A Gold Medal at Bloom for WB Yeats

BLOOM - The Final!


When you get behind with something, it becomes ever harder to spur yourself into catching up.
I seem to be suffering quite badly this year with un-catch-up-ability.
My garden has gone to rack and ruin, my house looks like Miss Haversham's, and my blog feels largely abandoned.

But recently I had an email from Bloom, asking if I'd like to submit a design for next year's Show. All this year's designers will have received one. I don't think I would, but it made me realise I've never even got as far as posting that my garden won a Gold Medal at this year's Show.
I was thrilled. Stunned, but thrilled.
And to think I nearly wasn't present for the awards!
It was only because Niall, whose garden bordered mine, said, as we downed tools on the last day: 'So - that's it then! See you at 8am on Wednesday!'
In my naievity, I'd been thinking: 'At last, the garden's finished! A lie-in before Press Day arrives!'
Hah!
But thanks to Niall, I was on parade bright and early, and present to receive my award.

My Gold Medal, still sitting on the dresser amidst the dusty china

And I even made it onto the national news, and TV, and radio, and newspapers, and magazines...

A few of the newspaper and magazine cuttings, inc Sligo Now, The Irish Independent, The Irish Times and The Weekender

It was a lovely few days, the Show itself.
Not least because my brother, the Mad Cyclist from Edinburgh, and my sister from Suffolk came over to see it for themselves, which involved both of them getting on planes - and planes, as we all know, mean hassle and expense. (Wonder Brother was, alas, in Portugal - thoughtless boy!)
The In-Charge and Surfer Son came too. It didn't involve a plane ride, but proved far more problematic than either of my siblings' journeys. The treacherous Silver Beast decided that not enough attention was being paid to her, plus she had not been invited to accompany me to Dublin, so she trashed her alternator and broke down before they reached the county border. The poor menfolk had to re-group, borrow a car from dear DodoWoman and start their journey all over again.
Not amusing.
But it was lovely to see them all, and they all loved the garden.

The Irish President and Sabina, his wife, visited on Opening Day, and I presented them with a WB Yeats rose. Mrs Higgins told me how delighted they were with it, she said Michael D has planted a rose garden and this will be its centre-piece. As he is a Yeats scholar, I can believe that it will be.

The Irish President, Michael D, and Sabina visit my garden. In his speech to open Bloom 2015 (of which he is Patron), the President said that my garden had inspired him the most. Praise indeed!

Various other dignitaries came to visit - including the British Ambassador to Ireland and his wife who turned out to be old friends from London from another lifetime. Goodness, what a bubble I live in these days! I had no idea they were living in Dublin, and are so important!
Maud Gonne and WB Yeats himself were fleetingly spotted in the garden at one point, and over the days of the Show, other people came and sang, or recited poetry, and it was all very beatifully done.

Maud Gonne and Yeats. Poor Yeats, the most casual observer could have told him that his suit was in vain

The Orpheus Choir sang for us - their recital included The Lake Isle of Innisfree

More singers in the garden

Famous Irish poet Pat Boran recites The Lake Isle of Innisfree to the President and Mrs Higgins. Michael D could easily have recited it to us, no one would know Yeats better.

 

Gary Graham brings Leo Varadkar, Irish Minister for Health, to visit my garden

 
I remembered to ask the President to sign my garden visitor's book, but I totally forgot to ask Jane and Dominic, the British Ambassador, or Leo Varadkar, the Irish Minister for Health, or anyone of the others.
Ah well...

Happy memories.
Looking back, I think I was so engrossed in building the garden, I hadn't taken the actual Show end of things on board really. And truth to tell, I was pretty tired by the time it opened.

Too busy building the garden to think about the Show. Seamus was mad enough to let me loose on the digger...

I certainly hadn't thought about the medals, or not until Seamus said something about the judges one day.
I was appalled. How could I have overlooked something as fundamental as judges?  I've been to Chelsea and Bloom often enough...
By the week before the Show, the atmosphere in the show gardens was taughtening every day. Everyone except muggins was focused.
To be fair, I'd been asked to do the garden because of Yeats 2015, I hadn't set out to win a medal. But by the end of May, everyone around me was starting to get a touch of exam-fever, which is very contagious, whether you like it or not.
On the last day of the build, the Bear called me over.
He pointed a finger into my face and I knew he had something serious to say. I felt like a school kid caught on the hop. He didn't beat about the bush.
'Are you happy with your garden?' he asked.
I thought about it for a moment.
'Yes,' I said. It was the truth. The garden was, I suddenly realised, exactly as I'd planned it in my head.
'Then f**k everything else,' he said.
It was the best advice he could have given me. I went back to my B&B, climbed into bed and slept like a baby.

Opening Day started early with a Gold Medal

So winning a Gold Medal was like some huge bonus, and even better was the judges' return visit. Several of them had just flown over from the Chelsea Flower Show in London, which runs the week before Bloom. On their initial visit (when I had two minutes to explain any aspect of my design I wanted to), they told me they'd been asked not to patronise Bloom by marking any differently from how they'd have marked the gardens at Chelsea.
At the time, it made the palms of my hands clammy and my stomach go into spasm. Not having considered the goal posts at all, it didn't really help to have them suddenly illuminated in neon.

When they came back for the follow-up visit after the medals (a less nerve-racking affair), one of them was kind enough to say: 'We haven't really got anything to say to you. Your attention to detail is incredible. You've created a piece of theatre. It's wonderful.'
And, as they were leaving, another one turned back. 'I just wanted you to know,' she said, 'that the judges decision was unanimous.'

To me, their comments were even better than the Gold Medal itself.
And so was the response from the public. My garden had been in the media in the run up to Bloom, and had received lots of good publicity, but I hadn't expected to look out from my 'lair' - the pagoda tent Bloom provides next to your plot - and see crowds standing 5-deep trying to see into the garden, with, every now and again, a friend or acquaintance pushing through to come and say hello.
It was amazing to receive such a warm and wonderful reception.
I think it was the only thing that kept me upright.
I was so tired, I could have crawled into Yeats' little cabin and slept for the entire 5 days.

Yeats' cabin with the Mary Cronin's Cloths of Heaven forming a sun-shield outside the front door, his 9 bean rows and bee hive hidden on the right and his wild 'lawn' and apple tree hidden on the left. My pagoda in the background

An overview of the garden from the front corner

Martha Quinn's fabulous sculpture 'The Waters and the Wild' - forming a 21st century window into Yeats' imagination

Looking towards the little path leading down to the lake. On the table the In-Charge's lovely drawing of Lissadell

The path down to the Lough Gill, Nik Purdey's mural forms the backdrop

Colin Scott's amazing White Birds - ceramic sculptures 'flying' amongst the trees on the lake shore

But by mid-June I was totally exhausted.
The decision was taken, around the time of the Show, to move my Yeats Garden back to Sligo.
It was great to know that, after just 5 days on show, the garden wasn't going to be 'binned', so I was delighted, but it wasn't so brilliant having to start from scratch, re-work the design and build it all over again. It was like having to re-do a maths exam.
But by some miracle we managed it and had it ready for Yeats' 150th birthday, 13 June, when - joy of joys! - Joanna Lumley came to open it.

The garden re-designed for Sligo. It now lives beside the Model Arts Centre on The Mall

Joanna Lumley opening my garden in Sligo. What a star she is!  Pic courtesy of Val Robus

What more can you say about someone who is already adored the world over?
Only one thing springs to mind, really.
She was Absolutely Fabulous.
She loved my garden. And I did remember to ask her to sign my Bloom Visitor's Book!
Of course, I gave her a WB Yeats rose as well.

Joanna's lovely message in the visitor's book, underneath the signature of Yeats' grand daughter.

Pudding Row Posies

It's Wednesday today. My elder brother's birthday, as it happens, but closer to home, it is Flower Day.
A lovely girl - a contemporary of my two sons - has returned to the area and opened a café in the village. It is delightfully called Pudding Row and, although I have not yet sampled any puddings, her bread and jam - both homemade - are dangerously good. We dropped in late one afternoon and she had sold out of cake (and pudding), but offered us some toast instead.

She contacted me several months ago, to ask if I would supply her with little table posies from the garden.
She got, poor girl, short shrift at the time.
'Yes,' I said vaguely. 'No problem', and promptly forgot about it. I was in Dublin, building the show garden for Bloom.

However, when I finally got back home, I did get my act together, and on Wednesday mornings I take little jugs of flowers to adorn her tables.

Because they need to last until Sunday evening, when she closes for two (much needed) days off, I don't pick them them night before.
But most Wednesdays this summer, I have been out picking in the rain, so this morning's sunshine made a welcome change, although I still needed wellies as everything is permanently soaked.

The rain has played wily beguiled with my garden this year. And in my absence, my garden has played puck with me. It is a sorry mess. The weeds are running riot, none of the early perennials have been cut back, and all the worst imaginable seed heads are wafting where they will.
The endless rain means I can rarely get out to call it to order.
The only - small - consolation is that, because it's such a cold, wet summer, lots of plants are still blooming that would generally be over and done with by now, so I haven't missed out as I might have done.

This Year's Weed is the minor rose bay willow herb. Minor is probably not its official title, but I've had enough official titles to last me a good while this year. You have to submit a complete plant list to the judges at Bloom, and, not having given the judging end of Bloom a thought, I planted quite wantonly, so mine ran to six pages. In Latin.
And inevitably, the final list was compiled at midnight the night before submission.
So I'm quite happy to go with any old handle at the moment, and 'minor' will do just fine.

Whatever it calls itself, it is everywhere.

When I was a child, I thought to myself: 'One day I shall have four children, and I will call them Rose, Bay, Willow and Herb.'
Yes, well...
It looks like that has come back to bite me on the bum.
Still, it could be worse. At least they pull out easily. If the sun only shone a bit more often, I might have a chance to get out there to pull them! 

The bees are not happy. Our bee man told me they are starving to death in all this rain, and has had to feed them emergency supplies to keep them going. But happily, my soaking garden is full of birds and frogs. Wherever you move, something leaps.
They are totally invisible in the dense jungle that has taken over, but I hope they are eating morning, noon and night. A rainy summer is a slug's idea of paradise, but a surfeit of slugs is probably an endless cream tea for a frog or a bird.
Yum yum. Pudding Row all round!

Bine's wonderful photo of a frog wallowing in our pond

The Park is Blooming

Bloom 9

I know it seems ridiculous, but I haven't had time to think since I last wrote anything here.
The days have telescoped into one long Bloom-bound roller coaster.
It's exhausting - but fun.

I'm actually living up in Dublin now, in a B&B just outside the gates of Phoenix Park.
I may never go home again. I have fallen totally in love with the park
It is a pleasure, going to work - driving past the great green spaces, the deer, the dog walkers, the runners and cyclists, past the huge chestnut trees all laden with candles,
The chestnut trees at home are miniature by comparison, and rarely have the luxury of so many flowers. One side of the tree might have a sprinkling, but even then the wind will find a way to snake around and bludgeon them to death.

Wonderful Phoenix Park

It's hard to believe that we've already had well over a week of building time.
Where did it go?
Yet already it seems aeons ago that I sat and looked at a bare, waterlogged mess thinking: 'This is it. Oh ye gods and little fishes - what have I done?'

This is how it all begins. One site. Water free. Grass temporary. Mud permanent

9 days later, the whole place is transformed. It's still heaving with heavy machinery, more people come on site every day, deliveries arrive constantly, everyone is borrowing this digger, that tape, a bit of space for trees that have just arrived, a barrow-load of sand, a dozen blocks...
It is all chaotic, yet out of the mess and mud and mêlée, gardens are emerging. And despite the din of cement mixers and heavy engines, you can always hear laughter and birds singing.

If you've read any of my other posts about Bloom, you may remember that I was upside down trying to decide which contractor I should appoint. I went for Seamus in the end. Not an easy decision, but it felt right.
Well, it's good to trust your instincts. Seamus is fantastic.
He has that ability - rare enough, I find - to make you sigh with relief  and know that the grown-ups have arrived whenever he turns up. I say 'turns up', but in fact he's generally the first person on the site in the morning and quite often the last to leave. 
And he knows exactly what he's doing, although at one point, I did wonder. 
He levelled out the site, gave me a spray can and told me to mark out the garden. With Glenn's help, I laboriously measured out a grid, counted this way and that, consulted my plan, um-ed and ah-ed and finally committed my design to the ground. Seamus turned up, glanced around, climbed onto a digger and immediately ploughed it all up. 
'That was a useful hour we spent,' I said to Glenn. He laughed.
But, what-da-ya-know! When he'd finished digging, shaping and levelling, Seamus was only a few inches out in one place.
I don't know why I'm saying nice things about him - he laughs at me, teases me mercilessly and is still promising that we'll have a row before opening day.
But he's a gas and the first person I'd go if I wanted advice.

Seamus glanced at the site plan and immediately trashed it

All my plants are landing in from distant Sligo.
Friends have brought up van-loads, and Sligo Haulage kindly came to the rescue and brought all the trees for me. What stars people are! 
We wrapped the trees in cling film (well, pallet wrap) and packed them lying down into a 30 foot rigid. I didn't look too closely - I didn't dare. My heart might have fallen out of my mouth.
But they are all fine. Seamus tells me it's how they come in from Italy. (Of course, what he carefully didn't mention is that the ones coming in from Italy are in opulent, sun-nourished leaf, whereas my Sligo-raised trees are brow-beaten and redolent of a cold spring!)

Sligo Haulage brought the trees - wrapped in cling film

Sligo, as well as being distinctly un-sun-kissed, isn't as far as Italy, but it seems a long way off at the moment.
I went back at the weekend, after a hectic day of planting said trees.
'We'll get them in and send you home to your husband and your dogs,' Seamus said. He also said: 'We'll move them around until you're happy with how they look.'
Liar. 
We moved one awkward willow from location A to location B, after which he said, 'That's it! You've used your 'move a tree' card! Get on with it, woman!'
It was accompanied, as most things are, with an infectious laugh. 
I like people who laugh.

It seemed a long way home at the end of the day. 
Lucy's friend, Vincent has sweetly lent me a little runaround as no one was able to loan me a van for Bloom. He was very hesitant, and seemed to think I might not want it, but I'm thrilled to bits. Lucy has dubbed it my  'little sporty number'. It's surprisingly roomy, drives itself and knows the way back to Sligo.
It doesn't know it's way round Dublin though. We got lost, and neither of us knew which way to go. But we're safe in the Park. There are walls at the edges that hold us in. 
But finding the way home was easy. I fell into bed and slept like the proverbial baby, but there was plenty to fill my 36 hours there too - catching up with the artists whose pieces are part of the garden, with the never-ending barrage of emails, with the lists of lists of things I still haven't done, with transport to be sorted, plants to be cossetted, blankets to be sourced for packing a mural...
I ended up singing aloud in the car on the way back to Dublin to stop myself falling asleep. (It works!)

The sporty little number that Vincent has lent me. I love her.

So here we are at Day 9. Nearly Day 10.
Yeats' cabin has been built by the wonderful Niall Millar, his wife Brenda and their friend Joe McGowan. It looks just dinky and I'd really like to keep it as it is - simply 'wattled', but daubed it will be - lightly, in a home-made, inexpert, rough and ready sort of way. The way a young guy would do it if he'd never done it before and (let's be honest) if he'd got a bit fed up with daubing when he'd really rather be sitting by the lake writing poetry and enjoying the view.

Niall, Brenda and Joe building Yeats' cabin

Still lots to do.
Lots to plant. Stuff to somehow be got from Sligo. Stuff to somehow be got...
The Somme-like mud has dried up. Let's hope it doesn't return.
Thank goodness Saffy and Sarah are coming up on Friday to help me plant.
Otherwise I'd probably slip behind with the schedule. 
Heaven forbid. 
Seamus and I might fall out and have a row.

The Week

BLOOM 7

Where do the weeks go?

The hours have been turned into minutes, the days into blips.
My life has been hijacked by a ravenous time-eating Bloom-machine.
Somehow, it's almost Sunday again.
But, before I go into another tail-spin, I need to remind myself that I have achieved a good bit in this whirlwind week.

Last Sunday was Easter Day. I worked all day, paperwork - planting - paperwork - planting. At least the sun shone and it was balmy and spring-like, and we did stop in the evening. My friend DodoWoman had invited us for supper. It was delicious - and wonderful to switch off for a few hours.

Monday was,  of course, a bank holiday. Officially that is - there are no bank holidays in this house at the moment, nor will there be for the foreseeable future!
The sun shone as we piled the dogs into the car, hitched on the little trailer and headed out.
Not on a glorious picnic, but plant-hunting.


Eddie Walsh, the owner of Lissadell House, had kindly invited me to go and dig up some of the candelabra primulas that were bred there over a hundred years ago. I'd asked him if I could - they will be a perfect addition to my Yeats garden.
It couldn't have been a nicer day and the Model Dogs were thrilled to be going on an adventure.
(Rather meanly, we hadn't shown them the leads, forks or gardening gloves.) 

The sea at Lissadell

King's Mountain behind the beach at Lissadell. SuperModel chasing the seagulls

The ModelDogs practising good behaviour

Happy Days!
It was heaven at Lissadell. The sun shone and the sea sparkled like molten silver through the bare trees.
The Models gambolled on the beach (you have to gambol in Spring) and lay in the sea, and grinned inanely, but all too soon they were on their leads being told to behave themselves as Eddie and Constance welcomed us, and took us to the primula-dotted woods. Thank heavens - moments later, a couple of deer went running through the trees and Model Dog nearly took my hand off at the wrist as she leapt to the chase - she is a deer-hound cross, after all. I just managed to hang on to her and (to their chagrin) they both stayed on leads while I dug.

We took lots of photos while we were at it. The In-Charge is going to draw the house, with iconic Benbulben to one side, to make a print for my Yeats garden. Yeats and Lissadell are a bit like strawberries and cream, they kind of go together.

Lissadell and Benbulben (and SuperModel, of course)

But we didn't linger very long - we had more calls to make, so we bundled the Models and my two buckets of primulas back into the car, and headed off to Brendan's garden.
What was left of Brendan's garden that is.
The dear man has dug most of it up for me, and plants in every container known to man (and several heretofore unknown) confronted me inside his gates. I knew at first glance that our small trailer wasn't going to cut the mustard with that lot, and in any case, Brendan wasn't there.

After watering a few things that weren't sure if they were enjoying the heatwave or not, we headed off to Nazareth House to fill the trailer with dead leaves.
They must have thought I was balmy when I asked if it was OK. I mean, who waltzes in and offers to sweep up your dead leaves and take them away?
We used our tarpaulin like a giant bag, filled the trailer and headed home.
By then, the Models had forgotten the beach at Lissadell and were less than impressed with their day out.

The silent road to Dublin

On Wednesday, we rose in the dark and headed out into a world devoid of sound and people.
It was cold in the blue of the morning. Fog drifted like milky smoke in the fields, turning dawn into a mystical sacrament, the sun a distant red god veiled in the sky, the bare trees spreading their arms in hushed worship.
We passed unseen through their morning ritual.

Three hours later, when we got to Dublin, it was just another busy day, our dawn flight faded with the mist.
I spent the day at Bord Bia, meeting other garden designers; the People who Make Bloom Happen; the Health and Safety officers; the PR team; the tea ladies...
It was a good day - tiring but very informative. They were all human, and nice, enthusiastic and helpful. It made my project seem - paradoxically - more manageable but also more terrifying. It was good to meet people for whom this is challenging but routine, but it also reinforced the ticking clock deadlines, the reality of having to translate my vision into a spectacle for many, many eyes.
We drove home watching the sun - back to a deep, fiery red ball - falling through a milky, misting sky. In the real, real world, nothing had changed. The day had just been handful of insubstantial hours.

Friday was the launch of the Yeats Day celebrations.
I was invited to go and mix with the great and the good, and afterwards I had lunch with Lucy.

Later we inspected my beech tree which had been delivered to her yard in our absence. We stood and looked at it in dismay. It was not what either of us was expecting, and it certainly was not going to fit the bill.
One of her chaps joined us, on his way home for the weekend. The two of them stood looking at it, comparing it with several beeches they had planted in the last while.
Minutes later I found myself being taken to look at some of those vastly superior specimens.
'Shall we?' said Lucy.
'We could,' he replied.
The two other lads, who'd just gone home were called back. The digger was dug out of the shed, the truck was brought to the site. Within what seemed like minutes a tree had been lifted from the ground, my poor, unsuitable and unloved specimen had been put into the hole (where it can quietly grow into itself) and the new tree was being loaded onto the truck.

Lucy and her team

And, bless them all, instead of going home, they then drove it, and the other few trees that had arrived that morning, out to Jack's and spent I don't know how long potting them up.
Some people are just totally wonderful.

Whiskey time again.
Wholly inadequate.
Again.

And today is Saturday. The week has turned full circle faster than light.
On Saturdays, lots of people chill out, watch sport, put their feet up.
That would be nice. Not the sport, but the feet up bit.
But Brendan's garden was calling and - yet again - Jack came up trumps.
With his trailer and Dutch trolleys, he drove me out to Calry where Brendan was waiting, bless him.
Sunshine, hail and a chilly breeze notwithstanding, we loaded - and loaded - and loaded.
Now Brendan's garden is in my yard, all six trolleys-full, not to mention bags, trays, tubs, fridge doors (he's an inventive chap, Brendan), buckets and basins.

Jack, the ModelDogs and Brendan's garden 

I call it 'my garden at Bloom'.
It isn't my garden at all.
It is a garden being created by a tireless, amazing, generous team of fabulous people.
(And two dogs.)



.

The Night Watch

BLOOM 5


It's 3.45am and I should be tucked up in my beddy-byes, but instead I've given up pretending that I'm going to go back to sleep anytime soon, I've thrown on my dressing gown and I'm sitting in the kitchen.
It's very warm in the kitchen, the fire is still glowing in the stove, but the Models, after an initially enthusiastic welcome have retired to their beds and SuperModel is groaning periodically - the canine equivalent of: 'Turn that light off! Some of us are trying to sleep here!'
Sleep? What is that?
A fable from some far-off land.
I'm having breakfast.

My poor, fevered brain keeps returning (unbidden, I might add) to the knotty problem of the mural.
There is a mural in my Bloom garden.
When I say it's causing me sleepless nights, I'm not exaggerating.
I'm not as concerned about the front of the mural as I am about the back, which must sound odd, I know.
The front of the mural is in Nik's tender hands, and as there are no better hands in which it could be, I have happily excised about 90% of anxiety on that score.
It's the fixing of the mural that is bugging me.

It was my contractor who first flagged it up. We spent a long time talking about the where's and whyfor's a couple of weeks ago and I thought we had - basically - sorted it.
Then I discussed it with Nik (who is inconsiderate enough to be wintering in France, enjoying himself) and he seemed happy enough with the overall plan. He pointed me in the direction of an engineer he knows.
So yesterday - no, the day before - I spent a profitable hour or so discussing it with this enterprising individual. When I asked whether he'd consider Sponsoring the required edifice, he looked at me speculatively and said it wasn't up to him, but he'd enquire.
I came home and triumphantly announced to the In-Charge that the mural was - at least in theory - sorted.

However, today - yesterday, I mean - I went to see the other engineer I've had in my sights.
He was fairly short and sharp and immediately pointed out several flaws in my newly hatched Grand Plan.
He also whacked a pretty hefty price tag on the whole operation, and when I asked if he'd Sponsor it for the greater good of the world and mankind - Yeats and Sligo in particular - he gave me a somewhat old fashioned look and said No. He then re-considered and said he'd throw in the cost of the labour.
It was a morsel, for which I was suitably grateful.

I'm not quite so grateful to find myself - at some ungodly hour of the morning - back at the design drawing board, having not passed GO and definitely not having collected 200.
The whole mural clock has, it seems, been turned back a month, with more questions now than I had at the outset.

I don't like lying in bed listening to the high-pitched squeal of my brain in overdrive.
It is not a restful way to pass the night watch, nor has it even provided any engineering solutions.
But at least I did pause to notice how beautiful my daffodils are while the kettle boiled. I picked them without even looking yesterday.
So the night is not entirely wasted.
And thank goodness the poor Models have managed to snatch a bit of kip, despite all.
That's something to be grateful for.
 

To Tree Or Not To Tree

NOT what I need for the Bloom garden, but Lucy and I quite fancied these as patio umbrellas

BLOOM 4

I spent a good bit of last week looking at trees.
In fact, I find myself looking at trees all the time. In hedgerows as I'm driving, in other peoples' gardens, in the woods with the dogs. And they are no sooner seen than categorised.
Too big - too small - good shape - not enough branches.
Birch - willow - hazel - alder. Sycamore even. Beech - if only.
And then there's the ash.
There are a lot of ash. They are beautiful trees.
I often find that the perfect specimen I've just eyed-up is an ash.
I was offered three perfect young ash trees, well - in fact a horse tried to eat them some years ago, but, having recovered, the resultant shapes were perfect - but it ain't gonna happen.
It is illegal to even lift an ash from the ground at the moment, let alone transport it to Dublin.

On Saturday, Jack took me to see some apple trees.
I have been on the hunt for a likely apple tree since January.
We walked around an old orchard just a couple of villages away.
The owner has kindly said I can borrow one. And a couple of cherries too - if I bring them back, and help Jack set the orchard to rights, which is fair enough. Jack is kindly going back to lift them on Thursday, which knots my stomach uncomfortably. I hate the thought of lifting these trees. Suppose they don't like it? Suppose they curl up their little torn roots and die? They are a bit neglected, and a bit overshadowed by a row of massive sycamores, but they aren't dead. Yet.

But if the garden at Bloom is to be made, trees we must have, and a) I haven't got the budget to buy them, and b) I can't find the right ones to buy anyway.
It's all very difficult.
I wish I'd known this was 'Go-go-go!' last autumn. At least then we could have trenched around these trees, let them make some little rootlets, steadied themselves against the shock.
But you know what they say - if wishes were horses...(they'd eat all the ash trees).

Anyway, there's no rest for the wicked.
On Sunday we loaded the Models into the car and headed off to Leitrim, to see a man about a cabin.
It's a bit of a puzzle, Leitrim. In my head it's sort of northeast of here, but to get there we drove an hour and a half down the road to Dublin.
Hmm. But it was a good day and the sun shone.

We ended up in the middle of a forest, talking to two lovely people while I secretly admired the way they live in such close connection with the land. Their garden was a delight - and the antithesis of mine. It has grown, bit by bit, into spaces that were once woodland, and most things that want to grow are allowed to grow. (Which doesn't happen in gardens that belong to control-freaks.) Their old cottage, in the middle of the clearing, has had a bit added on here and there, and is hunkered down seamlessly into its environment.
Outside the door - every door - flowers spilled out of old clay pipes and scillas spread across the ground like pale, early bluebells, while the dogs - ours and theirs - ran around like kids at a party.
It was a place of ease in the best sense, a place of welcome, and letting-live.

Niall weaves hazel and willow and makes all kinds of things from wood, including yurts frames - his own is pictured here, waiting for its sedum roof this spring - as well as chairs with character and traditional hay rakes and all kinds of other things.

He is going to build Yeats's cabin for me (the bit of it we need), from 'clay and wattles'.
I'm delighted.
If he weaves the magic of his homeplace into it, it will bring all the zen I could wish for into my little garden at Bloom. 

Blooming Gardens

BLOOM 1

I can understand why teenagers are constantly tired.
They are in the novitiate of life, and it's all exhausting.
I know, because I'm a novice at the moment.

This year is Yeats2015 - it's the 150th anniversary of the great poet's birth and there are events going on all over the place. You might have spotted one near you - Harp Concerts every full moon, Yeats on the London Underground, poetry readings at 1pm every day in Hargadons in Sligo, Yeats at the NLI in Dublin - and tomorrow he might pop up in Paddy's Day celebrations anywhere in the world, who knows!

I seem to have been living and breathing Yeats and I haven't even been to a concert or a reading yet. I haven't had time.
I was asked - last year - to design a Yeats Garden for Bloom 2015 and, knock me down  with a feather, it's been accepted and now I have to make it happen!
That's where the novice bit comes in.
Much as I love all things to do with gardens and garden festivals, I've never been involved in building a show garden before.

I've had plans, lists, phone numbers, websites and emails coming out of my ears.
I dream in square metres and my heart beats to the rhythm of plant names in Latin.
I am no longer seeing landscapes and backyards - everywhere I go, I am eyeing up possibilities and potential specimens.
And discovering how incredibly generous people are - with their time, their support, the contents of their flower beds...

Today, stomach muscles clenching in case I was making a mistake - I appointed a contractor. I wanted to appoint two - well, three actually. All of the ones I'd approached.
I think they'd all do a fantastic job, and each had something special to bring to the (potting) table. But of course it doesn't work like that, so I had to choose. I wish they knew how hard it was to make the decision - I'd much rather we all mucked in together, but life isn't like that unfortunately.
I hope I've chosen the right one. Time - as in all things - will be the judge of that.

And meanwhile, my own garden is abandoned and neglected.
It will forgive me, I daresay. In fact, in my absence, it will party its way through Spring and early summer, inviting in all the less salubrious types to dance through my borders and stay for indeterminate sleep-overs - you know, the docks and dandelions, the goosegrass - oops, sorry, the rumex obtusifolius, taraxacum officinale and galium aparine, I ought to say...

It'll be nice when I get past the tired and stomach-clenching bit.
Maybe that should be 'if' - 
My contractor said: 'It'll get worse before it gets better', and he ought to know.
Yikes!
But there again, by his own admission, he does go back and do it all over again year after year...   
Hmmm.
I'll keep you posted.

The Dragon Chick and The Giant Umbrella

We have, as it were, cashed in the rainy-day fund and bought a large umbrella.
A very large umbrella.
So far, this has just led to monstrous amounts of work, but hopefully it will all be worth it in the end.
We have got a polytunnel.

I have never remotely desired a polytunnel. I cannot envisage waking up in the morning and thinking: 'I can't wait to get into that tunnel', whereas I often rush out to the garden first thing with my early morning cuppa.
But recently the In-Charge and I went to visit a friend's garden. We had 'messages' in the area, and Annette, although she was away, invited us to make free of her verdant spaces, which we did. The In-Charge even got bitten by her young rescued pony - but he's well able for that sort of thing. He likes horses, and this one and he share the same name. Anyway, it was no'but a lad's trick.

In Annette's garden

Annette has a wonderful garden, which expands and changes every year, and seems to be continuously bursting with flowers. And she, along with everyone else in the north west, has a polytunnel. We stood in it, out of the mizzle, and admired the wall-to-wall sweet peas. The hot, humid air was laden with their scent and it was a very pleasant place to be.



 














We discussed it all the way home and have since visited other peoples' tunnels - by way or research. We ate warm, pungent tomatoes in one at Rossinver, admired jungle-like eucalyptus and dahlias in another near Frenchpark, and nearly passed out over the asparagus in a third (on account of the heat, not the asparagus). All grist for the mill.
It didn't take us long to decide.
As far as the fund is concerned, today is the rainy day.

Needless to say, being one of our projects, nothing has been simple.
Well, it was simple deciding where to put it because there wasn't much choice, but after that it was all up- or down-hill, depending on which way you look at it.
The ground wasn't level (and lies in the teeth of the westerly gales). There was a large tree adjacent to the site, not to mention a deep and open drainage channel. Moreover, it was the best grass on the property - how could we kiss goodbye to that? And - and, this was my beloved hens' paddock, one of my favourite places in the garden - could I bear to part with it?

The hens' and bees' paddock

The best grass on the property, a large tree and a deep ditch

 But on the other hand, it gets a lot of sunshine.

By the time we'd reviewed all the ins and outs, it didn't look good.
'It's going to cost as much to put up as it costs to buy the damn thing,' the In-Charge muttered.
All the same, we bit the bullet and set off on a Day Out to visit a supplier who seemed the most reliable, knowledgeable and reasonably priced. It turned out that not one but two of our closest friends had also bought their tunnels from him.
It would be delivered, he promised, a week later. IKEA fashion - ie in a lot of bits like a giant jigsaw.


But first we had a great deal of work to do and a gazillion tons of earth to move. We hired a Dragon Chick from Andy, the builder, and our friend Robin came and worked miracles with it, the first of which was to get it up the bank to the required location.

The Dragon Chick

Then it was just dig, dig, dig.

Bye Bye lovely grass.  Bye Bye hens if you don't watch out!

The hens helped. In fact, they were so helpful it's a wonder that none of them got flattened in the process.
I think they thought the Dragon Chick was their mother, constantly unearthing yummies for them to eat.

Model Dog helped too

When Robin and the Dragon Chick returned to their rightful dwelling-places, we were left looking at the beginnings of a decent swimming-pool, 5 tons of gravel - and a lot of flat-packed metal and wood.

Happily, the In-Charge's godson - little knowing what he was letting himself in for - emailed to ask if he could come and stay for a few days.
Why yes, dearest boy - how positively wonderful it will be to see you! How long can you stay? (And please bring your boots.)

Much debate as the fun and games begin

A lot of standing around in the mizzle

Down one ladder and up the next

Bless his cotton socks, he mucked in like a good 'un. We have, indeed, all mucked in like good-'uns.
We are now at the stage of wondering whose blimming idea this was in the first place, but at least we are finally ready to put the roof on.

The giant umbrella is nearly ready.
All we need is a bit of sunshine to 'stretch' the plastic.
And a pile of people to tug and pull and - ooops, not that way...

 
PS: Unfortunately, because we've been so busy, we forgot to pick the beans.