Dedication.

 I lost the love of my life and sweetheart and pal J last Tuesday.  We buried her on Saturday in a graveyard overlooking the bay.

The people of Bantry and beyond showed J  and my family and myself so much love.

I don't know when or if I will post again for a while.  But I will publish any comments on here.

God bless you all.👍

Sedum Autumn Joy And Bergenias. Winter's On It's Way.

 The pinky red flower is Sedum Autumn Joy.  The cabbage like leafed plants are Bergenia.

Sedums like Buddleia attract butterflies 🦋 to the garden.

They are also a sign to me that Winter is on it's way.

Sedums are one of these easiest perennials there are to propagate from cuttings.  Just cut off a little branch and stick in a pot of sand or compost and I guarantee it will root within 3 to 4 weeks.  It really is that easy.

The Bergenias also nicknamed Elephants Ears and Pig Squeak change their leaf colour through Autumn, Winter and Spring.  The go pink to reddy purple.  They also bring some out of season cheer with a pink flower.

That great English plants woman Gertrude Jekyll  used to make Bergenia like borders in her planting layouts. Going slightly off topic.  Her brother was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson and he borrowed their family name for one of his most famous literary characters.

They are both old garden favourites of mine and prolong our summer that little bit longer.   I think they grow and look better in big clumps or drifts rather than just individual plants.

I like to see the Butterflies hovering and feeding on the Sedum at this time of year.  The Sedums seem to melt through Winter and eventually appear and grow next Spring 

A View From Inside The Rosette Room.

 More rosettes pinned up with the sashes for our prize winning 🐖 🐷.  

The latest rosettes were awarded at Tullamore Agricultural Show a couple of weeks or so.

Joke.  There was a fire at a sleeping football giants stadium.

A rather concerned Chairman asked the fire chief if they had got to the cup room yet.

The fire chief replied:

"No we haven't managed to get into the canteen yet?"

No it wasn't MUFC.

I have been grafting hard all week and haven't had time to blog.  I'm trying to get a few extra quid/ Euros together for my forthcoming Prog Rock festival roughing it trip.

Storm Amy is knocking about our shores tomorrow night.  Batten down the hatches and hopefully it won't visit us.

Potting On The Newly Rooted Plants.

 I potted on all these new plants that I divided and took cuttings of a few weeks ago.

My neighbour down the road had his drive rechipped and tarred.   

They gave us the old top surface It's a very sandy mix.  These are the kind neighbours who leave us the bag of vegetables peelings under a upturned plant pot for the livestock on their garden wall.

One of the contractors came up and asked me if I could find some where for the scrapings?

"Something for free?" 🤔 thinks me.

Two Bobcat skid steer buckets later I had my very own cuttings mix.  On inspection it's very gritty sand and contains soil and well composted plant tissue like leaves.

A nice sandy mix for my cuttings. 

A bucket full of free draining cutting mix and it's  free!

It's  got absolutely perfect drainage and not too rich in nitrogen to start off cuttings.

I took lots of cuttings and divisions and used the scrapings for my cuttings mix.  Remember when I showed you my cuttings floor several blog posts back?

Yesterday I gently tugged the cuttings to see if there was any resistance and pulled them out of the sandy rooting medium.

One rooted Osteospermum (Cape Daisy) cutting.  I never cease to be amazed when I see newly formed roots.  I think Mother Nature sews them on to the cuttings while we sleep.🤔

It's always worth taking some of these frost tender plants cuttings at this time of year.  I lost most of mine in 2010 when we had the biggest snow accumulation for fifty years and we were snowed in for a fortnight.  

I could also have waited for leaves to form and roots to appear out of the drainage holes in the plant pots.

I wanted the room to take more cuttings so I began potting up the newly rooted plants in their own individual plant pots.

There are Osteospermums,  Shasta Daisies,  Bergenia, Hebes,  Hypericum, Cotoneasters, variegated grasses, Phormiums, 🌹 🥀 and Hydrangeas.  Rugosa cuttings are my next project.

Plant propagation costs very little.  All it needs is a pair of scissors ✂️,  some free cuttings, free plant pots (I have hundreds that people have gave me!), a watering can, water and some plant rooting material like that's  preferably free and most of all patience!

Are you propagating plants at the moment?  My plant nursery is getting ever fuller.  I must grow more veg.😀

By the way I have had two thousand seven hundred views so far today.  Either blog stats have gone crazy or there's a lot of folk out there who like Prog Rock?

Prog On A Friday.

 I found this fantastic video on good old You Tube recently.

It features ex Genesis axe man😀 even guitar genius:  Mr Steve Hackett and his band and Marillion lead guitarist 🎸 Steve Rothery on the Genesis track: Fly On A Windscreen.

I have featured Steve Hackett on here several times.  I have also posted on here  about his super book: A Genesis In My Bed. 

Before joining  Genesis.  He rang a NME advert for a band requiring a guitarist one night and someone called Mr Peter Gabriel answered the phone.  The rest is like they say: Prog Rock history.

Did any of you see Genesis in the early seventies?  I have always liked Steve Hackett and Peter Gabriel especially.  Not forgetting the work he's done with the English/Irish rock godess/Banshee: Kate Bush!

I saw Steve Hackett and his band with Nad Sylvan (vocalist on this video) playing his Genesis Revisited set at Cropredy festival in 2022.  I blogged about the concert which was amazing.

I first saw Steve Rothery with Marillion and rock poet Fish at Garden Party at Milton Keynes Bowl in 1986.  What a great day and line up that was.

Then I saw Marillion at The Night Of The Prog in Loreley in Germany in 2017 which I also wrote about on here.  

Steve Hogarth is the Marillion singer these days.  He's only been doing it since 1989.😀 

However he is a Red Devils supporter like myself and I am not talking about Salford Rugby League Club.  Or maybe I should do?  

Why couldn't the Caraboa Cup have been replayed at Old Trafford.  Grimsby would have had a kings 🤴 ransom share of the gate receipt and United might have won?🤔  

Any way or any road.  This 61 year old and several months will soon be going to Blighty to see them again in late September.  I hope they  do some early Marillion stuff like Script For A Jesters Tear or Misplaced Childhood...

It will be time for donning my shorts and showing off my donkey knees and a few days roughing it on one of my rock festival trips, Wetherspoons (cheap real ales and Cornish cider) and pasties.

Enjoy the track:

You can't beat some prog rock can you?

Have a great weekend🍺👍.

Shoulders Of Pork And Ham And Spam. Oh And The Price Of It!

 Another what we are having for our tea tonight or had for our tea last night post.  This time it's a Lidl version of Spam.

Apparently shoulders of pork and ham is where the word spam comes from.  Rather like the laboratories of New York and London jointly invented NYLON.

 On further Google research.  Spam was invented by Hormel Foods and Jay Hormel in 1937.

It was created to utilize Pork shoulder which was not a popular cut of meat at the time.

"Spam" is believed to be a combination of the words: "Spiced and ham".

My email often says: nothing in spam.

But I think there is.  Especially if you eat it!

The price of petrol station ⛽️  Spam.

We spotted this when fuelling up a few weeks ago in County Kerry.  I thought it a tad bit dear.

I remember Spike Milligan writing ✍️ in his book My Part in Hitler's Downfall.  He was serving in north Africa in the middle of a jungle.  He walked into an Arabic tent cafe  in the jungle and said to the waiter: "Spam and chips twice please!"

Do you like Spam or Shoulders Of Pork And Ham?

This sketch is over fifty years old.  1970 in fact.

You learn something new everyday. 😀

Could this be my blog post magnum opus?  Or even a Spam magnum opus? 

Reacquainted With An Old Gardening Work Mate.

One thing that I know when am gardening.  If I lose something eventually it will turn up.

It could be days, weeks, months or even years.  But eventually I will find my lost item of gardening equipment.

I have moaned and ranted on here before  about why don't garden tool manufacturers paint everything bright pink or red instead of green or brown?  Green and brown are natural habitat colours.  

If you don't want them to get camouflaged paint them in bright colours .  I have a pair of red handled loppers and I find them in seconds.  My green or black handled loppers can take me five to ten minutes to find.  Perhaps they think if we paint them green or brown the gardeners will lose them and buy new ones?  It's  the garden equivalent of The Man In The White Suit.

Secateurs are another one of my how to lose garden specialities.  I have dug up a few rusty pairs in the compost heaps  in my time.

These days I only buy cheap secateurs from a car boot sale or Lidl.  I know they will either break or lose them.

Any road or any way.  I was digging out some fym the other day for my raised beds and I uncovered the top of a big black tree plant pot.

They are briiant for putting weeds or  small stones in.  I bought the said plant bucket for five Euros a couple of years ago from a carboot sale.  It's  been used hundreds of times and I found it very useful.

I managed to eventually uncover and dig round the pot and prize it from it's fym prison.

Here it is for your perusal:

My old friend.  Big black bucket!  Or if it was in Keeping Up Appearances: Black bouquet.

Do you lose your gardening tools in the garden, but you know they will turn up some time?

You know you have been writing blogs for over fifteen years and you can find an old tree plant bucket interesting enough to write about.  Perhaps I am turning into an Eric Olthwaite and could write about ' interesting' coal shovels?😊