Monday 3-26

Monday morning I got up early for a big breakfast of eggs, kale, apples, porriage with bananna, and cinnamon toast with some herbal tea I had gotten from the health store in Athy over the weekend. I went for a short walk around the property line and went right to the gardens to meet Clara to plant some forest plants for Lesley. She had bought a few anenemes, crocus and other various bulbs wtih would be spread across a few ridges in the nut groove behind her stabel yard. We had four trays of plants so we split them up, placing them randomly between patchs of lillys, pachysandra, and gallanthus. This took about an hour and a half, then we moved onto cutting back an area of raspberries and Clara started pulling weeds around the area so we could later dig up any runners and put them back into the main rows of plants. Over the weekend the wind had blown off some of the nets covering the onions so we had to gather some more rocks and lay them down the sides of the beds to keep out critters and birds that had already pulled several of the onions out of the soil. A few areas had holes, so we also too time to tie them back together with pieces of bailing twine. I spent the rest of  the morning rotovating patches from a few weeks before to tear out any surfacing weeds and cut the soil even finer.
After lunch that day, Which was on the patio again in the warm sunshine, I got a hold of my airline to discover the price for transfering tickers. Since my origional ticket was a economy saver package, I would have to upgrade classes to transfere tickets which would cost over $1500. I went back to work for the afternoon without thinking much of the ticket situation and tried to enjoy the great weather. As soon as we went out I was needed to help James agther a hundred Achillites for a buyer from a local nursury which had run out of thier own supply. We dug clumps of ten and put them into small pots with compost and enough water to make it back to his own garden. These bulbs go for a high price because they take so long to divide and spread over an area. This garden is known for having one of the oldest and largest collections of Achillites in Ireland. After potting up the bulbs I went to water all of the pots and containers in the stabel yard as well as the small greenhouse full of verebena and flower sprouts. I then went back to the garden and harvested an area of leeks that could be weeded and rotovated. I gathered the weeds and stones and moved the rotovator to the bed. I went over the area a few times to level out the soil that had been built into a large raised bed for the root vegetables, but would now be used for cabbages and broccoli. For the remainder of the day I weeded areas near the stone boarder and set up a sprinkler to moisten the potato mounds and rows of beans and peas. After we finished, James showed me a section of the stream around the woodland that had been over grown with a creek grass that had to be raked out before it was out of control. I planned to start tuesday with waist high wellies and a rake clearing as much as I could before the afternoon.