Mid October puts on an early Samháin display; darkens the noon sky and sends school children scattering. The Met Eireann weather warnings were accurate and precise. Today’s rainfall will be measured in inches rather than millimetres, the national watertable is now full to overflowing, and the monster’s measure is too sodden to tramp. The last of the Autumn Kings will be lifted as soon as it dries a little, and that will be that: all the beds emptied, all the drills cleared for another year.
We’ve managed to retrieve most of the old postings, but some, alas, could not be debugged. So we’ll move from here, and work on the legacy posts when the nights draw in. The clocks go back an hour Saturday week, and that means the allotment site opens on winter schedule. The last of the sunflowers and lupins have given up the ghost, and we’ve bedded the last of the muscari bulbs. Yellow wind warning and orange rain warnings result in a red flood warning. The monster’s measure though damp is watertight in every other ways…roll on the Samháin.
On February 1st we crossed our fingers just as St. Brigid had once crossed the reeds and rushes in the hope that the coming growing seasons would be kind to us. We had been prevented from stepping out the monster’s measure since mid November due to one of the wettest winters on record and our desire was that Lá Fhéile Bríd would at last herald the beginning of winters end.
And for a few short days the meteorological elements seemed to have heeded our wish for by mid February the early spring bulbs had bloomed. Small patches of vibrant yellow trumpets dotted previously drab garden borders, and the muscari’s blind inflorescence began sallying forth from their spindly leaf crowns. In mid February there was still a lot of standing water on the monster’s measure. It still rained almost every day, but, we had hoped that the slowly rising temperatures and early spring crawl towards equinox would dry things out and that we would, at last, begin the annual cycle of sowing and growing on plot 31.
In mid February we had general elections in Ireland, and as a result a new Dáil; we had Irish whiskey on sale at 35,000 euro a bottle; bee populations were at last globally acknowledged as being in drastic decline and 50% of all fish in the oceans we were being told now contained micro-plastics. Mrs Dirtdigger purchased Cosmos and sunflower seeds on one of her garden centre shopping ventures and Dirtdigger himself was getting his hands dirty and looking forward to ‘not looking forward to’ the screening later in the year of Mr. Speilberg’s first foray into the Musicals genre with his particular take on the classic Westside Story. There were Primary contests on one side of the globe, just as there was a daily ding-dong in Hong Kong on the other side.
There was also now, notably more interest being reported in a new bug which was making its way from mainland China and was causing eyebrow-arch in Italy and France. While in China this bug/virus was still considered ‘distant’, or at least somewhat distant as it was still ‘over there’ so to speak, on the other side of the world. But only a few short days later cases were being reported in Europe’s heartland. The number of cases soon became catastrophe, and catastrophe and causality very quickly showed just how small a village modern day planet earth is become.
And before you could shake a stick at it, it was here.
Everything is changed; changed utterly. Old certainties are challenged, and established protocols and covenants rudely awakened. I don’t know what the German words for ‘social-distancing’ are, but until quite recently I dare say most Germans didn’t know either, or at least had little need to consider such a jargon concept. And just as I don’t know the French for ‘flattening the curve’ or the Italian and Portuguese equivalent of ‘r-value’ or ‘lockdown‘, regardless of cultural mother-tongues we all have had to learn a whole new language rapidly. I’ve heard children as young as five speaking of cough-etiquette and hand hygiene, just as I’ve heard other ten year olds explicate the conspiracy theory that this is and was a man-made disaster visited on western democracies by, well, well by someone else. And just yesterday Mr and Mrs. Dirtdigger’s seven and eight year old nephews spoke with almost unnerving erudite insight on the pro’s and con’s of social cocooning.
Everything changed, and is changed: schools and colleges have been closed for 5 months, and every non-essential retail, manufacturing and construction business was closed and many remain closed; anyone who could work from home has had to do just that, and in the first few week of this new aberrant reality every Thomas, Richard and Harold had to adapt to the imposition of a 2km travel restriction limit. Hundreds of thousands of people here in Ireland were suddenly out of work while globally tens of millions were confined to home with little to do with their new found time-on-hands but to listen to the grim reportage-stream and watch live images from Italian and Chinese cities at the epicentre of this global pandemic. Seven months later and little is changed. The only thing that has changed is the focal location. Everything changes, yet everything remains the same.
Our last full day on our plot prior to lockdown was March 15th .
We had only just begun with the season’s undertakings when on Sunday 15th we were informed that the allotment site was being locked down to comply with emergency statutory regulations. The St Patrick’s Day festivities were cancelled, the pubs were closing, and quite unthinkably even the churches were closing, so it came as no surprise that our allotment site would also be closed. The stark fact of a natural social distance with this pastime and hobby did little to persuade otherwise. On Sunday 22nd we were allowed access for 2 hours to put things in order, and that, as they say was that until the end of May. We could not access the monster’s measure for 10 weeks, that same 10 week period which turned out to be the brightest and driest spring and early summer period since 1837; the brightest driest period in 187 years.
The country may have been in enforced lockdown, but there was a silver lining in that while everyone was confined to their own backyards at least the sun shone brightly. By April 6theveryone bore unseasonably early summer tans, and had learned to settle for socially distanced garden bingo and karaoke sessions, while every slowly stretching April and May evening invited cold Peroni and pizza sessions al fresco.
When we returned to our plot on May 18th we were, not surprisingly, greeted with a scorched earth scenario: our kale was non-existent; our peas and beans had disappeared, and our onion sets were still, relatively sets. The beetroot and turnip seedlings were miniscule but at least we had seedlings, just as with the parsnip seedlings; sometimes there can be a benefit to notoriously slow germination rates. Our rhubarb stand was decimated. There is a reason why gooseberries and rhubarb are synonymous with Irish summers of yore, the reason being that they both thrive in generally cool and damp conditions, and this by and large is the general Irish summer experience. But this year they never stood a chance, and at May’s end they were practically invisible. Having spent an hour assessing and bemoaning the sad scene we rolled the sleeves.
Six weeks later and the monster’s measure is greened once more. Mrs Dirtdigger’s wildflower patch is way behind, but it is starting to colour up. The onions have bulbed-up, but given the early stresses during the lockdown-drought well over half of them are already bolted. We’ve had some strawberries, some raspberries and we’ve certainly had a very good blackcurrant crop from the Ben Lomands with our Ben Tirrians also bearing a reasonable crop for early August.
We have courgettes aplenty and cabbages of a latterly re-designated cultivar, Lazarus- the hint being in their name. There is also a potentially good crop of cucumbers and tomatoes, but still green and immature at present due to the fact that since 12th June we’ve had little or no sunshine. By mid June Irish summer weather had returned to normal. The daily temperatures have held at or above average but it has been quite dull and wet most of the last 5 weeks, and just this week we’ve sown next year’s lupin, foxglove and chive seed. Today being August 6th we are into the first days of autumn, and restrictions are being re-imposed. And that was that…the locked-down plotted and spiked allotment experience…
If ever we needed reminding that there really and truly are things more important than golf, or rugby or parades or foreign holidays or the local boozer or allotmenteering for that matter, well this year has helped put many things into a much needed perspective, and whilst stomping the monster’s measure is a much cherished pastime, we have another string to our bow which pays the annual con-acre ground rent, and that has afforded afrontline experience which the monster’s space helps balance. We are not out of the woods yet; not by a long, long way; and rather sadly a lot of people have already begun to ignore the trees.
We’ve made our jams and we’re planning our pickles.
As any crow or raven could tell you reality roosts easy when the trees are taken for granted. Our hope is that the only second wave we’ll experience is a late second flush in the monster’s autumn blush.
Water Water everywhere… compliments#janpaulkelly on instagram
“It rained on August 1st, and it rained again on the 2nd. It rained on the 3rd 4th and 5th; it rained the first Tuesday and again on Wednesday 7th and the next day also. Thus it rained the whole first week of August. It also rained each day of the second week, with another full encore the following week. In fact it rained every day the first twenty two days of August,,,”
That is how we opened the monster’s previous posting at the end of September. We’ve not been able to do much in the meantime; hence we’ve not had much to record. We had hoped (and rather naively it must be said) that if things were not to improve that at least they could not get much worse than our end of summer experience. We had had a typically Irish summer i.e. one of sunshine and showers in equal measure with a couple of good weeks in July, but Augusts’ arrival seemed to herald an earlier than usual autumn and one which precipitated a necessary change in plans and harvest outcome. And so, just as with all other allotmenteers on our site and farmers and smallholders right across the country we proceeded to harvest and lift what we could so as not to have them totally ruined should prevailing gut feelings come to pass. Well, come to pass it has. Autumn was rightly drowned: no bright days with golds and oranges and ochres; no piles of dried leaves to kick-up on walks through the woods and parks; no snapping twigs underfoot, and no fabulous transitional autumnal show from the branches before winter’s set-in. No, everything is sodden, soaked and flooded. Whatever crops we’d not lifted before October arrived have had an aquatic existence, and having been submerged for too long thus, are most probably beyond use now, but, we cannot even check this status until the standing water subsides.
Jams and Chutneys and Sauces and Relish some of last year’s pantry harvest
It hasn’t stopped raining yet, and as such we’ve still not been able to do much with the monster’s measure. In recent weeks we have not been able to negotiate further than the full allotment site entrance as even the parking bays are under a foot of standing water. It rained most of August, and though early September brought a little respite from the deluge, October and November simply saw the situation deteriorate to a heavens opening down-pouring of almost biblical proportions. Large swathes of the country have already experienced flooding events; rivers have been in full spate for weeks on end, and in most low lying areas livestock has had to be housed already and that is a good 6-8 weeks earlier than usual and something not normally done till near winter’s end. A lot of the potato harvest could not be lifted, and a lot of the winter barley could not be sown, and to add a seasonal twist this last week has seen the mercury drop back significantly to what would be typically late December readings with daytime temperatures 3 degrees below average for early November. And to top it all off a forecast this evening of possible sleet and/or wet snow on a brisk north easterly and a forecast low tomorrow night of minus 4 degrees! Oh yes, come to pass it has: it was only a few short weeks ago we were mulling-over the potential of an early autumn, and suddenly we find ourselves in the grip of winter. Year after year, decade after decade, perhaps century after century even Ireland’s weather was always viewed as dependable. It was dependable in the sense that it was always quite unremarkable. You knew what to expect with weather in Ireland: never too hot, never too cold; an odd few days or perhaps a couple of weeks in July of fabulous summer sunshine, and once every couple of years a blanket of late seasonal snow which, if you were lucky enough, might just coincide with the late 19th and 20th centuries media-driven Christmassy sentimentality that somehow lulled generations into a false belief in the possibility of snow flurries between the 21st and 31st December every year, when records have always shown that we would have been most prone to snowfall, if indeed we were to have snowfall at all, from late January to late February each year.
For as long as anyone could remember Ireland’s weather was remarkably unremarkable in this sense: drizzle and sunshine, breezy, and blustery; soft spring days and soft summer days aplenty; frosty mornings, though not so many as to write home about and unnamed winter storms which blew in half-unexpectedly and without warning and invariably blew themselves out by Patrick’s Day. But, that was then, and now is the new weather reality. The pattern of weather in Ireland now is most definitely changed, and what was once by-and-large considered dependable and unremarkable is now most definitely become remarkably remarkable. As children of the twentieth century’s great and good technological developments and advancements, we here on monsterinthecorner have always valued the evidence and researched based conclusions which helped greatly improve the living standards, healthcare and education for many, many billions of people on this tiny blue spinning rock ninety-odd million miles from our nearest star; there is just no arguing with science when that science is done scientifically. And now almost all of The Science on climate change says…well, it says “we ain’t seen nothing’ yet!” We here on the monster’s emerald isle stomping ground now experience a pattern of weather with noteworthy extremes: we now have higher than average seasonal temperatures in both summer and winter; we now experience twice the historical mean number of Atlantic winter storms each season and ones which make landfall with greater and more sustained force than had been the case heretofore; we are now become acquainted with extra tropical storms and downgraded bona-fide hurricanes not to mention highly destructive and erosive tidal surges, and how can we ignore that steadily increasing number of days when rainfall amount surpasses former monthly equivalents. Most certainly, and for all the wrong reasons, our weather must now be regarded as remarkable, if not remarkably remarkable. Long before it was considered worthy of mainstream sound-biting we, here on monsterinthecorner, espoused an awareness of the fragility of the environment on which we all ultimately depend, and Mrs Dirtdigger has been a lifelong soft-shoed advocate and practiser of low-carbon footprint activity and sustainable living. So we’ll not attempt to outline the science here, we are just glad the giants in those particular fields have hoisted us onto their shoulders and, if truth be told, the whole world is (or at least should be by now) so well acquainted with the factual reality of climate change as to reduce quoted iterations here to little more than line and blog filler. So fact, the climate of the planet on which we live is in massive flux, and most of the dynamic drive behind that recent flux is undisputedly due to human abuse of the planet’s resources. Another fact is that even if every single plane, train and automobile stopped dead right now, and we mean right now; and if every single coal, oil and gas fired station on the face of the planet ceased production immediately, and if all the gigantic herds of intensively farmed livestock were culled overnight, and if not one more tree was to be felled anywhere across the globe from today, and even if production of all plastics and herbicides, pesticides and fungicides was ceased right here and now, well, it would all amount to nothing! Don’t get us wrong, this all needs to be achieved and it needs to be done YESTERDAY, but in the short term it will amount to absolutely nothing. Even if all this was somehow magically possible overnight it would not change one single iota of the unimaginable damage already done, and more importantly, neither would it slow nor suspend the disturbing effects we are now witnessing. This in no way is to sound sensational, nor defeatist, but this is the hard reality. We’ve tipped the climate into a reactive state and unfortunately we cannot tip it back again. We are going to have to ride this out, and that ride that is going to last for decades, perhaps centuries. Yet when you listening very carefully you hear we are developing our survival and mitigation discourse whilst seriously considering continuing to mine and burn, and pump and burn, and frack and burn, and cut and burn, and expand and grow economies, and maintain political viabilities, and talk the greatest talk that’s ever been talked, while we all hoodwinkingly walk somebody else’s walk to a mutually assured state of global chaos. It’s not The End of the F…ing World, oh no people, it’s much more serious than that, and if you/we/us/them are waiting for someone else to tell you what needs to be done and what you need to do, well then, you probably still haven’t got it.
Monster’s Access Pathway in November!!! compliments #janpaulkelly on instagram
It rained on August 1st, and it rained again on the 2nd. It rained on the 3rd 4th and 5th; it rained the first Tuesday and again on Wednesday 7th and the next day also. Thus it rained the whole first week of August. It also rained each day of the second week, with another full encore the following week. In fact it rained every day the first twenty two days of August, and that, as must be said put a real dampener on the late summer’s gardening experience.
It did dry up and improve somewhat toward month’s end but the dull damp conditions for most of the month took its toll: the potatoes were blighted, as was the polytunnel tomato crop; the pumpkins sat in the dull damp and those that survived the unseasonal water-logging and flooding simply called it quits and failed to mature and swell to anything near expected potential, the vines mildewed completely and we had to pick the remainders. We had to lift the late onions and shallots and cure them under cover, and the lettuce and rocket bed was obliterated by the constancy of the pelting droplets; the summer colour in Mrs Dirt-digger’s orangey-patch looked bedraggled and those sunflowers which actually managed to bloom looked forlorn. We did however have some cucumbers from the polytunnel, in fact – and perhaps by way of compensation – we have had a veritable cucumber glut, which we’ve put to good use by using all the excess in a store of pickles, a challenging exercise with our dried herb and spice rack; turmeric, mustard seed, fennel seed, dill, chive flowers and shallots, fifteen jars in all to see us through the leaner months.
Anemone with rudbekia
Things improved greatly with the first days of September, skies cleared and the sun shone; we had days with temperatures well into the mid twenties and all breathe a sigh of thankfulness at feeling the remnants of summer before it disappeared completely again for another year. The nights are cooler now and the mornings mistier, and with the exception of a couple of overcast occurrences the first 20 days of September had been a bonus. As I type there is patchy blue sky once again, a strengthening breeze and an expected temperature this afternoon of 18 degrees, which for the latter end of September is as good as it gets.Rain is forecast. The early-fruits harvest through the early summer months was disastrous, a combination of last summer’s prolonged severe drought and this spring’s adverse blossom burst timing, and although our gooseberry and blackcurrant crop was practically non-existent as a result, these last few weeks Mrs Dirtdigger has been foraging some wonderfully plump blackberries which we’ve combined with April Queen Cider apple to make some seasonal jam that will more than compensate for the meagre store from the early season harvest.
Grasshopper on a ripening pumpkin
We’ve already dipped into the pasta sauces and pizza sauces we jarred, just as we used the Rhubarb and Ginger Jam; we’ve also used plenty of the summer pickles, and this weekend we will set about combining our now fully ripened Cayenne peppers with Fresh coriander leaves and garlic bulbs harvested in July to make some Harissa, another of the monster’s staples. The Purple Cascade French Beans proved to be a winner, and though the vines are now spent we have over 10 lbs frozen for use in the coming months. The beets are finished and it’s just a tad too late to try a successional sowing, the autumn curly kale is ready anytime soon and we still have the parsnip bed which only lately seems to be spurting growth and this should herald a good crop, most especially with the warm damp soil conditions that are autumn parsnip heaven. And so with the drawing to a close of the monster’s annual cultivation activities, other activities come to the fore. We’ve already begun to plan some of those changes we need to make, and also some we want to make during the forthcoming winter season. Mrs Dirt-digger is planning a large octagonal herb wheel construct into which we’ll relocate most of our herbs early next year, and we will also finish the gothic picket fence which we started last winter. It rained again yesterday, but as we are now the darker side of the equinox the weather is as expected to be given that. The rudbekias and anemones shine in the speeding autumn sunlight, the dahlias stand blousy-bright and the autumn beauties are on sentry duty right the way around the monster’s perimeter.
This past weekend we set some lavender and bay laurel cuttings; we collected our marigold, sweetpea, poppy and calendula seed heads, we cut the last of the strawflower blooms and have them drying in the potting shed and we planted some ‘Thalia’, ‘Sunnyside Up’ and ‘Double Fashion’ daffodil bulbs for new colour next spring and with that action right there, this circle is squared for the year.
Monster In The Corner... 