My favourite poem

From the Republic of Conscience
by Seamus Heaney


When I landed in the republic of conscience
it was so noiseless when the engines stopped
I could hear a curlew high above the runway.
At immigration, the clerk was an old man
who produced a wallet from his homespun coat
and showed me a photograph of my grandfather.
The woman in customs asked me to declare
the words of our traditional cures and charms
to heal dumbness and avert the evil eye.
No porters. No interpreter. No taxi.
You carried your own burden and very soon
your symptoms of creeping privilege disappeared.
Fog is a dreaded omen there but lightning
spells universal good and parents hang
swaddled infants in trees during thunderstorms.
Salt is their precious mineral. And seashells
are held to the ear during births and funerals.
The base of all inks and pigments is seawater.
Their sacred symbol is a stylized boat.
The sail is an ear, the mast a sloping pen,
the hull a mouth-shape, the keel an open eye.
At their inauguration, public leaders
must swear to uphold unwritten law and weep
to atone for their presumption to hold office –
and to affirm their faith that all life sprang
from salt in tears which the sky-god wept
after he dreamt his solitude was endless.
I came back from that frugal republic
with my two arms the one length, the customs
woman having insisted my allowance was myself.
The old man rose and gazed into my face
and said that was official recognition
that I was now a dual citizen.
He therefore desired me when I got home
to consider myself a representative
and to speak on their behalf in my own tongue.
Their embassies, he said, were everywhere
but operated independently
and no ambassador would ever be relieved.

Oooooops...

Today is the 1st September and I've visitied this blog (that I had great plans for) and realised that it's been two months!!! Tonight I'm at a party with friends and, frankly, a bit bored (they're talking about The Fast Show). Facebook has rather monopolised my attention for the last couple of months but I'm over that now. The garden has toddled on. I've had my best crop of tomatoes so far but it's been a disappointing year otherwise. My runner beans are just coming through now and they're looking good. The cabbages are so tough they take longer then spuds to cook. Is this normal? Most of my herbs seem to be taking time out although the fennel is at least 10 feet high and the seeds are HUGE. I've neglected to sow any sprouting broccoli seeds so now need to source some plants to go into the bed I'm going to prepare this weekend. If all gardeners were as disorganised as me teh whole world would starve.

Summer update

I can't believe it's been nearly two months since I posted anything to this blog! Very remiss of me. As you can imagine there have been a lot of changes in the garden in this time. The broad beans have been harvested - I froze three kilos of beans and ate loads. The runner and French beans have now been planted although they're smaller than they should be due to being confined in pots for too long. However, hoping they'll romp away once they recover. I lost quite a few to slugs but I popped in more seeds when I planted them out so hopefully these will extend the season and fill in the gaps.

I've have a bad year for salad for some reason. Either the seeds I sow don't germinate or the seedlings just disappear or, those that do grow, bolt and go to seed in a matter of weeks. The only lettuce I've managed to grow is in a pot! Don't really know what the problem is but I'm going to try again this weekend.

Tomato plants finally planted out

Beans

Pea and bean bed

Overview of veg plot - I need more space!!

My tree wish list

Elder

Hornbeam / Whitebeam

Willow

Alder

Guelder Rose

Hazel

Damson

This list will be added to

Beans!

Swift update on the state of the bean sowings.  There are now eight runner bean seedlings from the 2 May sowing.  They're Runner Bean 'Polestar'.  This is my third year sowing them (same pack of seeds!) and they crop well and are tasty and stringless until they get very big.  It will be interesting to compare them with a different variety this year.

The very first seedling of the Dwarf French Bean 'Tendercrop', also sowed on 2 May, is poking above the compost this morning.  That's 20 days to germination.  But then, everything seems to be slow to germinate this year.

Also sowed on 2 May were Climber French Beans 'Cobra' and Dwarf French Bean 'Kinghorn Wax',  a yellow bean that I had a great crop from 2 years ago but that got decimated by slugs last year.   There's no sign of these coming through yet but we'll wait and see.  BTW, just discovered that any bean called 'Wax' is yellow.  It's the bean worlds word for yellow!

I also noted that a small patch of rocket is coming through nicely (horray!  first time I've managed to germinate rocket) but carrots (Nantes 2) and radishes haven't appeared yet.  The other good news is that the parsnip seed (Albion) I sowed between the rows of elephant garlic have germinated and are looking good although I sowed them far too thickly and am going to have to thin (sob, sob).  I HATE thinning!  Seems like such a waste.

Enough of gardening for now, it's a miserable wet, windy day again for which I'm grateful as my exam is on Monday and I really need to knuckle down and study for the next few days.  

After the Gales

We had a really bad day here yesterday, gale force winds and pouring rain.  Did a recce of the garden today and, to my surprise (and delight) there is very little damage.  My broad beans were a bit flattened and one plant broke completely.  This is the second year winds have damaged the broad beans in May so I'm now making a note to give the next crop loads of support and NOT REMOVE IT  too early to support fledgling peas!  Although there are loads of embryonic bean pods on the plants there is nothing ready for eating yet.  

There was a thread on the Irish Gardeners Forum this week about the viability of seeds and I discovered that bean seeds are only viable for two years which explained the non-appearance of 

all the beans I sowed a fortnight ago.  I decided an emergency purchase was necessary so off I toddled to the garden centre yesterday and bought a pact of runners, Scarlet Emperor and some climbing Kentucky Wonder Wax, a heritage American variety with waxy yellow pods.  When I went out to sow them in the failed seeds pots what did I find?  Yes, a seedling!  Isn't it sweet??!

The upshot is that I decided to leave the pots alone for another week so I sowed the new purchases in their own pots.  There could be a glut of beans in this house yet.

As I had the camera out I did a photo patrol of the rest of the garden.  Here's some of the highlights.

Purple carrot seedlings 

Garlic!

Herbs:  green and purple fennel, curly and broad leaved parsley, salad burnett, garlic chives, horseradish, oregano, scorzonera (re-growing from last years roots) and a sprinkling of self-seeded welsh poppies

the sister's woodland garden, two months on.

A Lidl cherry tree

Oh, the Joys of Summer!

It's been ages since I posted because I've been working hard getting assignments, etc finished so I've purposely not allowed myself get embroiled in blogs. Handed in the last of my assignments last night so now have 2 weeks to prepare for the exam. However, I've given myself today off and have had a lovely day in the garden. I finally started digging up the lawn as promised for ages. True to the principles of 1 foot gardening I dug up an area approximately 1 yard square. OK, it's triangular but so what! The thing is that I keep buying plants without anywhere in particular in mind to plant them so I've ended up with those I can't bear to part with in pots looking progressively sadder and more stressed as time passed so it was about time I found a permanent home for them. So, today was the day. In case you can't see what's in my new bed there's a lavender I rescued from my sister, the thyme came from the same place, 2 scabious plants, 1 blue (horribly potbound) and 1 red, an echinacea and a geranium whose name escapes me at the moment.










The highlight of the day was the robin who dogged my every dig and got lots of worms for his trouble.

My new flowerbed is next to my vegetable beds and will hopefully attract more insects to this part of the garden. I don't know if it's a result of the hard winter we've had but there seems to be a real dearth of insects this year. Pests as well as good 'uns. For instance, there's not a sign of black fly on my broad beans so far this year and the only aphids generally are all indoors. However, I haven't yet seen a ladybird, and neither has the next door neighbour who usually reports on seasonal visitors earlier than us. Wait and see I suppose, and be grateful for the lack of pests :-)

Planted some Greyhound cabbages at the weekend. They're supposed to be fast growing so hopefully we'll have some edible cabbage fairly soon. The seasonal stuff seems to be getting off to a slow start for some reason (probably the same reason as the lack of pests). Broad beans are only starting to form and the cabbages I sowed in the Autumn are still looking positively juvenile. I suppose we can only wait and see.