mariamayfleming

Weaving Willow Magic.

August 19, 2019August 20, 2019mariamayfleming

Firstly we must ask our regular readers to forgive us for only writing one post so far in August. Our family is going through big changes with two of our daughters spreading their wings and starting College in September. It has been a month of waiting for exam results, waiting for offers from the Colleges, happiness when both girls got into the courses that they wanted and time spent organizing their accommodation. Our other daughter is starting her Adult Services and she is looking forward to devoting more time to her interest in photography. We are glad to be getting stuck back into the garden work now after a couple of weeks organizing for the future.

The green sanctuary.

August 7, 2019mariamayfleming

A sanctuary is a holy and sacred place. The more time we spend in nature, the more we realize that our sanctuary is all around us. Since starting the work on the land about six years ago we have been working towards creating a place for us, but equally a place where plants and animals can thrive and coexist on fair terms.

Celebrating the Colours of July

July 24, 2019mariamayfleming

We went outside to capture a few of the beautiful colours to be found in the garden at this time of year. We do not belive that you can have too much colour and we never plan any colour schemes. Most plants are allowed to selfseed, mingle and grow to their hearts content.

Another summer of Love.

July 15, 2019February 7, 2020mariamayfleming

It is Monday morning and we are contemplating the wonderful weekend we have just experienced. We opened our garden again this year in aid of Amnesty International Ireland. The word that mostly comes to mind regarding this year’s event is love.

June in retrospect.

July 9, 2019July 9, 2019mariamayfleming

One week of July is behind us and it is high time to write about the garden in June. We had a lot of warm and windy weather but not much rain and it took a long time for the annual vegetables to get established. It is still very dry compared to other years and we have spent quite a lot of time watering. The vegetables are finally beginning to put on some bulk.

Open Garden 2019.

June 24, 2019July 15, 2019mariamayfleming

It is getting close to the time of year when we usually open our garden to the public. For the last two years we have enjoyed having many visitors and collecting money for Amnesty International Ireland. This year we were considering not opening the garden as we have to do a lot of building work while the weather is warm. But over the last few months there has been a lot of interest and questions about it and we decided to open the garden anyway.

Photographs of endangered species

June 20, 2019June 20, 2019mariamayfleming

I just had to reblog this post from my daughter’s blog. She is on the Autism spectrum and used to be terrified of bees and bumblebees. It is wonderful to see her now, getting close up to these beautiful creatures. 🐝💚🐝

Josie's photos

I used to have a fear of bees because I thought they might sting me. In order to overcome this fear I went outside with my camera to search for bees and take photographs of them on flowers. This helped me to stay calmer around bees because they won’t sting me randomly. Bees are very good pollinators and they take nectar from each flower. We have a lot of flowers in our garden and we wouldn’t want the population of bees to decrease and disappear.

Stupid people who spray chemicals all over the place are killing the bees and they are killing themselves.

View original post

From Gazebo to Pergola.

June 19, 2019mariamayfleming

When we started to work planting our forest garden seven years ago there was nowhere covered outside to escape to in case of a shower. As we have plenty of showers in the West of Ireland, we remedied the situation by building an eco-friendly gazebo from materials that we had available. If you would like to make one for yourself you can find tips and instructions in this post.

May flowers.

June 8, 2019mariamayfleming

May brought us a couple of weeks with next to no rain and then a ten day downpour. We have been busy in the garden, planting our vegetables and watering for the first couple of weeks and then tackling a few of our structures in need of updates. We will write more about them in the next couple of weeks.

In our conservatory we have two different passionfruit plants and this year our purple petal variety flowered for the first time along with the more common light green one. We have lots of small fruits forming already and maybe the season will be long and warm enough to actually get some tasty, ripe fruits later in the year.

A vintage dream.

May 30, 2019mariamayfleming

For the last couple of days we have had almost constant rain and we decided it would be a good time to finish up the interior of our tree house so that friends and family can enjoy it. It has been a few years since we started building it and the large beautiful rowan that was growing next to it has since blown over in a storm. At the moment it has hops and a lovely climbing rose twining their shoots up the structure and the hazels are slowly growing up to replace the lost rowan.