a little project involving St. Stephen's Green, a park in Dublin. I've been there a couple times recently to take photos. For the Festival of the Trees this month, I thought I would post some of these old trees in the park.

I love the vines climbing up some of these.
I used to work just up the street from this park, and spent many lunch hours sitting under the big trees.. daydreaming or reading, or napping!

August's festival host is Via Negativia

I will be hosting this festival for the month of November, a bit nervous I am! I might try a theme of spooky trees, and have the festival post up a day early, 31 Oct, Halloween! So start thinking about the spookiest trees you have seen.

For more info, see Festival of the Trees.

Fixing up the garden

The garden became a bit untidy while I was gone, even for my wild and chaotic standards! The grass was way too long, weeds and dead flower heads everywhere, lettuces completely dissapeared. Above are field poppies and borage taking over the raspberry patch. They can stay..

Had to clear out some long weed grass to find a viola leaning over the black mondo grass.

A self seeded viola, looking amazingly like a watercolor painting. Darn slugs found it first..

Daisies struggling through the geranium leaves to get sunlight.

Malva, very small, was buried under some weeds.

Dark Lady was all dead flowers refusing to drop on thier own, these opened up during the week after I cut all the old hips off.

The parsley was looking great.

And THIS is where all the lettuces went. There were several of these giant slugs all over. *shivers* .. I don't like slugs.. Where are all the slug-eating birds??

So I've weeded and planted out new little seedlings, which amazingly were still alive in their pots.. so hopefully in a couple weeks, all will look much nicer.
I'll have a chance to visit everyone's blog over the weekend, so see you then!

Mom's garden

Hi garden friends! I'm back from tidying Mom's garden...

Here's a close up of one of her amazing giant blush pink hydrangea flowers in her back garden.

The front garden ...before

...and after

Lace hydrangea

Her favorite plant, a blush pink hydrangea

Impatiens

Verbena

Dahlia

Feverfew, sort of double flowered. A mutant offspring of one of my seeds. Hoping to collect seed and grow this one in my garden.

Cosmos

My Mom feeds birds, and she likes this particular blackbird, who is very people-friendly. She calls him "My Little Birdie"

Bird's eye view of the front garden. She made me remove a lot of plants and shrubs she didn't like. I found some struggling seedlings under larger plants that I planted in the empty spots, including several sunflowers. So hopefully they will do well now.

My Mom's garden

Tommorro, I'm off to visit my Mom in Holland again, she needs her garden tidied up.
Here are some pics of her little front garden last year, that I had planted. That's my Mom.

I picked up a few river stones from the nearby Maas, and laid them in a path for her to use as stepping stones.

The violas are there because I insisted on putting them in. She usually chooses plants, but I HAD to plant violas! I'll bring my camera and take new pics, and post them when I return.
See you all in two weeks!

Blythe Spirit opens, it's July!

This morning I saw the first Blythe Spirit rose open. One of my favorite roses, in my favorite flower color of yellow!

A pot by the back door, containing calendula, impatiens and night stock. It seems impossible to get a photo of both the calendula and stock open. As the day begins, the stock closes up. A bit later, the calendula opens up. And in the evening, the other way around. The night stock has a heavenly scent in the dark, I can smell it even when the doors are closed.

The Dark Lady opens another flower.

Geranium, feverfew and grass at the end of the garden path, and the entrance to Peppermint Woods.

Marinette. She struggles in the wind, her poor dainty stems are lying sideways in the front garden. I pulled this one up off the ground, propping it up on itself. I think next year, I will put some twiggy branches in for a prop.

A view of our house from the Peppermint Woods.