Garden - Early March

 

I love roses. I have to admit that it is my favorite flower along with winter roses, hellebores. But I've come to realize that I only love certain types of shape and colors of them. I adore pale pink, round clustered old rose shape. (I've tried using 'realise' and 'colour' but I hate red lines due to my job. Red underlines mean problems, errors. So let me just stick to American English that may offend English English speakers.) 

I also love lavender colors, many Europeans seem to call the shade 'blue' but it still confuses me. We never learn that color 'blue', it is 'light purple' and it is the official name. When ye call 'purple', 'violet', 'navy', 'light purple' all 'blue', Asians get lost. At least I did. 

Almost 5 years ago, we moved to this house in the country. My love and I have moved about 6 times. I say about because there were a few gaps between the moves and we stayed at mam's (mother-in-law's) during those gaps. We met in Korea, moved to Ireland, England, Ireland, Luxembourg and Ireland. It has been 11 and a half years since we got married. During the time, we rented 5 places together. So this house is our 6th house and the first house we purchased. And we are very lucky to have a fairly big garden. I've never dreamed of having a garden in my life as I was so used to high rise apartments in Korea. Gardens were always there but they were communal and we had to do nothing but pay the maintenance fee. When I think of it, I took those climbing roses and well-trimmed trees surrounding so many apartment complexes for granted. I was never even interested in knowing who was doing all the work.  

Since we moved in to this house with our 3-month-old baby girl, we've done some gardening but it was never really proper. We got hedges planted, he cut the lawn and I planted several climbing roses as I fell in love with them when I lived in London. But nothing much more. Then year 2020 happened. I had such high hope for the year since it was the year I was going to turn 40. There, I said it. Wow, I feel old but I feel less old than I expected when I was younger. I still managed to celebrate my birthday in February in London. It had been 10 years since we left London. I had no idea that it would take that long to go there again. It is only 1.5 hour flight journey away. I know some people even commute to London from Ireland every week. A lot fewer Asian tourists were there but it was still that bustling energetic city. Then grim March came and everyone was home. It was very strange but I learned to enjoy my husband helping out more with housework and minding our girl. Since she is still young and doesn't have to worry too much about school life and studies, I felt in a way that it was a good time for our family. For my husband to get to spend much more time with our 4-year-old daughter. He was always a great dad but they definitely bonded a lot more through last year. 

So, to get to the point, I became a mad gardener in 2020. I planted on almost every dry day and even wet days. I learned how to shovel/dig everywhere. I was afraid to make one small circle in a huge lawn at the beginning but now I enjoy carving my lawn in a heart shape or so. I managed to plant more than 100 species of flowers, shrubs and trees including wild flowers. I know waaaaaaaaaaaay more names of flowers than I did in 2019. But I know I am still a newbie. There are lots more things to learn in gardeners' world. I'm so grateful that I have the land to play with, touch the earth and not be afraid of wiggly worms.

For the last 5 days, I

- made another rockery thanks to our beast jumping on the wet lawn whenever there is a passerby. It is simply not possible to keep the lawn around that area. 암석 정원

- planted/re-planted camellias (2 medium sized hot pink and 3 small pink) 동백나무

- moved French lavenders from the gate thanks to rabbits that managed to sneak in and nibbled the roots. They don't eat the woody mature ones. But they still munch medium sized lavenders. And they love the small one's leaves and roots. I lost about 8 out of 10 lavenders during the first year of gardening. I save them a lot now thanks to our beast/mutt. (Her pet name will get better later.) 프렌치 라벤더

- planted creeping thyme (pale purple). 15 to the front left garden, 15 to the right new border I carved out. 연보라색 타임

- planted 4 nepeta (giant catmint) between shrubs. 캣민트 

- poured 4 bags of pebbles and 1 pea gravel around the rockery with lavenders and catmint. 조약돌

- moved rising daffodils to the gate area. The nearer the gate, the more exposed to those rabbits. (can't believe that I became that angry farmer in Peter Rabbit. I still love rabbits. Just outside of my garden. 수선화

- moved all pieces of dug-out lawn (about 20 wheelbarrow-full) on top of briars. I loved them when we first moved in as they made a natural wall. But it is overgrown and quite invasive. It is of course not safe for our girl. I pressed them with the heavy lawn with soil. Not sure if it will work. But I'm hoping that the grass grows long to make a beautiful wall pressing the prickly thing. 잔디

- trimmed edges of 4 beds (1 circle, 1 butterfly, 2 hearts) with a shovel. A shovel is like a brush to me now. 꽃밭 가장자리 정리

- planted 3 lovely blue-ish pale pink roses from him in one of the Heart beds. 하이브리드 장미 (So happy to see them full bloom in early Spring!) 비닐하우스의 기적

- planted red Japanese quince (front left wall). 풀명자? 모과였구나!!

- planted Burgundy Ice rose in Hellebores bed. 매혹적인 와인색 장미        

- planted Acer palmatum 단풍나무 at a shady corner of front left garden.  

- planted 3 seeds/roots(?) of fire red Astilbe in shade 노루오줌(...이라니...)

- planted 2 seeds of pale pink Astilbe next to Fairy garden.

- planted Liatris spicata purple seeds in the middle of Heart bed. 리아트리스 스피카타

And this is our beast 'Doori(두리)'. It means 'the second baby' in Korean. It is not a unique name in Korea but it is in Ireland. Many people seem to call her 'Dori' or 'Dooley' here. She was born on our 10th anniversary. So she was meant to be our family. At the moment, she loves napping on the lawn, chasing rabbits and crows and making lots of holes jumping on all over the wet lawn.