As with the seasons, the garden is not required to be in harmony with the gardener’s expectations of it. Gardening and allotmenteering is a process of learning to work with what you have, and this year -more than any other in recent years – both the garden and the seasons have challenged even the most experienced gardener and Plantsman; but what a year it has been to date. An old adage says that if you always expect the worst, then everything else will be a bonus, and whether or not you agree with the couched principle of this succinct aphorism, the experiential irony is not lost. Skeptical commentary aside however, the year to date has presented us with both the best and worst of gardening times, and there is still one full quarter portion to run.
As usual, the arrival of the New Year heralded a new chapter in the gardener’s almanac and diary, but it was not too long before the great gardening expectation was consigned to a much longer than expected stay in winter’s stasis chamber, whence it seemed winter showed no shadow of parting at all. Yet depart it did, and in what seems little more than the blink of an eye the sheaves and sisters are being brought in…
Jams and Chutneys and Sauces and Relish August 2018
And we too have been busy with the bringing-in…
Moneymaker Tomatoes & the last of this year’s RhubarbParsnips and Peppers and dew drenched Florence FennelParsnips, Beans,Blackberries and Squashes
It was a big summer; with big sunshine and big temperatures and a big drought that will live big in the memory. And there you have it, past tense. A big summer it was; but now summer into autumn has slipped and this year’s transition is sudden and tangible.
The Monster’s September song…
September, that great misplaced misnomer of the calendar year, tripping softly off the tongue, ripening memories of the big summer that was , safe that come the darker days September will fete us something to remember. And so we’ll gather and collect, and store-up, and we’ll treasure the harvest just as we’ll harvest the treasures from the big summer that was, and mindful that just as every gardener and grower begins the process of reaping and gathering, nature herself actually begins the cycle again, for come September nature begins sowing again, scattering her seeds abroad, and therein next summer is already sown…
I remember it well: it was The Year of the Cat, Silly Love Songs were Songs in the Key of Life, The Boys were Back in Town and some Dancing Queen was saving kisses for just about everyone. Rocky Balboa battered slaughterhouse daylights out of refrigerated carcasses and was doing it all for Adrienne, while, on the flip-side of things “we could have been anything that we wanted to be” with Tallulah and Blousey and Fat Sam. Yes I remember it well; the Bic white razors and Blue Stratos aftershave, the plaid patterned kick flairs, the big heels, the brass toecaps, and the migration from barbershop to hair dresser. And I remember it was warm, very warm, with water shortages and rent strikes. It was warm too in the Venetian court as one of literature’s earliest cross-dressers extolled the quality of mercy, and warm too as Kodály’s Hary János met Friel’s Potato Gatherers and all stopped by woods one snowy evening to discuss the allegorical significance of red socks sown into the futility of human greed in Sassoon’s Base Details. Yes, I remember it well; well most of it; well, some of it. It was 1976, the whole country was a ‘thundering disgrace‘ and that was the last time we experienced a spell of weather as warm and as dry as we’ve experienced thus far this year. It was the last time we experienced a bona fide prolonged heatwave.
Ireland was a different place back then; grubby and dreary, still striving to come to terms with the reality of developing its own terms, and still trying to find some direction for the head-spun inertia experienced since it had taken its place among the Nations of the earth just a few decades earlier. Dublin too was different back then; the city centre was –as it had been for over a hundred years-crumbling, and the newer suburbs both north and south which had been initiated just a decade earlier now stretched out to the green country fields with no shops, schools, churches or hospitals and whence prevailing winds veered from that certain direction memory of what had been left behind would still catch olfactory orifices off-guard on light winter mornings as plumes from the distant hop house surfed the wavelength between the lifting smog and the Liffey’s perspicuous stench. And that was then; and this is…well, forty years later… It has been a good summer, this summer of 2018. It has been a very warm and very dry couple of months. It has been a good summer, and upbeat consumer sentiment is reflected in the latest quarterly index retail figures, benefiting no doubt from the sunny feel-good bounce with sales in beverages and foods and BBQ’s and stay-cations way, way above average and expectation. It has been a very good summer and those lucky enough to have been visiting from abroad this last couple of months will have seen Éire at her bright and shiny best. The sun has been shining for weeks on end, the whole population is tanned and suddenly there is renewed talk of the necessity of increases in net inward migration as we are at full employment levels once again, something not seen since the heady days of the Celtic Tiger. It has been a very good summer, and the country is on a high: those who needed to be held to account have, (well some of them have) at last, been held to account. We are become an all inclusive and an all encompassing pluralistic society. We’ve paid our international debts in full and on time and we are now squirreling away for the other type of day, the rainy day; and boy oh boy we know the rainy days here too!
The monster’s entrance…
It has been a good summer so far, but the monster alas, is struggling. The effects of the summer’s drought-like conditions are now unmistakable. We have had some wonderfully early cucumbers and courgettes, and we’ve wiped out most of the early lettuce, salad leaves, kohl rabi and radishes but the broadbeans and potatoes are struggling big time and dare say the crop will not be so good as we hope for. The strawberries are finished, the shallots are curing and the onions have been lifted. The gooseberry crop struggled to plump so we opted for a crop in the hand sooner than the crop on the bush and managed to get a dozen jars of jam. We’ll be doing likewise with the blackcurrants this weekend. The pumpkins are swelling and the Florence fennel has germinated. We tasted some of the beetroot and it is fabulous, and once the Red Barons are cured we’ll chutney about 10 lbs. We’ve summer pruned the plum and dwarf heritage apple trees, and we’ve put the french beans and swede seed to bed and in so doing we have set the monster up for autumn and winter. Today being the 19th July means it’s Tipping Day on monsterinthecorner, the 200th day of the year, the day by which high summer almost always recognizably wains. The young finches, sparrows and linnets are fledged, robin chicks have been rescued, fox cubs and leverets are making their own way and the early summer lush greens are beginning to look just a tad jaded. Some of the monster’s beds and drills are emptying fast, and at last there is a forecast of a substantial rainfall over the next 24 hours. And slowly, but surely, it all turns. And sooner than expected we’ll be saying “we saw both days”… and we’ll remember them and hopefully recall these days with fondness. It has been a truly good summer thus far, so good so that in the last number of days we’ve found ourselves wondering what (?) if anything, the abiding memory of this great summer would or should be, should we be fortunate enough to live to reflect upon it forty years hence. But, this is where we’ll leave it, for now.
firewheels and poppies and peas and robins… monster images from the summer that is 2018 images compliments @janpaulkelly (aka Mrs. Dirtdigger)
Marvelous May more than made amends: warming breezes with bee-buzz and late apple blossom. It sprang; it sprung; it’s spring: it’s sparrow-chirp and blackbird songs, with frolicking new born fleeces and days stretching out to where summer belongs.
Onions, Pumpkins, Shallots & Beans
Yes, May has more than made up for things: Lilacs hang heavy, early foxglove and Lupin spires stand proud and every bloom is bombarded by winged wonders that now seem frantic to make up for the month long delay in bud burst just a few short weeks ago.
Yes, May has more than made up for things; and with that all is forgiven. All the bare beds and drills are green again and all the seedling which had to be kept under cover for far longer than expected have been grounded at last. The polytunnel tomatoes, peppers and aubergines have set bloom and trusses at last. And softly, almost imperceptibly May morphs, and merges, and June…Glorious June, and for the first time in many decades the fulfillment of the promise of an early summer is fully realized, with thoughts drifting on waves of meadow grasses and buttercups. Tits and thrushes and warblers, and poached-eggs and heady irises, and the first roses of summer, Port Sunlight and Young Lycidias; and there is a time for all things, for constant watering and thinning-out, for hardening-off and sowing out, but there is also a time for leaving the hoe and trowel rest a while, and allowing the misplaced weeds thrive an hour or two longer, or a day or two longer; a time for prosecco and Ice Cream, and balmy nights with clammy skin and late outdoorsy activities, and long bright evenings sitting in the dappled shelter of the broad beans, gooseberries and blackcurrants and wondering what it would be like with a whole summer of early June, a thought as fluttering as the Holly Blue butterflies.
Bright & Shiny ButtercupsBearded Iris ‘Killiney’
All looks well in the early summer sun, and the monster is no different, but the gardener’s eye still catches on the after effects of the atrocious winter and spring; the space where the peach tree used to be, and the gaps in the border where the dahlia and geraniums just didn’t make it. But, it is still early June, only early June, and for more years than we care to remember at this time of the year we would idly content ourselves wishing for the onset of a decent run of summer, sometime soon… So, here’s to a decent run of summer, sometime soon, a run of summer like this year’s early June.
Monster In The Corner... 