My favourite month is May and this month has delivered in spades, waking up to gorgeous skies is such a treat, especially since we have done more work on the garden, we can now enjoy some of the fruits of our labour.
To be honest, it feels like more labour than fruit at the beginning, one day of work will not deliver a garden. It’s a continual process of planning, digging and planting. The work did not pause either during the winter, we were preparing the ground for bare root hedging, silver birch trees, scarifying the lawn, tidying up the flowers beds and topping up the mulch.
I’m delighted to see the plants returning after a year in the ground, expanding and coming into their own, we’ve lost a few along the way, but the ones that have lasted, have shown such resilience through West of Ireland winter.
When I get lost in the moment of gardening, I often think it represents a microcosm of society and rearing children, if you give the plants/people a good start with plenty of space and nourishment, they will flourish. Taking a plant that was dying in a pot and replanting it in lots of fertile space and watching it take off is pure joy. Every living thing deserves the opportunity to fulfil its potential, but some governments and gardeners manage this process better than others.
The early morning is particularly magic time, enveloped in birdsong, you feel like a visitor in the bird’s kingdom. I’ve made a new nerdy discovery with the ‘Merlin Bird ID’ app which identified the Willow Warbler, Blackbird, Blue Tit, Cuckoo, Wren, Wood-Pigeon, Bullfinch, Thrush, Chaffinch, Great Tit, and Blackcap, to name a few!
We’ve also built a concrete bench in the garden, it’s a prototype for our stove hearth for our living room, there has definitely been some learning on formwork and polishing that we can use for the real thing. The prototype is now a pleasant permanent fixture in the garden.
Bit by bit, these moments are being created and the garden experience becomes a collection of moments connected by paths and desire lines. Much like life, it’s the magic moments that stay with us and the labour to get us there is soon forgotten.
