The gift of a garden, p.10
The Gift of a Garden, page 10
Next up was the gravel. This was a different experience entirely. Gravel is hard, sharp and unforgiving. I dragged it along with a rusty rake to the grating sound of iron against stone and the paths gradually lost their sags and hollows. They were getting a facelift, and when I was finished there was not a wrinkle in sight.
The garden was ready, but I was beginning to wilt. That night I took a long, warm soak in the bath and a miracle took place. I am a firm believer in bath magic: a shower is for cleansing, but a bath is a whole different experience. As the warm water gushed into the bath, I poured in my most expensive oils and bubbles, and I was very generous. This was no time for economy. No time for bright overhead lighting either: that’s for the operating theatre! I lined the edges of the bath with softly glowing, scented candles. I pinned up an imaginary Do Not Disturb sign. I locked the door and submerged myself. Bliss.
Rejuvenation
Swirls of steam shroud the tired body
Of an old, old woman.
I crawl feebly over the bath edge
And submerge into the sudsy warmth.
My children are parasites,
My husband unloving,
My friends demanding;
I want to die.
My body dissolves,
My mind evaporates,
I become nothing,
Drifting into oblivion.
A few hot-water top-ups
And an hour later
I come back together.
My children are independent,
My husband adoring,
My friends supportive;
It’s good to be alive.
And I high-step
Out of the bath
Vibrant and beautiful
And the old lady
With all her problems
Disappears down
The plughole.
CHAPTER 17
It was the night before the grand opening. Kate and Lolly had been evicted to the dog kennels. They bounced unsuspectingly into the van without an anticipatory care in the world, and I was flooded with guilt. I simply could not accompany them to the kennels as I knew that as soon as Lolly saw the place she would adopt the I Shall Not Be Moved attitude, and I would feel even more guilty. She would act like an abandoned baby and my self-punishment would increase further. It was a lose, lose situation, so I chickened out and slunk back in through the garden gate as the van drove off with Lolly peering out through the back window. She is more finely tuned than Kate and had obviously begun to smell a rat. But there was no way they could stay around. Despite the theme of the weekend, some visitors might be nervous around dogs and the mere sight of a dobermann can strike terror into the heart of the even most doggy-minded souls. So, having an open garden with two dobermann dogs on the loose was not an option. Despite all this reasoning and the strenuous efforts to convince myself that it was okay, I still felt bad. I needed a comforting, listening ear, so I rang a sister who loves gardening but not dogs. Bad decision! No comfort there: I shouldn’t have dogs anyway if I was into gardening …
I decided to make tea instead, and I cut myself a big wedge of fruitcake and took a tray out into the garden. Comfort eating. Just as I put the tray on the table the phone in the kitchen rang. Because Kate was absent it was safe to leave the tray unattended; if there, she would scoff the lot as she’s a bad-mannered glutton. It was a small luxury. Lolly is a lady with the manners of a queen, whereas Kate behaves like Henry VIII, thinking everything in sight is hers. Here I was, I realised, still thinking of them though they were on their holidays. It must be the guilt. I decided to walk around the yard and garden and view the whole place as if I was one of tomorrow’s visitors who had never seen the place.
Around the yard I had strategically placed pots on top of various holes in the old concrete around the edges to create the appearance of a hole-free zone. I examined it closely: it worked. The garden shed was next up for inspection. It has two windows through which enquiring eyes could normally view the working confusion of this gardener. Against the windows I had placed two painted canvases showing tranquil rustic scenes – obliterating the chaos inside. That worked too!
The garden itself was next up for inspection. Turning right at the gate, I began a slow, critical walk along the pathways. I read the information notices that I had earlier posted at strategic points telling visitors the story of the garden. I read the account of the old, iron garden chair that a blacksmith had made for me with horseshoes from Billy the Blacksmith’s forge at the end of the village when Billy had died. Next, the history of the Old Hall that creates the northern boundary of the garden, and beside it the historic pathway leading down from the housing estate, The Spires, where the home of Winston Churchill’s aunt, Clara Jerome Frewen, once stood. This pathway was used by the young Winston to access the river for fishing while he was on holiday with his aunt. Across the garden stood the stately Jacquemontii silver birch, which was a twenty-fifth silver wedding present in 1986; it had started off as a slender slip and is now a towering remembrance. This garden had inspired many poems and I had printed them out and pinned them at strategic points. Food for thought and time to contemplate. All these little fragments would tell the visitors the story of the garden. There is more to gardening than flowers, trees and shrubs. Every garden has its own story. I felt it was necessary to tell the visitors the story of this garden.
Deciding to open your garden to the public turns you into a weather forecast addict. You watch it on TV, listen to it on the radio, check it on your laptop, dial it on special telephone numbers sending your telephone bill sky high. My father used to simply stand on the doorstep, look up and read the night sky: he was his own free weather forecast service. He needed dry weather to save his hay and I needed it for my open garden. Only die-hard gardeners will traipse around a dripping garden, so if you want to attract the number of people that makes an open garden a worthwhile financial venture, fine weather is essential. This was a weekend opening, so my hope was for a good Saturday and Sunday. Was that too much to ask?
Saturday dawned soft and misty, which transformed the garden into a mystic, green, dripping wonderland. Beautiful, but not conducive to garden visiting I concluded. But I underestimated the real troopers who people the gardening world: in the gate they trudged, shrouded in an amazing array of all-encompassing rain wear – real gardeners pay no attention to the irrelevant detail of looking good, so they arrived donned in whatever it took to view the garden in comfort. I chatted with them and found out more about my own garden than I thought possible. It was like walking around the garden reading a hefty tome from the Royal Horticultural Society. Gardeners are by nature generous, so their gardening knowledge is for every garden. We talked about the difficulties of dogs and how to overcome them; and I told people about my decision to abandon lawns completely because of Kate and Lolly. It was an enriching experience to chat with these wonderful gardeners and be enlightened by their wise recommendations. I hoped that they too got some ideas and inspiration from my humble efforts. The day slowly cleared and as the sun came out it melted the misty shroud over the garden, so that it glowed into sunlight. The day sped by, and I enjoyed every minute of it.
The following day the sun was high in the sky when we opened the gate – and people poured in. These were different to yesterday’s brigade. Yesterday’s people were real gardeners, these people were out for the day. The real gardeners had begun at the gate and worked their way methodically around the garden; the ‘out for the day’ people gave a general look around and then went and chatted to all and sundry. But everyone had come to enjoy themselves and on both days the garden and yard were full of laughter and conversation. Old friends met and many sat in the sun for long periods, catching up with local news. Young couples came and planned their own garden as they wandered around. Some enthusiastic gardening women arrived, dragging along reluctant husbands who were relieved to meet neighbouring men happy to discuss upcoming football and hurling matches. They parked themselves under the shade of a tree and talked about sports, the weather and farming. Later, one of them caught up with me. ‘Do you know something,’ he told me in surprised tone of voice, ‘’twas most enjoyable. Herself dragged me along and I didn’t want to come at all.’ ‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you help out in the garden?’ ‘Ah, I thought the place would be full of women with posh accents and floppy hats,’ he told me. ‘Sure, they were all half-normal like myself!’
Mothers and daughters who enjoyed a shared interest in gardening came, and some women were accompanied by a daughter-in-law wise enough to benefit from the older woman’s knowledge. People had travelled long distances, and because it was in aid of Tidy Towns some groups had come from towns in other counties, and, of course, dog owners had come to see what could be done with two dogs at large in a garden. When we finally closed the gate I had lost my voice and my legs were creaking at the joints, but I felt that life was wonderful and that if gardeners and dog owners were running the world it would be a very peaceful place indeed. But it was time to bring Kate and Lolly home.
CHAPTER 18
‘The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago; the next best time is now.’
Boundaries have always caused problems. Where my piece of land finishes and yours begins has forever been a thorny dilemma in Ireland. The same problem has led to global warfare. However, in Innishannon if you should decide to extend your garden boundary out around the village you are more than welcome to do so. You may well ask, why would you want do that? Well, there is really no answer, only to say that real gardeners are a strange breed in that gardening is not about land ownership but rather about tilling the soil and making the earth smile with flowers. Once you take that first step outside your own front door and put out window boxes, you have stepped through the invisible glass wall between you and the rest of the world. In a village, the next step is planting up street tubs, troughs and waste areas and from there on, the horizon is the limit!
On the approach road into our village, which is on the main road from Cork city to West Cork, there was for many years a long track of wasteland, sporting weeds, abandoned tar left over after road repairs, and rubbish. Because rubbish invites more rubbish, it was fast turning into a dump, and an embarrassment. After all, who wants a dump outside their front door? And this was effectively the front door of our village. So the answer was planting. As this was a large tract of land between the main road and a side road, it did not lend itself to fancy plants and flowers, so the obvious solution was trees; it definitely was a site for the heavyweights of the garden world. It was also a golden opportunity, a time to remember the wisdom of the Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai. She said: ‘Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven’t done a thing. You are just talking.’ It was time to quit talking.
So how were we in the Tidy Towns committee to fund this enterprise? Good trees cost money – and we were thinking big, with well developed, ball-rooted trees in mind. It made for a far more expensive tree, but we were paying for years of growth. We were in one sense buying time. This is not always possible and in normal circumstances not necessary, but we felt that in this particular project it would be a worthwhile investment.
Most people like the idea of planting a tree, so we asked the locals if they would like to sponsor a tree in our new grove. The response was heart-warming and contributions flowed in. If you think about it, planting a tree is probably the cheapest and best investment you will make in life. The tree will grow stronger from the first day it hits the soil and will, if some fool does not get a chainsaw to it, outlive you for centuries, enhancing and enriching the earth long after you have ceased to matter. We plant flowers and shrubs for ourselves, but we plant trees for the next generation.
Then, a visit to our local tree farm was a delightful experience where Matthew, the tree man, extolled the virtues and the limitations of the different species. When I inquired about the choice of a specific tree, it was quickly dismissed as a ‘Mickey Mouse’ type, so from then on we decided we would be guided by his expertise. It was amazing to watch an enormous circular saw penetrate deep into the ground beneath each tree and cut out a huge ball around the roots so that the tree would be moved with minimum disturbance.
We had enough money to hire machinery to clear the site and draw in good topsoil. You only get one chance to give a tree a good home and if you miss that opportunity you will watch the poor tree struggle for years. We piled in old horse dung that would provide years of future nourishment. We were determined to give our trees the best possible start in life. The evening before the big planting was mild and the tree bed was dressed and ready. Golden brown earth, like a huge velvet duvet, stretched out over soft blankets of the rich, warm horse dung that lay waiting to receive the trees. ‘It’s like a bridal bed,’ I enthused to a neighbouring farmer who had joined me to view it in the gathering dusk. ‘Ah Alice,’ he protested, ‘you’re losing the run of yourself!’
But excitement coursed through my veins as I viewed our wonderful achievement and the prospect of things to come. The eyesore at the entrance to our lovely village had been removed and now the thought of a future grove was a thrilling prospect. There can be nothing more satisfying for the human soul than planting a tree, and to be planting over twenty trees in one go was almost too much to take in. On such occasions I always think of Uncle Jacky and the blessings he left behind in his garden. And now here were these trees waiting to be planted. They would enrich and calm the heart of all who, in future years, would pass by – and as thirteen thousand vehicles pass by here daily, that would be a lot of people!
The following day I awoke at dawn to the sound of rain pounding off the roof. But this did not take the edge off my excitement. One of the great things about an exciting project is that you wake up full of anticipation. It happens to me if I am painting a picture, planning a planting or writing about something I love, as I am now. It probably all comes down to creativity in flow – we dance with creativity and with creation itself.
Out the road in the grove, hooded people in long, waterproof gear were digging holes at specified locations. This was the old Irish meitheal system at work. The meitheal way of doing things dates far back into the Irish farming culture: if there was a job to be done that needed a large workforce, many neighbours came together to help, and then you did likewise for them. It was a great system, with many hands making light of the work, and in the process bringing companionship and bonding to the community. Most of our diggers were farmers who are used to working in all kinds of weather, so they took it in their stride. The trees were lined up in a trailer beside the road and then lifted into the holes when they were judged deep enough to contain the root balls in comfort. Men and women dug the holes and then gently put the trees to bed – in gardening there is no gender discrimination. Wellington boots sank into the soft earth and much good-humoured banter greeted anyone unfortunate enough to get stuck and who had to be hand-lifted out. Gradually the holes were filled. The day cleared up and tea arrived in wheelbarrows.
When a meitheal is out working, there is nothing they enjoy more than a break for sustenance. Mugs were filled out of large teapots and hungry workers sank their teeth into generous sandwiches and homemade cakes. More than half the trees were in by now and we soon returned to work with renewed vigour. By late afternoon all the trees were standing. And what a glorious sight it was! Then, because tree planting is a sacred event, we were joined by our two clergymen, Church of Ireland and Catholic, to bless the trees. There is no religious discrimination in nature either. Together we all bowed our heads in thanksgiving. We had much to be grateful for.
Having got the taste of communal tree planting and the transformation that it brought about, other waste areas around the village came under scrutiny. Across the road from our grove was a long, sloping bank of mainly scrub and furze bushes. These bushes are lovely in the spring, but are not very hospitable to trees as they have no manners and shoulder the trees out of their way, eventually stifling them. However, once trees would get going and become firmly established, they could hold their own. We eyed this bank as a potential wooded area too, but it was three times the length and twice the width of the grove, so would need to be tackled in stages. But everything in gardening and planting takes time, and nature is mostly a slow mover. We were not daunted by the challenge and soon the digger returned to clear the scrub. Here we had to think big as the first planting would be a hundred trees. On this occasion, ball-rooted trees were not even considered as financial resources were limited. We settled for much younger trees, which was wiser in any case as the soil here was far poorer. This long bank had been created by the local council in the widening of the road long, long before my time. Uncle Jacky had talked about this soil as consisting of clay and stones and a local farmer had told me: ‘That bloody place wouldn’t even grow grass.’ So we had our work cut out for us.
