Monday, May 25, 2015

Busting Out All Over

We were headed out for a short ramble around town this afternoon and we bumped into our neighbour, Theresa, doing a bit of weeding so we stopped to chat. Turns out she has been a florist and gardener for 40+ years so she knows a lot about plants and flowers--I can learn a lot from her, since I know pretty much nothing! She took us around and showed us various plants. Then we went into the lower garden.

The way things are set up here, there are 5 cottages and the larger tower house, all attached. Someone from Northern Ireland owns the 5th cottage and is only here occasionally. Tim, another neighbour, owns the tower and one of the cottages, Theresa owns one, and our landlord owns a couple and rents out both of them. Theresa and Jason, our neighbour who rents the other cottage from our landlord, do all of the work in the beds around the building and out back. The lower garden belongs to our landlord, apparently, and he prefers to do all the work on it himself, though others have offered to tend it when he is not here. He does not get much chance to do this, I guess, because he lives in Dublin, which is on the other side of the island. Unfortunately things are quite overgrown at the moment, but in spite of that, the flowers are gorgeous! I have been meaning to go and look at things up close instead of just admiring things from the kitchen window!

I've watched as the peonies went from small green and deep red balls to spectacular blooms--such a deep, rich colour!
Very, very pink!
Quite white!
Once he comes and cleans things up a little, it will look amazing. As the summer wears on there will be more kinds of flowers appearing--I am looking forward to watching how it all unfolds!

As we headed towards town, we passed this beautiful tree:
On the corner in front of the bank I glanced into a stone planter and was taken with these cute little purple blooms--I love these!
 On the way home, a short distance down Main St, there is a bridge over a river. The buildings on the corner are at street level, but everything slopes downward and the back gardens of these buildings are below street level, as are the river and the trees growing up alongside it.
Lots of hills here--big and small. It makes for an interesting landscape! Right now it's a landscape awash in colour!

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