At last, Dublin latitudes are benefitting from sunlight. We see that in a bed of Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’ planted for over a decade under a canopy of trees in the front. Some passers-by have told me they are siberian bugloss ‘Jack Frost’. I’ve also had conversations with passing architects and keen gardeners who don’t know its name. They paused to admire the silver-frosted, heart-shaped leaves detailed by veins and edges of jade green. We have come to think that the perennial appearance of sprays of small, bright blue flowers are the confirmation that spring has arrived. Confusingly, after a decade of reproduction and expansion, some of the frost is disappearing. Warming?Dehybridising? Unevolving? Regressing?
[Read more…] about Jack Frost, President and Platechapbook
No Way To Rome (Yet)
‘We should have walked to Buxton today. It should have been the first stage of the trip to Rome … We’ll do it same time next year .. it’ll be 18 daily hikes before we can catch the Dover ferry to cross to France. And then, well, then it’ll be a mere 96 daily hikes to get to dinner in Rome’ or so I wrote this day last year.
[Read more…] about No Way To Rome (Yet)March Magnolias
‘March, the month when magnolias rule our world’ wrote Thomas Pakenham in The Company of Trees, a gift last December that inspired me to test his opinion.
Our local 5 km pandemic travel radius is coast-cropped. We only had access to 37 km2 for exercising and magnolia hunting. I stopped counting after finding over 80 specimens in 26 days of peering into suburban gardens.
[Read more…] about March MagnoliasThe Garden Issued
Chapbook or photozine? I wish I’d thought of calling them the former before I started publishing photozines. And I wish we’d thought to set up Bracket Books Ireland long before now. Either way, we intend to fail better next time.
Garden went into the post-office yesterday. It’s the second book, the February edition, for the current subscribers. I’d anticipated the pandemic-slowed postal services would make local deliveries on March 1st. It seems that nothing is predictable and miraculously, some arrived today.
Yes, these were taken at home during the pandemic.
The Muglins Issued
It’s a bit late for January but the production issues have been overcome and we mailed out the first issue of the photozine today. The free subscription list of thirty-nine is full but that doesn’t mean a request for a free copy will be ignored in these first few issues.