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 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?😊

Still Got It.

 I never went to Cropredy or A New Day Festival this year.  Thankfully though I can watch some of the great You  Tube videos that other kind festival punters have recorded for the world wide web.

Here's Robert Plant from Cropredy a couple of weeks ago.  He was a special guest for the Deborah Bonham Band.  Yes you're right.  Debby is the late and great Led Zeppelin drummer's John's sister.

Robert Plant still seems to have got it!  What a magnificent voice:

Any one else planning on going or been to any rock festivals this summer?

It's  been brilliant weather the spring and summer of 2025.  The best ever me thinks 🤔  

A Scene From The Cuttings Floor.

The crowded floor of my proposed new potting shed/ man cave.

People have been very busy lately and my new potting shed seems to have been put on hold.

This plantaholic however decided to press on with my plant propagation area.

I took a piece of old polytunnel plastic and laid it on the ground to hopefully suppress any pernicious weeds.  Then I moved some small patio flags and pig slats to make a level ("ish") area to place my potting bench/ tables on.

Bob's your uncle!  I have a new area to take cuttings and divide plants and start veg seeds off.

I am not buying potting compost at the moment.   Instead I am experimenting with my potting mix.

Sand, home made compost and topsoil all combine.  I even place cuttings in just sand.

So what cuttings are you taking Dave?  Good question Dave.

I have been cutting back Shasta Daisies. Taking cuttings about a pencil length long.  Removing any leaves except a couple at the top which I could in half.  Then I get about ten cuttings to a large plant pot.

Of course I could divide the Daisies in September or next spring but I get great pleasure in seeing roots and leaves appear.

I will buy some good potting compost before they stop selling it for winter and pot them on individually.

I have also been taking Osteospermums (Cape Daisies) cuttings and dividing Bergenias and small Phormiums.

I water them most mornings at the moment.  But we are starting to get dews.  We even lit the stove in the front room last night and we weren't roasting.

My new potting shed floor is getting full already.  Soon they will be going outside into the plant nursery in the veg plot.

This is how I use to propagate my plants before I got my polytunnels which alas are no more.

I hope we get the sides and roof on before the Irish monsoon and gale season begins.

Are you propagating plants or making a potting shed/ greenhouse or polytunnel?

 

"Bye Jove He's Got It".

A bag of cheap discount supermarket daffodils.

I never thought any of our lads would become obsessed with gardening like yours truly and me, myself and I.

Number 2 son moved a couple of hours away last year.

We weren't happy bunnies and it's the same feeling most parents have to experience and all little birds have to fly the nest some time.

One day we visited them and somehow I was talked into digging off a big border of gravel courtesy of a borrowed shovel from next door and pulling up a big sheet of polythene.  The gravel was deposited on top of gravel on another border.

I pulled out any weeds and was impressed with the rich and fertile soil.  He was going to make a flower garden.

I visited him again and gave him the left over plants from a close by car boot sale we had just visited.  Then we arranged them on the border and guess who got the job of planting them?

He also bought bedding plants and a rose tree and we gave him some more plants.  Especially my Cape Daisies and Shasta Daisies.  Daisies are my plant autograph and you always know when I have planted up a garden.  It will contain my Daisies. 

He purchased some ornamental bark and a lot of his neighbours commented on his 'new' garden and how they would like a garden like it.

He's actually taken an interest in gardening and he even grew lettuce in a hanging basket.

I can't persuade him to put his name down for an allotment yet but he does want to container garden next year and grow vegetables.

Now we text each other about his garden and the latest plant offers in Aldi or Lidl.

I told him he could get a big bag of daffodils from Lidl for ten Euros.  

The other day he drove home and presented me with a quarter of a bag of daffodils.  He said he'd got tired planting his ones.

I have planted them in one of my old decking plank raised beds.

When I was planting them I thought:

"Bye Jove He's Got It!"

At least one of our lads like gardening!
 

When You Plant A Buddleia You Get Yourself A Butterfly 🦋 Bush.

 

Butterflies and Buddleia. 

The 🦋 🦋 butterflies love the Buddleia that I planted to make our patio a bit more private last year. You can see the bay and Beara in the background.  We live in the countryside next to the sea.

Regular readers will know this particular shade of purple/ lilac specimen is an offspring of a Buddleia  cutting I took when I lived in Cheshire.   I filled two wheelie bins full of my shrubs and perennials and manhandled it into the back of a Luton hire van.  

Last year I planted another cutting that had successfully "striked" rootsand now it's attracting the Red Admirals.

When I was trying to sell my Buddleia and other plants at a carboot sale the other week.

I had a conversation with a lovely lady and I told her about the Buddleia or butterfly bush.  I told her if she planted it in her garden it would attract the butterflies 🦋.   Then I said that apparently that butterflies serve no natural purpose other than being beautiful.  We both agreed what could be better than that?  She bought my potted Buddleia and went away happy.

My Sedum Autumn Joy's are now turning pinky purple.  These also attract the butterflies.  Sadly when I see these in flower and the butterflies hovering round them.  I know winter is on the way.  Rather like seeing farmers making second or third cut bales of silage.  So the cattle will have forage in winter. 

Anyone getting lots of butterflies on their Buddleias?

Here's a song by American heavy rock  band Heart.  I saw them play at Birmingham NEC back in the late eighties.  I think it was 1988🤔? Crikey!  That is thirty seven years ago.  Where does the time go?

A Text Message And Some Windfall Apples 🍎 For The Livestock.

I had got a text message from one of my neighbours when I was working in the veg plot.

He had left me a wheelbarrow full of apples that he had collected from his orchard and I could give them to our livestock

Happy apple eating pigs.

Apple munching  ponies.

The pygmy goats 🐐 loved their 🍎 🍎. 

Wheelbarrow of windfall apples.  

It's been a great year for fruit, vegetables and 💐flowers.

 

 

Homemade 🌭 Hotdogs.

 Another snacky post or: "What We Had For Our Tea Last Night!"

Our homemade hotdogs 🌭  made with our organic homegrown Japanese onions 🌰. 

A jar of cheap Bratwurst Lidl sausages, hot dog rolls, onion, mustard and tomato sauce.  Very nice.  Quick and easy.  Perhaps I should get a hot dog van and paint "Dave's Dogs" on it?

I could go to rock festivals and charge a 🤴 ransom or  a "tenner" for one of my hotdogs and listen to the music?

I watched Robert Plant at Cropredy festival on You Tube at the weekend.  I went last year and in 2022.  He's still got an amazing voice.

I never got to see Led Zep but I did see Jimmy Page play at: Monsters Of Rock festival once.

Hope you like the tune?  

I wonder what other snacky snacks we can come up with?  Vinegar butties, banana 🍌 butties..🤔

Growing Beetroot Vegetables Which Are Really Swiss Chard.

 You know how "Algarve' and "Portugal " my beloved polytunnels plastic were ripped and torn by the Atlantic gales?

We still haven't got round to building my new sturdy potting shed/man cave yet.

I bought quite a few of our vegetable seedlings in trays from a garden centre up in  County Kerry.  Their vegetable plantss are excellent.

Unfortunately they had not labelled the seedlings and veg plants.  I had even remembered to bring my Lidl reading glasses with me

Old Clever Clogs (me) jumped in with my size 11 boots and picked what I thought (" I taught I saw a puddy tat") were beetroot.

I have been watching them growing with caution and wondering why no beetroots were not forming under the leaves?🤔

I was weeding the repurposed plastic tanks yesterday and the penny finally dropped:

"They're Swiss chard".

Yes I know they are related to each other in the vegetable family.  Same factory, different department:

Swiss chard with some Nasturtiums invaders.

Anyone else grow Swiss chard?  Do you eat it raw or cook it?  I believe it's a good idea to cut out the hard spine before cooking or eating it?

Snacky Time.

 I am a great believer that the sun feeds you when it's so hot like this fabulous summer.  I have never known a summer so good.

We have a big Kenwood Chef mixing bowl of new potatoes waiting to be ate.  But it's just too hot and we much prefer snacks like corned beef toasties.

I have blogged  about the Kenwood Chef stainless steel  bowl before.  I bought it for a pound on a car boot sale twenty five years ago and we still use it every week.  Especially for collecting new potatoes from the veg plot.  There are still plenty left for me to dig.

Of course I am using our home grown onions and lettuce to accompany the corned beef and toast:

What I had for my tea last night.

What's your favourite snack at the moment?

Do you hear yourself saying:

"It's far too hot 🔥 for 🥔 potatoes. "

"Is it hot or is it me?"

Here's a little bossanova tune to go with this post:

Leeks Growing In A Fym Filled Cut Down IBC Tank.

 I went out this hour to pick one of my Redina lettuces for a corned beef toasty for our tea.

I noticed my leeks growing in a cut down IBC tank.  They seem to be absolutely flying it.  

The docks and weeds outside the tanks seem to also be flourishing   My raised beds have drilled drainage  holes and no doubt the soil nutrients feed the weeds.  If the weeds don't  grow.  Nothing will grow.

I am so pleased with our repurposed plastic tanks filled with fym and planted with organic bought vegetables.

One often praises clay plant pots.  I rarely see any over here.  I am starting to praise plastic pots and containers.   I think they warm up the growing medium and the veg plants flourish.  Have you had similar thoughts?

We harvested one of our first leeks the other day.  It tasted wonderful.  You can pick stuff young and fresh when you grow your own.

The vegetable sugars have not got old and turned into starches like a lot of supermarket old vegetables.

I definitely think the better the depth of soil.  The better the vegetable grows.

A Gunnera And A Tree Fern Growing Here On The Irish Riviera.

 I spotted this Tasmanian tree fern and this Chilean Gunnera growing side by side in a garden on our peninsula in the south west of Ireland.

We live on the Gulf Stream and it is remarkable what will grow in such a mild climate.

Tree ferns or man ferns go for astronomical prices.  You can buy small ones for about 30 Euros.  

If you go to Kells over on the ring of Kerry there is a tree fern forest, garden centre and their head gardener recently won a gold at Chelsea flower show.   I think they also " put you up" or accommodate you even and there's a restaurant.  I have been there once and featured it here on my humble blog.  Way back in 2015.  It's  on my blog search.

The tree ferns were originally used for convict ship ballast returning to Blighty after dropping off deportees in Van Diemen's Land.  The ships returning were empty so they cut down tree ferns and used them for ballast for the long sea journey back to Falmouth.

On return.  They threw the plants into the bay and some people planted them in their estate gardens.  Amazingly they grew and have aerial roots and people started collecting them.

Gunnera originate in Chile and Brazil.  They look like giant rhubarb and their leaves and stalks go brown in Autumn and they do not like frost.  Fuschia is also a Chile native and it grows profusely here in West Cork.  I have also seen growing happily in Devon and Cornwall. 

It was good to see to two plants from different continents growing side by side.

Would you have them in your garden?  I would love a tree fern.

Topping Up The Repurposed Oil Tanks/Raised Beds With FYM.

One of my tv gardener heroes was Geoffrey Smith and I often still watch his gardening videos on good old YouTube.  Here are two gardening quotes by him:

"Put the brown end in the soil, the green end above it , and you're in with a much better chance."

"If I am depressed,  or I think the world's  a filthy place, I just go and look at a flower".

Geoffrey like myself came from Northern England and he believed in hard graft and forking over the ground and leaving the rough clods for the Winter frosts and rain to break them down and make lovely friable soil.

My gardening digging habits have evolved to the Irish climate.  Ireland gets its fair share of gales and very wet winters.  But we rarely get the snow and frost like they get in the north of England.

I am 62 this December and I still grow some crops like new potatoes in the ground.  But in recent times I have been repurposing containers like plastic baths, heating oil tanks, Belfast sinks, rear wheel tractor tyres, mussel and fish crates and IBC tanks...

They give me a lot deeper depth of growing medium and I am gardening at waist or knee height.  I am not no dig and I climb on top of them and dig them over after a crop is harvested. 

The weather is very good this spring and summer.  I took the black plastic cover off the dung heap and filled up my weeding big bucket 🪣(tree plant pot) with fym and filled up some of my vacant plastic raised beds:

Topped up raised beds.  Already for next spring.  The fym contained a lot of fat juicy brandlings worm.  They reminded me of coarse fishing days when I would use such worms 🪱 to lure Perch and other fish to the hook.  

Fishermen are the watchdogs of our waters and gardeners and allotment holders monitor the soil.  The worms will take the fym down into the soil.  I could cover them up with plastic but I will allow the rain to add nitrogen and wash the goodness from the fym into the soil.

I have had great harvests this year in my repurposed raised beds.  You don't  need to have a garden or allotment just some containers to grow your veg and some muck and magic.

Anyone else making use of the fine weather and getting their veg plot topped up with fym and ready for spring?

"A Nice Cup Of Tea In The Morning".

 Rosie having a 'nice'cup of tea.

Rosie is the mother of Bronte my faithful Golden Retriever and walking repurposed railway lines pal.

I have been mad busy working this week and have not had much time to blog.  I hope the photo makes you smile?

I have never been much of a tea drinker.  I prefer 'real' coffee ☕️ in a cafetiere first thing in the morning.

When I lived in the north West of England we would go to Levenshulme in Manchester to a Irish grocers and bring home Barry's tea from Cork and red lemonade.

I remember my holidays here in Ireland and my dad and my my brother and me would try to pike hay on to the cart and chase rabbits and my grandma and my mother would come down the fields with currant cake and bottles of cold tea in a sock.  It was great for quenching your thirst.

I still prefer coffee than tea.

Homemade Plant Cuttings Storage Box Propagator.

I made or repurposed a plastic storage box to get my shrub cuttings to root and keep them in a moist and humid environment 

Propagator with lid on.

I took the lid off a week since planting the Hydrangea cuttings in sand.  They are still moist and don't need watering.

The box cost me nothing and it's now a cuttings greenhouse.

It holds ten small plant pots of cuttings.

August is a good month for taking shrub cuttings like Hydrangeas.

It's been a wonderful year for flowers in particular.  Why not take some cuttings of your favourite shrubs?

 

More Carboot Sale Treasure.

 We were not happy bunnies after our poor plant sales on Saturday. But we still decided to go car booting.  

One needs Womble retail therapy.

Here's some of the things we purchased.  I haven't photographed everything though:

Two Victorian brass candle sticks. I paid 7 Euros fifty for them.  I have eight of them now me thinks?  Did you need them Dave?  No but could I leave them and walk away?  No!

The book is full of fabulous sacred sites in 🇮🇪 Ireland.  I have visited some of them especially in Sligo.  It's also the personal spiritual journey of the author.

The photos are brilliant.  It's more of a browse flick through kind of book for somebody like me with little reading 📚 patience at the moment.  

I would rather read blogs or browse and surf the Internet.  I am sure I will read it proper in the long dark nights from mid August to April. 

A travel bag for personal documents like my Irish passport and money and note books...  I paid five Euros for it.  My old one is looking shabby and the zip sticks.

I bought the Phil Lynott book for 2 Euros.  I already have one book about him.  Thin Lizzy are one of my top two favourite Heavy Rock bands along with Kansas and I remember seeing Phil and the lads when I was just 17.  Lizzy were brilliant and I am always playing their records.

Lastly I bought a mountain bike for me to occasionally go for a cycle on the repurposed greenways that I often write about on here.  I paid 35 Euros for it.

That's the same amount I got for my plants the day before!  Hey my plants paid for my bike.

Serependipity or what?🤔

A Van Full Of Plants.

We loaded up our little van and we went carbooting over the Irish bank holiday weekend with my shrubs and perennials that I have lovingly propagated myself.

Not Van Morrison but a van full of some plants😀👍.

I have always believed everyone should be able to afford to buy plants and have a nice garden.  

Or even be like the old gardeners of old or myself.  

Gardening doesn't need to cost money just tlc and lots of your time!  I only sell my plants  cheap.  The average price was only 2.50.

We got up at 5.30 on Saturday morning, paid our ten Euros pitch and took only 45 Euros.  Which is only 35 Euros if you take off the ten Euros pitch fees.  Forgetting about diesel ⛽️ and our breakfasts.

We met some wonderful people and had some great chats and I gave a few of my veg and plant growing tips and talked about my repurposed raised beds and baths. J sat knitting and had lots of conversations about knitting and showed ladies her many photos of her knitting work.  She made a few contacts for knitting patterns and wool..

It was a enjoyable morning but disappointing plant sales yet again.  Perhaps next time I will have a mixed bag of car boot treasure and just a few crates of plants?

We didn't go plant selling on Sunday.  We did travel to two carboot sales.  I will post what we bought in another post.

Did you go carbooting selling or buying at the weekend?

After the lockdown it's good to go to a carboot sale and chat and sell some of my plants and help raise some funds for a good cause.

Repurposed Planters.

 I spotted these planters outside a supermarket the other day in Kerry:

Sheep or calf nuts troughs looking elegant and filled with seasonal bedding plants.

A wheelbarrow with a flat tyre.  The Ancient Chinese invented this physics defying gravity one wheel contraption.  It looks very nice full of bedding plants.

Note to author of this blog.  Must source new secondhand wheelbarrow.  Yours is on it's  last legs or wheel even.  Far too much carrying fym, concrete blocks and concrete and compost and top soil!

Don't plants brighten up the dullest of containers?

Old Worlde Tools At The Carboot Sale.

 

Farm and turf cutting tools from yester year.

I always look at what tools are for sale at the carboot sales.

I immediately recognised the potato 🥔 fork on the right.  It's got steel baubles on the bottom of the fork tines.  This prevents the potato digger from puncturing the new potatoes.  I often put my fork through them.

The man wanted 40 Euros for it.  I wanted the potato fork very much but I wasn't paying that for it.

Next to the potato 🥔 fork is a slain.  That was or can be used for digging peat or ' turf' they call it here in Ireland.

The slasher with the long handle was used for cutting brambles and briars.  

All very useful tools that require hard physical work.

Dropping Off Piglets And A Walk On A Beach.

 We headed over to Kerry to drop two piglets of ours off to the Maharees in between Brandon Bay and Tralee Bay.

Our piglets over look Bantry Bay and now they have gone to the seaside in County Kerry.

I have featured the Maharees on here before it's a sand dune peninsula scattered with houses and winding boreens, pubs and caravan parks.  

I have camped there a few years ago when we walked a lot of the Dingle Way.  One stretch of the beach from Cloghane to Camp was 12 miles long sand.

After settling in the piglets in their straw bed we set off back and stopped at a little beach on the Maharees.

Bronte went for a run and a swim.

All that seaweed strewn along the beach.  My veggies would love all that natural fertilizer for free.

Bronte having the time of her life.

Nasturtiums growing amongst the rocks protecting the road from the heavy tides in winter.

Straw bales waiting to be collected in the fields.  They looked like they had been there a while.

There are so many virtually empty beaches in Ireland.  Far away from the madding crowd.

 

A Hair Dog Hair Cut And Dog Hair Compost For The Raised Beds.

 

Bella also called "Thumper" is a Newfoundland.  She looks like Bo Derek in 10 when she's been for a swim and drying off.

She reluctantly agreed to having her coat trimmed the other day.  It really is far too hot with such a thick coat of hair.

After her hair trim.  "Who cut your hair?  Was it the council?"

A trug full of dog hair.  It's not my grey head honest!

What did you do with it Dave?  Obviously I did not throw it away.  I decided to make dog 🐕 hair compost.  

"Dog Hair Compost?"  " Didn't  we see them play at Stonehenge free festival in 1986?" 🤔  " No we went to "Hair" the musical!"

Yes you are right regular readers.  I took it to my veg plot and used it to fill up one of my repurposed raised beds.

Apparently according to the Tinternet and Tweb.  Hair is full of nitrogen and makes very good compost.

Anyone else use hair to make compost?

A Tribute From A Yorkshire Tractor Boy Who Had A Kerrang Subscription.

 I have been watching many Ozzy Osbourne You Tube tributes.  

The following Ed Sheeran video I found/find very moving.  God bless Ozzy you are a working class hero:

It's Buddleia And Butterflies Time.

 When I moved to Ireland twenty four years this week.  I brought a wheelie bin full of perennials and shrubs that I had propagated myself by division and cuttings. 

I still have a lilac or purple Buddleia that I rooted from a cutting I took when we lived in Cheshire.

Last year I planted one of its cuttings in another part of the garden.  It's grown immensely just like it's parent plant and it's currently flowering and attracting butterflies 🦋 like Red Admirals.

Butterfly,Buddleia and hmm, me finger.

They originate in China.  French missionary and botanist Armand Davidii brought the seeds back to Europe and the Buddleia is named after him.

Some people say they are another invasive species like Rhododendrons are.  

I have seen them growing in derelict bomb sites and in the train tracks at Temple Mead railway station in Bristol.  

I like them.  They are easy to propagate and you often find volunteer shrub plants growing in different parts of the garden especially in gravel.

They grow very large but there are small dwarf varieties.

If you want to attract butterflies in the garden.  I would recommend you plant a Buddleia.  Sedums also attract them.

Do you have Buddleia and butterflies in your garden?

The Nicest Thistle In The Garden.

 Our first globe artichoke flower:

Isn't she pretty?

I grew my globe artichokes from seed last year.  A lot of gardeners like them for their architectural structure features.   

I cooked or steamed  a couple of their unopened heads or flowers the other day.  It was OK 👍  with a some what nutty taste but nothing to write home about.

Globe artichokes ready for steaming for forty minutes.

You Tube videos suggest eating them in a mustard vinaigrette dip.  I just added them to my corned beef salad:

Thr globe is at the top of the plate above the lettuce and the tomato.

We bought the tomatoes and tin of corned beef from Lidl.  I grew the globe artichoke, lettuce and onions.

I washed it down with a tin of Carlsberg.  Will I ever see English beer again in the supermarkets over here?  

The globe artichoke is a perennial and I will probably have a go at dividing it soon.  

It's got to be the nicest cultivated Thistle that I have ever seen.

Weeding Around Trees

 I spent half a day this week hand weeding and pulling grass from around a recently planted native trees area of a West Cork farm.  

There is a scheme in Ireland called Acres.  If you join the scheme the farmer or land owner will get a payment for five years.  I believe it's a very good payment to plant trees on your own land.

The trees have got to be native and every year I am employed to weed and pull grass around them.

A hawthorn tree after it weeding operation.

I was sweating like mad but thankfully there was some what of a breeze and I took two small bottles of Lucozade with me to quench my thirst.

Unfortunately you can not strim around the trees because you would ring bark them and kill them.  Like wise you can't graze the long grass because there are no plastic rabbit guards around the trees and livestock would ring bark them 

So I spent the best part of four hours day dreaming, getting bit by Doctor flies and my uncovered arms were scratched and bleeding and I had to listen to my thoughts for a few hours.  

Ozzy Osbourne played on my mental jukebox for the duration of my task.  Who needs to play music when your head plays it for free?

It's a hard job but someone got to do it!

Would you hand weed lots of native trees for a few beer tokens? 

"Wondering Will Mother Earth Survive...

I never got to see Ozzy or Black Sabbath sadly.  I once saw Ronnie James Dio at the Monsters Of Rock festival at Castle Donington.

I remember in my mid teens my friend giving me the Black Sabbath album: Never Say Die on cassette tape.  I was hooked.

What a sound.  Black Sabbath were brilliant and they created their own rock genre: Heavy Metal.

One of my gardening customers texted me the other night informing me that Ozzy had left the earth stage and gone playing the greatest rock festival in Heaven or even Hell? 

Ozzy was a working class hero with tons of talent and that wonderful English sense of humour.  I spent hours yesterday watching You Tube videos of him performing his songs and his reality shows like: "At Home With The Osbournes" and his appearances on chat shows like: "Parkinson".

I played the following song by Ozzy yesterday and the tears began to roll down my face.  I never realised how much a rock icon he was.

" Dreamer" reminds me so much of John Lennon.  

 Ozzy claimed the Beatles inspired him to join a band.  The rest is history.  Thanks for the music, anecdotes and all the laughs you gave us all Ozzy.  A rock fan across the sea in Ireland.

Roast Japanese Onion And Beetroot For Our Tea.

A picture of one of newly peeled my Japanese onions 🌰.  They have been mighty this year.  
 

A beetroot and the same onion.

We wrapped them in silver foil and placed them on a metal tray and roasted them for about forty minutes.

Then we tested them by pushing a metal skewer into them to see if they were soft enough to eat.

They were ready to eat.  We ate them with some of my redina lettuce  leaves and beef burgers.  They were 😋 delicious. 

Any oneelse roast their onions and beetroot,

Vegetable Scenes From My Repurposed Raised Beds.

 I was weeding my repurposed raised beds the other day.  All the fantastic sunshine 🌞 and now the rain is helping the veg and weeds grow rapidly.

I have at least twenty seven repurposed beds and I am always looking for more to  repurpose to grow veg in.  Here's some photos for your perusal dear blog readers:

Globe Artichokes growing in half a repurposed heating oil tanks.  They are looking at the sea in the distance. 

Summer onions.

Red cabbage. 

Brassicas in the baths.  We are growing kale, cabbage and swedes.

Japanese Onions growing in the baths.  They get planted in September and grow through the winter and spring and we usually harvest them in June.  They have been absolutely crackers this year.

Swedes growing a wooden raised beds.  I made it out of old decking planks for nothing as per usual. 

Raised bed.  The fork marks where the next colander of potatoes 🥔 will be dug.

A weedy brassica raised bed.

Beetroots and perennials like Ladies Mantle or Alchemilla Mollis and Bergenias or Elephants  Ears.

Red cabbage, beetroots and leeks.

Chives, redina lettuce and a few weeds.  

Tomatoes 🍅 🍅 and nasturtiums.

Leeks and weeds growing in a cut in half IBC tank.

Leeks.

Onions 🌰 🌰  growing in a mussel crate that I found on a beach near by where we live.

Once again my repurposed raised beds and containers remind me that you do not need to have a veg plot or allotment to grow yourown own vegetables.  You just need something to grow them in.