Fava Beans Planting And More Leaf Mulching.

 At this time of year I find it a problem sourcing seeds.  My German garden centre and food and beer providers seem to have put gardening stuff away for the winter.

Luckily my other cheap gardening supplier: The Range still continue selling gardening supplies like bulbs and seeds...

Now Fava or Broad Beans are the last thing to sow before winter.

I bought a packet of them for just 75 Cents and I sowed two fish boxes of them in the polytunnel today:

Broad Beans or Fava Beans originate in China and the Himalayas.  They were probably brought to our shores thousands of years ago.

It will be good to see something growing through the winter.  Beans are Legumes and the extract nitrogen from the air and release it through their root nodules.  Instead of taking out goodness they add goodness to the soil.  Like the banana, beans are full of potassium.  Which is very good for your blood pressure and your heart.

Have you planted any Broad Beans yet?

I am always weeding my raised veg beds and I scattered to big buckets of leaves around my leeks.  Hopefully they will suppress the weeds and feed the soil when they break down?

Any once else mulch with leaves?  I also mulch with straw.  With the leaves I am imitating the rich  leaf blanket of the Autumn floor and feeding the worms, beneficial anaerobic bacteria and much needed plant food like carbon.

Newly mulched oil tank (repurposed) raised bed.

MY Hydrangea Cuttings Are Flying It.

 French Botanist Philibert Commerson first discovered the Hydrangea in China in 1761.

If his ghost visited my West Cork polytunnel.  He would find over fifty newly rooted cuttings like this one:

I grew my shrub cuttings in homemade compost in plant pots covered with  plastic bottle cloches.

I will eventually pot them on into bigger plant pots and I will eventually plant some in the garden and sell them at a carboot sale next summer. 

 That's if old Jack Frost and his wife don't get them of course.  I think they will be OK residing in the polytunnel.

I only have to wait two years for them to flower. I have seen them for sale in Lidl for 10 Euros.  Mine cost me nothing!

Any one else busy propagating shrubs?

Retail Therapy At The Carboot Sale.

 I know how to give our lass a good time.  We put some motion lotion in the van and J, Bronte the Golden Retriever and me went for a spin to a carboot sale.

We were not going selling this week.  We wanted to buy stuff.  It was very busy and well attended.  What a difference a dry day makes.  Here's some of our purchases:

New bar stools for the breakfast bar.  The ones we have a lovely rusty speckled patina on them.  Muzz Muss seems to have taken a liking to them.  We paid ten Euros for both of them.  I know.  But you have to put the boat out sometimes!

A brand new pair of wellingtons or the " rubber boots" that they call them here in West Cork.

My steel toe capped wellingtons split a hole in them when I was planting that hedge the other day. On Saturday I donned a carrier bag tied on my leg inside the wellington boot.  On Sunday I treated myself to a new pair.

The bar stools costs 10 Euros and the wellingtons 25 Euros.

Anyone else been car boot shopping recently?

A Beautiful Birthday Card From Vietnam.

 It was a birthday for J the other day.

One of her birthday cards came all the way from Vietnam and bought by a relative on a visit there this summer.

 It's incredibly beautiful and the Vietnamese lady is a hand  paper cut and it stands up in the middle of the card:

It's a card that will not be placed in the stove to keep us warm.  It will go in a drawer no doubt.

Wouldn't it be good if you could buy hand cut cards where we live?

Hedge Planting.

 I spent Friday morning digging holes and planting forty Griselinia hedge plants I grew last year from cuttings for a friend:

They will (hopefully) eventually camouflage a concrete panel fence.

The best thing about planting the hedge is that I was able to bring the plant pots home.  I will spend a few hours soon filling them and making more cuttings.  

It's good to have a propagating hobby which eventually financially rewards.  

Do you grow hedging or plants for an hobby?

A Flying Orb Ghost Story For Halloween.

Click on the sign to read please.

The small building on the left is the Hell Fire Club.

Cloisters windows where the orbs flew through.

 Regular readers will know we like visiting ancient sites in Ireland.  

I know there a lot of people on the Internet  who do not believe in God or the devil or even the living dead.  But this is what happened one late summer day to us:

The above photos were taken in 2017.  Google photos reminded me of the date the other day.

There was my youngest son, my wife and me.  We had seen the tourist signs for an old Franciscan Priory, a castle and an Hell Fire Club.

We were the only visitors walking through the grounds.  The three of us immediately very uncomfortable and that someone was watching us.

I walked along into the ruins and a white round orb or like circle of mist passed over my shoulder and out  the cloister windows.  Then several more flew passed me.  

It felt like we were in a room full of people. Yet only 3 of were present in broad day light.

We all felt really scared and couldn't leave the building quick enough.

I have seen ghosts before and wrote about them on here.  I have watched many ghost programmes and read about white orbs and also pyschometry when things or events get stuck in water like rivers etc.

The Hell Fire Club was built the same year the Franciscans left the Priory.  Hell Fire Clubs were mainly drinking clubs for rich aristocrat types.  But there are tails of them trying to rise the devil.

I have also read that Cromwellian soldiers or Roundheads ransacked the Priory and people were murdered there.  

We definitely felt uneasy and picked up on the tragedy of the place and that spirits were not at rest. None of us ever wish to visit the place again.

Have you had similar ghostly experiences or do you know of a haunted building near you?

Here's a song that we should have been singing:

Winter Onions And Our Summer Onions Sprouting In The Chitting Room And A Dylan Thomas Poem.

Our Japanese Winter onions are loving it growing in a raised bed in the polytunnel.  

I have grown these winter onions for over thirty years and they don't mind snow or wind or rain or anything  the Autumn, Winter and Spring throws at them.

 Regular readers will remember that we froze a lot of our Winter onions.  The ones in the cardboard box  we put them on a shelf in the dwelling where we live and the room that I chit my seed potatoes.

It must be the heat of the room that seems to have made the onions come to life and decided to sprout and grow stems and stalks?

The onions made me think of a Dylan Thomas poem.  He writes about an invisible green force.  

What is that makes a seed germinate or a bulb or flower to sprout?  Mother Nature's magic touch perhaps?