Just published over at Bealtaine Cottage Good Life…
Lughnasadh Garden…here’s a link for members:
https://bealtainecottage.org/2016/09/02/lughnasadh-garden/
If you would like to support the Bealtaine Project by becoming a member, here’s a link:
Tag Archives: plants
Earth Sense
Thankfully it rained for most of the night!
Not a lot of people would be happy to report that, but as a grower, the dry heat of recent weeks has been a close call for the younger plants!
The water barrels have filled and the well is finally sending more than a trickle to the cottage!
More peas and beans were planted out yesterday, so this rain will bed them in nicely!
If it was possible to bottle the Earth Scents outside in the gardens, then I’d be a millionaire and could buy lots more land to plant trees on!
There is another Earth Sense though…one we all need to tune into…one that ensures a sense of well-being.
A sense of belonging to the environment around us.
Living in a small cottage ensures much time spend outdoors during the day, something that was common place for many people until fairly recent times.
The advent of TV ensured more and more people lived indoors and not out.
I recall as a child spending much of the day outdoors, as there just wasn’t room in the house to play!
Walking outdoors can add to a sense of well-being, even in the rain.
The healing aspects of Nature are being continually distilled into medication by the pharmaceutical corporations, yet remains inherent all around us.
Nature massages the soul!
Being outside with plants, trees, wildlife, Nature, animals and birdsong, is unbeatably good for ones’ mental health!
Nature is real and alive, strong but gentle and always there for us despite the abuse we fling at her.
It is something that cannot be put into a pill and certainly not for sale in a bottle!
Bealtaine Cottage is also on YouTube…with over 102 videos about Permaculture, planting, growing and living.
Over 800 blogs from Bealtaine Cottage in the archives here.
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A World Without Butterflies and Bees…
Buddleia are in full, heavy, nectar perfumed bloom all over the gardens at Bealtaine Cottage.
This is one just opposite the front door.
The purple coloured blossoms droop expectantly, waiting for the seasonal Butterflies, but there are none…
What has happened is the fault of humankind, weather, pesticides, corporate greed and ecocide happening all around me.
If the Butterflies had to rely on the Bealtaine gardens alone, then the world is mad.
I fear, in this area, they do.
Flowers like these Perlagoniums hold nothing for Bees or Butterflies.
Colourful they are and I love the vibrancy and traditional look of them, but they are just that, traditional ornaments.
There are no others like this at Bealtaine Cottage.
Yet, parks are filled with these plants and others that are of no value to the natural world around us.
Gardens the same…
There is only one neighbour who tends a garden.
Only really one other garden in bloom with plants so loved by Bees and Butterflies.
The pathways in between are now cut as the silage machines level the meadows of meadowseet and buttercup and all the wild flowers much beloved of the humble Butterfly, whose days in the sun were always few and now, it appears, none.
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Permaculture is…
Permaculture is… a design system…
It’s a simple and effective way to apply the principles of ecology in the design of sustainable human habitats.
Building a veranda on the south side of Bealtaine Cottage was a practical and sustainable way of applying the principles…there is now an all-weather area in which to shelter and store humans, plants and fuel.
Permaculture is not just about growing things.
Although permaculture focuses on food production, it is more than just food, as it embraces every aspect of living holistically on this Earth…with this Earth!
All aspects of living well, such as health, and education, are integrated in this new way of living… Aspects of community and architecture, especially living architecture and always sustainable architecture…using locally source materials, especially wood.
It brings sustainability into all aspects of life, even art, as in the stained glass wheel of life using beer bottles!
Permaculture uses resources from, essentially, three main areas.
These are nature, traditional systems…as in the application of permaculture principles at this old stone cottage, and modern scientific /technological knowledge.
Embracing knowledge and applying it in a permaculture way is one way of describing what I do here at Bealtaine Cottage.
For example, retro-fitting the cottage for maximum insulation using minimum £resources, such as sheep’s wool for insulation in the cottage and fertility on the hungry land!
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A Life in the Country ~ Buddha, Permaculture and Growing…
What we think, we become. Buddha
Thinking plants and gardens and growing…I suppose I have become a person who is in love with the Earth!
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumoured by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. ~Buddha
Permaculture wine…because, all the fruit is grown here at Bealtaine Smallholding using permaculture methods and every aspect of the wine making process is carried out in a sustainable way.
Even the demijohns have been sourced as recycled/upcycled.
I’m reading ‘Blackberry Wine,’ by Joanne Harris at present and one of the central characters, ‘Joe,’ is definitely a permie!
It’s a great read!
A reminder from a few months back…and yes I planted trees and a lot more than 50.
As for the Blackcurrants, I have taken to planting them along the ditches here and into the hedges…planting a slip at a time!
Trees are very precious to me.
I have lived here for 7 years and planted over 600 to date with plans for more!
Plant as though your life depends on it…because it does!
We could not exist as we do if there were no trees.
A mature leafy tree produces as much oxygen in a season as 10 people inhale in a year.
Forests act as giant filters that clean the air we breath.
Trees Shade and Cool
Shade resulting in cooling is what a tree is best known for.
Shade from trees reduces the need for air conditioning in summer.
In winter, trees break the force of winter winds, lowering heating costs.
Studies have shown that parts of cities without cooling shade from trees can literally be “heat islands” with temperatures as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit higher than surrounding areas.
Permaculture Cottage…the Acres of the PermaGoddess
Three acres of Permaculture and seven years of growing from scratch…monoculture emptiness.
A journey via Permaculture that has led me to give up smoking, become a Vegetarian and evolve into a Vegan.
Happy to be an Economic Terrorist…I rarely shop, so that makes me an enemy of the Corporate State…and anyone who wants to rant about me being a Conspiracy Theorist…well, I live in the real world and watched as Ireland was handed over to the Corporations, mostly banks, bankers and greed-mongers…if this resonates with you then be prepared to be dismissed as a C.T.!
You can’t buy anything on this site…everything I advocate comes for free and I’m happy to welcome visitors to this Permaculture Smallholding and show them around, even send them off with free plants and advice on how to do permaculture.
A willow arbour. Free. No Garden centre involved here! No money, just the abundance and love and goodness that is Nature…beyond money and the Merchants of Greed!
And places to sit made from upcycled castaway wood and concrete blocks…free!
Hens at Bealtaine today…Battery eggs are degraded food…the corporations will degrade you because you are little more to them than battery hens!
The Permaculture Polytunnel this morning. Spilling over with food and seeds…Seeds are the bankable currency of the VERY near future! Why do think the US government shares the control of GM seeds with that Monster Monsanto?
Nature is perfect…so why does all the corps., want to control and degrade her?
A Very Irish Garden!
A Friend Visited Today…
and remarked that this was a “very Irish garden.”
I asked her what she meant?
“It’s definitely not an English garden, or any other type of a garden!”
Hmm…
I thought about this after she had departed and came to some interesting conclusions.
Firstly, there are no formal beds, so that explains the fact it’s not an ‘English garden!’
This garden, like we Irish, is all over the place, with lots of surprises round every path…like here, almost hidden from view, the beautiful Spirea, Bridal Wreath, situated at the top of irregular steps that dare you not to fall!
The fact that wherever one goes in the garden, there are wildflowers as much as there are cultivated ones and are simply not contrived in any way!
And the plants themselves seem to possess a rugged individuality, so beloved in the Irish themselves.
It’s like they fuse back into Nature and determinedly do their own thing!
So, yes Marian, I do agree…this is a very Irish Garden!
Nettles, Compost and Spuds…the food of love! Permaculture Picture Post.
Nettles on the compost heap…
Some are used for tea, some for mulching…makes a nutritious mulch around plants!
Lots of lovely straw from the hens garden, ready to put into tyres as a healthy base for growing spuds.
The spuds are placed on a bed of the used straw and covered with the same.
And as the spuds grow I will top them up with home-made compost…the more home-madey the better!
The Benefits of Mulching in a Land without Rain…Ireland ~ Permaculture Living.
There is little space left in the tunnel…plants and seedlings jostle for what is there and the grapevine is setting lots of fruit. Nectarine and Peach trees in here have already set an abundance of small fruits, so the harvest is looking fruitful!
Lots of tiny Pears have set on the Pear trees in Zones 1 and 2. Frost at this point can happen but is not expected, so the majority of settings should mature into good fruit.
Each year for the past four years of the seven Bealtaine has been growing I have siad that this would be a bumper harvest for Apples. I have to say this again…a bumper crop is expected! I will post regular pics to update you on this! You can see some from last harvest, when the trees were heavy with fruit! No sprays, no chemicals, just permaculture!
Heavy mulching arounf fruit trees, bushes and plants have saved them from the ravages of the drought experienced recently here in Ireland.
Living in Ireland where few trees are planted,( except the dreaded Sitka Spruce for money!) Bealtaine is fast growing to look like an Oasis in a desert. Intense planting, as per permaculture, makes this small 3 acres look exceptional. Most farmers in Ireland get financial subsidies and don’t plant trees…I have planted almost 600 and receive zero reward…well, not in financial terms, but you can see the immense rewards here for Gaia, birds, insects, animals, visitors and me! PLANT MORE TREES!
