Sunday Morning

Sunday morning, brings the dawning

It's just a restless feeling by my side
(Reed, Cale) 

And here we are. It's a cold Sunday morning and we awake in the dark. Nothing new there - the dark still reigns supreme at 6.30am, only beginning to lighten when the hour of seven is well established. Alannah is an early riser and as a perk of being mother, I get to watch (with her) the sunlight coming back around every morning. Some days it is bright and golden, with the light reflecting off the amber coloured beech trees that line the Charleville estate walls, and some days it is dark and damp with light barely making an impression behind heavy grey clouds that block out life-giving-sun's light. How different from the summer when light was barely gone for more that a few hours, and when getting up at 5am seemed like the wisest thing to do to ensure we didn't miss an ounce of all those glorious June mornings and hot afternoons.

Woodland winter palette awesomeness

But best to stay in the moment, in the here and now. Best not to linger in the past summer months or waste precious winter wishing for the brighter days to come. Best to embrace the dark and welcome it for what it brings. For this is the dark time, the winter dreaming. Time to think, time to read and time to process thoughts and ideas and images of the year gone by. Time to rest the body but feed the mind. Time to kick up fallen leaves and enjoy the winter silence. 

Here in the Holly Cottage, the pace of life has slowed down by a level or ten. We wake early and pull the blinds, waiting and watching as the light comes back to illuminate the now very quiet garden. The winter garden is now the stronghold of bold robin, brave wren and stoic blackbird, as we - less graceful humans - step back and leave  them to it, letting the soil breathe its heavy winter sighs and yield whatever sustenance it can to our hungry feathered friends. Green manure has been sowed on bare soil to hold and nourish it in the springtime; half the spuds are out of the ground and hardy brassicas and root vegetables are left to wait it out. The Setanta spuds are sadly, but surely, widely and badly damaged by burrowing slugs, who found a nice damp  home inside the nourishing starchy homes in an otherwise un-slug friendly summer. We think - we hope - the Sarpo axona variety fared better - they are much smaller in size but seem to have been less attractive to the cunning slime-mongerers. There are still some beetroots left in the ground, along with parsnips and turnips ripe for the stewing and roasting. But the most beautiful of all things green in the garden at this time are the bulging winter cabbages, sown early last spring and almost completely forgotten about under a wire net until a few weeks ago when we started looking round for what was left to eat. We won't go hungry ;) 

Most of the day is spent in the Holly Cottage kitchen now, escaping to the leaf littered woods when we can. Holly is making herself sick on acorns but I can only hope that someday she will learn. While  Holly forages, Alannah is beginning to take a peek at the world outside from the safety of the baby carrier. Sometimes I look down to check she is still with us and I see her bright blue eyes watching the scene as we walk past giant oak and tumbling pines. What must she think of it all? What impressions and what cascade of neural networks are becoming established as her brain is processing all this new information?

All this got me thinking, more. And so the last week I have been delving back into old philosophy books and trying to re-assemble thoughts and theories that get squeezed out of focus when the mind is in work drive. The work of Socrates, Buddha, Descartes, Spinoza, Schelling, Hegel, Hume, Kant and Nietzsche - not to mention Darwin - all these names and ideas are buzzing around my head as I distill and decant and try to see the world from their perspectives, making sense of my own. It's fascinating how thinking changes through the centuries, and yet I find that the fundamental truths and realities stay the same. Each one of us must make our own sense of it, and this is one of the most exciting and sometimes frightening aspects of being human - that we can make sense of it, or at least that we can try and wonder in awe at the whole thing as we do.  Like Lou Reed and John Cale's poetic reflection of a Sunday morning. 

Sunday morning girls

She is thriving of course - two months last Wednesday and grown out of her newborn wardrobe completely, filling the three month sleep suits more and more.  Pink is her favourite colour at the moment, mixed up with white and purples and lilacs. A marked contrast to the yellows and greens of the wood, she strikes a defiant pose as bright pink bundle as we stroll through that earthy palette of autumn-come-winter temperate woods. 

Time to get back out into it, this time with Lou Reed's voice echoing in her ears and in my heart. Thanks Lou (1942-2013) - how beautiful you are. Play it loud ;) 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnGoIF5N_-Y

Planting the Spuds

While in the vet's yesterday with our little Holly dog and in the midst of a waiting room of maybe 15 canine companions, the vet called for Spud next, please. Spud turned out to be a fairly capable and sturdy Doberman, not quite as his name might suggest - I was thinking small and cheeky looking Terrier. Anyway, in the midst of all that fur and aroma of canine, I got to thinking about spuds, and I got to thinking that the word itself - spud - and the sensory evocations that come with it is such a truly Irish tradition. 

March snow keeping us on the move

Of course, another Irish tradition is to have the spuds - the earlies - in the ground by Paddy's Day. Well, we missed that - not for want of the impatient spuds being chitted in the front room for the last month, and not for want of any eagerness on our part. The delay was 100% with the snow and the frost that has been following us around for the last of March. We woke up Wednesday last to another snow scene - it's lovely really once you don't need to go to a meeting with your manager say, an hour's drive away. Ho Hum. We got out for a walk in it before any dreadful white knuckle driving. And Holly frolicked in the snowy woods. The snow is still lingering on Irish hills and the more northerly extremities on this terminal day in March but we decided to dare it to defy our will, and yesterday we got down and dirty and planted the spuds. 

Spuds to the ready for planting

Of over 120 potatoes now shivering in the March attacked soil, we have 40 earlies - Orla variety, and 40 Setanta and 40 Sarpo axona, the latter two being maincrop. Now, to be fair, there is a particular 'spud-speak' and potato lingo that takes a little bit of getting used to, so let me explain. Even I, daugher of a mother whose father grew fields of spuds for a living, am just getting the hang of it in this, my fourth decade on the planet. The earlies are the early potatoes - fairly self explanatory that, and usually ready for the eating when Wimbledon is on and school exams are over (June for those not in this general area of NW Europe). These are usually deliciously sweet, smallish spuds that ask only for a bit of butter and sea-salt, a sprinkle of parsley and a spray of freshly cracked pepper - these simple delicacies are more gourmet than masterchef itself. This was the crop that my parents looked forward to every year - they are still lovers of the British Queen variety - and every spring there were trays of spuds chitting under our childhood beds. I never understood what was going on, and why, but now I do. It's a little bit like a rite of passage when you start to buy your own seed potatoes and you start to talk about your own preferred varieties. Weird in a good way. The maincrop spud is usually in the ground until later, harvested in autumn and can be overwintered for use for as long as you're storage technique allows.

Our own experience has been pretty mixed. The first year (2011) we were supplied with seed potatoes straight from one of the key scientists that is co-ordinating spud breeding for blight resistance in Ireland. Thanks Denis ;) We had spuds that year from June to the following April - stored nice and dry in the front room and delicious to boot. Then last year (2012) - well, let's not speak of the blight. Our over-zealousness and lack of experience led us to losing the guts of our own British Queen, and Duke of York (both early) crops, and the Roosters and Golden Wonders (main crop). What a disaster, and how depressing to see the stalks black and rotting away. 

As pretty as a potato flower can be 

This year is going to be a great year - in more ways than one. Despite the cold spring, we have three sure-thing blight resistant varieties currently nestling in the good earth of the Holly Cottage garden. And all the weather prophecy men say it's gonna be a scorcher of a May, a mixed June, a wet July and a sunny August. I'm just glad to see sun mentioned in the mix at all! Onion setts are in the ground - red and white onions this year for all that red onion jam, yum ;) There's peas and broad beans sown in the greenhouse that survived the December storm and one or two other things - all slow to stir in the March winds. Poor daffodils are struggling this year, but they are braving the snow storms and their bright yellow is such a vivid delight in contrast to the pure snow white. And there are tantalising signs of tulips in the making ready to brave those April showers, and sun - we hope. 

Happy Easter to all - as I write I am perched at the kitchen table - cold wind is outside, spuds  are warm in their perfect drills and no need to go out into it save for the late walk in the woods with Holly - it'll be bright until 8pm tonight. AND, I am currently being treated to the aroma of a Wilkie's Organic Hot Chocolate in the making. Now, it doesn't get much better than that. Easter Bunny go get your own! 

Back to the Holly Cottage Garden

The last two weeks have been busy, and in that time it seems that everything has changed. While I was busy driving around this small nation - from Dublin to Galway and down and up and across the fair Midlands - the birds, plants, flowers, trees, shrubs and even humans were subtly being transformed by the onset of spring. 

Defiant winter beauty

Let me fill you in. All of the snowdrops are up now - it started with one or two at the front of the house in early January, but now they are in great abundance and in rich clumps down through the length of fruit alley in the Holly Cottage garden. And then there are the other arrivals - irises and crocuses, some delicate, some beautifully strong and defiant (even when the scary neighbour dog comes in and kicks the crap out of them with his hind legs...grrrrr). The climbing roses are showing signs of new growth and blackcurrant and raspberry are showing those first yellow green leaves of 2013. Let me share with ye however the most significant and wonderful of all changes - the day is gloriously brighter and last week it truly, madly, deeply felt like spring. Happy days!!!! In fact, if the weather people are to be trusted (I know, it's ok to be guided by their past failures but let's be positive) it's not going to rain for at least five days!!! Bring on the sun screen!

It wasn't all quiet in the Holly Cottage garden this year and somehow we managed to get a few things done in between the showers. The whole garden was dug over, save for the broccoli and leek rows. The strawberry beds were gutted and old and new plants re-spaced. This was one of the great successes of 2012. From humble beginnings of 6 humble plants in 2011, we now have at least 160 ready for 2013, and if the bumper crop of 2012's 80 or so plants is anything to go by, we will be giving Wexford Strawberries a run for their money! We still have huge bags frozen from last year - great in smoothies. 

Following from the strawberry plants coup of the former herb, rhubarb and strawberry bed (they are certainly a dominating plant if you let the runners off - just cut them back if you  have enough plants), we had to extend again to find a new home home for the super rhubarb and the precious thyme, rosemary, lavender, oregano and mint members of the garden family. This time we passed on back breaking digging and used heavy duty fabric to cover a former grassy patch and just planted in the herbs at intervals. This will hopefully save on a bout of weeding in the height of the summer sun. Another small job back in December was planting the garlic - hopefully a better crop than last year's, and this time we got garlic bulbs for planting as opposed to garlic from who knows where that we sprouted from the shelves of the local supermarket. You live and learn, everyday. 

This weekend was for tidying up the last few standing after the winter - last of the parsnips are buried in a soup pot, straggly scallions that were a harbour for insatiable slugs are in the compost bin and the few tiny leeks that made it through are waiting patiently for tonight's risotto. There's still enough onions hanging in the shed to last until Easter and beyond and the spring broccoli will hopefully make up its mind soon to do it's thing...any second now.....

Last year was a tough year for gardeners and farmers, but we had a few highlights. The strawberries were amazing, some were the size of small lemons and they didn't suffer from lack of taste. The onions, carrots and parsnips faired well although there were mixed results from the beetroot. Those cucumbers were sensational and the tomatoes just OK, while we still have bright red chillies in the freezer to heart us from the inside on cold nights. These chillies and some mini, late scotch bonnets have become the base for some very tasty pepper sauce creations by the man of the house - bringing back memories of hot pepper sauce with everything in Barbados ;) The celery was a learning curve, don't think we'll go there again and the spuds were a disaster. Blight hit them early and there was no going back after that. This year we've order three blight resistant types - Orla (first earlies),  Sarpo mira and Sarpo axons. We'll see. Ordered from www.gardencentre.ie 

The future ;)

Now is the time for looking back and seeing what worked, and looking forward to see what we can handle in 2013. Everything though is reliant on the weather, and someday (when we grow up) we'll hopefully have a polytunnel to help extend our growing season and keep us out of the rain. We'll throw in a few new things here and there of course - always exciting to try a new crop. I'll keep ye posted. In the meantime, in my absence last week the other gardener was busy too and seed trays have been started with tomatoes, marjoram, basil, sweet peppers and some early rocket for the greenhouse. Other things started a while ago is a batch of lime pickle - takes about four weeks plus. This one was inspired by New Year's eve's trip to the local indian restaurant - again, I'll keep ye posted. 

In the meantime, there's some seeds to be planted today and hopefully some sun and cosmic rays to warm myself and Holly as we get finally, and thankfully get back out in action to the tiny wondrous world that is the Holly Cottage garden. 

Just one other thing - while walking out on a bog last week I was distracted by overwhelming grunting and well, sounds that would make you wonder! It was an orgy of frogs - amazing really. Tens of frogs all getting down together. Funny thing, it was Valentine's Day......what a sight  and sound spectacle ;)

There's a party going on just under that tree....