Update for 2007.........Part one: February  and part two November                          

Camera in hand, last week I walked around the garden........ on an rare, dry day..... to see for myself how the place has survived the gales and rains of this winter. Surprisingly, even amazingly I found a few things flowering. Below is one

This little fellow is called (As you know, I'm sure)  HELLIBORE.

 I also found this lad,( below), the common or garden WITCH HAZEL. If you want to be gardener-like you could  call it: HAMAMELELIS x intermedia 'Pallida'

This comes in yellow and red. The red one looks better (So the Gardener says)  but it  had been blown away before I got the camera to it.

Further searching uncovered a few more:

Any gardener would expect this  CAMELLA, debby to be flowering in February.  I was surprised at its beauty.

I found this HEBE taking cover from the winds and sea-salt spray. It was almost hidden in the middle of the shrub but a sudden burst of sunshine gave away its hiding spot.

It is cheating a little to show another CAMELLA but this was in a different part of the garden to the shrub shown earlier. (It is also a different colour). This one was fully exposed to the elements. Once more the extraordinary power of nature surprised me. This small plant took everything thrown at it .....gales, severe gales, storms, torrential rain, low temperatures and salt spray throughout the winter and still blossomed at it's appointed time.

Around these parts it has been an incredibly stormy winter. From September onwards there were gales followed by more gales. At the start of 2007 the place looked totally wrecked. Every plant was black with salt spray. The Gardener was seriously worried and it takes a lot to worry her. Now, in late February, as the days lengthen a little there are some signs that maybe, there will be still a plant or two to be seen by Summer.

To remind you, once again, just how close to the sea this place is, take a look at this picture:

The garden surrounds the white house in the centre of the picture. The Gardener and myself call it "Home".

 Having listened to the various warnings of rising ocean levels and  carefully measuring heights at my small piece of this planet,  I reckon we have only  162 years and four months before the waves come into the house. How are we going to cope with that?

Possibly, I could, (by taking down the mast ), get my boat into the kitchen.

                         Two more pictures of February findings:

The common IBERIS......this seems to my eyes to be always blooming..........and

LEPTOSPERMUM, another one that has, withstood the harsh winter.

That concludes my little stroll around Cois Cuain in the month of February. It proves to me that  mother nature is exceedingly bountiful. Also, that it looks like I will have to slave away at my menial tasks for another season.

 This is the final picture for this bit of updating. A winter sunset on Dunmanus Bay. Nothing to do with horticulture, in truth but it's where the garden is. The gardener sometimes calls it (very infrequently, I am glad to say), her water feature.

More later....if the weather stays bad.

PART TWO: November 2007.

Several years ago, I was building a dry stone wall, (similar to the one above) in the garden, when several of the stones fell on my foot. It felt as if I had broken toe or two. In considerable pain, I eased my foot out of my shoe and took off my sock. I limped my way to the water's edge and soaked my foot for a while. I was just returning to the accursed wall when I heard, "Hi, how are you doing". Looking towards the voice I saw a tanned, fit-looking man with a bicycle at the entrance gate. Behind stood a beautiful woman, also with a bike. The Gardener was out for some reason or other and I was the sole custodian on this glorious sunny day.  The Gardener had left instructions for me: smile at any visitors, apologise for her absence and show them around.

These instructions did not cover someone who was in agony, in foul humour, wearing only one shoe and standing next to a  large load of stones.   I was about to say something really rude and extremely unpleasant to these two when I recognised them.

I sometimes think about what would have happened had I said what I almost said.

 Had I insulted His Excellency, the American Ambassador to Ireland........... would Mr. G. Bush have invaded west Cork....... would there be a different sort of green zone around Kilcrohane now........ would I be living  in Guantanamo Bay?. I will never know. 

 On the previous day a newly-opened section of the local  marked walk, Sheep's Head Way had been inaugurated  by none other the the American Ambassador to Ireland, Michael J. Sullivan ..........and here he was, off duty, cycling around the peninsula with his lovely wife, Jane. I bade them welcome, offered coffee and was on my best behaviour as we wandered around the garden. The Ambassador had discovered that his forebears had originated from these parts and had settled, in the nineteenth century in Wyoming, where he was from.  

This year, the  season of Summer was a strange class of a thing. The picture , below was taken in June when it rained as much as it had done in May.

The longer I live the more amazed I am at the way plants perform.....no matter what the winter or spring weather throws at them, (If  I wished to live dangerously I could almost venture to say, whatever a gardener throws at them) they continue to do their own thing. The rockery in this picture was a scene of complete devastation during Winter and early Spring. In February I heard the Gardener remark that "Everything is ruined this year", yet when June, wet and all as it was, arrived, every plant that should have being showing it's colours was doing so. I suppose gardeners expect plants to grow but very often it amazes me, a non-gardener, (I remind you again), just how much they do grow. For example, this picture of a  PAULOWNIA, 'tomentosa'   taken in March, when I had chopped it to pieces,

had grown, to the size you see below by August, when I photographed it again.

Just in case you did not know, Paulownia is named in honour of Anna Paulownia who was a princess of the Netherlands.  (You might think I knew that and am becoming knowledgeable about horticulture;  I didn't,  I read it in a book while I was looking up the spelling of the plant.)

As the Summer moved along the weather improved and August , September and October have been amazing for these parts. Even now in November, the daytime temperature is in the high teens. In effect, the Summer seems to be in Autumn, this year. I saw the following in a very old gardening book which the given by a friend to the Gardener:

If there's ice in November that will bear a duck,

There'll be nothing after but sludge and muck.

If that's true then the prospects of a gentle Winter are good.

Another Aside.

Early in the Summer when the weather was bad and the sea rough the excitement for me and  fellow residents of this area was brought about  by the early morning news that a small craft was in difficulty in Dunlough Bay. This little bay is at the mouth of Dunmanus Bay..........our bay..... and I fish there regularly. It later turned out that over €100 million's worth of cocaine had been recovered from the craft in trouble and the water around it.  The bay was full of Gardai (Police) in RIBS, customs officers, naval divers and low flying helicopters for a couple of weeks. Several gentlemen were arrested and are awaiting trial. This gives me the chance to show you my boat again. Mine is the red one, in case you have not seen pictures of it before on this website. The other boat is an Irish naval vessel searching for more bales of coke, I suppose.

I must add that my boat had absolutely nothing to do, whatsoever, in any shape or form, with this incident. However, fishing in Dunlough Bay has been poor this Summer.

BACK TO THE GARDEN:

Here is an Autumnal picture.

A huge crop of crab apples appeared this year and the birds had a feast. The gardener tells me this is MALUS 'everest'.  I call it Crabapple.

In April a new pond was established at the highest part of the garden. I am very pleased with it. It is bigger than the other ponds and seems to be settling in nicely. I was delighted to find the two stone ducks in a shed which I named as above. The Gardener hates them, says there are too "Twee", if that is a word. I think they add a touch of class to the new pond, but I am probably wrong. Anyway, she will not see them on this web site as she rarely looks at it.

This GRAPE HYACINTH first came to blossom in March this year and stayed in flower until July. It's botanical name is Muscari. Due to "Gardener Pressure" I have reformed my character and am now ,once more giving the full names of plants shown on this site. I am not sure how long this will last. I bear grudges for a long time. It's a difficult job looking up the names in books and specially when I don't really care what they are called. Usually my CV, in botanical terms contains about eight or nine names. The Gardener always knows the names......immediately and without fail. For example, I showed her this picture and  the conversation continued as follows:

GARDENER: "That's pretty, isn't it? A nice photo, too"

ME: "What's it called?"

GARDENER: "Grape Hyacinth, I've told you that at least twice in the last month"

ME: "I don't remember you telling me, anyway, I only took the picture half an hour ago. What's the proper name for it?"

GARDENER: "You'll forget it again"

ME: "I know, but if you tell me now, I will write it down, go to the computer and put the name there and then I will have done the job"

GARDENER: "The botanical name is 'Muscari', but I am not quite sure if there are two  'S's  in it or one. Have a look in the book, why don't you"

So, I end up looking in the book for Grape Hyacinth and find there is only one 'S' in "Muscari" and one in "Long-suffering".

This picture is of a nice example of Leptospermum 'nichollsii'. It looked well in late June this year. I am not certain that the 'nichollsii' part is correct and the gardener is not available to inform me. No doubt someone is going to email me and tell me to stop doing something I know nothing about, but isn't that half the fun............annoying gardeners can become addictive.

This page is going to be awful slow to download.......there are too many pictures in it. Once again, I am going to finish with a non-gardening picture. The photo, below was taken a week ago, as the daylight faded. It shows just how beautiful this peninsula is.

 Dunlough Bay, which I mentioned in this update, is just around the corner from the headland you can see.

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