Peas, please! - Friday 3rd April 2020

Young pea plants of the variety 'Homesteader', grown by Marty

 My wife Marty has taken me to task for calling the garden I share with her 'my' garden in this blog, although of course it belongs to us both. Like many homes with two keen gardeners, we each have our own parts and our own jobs. Marty manages our handsome front garden with the help of our skilled gardener Geraldine, and raises most of the vegetables, which she plants out into raised beds. I manage the grass, the hedges and shrubs, and the mini woodland I call the wilderness.

Honour where it is due, today's subject is peas, both as a vegetable and as flowers, and Marty has been busy with them. In the photo above you can see a tray of young pea plants in the greenhouse. The variety is an old one called 'Homesteader', which Marty got on our visit to the US last year - it's not a name I recognise on this side of the Atlantic. It is a heritage variety dating back to the early 1900s, and clearly still popular in America. Marty is delighted with the high germination rate. I look forward to picking and eating fresh peas in a little over 2 months, just cooked for a minute or two with pleanty of farmhouse butter!

My Grandfather, Jocelyn Waller of Prior Park, grew peas in the 1960s for the Erin Foods factory in Thurles, like many other local farmers - sadly the plant has been closed for many years. They had to be harvested by a contractor at exactly the right time and sent to the factory to be frozen within hours. Do you remember the Birds Eye advertising jingle, "Sweet as the moment when the pod went pop"? It was the same idea. I remember the anxiety in the house as harvest time approached. Were the peas ready? Could the contractor be got in time? Would the peas obtain the desired price at the factory? I'm not sure, but I think he soon decided peas were too much trouble as a crop, and stopped growing them.

Marty's Sweet Pea plants waiting to be planted out

Marty is also growing Sweet Peas in the greenhouse, as she does every year - the seeds were planted in the winter, and as they grow tall they are chopped to make sturdy, branching plants, to plant out when the danger of frosts is past. They are always wonderful, and during the season she picks large fragrant bunches for the house and to give away - I call her "My Sweet Pea Queen of North Tipperary". She says for the year that's in it she wants to concentrate on vegetables, not flowers, but I hope she finds a good place so that these strong plants don't go to waste - a summer without sweet peas would be no summer at all!

Flower of the day Thursday 2nd April 2020

Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna)

Today's flower is the beautiful Lesser Celandine, another wildling, a harbinger of Spring. It brightens the darkest ditch or woodland with its gleaming yellow cups before the leaves of trees cut out the light. It has blessed me by coming  into the garden as a volunteer without my help. I did once plant a small patch I found in the ditch with pretty black markings on its heart-shaped leaves, but that seems to have reverted to the ordinary wild type. There are several much more spectacular varieties you can buy in the horticultural trade, such as 'Brazen Hussy' and 'Coppernob' with dark purple leaves, and 'Collarette' with double flowers - but I really prefer the wild type.

The proper scientific name for the Lesser Celandine is Ficaria verna, but the older among us will know it by the name given it by the great 18th century botanist Carl Linnaeus - Ranunculus ficaria L. This reveals its close relationship to the buttercups in the genus Ranunculus. Oh why do the botanical systematists keep changing the names of the plants we learned as children!

Another, much less attractive name for it is Pilewort, because historically it was used to treat piles (hemorrhoids). An ointment of raw leaves is still recommended in some herbal guides for application to the affected area. Supposedly, the knobby tubers of the plant resemble piles, and according to the doctrine of signatures, this resemblance suggested that Pilewort could be used to cure piles. Please don't try this at home - far better to enjoy the fleeting blossoms!

Wordsworth, when he wasn't wandering lonely as a cloud admiring daffodills, was very fond of Celandines - he wrote no fewer than three poems about them. Here are the first lines of one of them:

To the small Celandine
Pansies, Lilies, Kingcups, Daisies,
Let them live upon their praises;
Long as there's a sun that sets
Primroses will have their glory;
Long as there are Violets,
They will have a place in story:
There's a flower that shall be mine,
'Tis the little Celandine.

Flower of the day - Wednesday 1st April 2020

Wild primroses - Primula vulgaris ssp vulgaris

Our native Irish primroses are making a fine sight in the bank at the back of the garden just now. Wildlings, they are such a mark of Spring in ditches and woods right across the country, and worthy of a place in any garden.

The proper scientific name for primroses is Primula vulgaris, and our wild ones with pale yellow flowers are a subspecies: Primula vulgaris ssp. vulgaris, native across western and southern Europe. The latin epiphet 'vulgaris' means 'common'. Occasionally, rather muddy, light pink individuals grow wild or in cottage gardens alongside the more usual light yellow variety.

Primula vulgaris ssp. sibthorpii

I also grow another primrose subspecies, Primula vulgaris ssp sibthorpii. This is native to the Balkans and South-west Asia and its flowers vary between a bright light pink and a deep purple. The ones I have are a strong purple and flower much earlier than wild primroses - they began in January, and are now nearly over, with just a few blossoms hanging on.

I am excited that these two subspecies are hybridising in my garden, despite their different flowering times. The hybrids are very vigorous, floriforous, and a strong bright pink. I shall try to propogate them and pass them on to any fellow gardeners who would like them.

My hybrid Primula vulgaris, growing alongside one of its parents, P.vulgaris sibthorpii

I rejoice in the diversity of God's creation!

Flower of the day - Tuesday 31st March 2020

Magnolia 'Leonard Messel' in bloom today

Magnolia 'Leonard Messel' has come into full flower today - I just love its delicate pink goblets born on bare branches. Strictly speaking it should be called Magnolia x loebneri 'Leonard Messel', because it is a selection of the cross between two Japanese species, M. kobus and M. stellata, which arose by chance at Nymans, Messel's great garden in Sussex. Unfortunately my plant has lost its leader, broken off by the wind because I had grown an everlasting pea through it for interest later in the season, but happily it is growing a new one, so I look forward to it developing into a fine specimen.

'Leonard Messel' blooms a few weeks later than its parent Magnolia stellata, also in the garden, which is now at its very best, a veritable snow white pyramid of starry blossoms. Later in the season, after the leaves come out, I find it produces a few late flowers which are tinged with pink. M. kobus is white, so I wonder if 'Leonard Messel' gets its beautiful pink from its stellata parent.

Magnolia stellata in bloom today

Let us rejoice in the glory of God's creation in these strange times!

Death stalks the garden

The remains of an unfortunate pigeon

Murder was done in my garden a few days ago. The wings and feathers of an unfortunate wood pigeon lie strewn over the flowerbed beside the water-filled famine pot where pigeons often come to drink. And I think I know the culprit: next day I spotted the feral cat we often see skulking close by, no doubt hoping for another meal. I wrote murder, but that is the wrong word. The cat was simply doing what God has created cats to do, and deserves no moral blame. Cats kill to eat, and God feeds cats as well as people.

The culprit - a feral cat

We all know that a different killer is stalking God’s wider garden just now – the Covid-19 corona virus – and we human beings are its prey.

Transmission electron microscope image of the corona virus (Credit: NIAID-RM)

It appears that for most the disease is quite mild. But it kills a proportion of both older people like me and those with pre-existing conditions - though even for these 90% or so will recover. The Chinese and the Koreans seem to have brought it under some control, and we can pray that we in Europe will do so too, but I think most of us will be infected eventually. Lives can be saved if we succeed in reducing the rate that it spreads (‘flattening the curve’), so that the health service is not overwhelmed, and those who need intensive care can get it. This is why it is so important for us to follow official public health guidance. Let us be the good people God has made us to be by doing so, showing God’s love to our neighbours.

I do not fear death. I know I am mortal, but I would like to stay around for a bit yet. I hope to see the grandchildren grow up, perhaps even to welcome their children. Of course I am apprehensive about dying, dreading indignity and suffering, though perhaps Covid-19 is not the worst death. I will accept what comes, but not facilitate it.

The way I see it is this. My life from birth to death is like a piece of 3 dimensional string in the 4 dimensions of space-time, starting at birth and ending in death. My life-string twines around the life-strings of every other person I encounter along the way, including family, friends, neighbours and strangers. God is not constrained by dimensions and sees the whole of my life-string, from birth to death. Love is what pleases God. God judges me as a function of the love I show, both for him and for every person my life-string touches, summed over the whole of my life-string. I know that I often displease God. But despite the times I have displeased him, I believe that God is forgiving and will always love me, always love the whole of my life-string, just as he sees and loves everyone else’s. This, to me, is eternal life, why I do not fear death.

And God’s garden is full of life as well as death. While we humans worry about Covid-19, the natural world burgeons and unfolds as the days lengthen, this year as every year. The buds of Magnolia stellata in my garden have opened already. The pussy willow is yellow with pollen for the bees. And other pigeons are billing and cooing, getting ready to raise a new generation.

Magnolia stellata bursting into flower

Daffodil stories

The first two kinds of daffodils in the garden are making a cheery sight just now, despite the incessant wind and rain. There will be more different kinds to come as spring accelerates, but there are nice stories behind these two very different ones.

Narcissus asturiensis - I call it the Clonteem daffodil

The first, and earliest for me, I call the Clonteem Daffodil, because that is what my mother always called it, and I got it from her. She in turn had got it from her mother, Fairy nee Devenish, whose girlhood home was Clonteem, Co. Roscommon. The house burnt down when she was a young woman. She had ridden her bicycle to another big house a few miles away to attend a ball and stay overnight, with her ball-gown wrapped up on the panier. When she got home she discovered her family in their night clothes looking at the smouldering ruins of Clonteem. She was the only one with proper clothes to wear. I have inherited a small mahogany desk from her which was taken from the burning house, but very little else was saved. Later on Fairy's parents lived not far away in Drumsna, Co. Leitrim, and I suspect her mother Kitty nee Russell brought the daffodil to her garden there, and gave her some bulbs after her marriage to my grandfather Jocelyn Waller to plant in her garden at Prior Park.

It is a true minature no more than 6 inches high with perfect yellow trumpet flowers, which I have been trying for years to identify. I now believe it is a true species from northern Spain called Narcissus asturiensis. I have no idea how it got to a garden in Co. Roscommon.

An old fashioned double daffodil - can anyone name it for me?

The second is an old fashioned double daffodil, widely grown in these parts, whose name I don't know. The buds are just bursting as I write, so the photo is of some I brought into the house a few days ago. I did not plant it - it came as a volunteer along with regular daffodils with topsoil brought in when we added an extension to the house. Like many double flowers it does not produce any seed, but it is as tough as old boots and has clumped up beautifully in grass on the edge of the drive. I must split some of the clumps later in the year and spread it around a bit.

Look out for the pollinators

An early flowering cherry promises good things to come

My early flowering cherry (Prunus x subhirtella ‘Autumnalis Rosea’) has been delighting the eye with its shocking pink flowers since early February. Storms Ciara and Dennis have battered the side exposed to south west winds, but in the shelter it remains glorious. Every year I see it as a promise of all the good things to come as the days lengthen and grow warm, in the same way that the ancient Israelites saw the rainbow as a promise that rain and floods would never last for long.

This tree is a favourite early source of nectar and pollen for honeybees, and on mild days it buzzes with busy harvesters from the hive my friend and neighbour has placed in my garden. I hope it will give them a good start to the season, allowing the colony to thrive and yield a good honey crop later in the year.

A honeybee harvesting nectar & pollen

Pollinating insects are critically important to the health of our environment - not just bees, but also a legion of other species, including hoverflies, butterflies and moths. Pollinators, flowering plants and animals engage in a wonderful three-cornered dance in God’s creation. The insects pollinate the plants and are fed in return with nectar and pollen. The plants produce fruit and seeds which feed mammals and birds. Mammals and birds in turn eat and distribute the seeds, and in the case of humans plant orchards of fruit trees. The dance would stop without the pollinators.

So it is disturbing that there are indications of a large decline in the biomass and the number of insects in many parts of the world, including Ireland. People my age remember well the days when you could not drive more than a few miles without having to clean the splatted insects from the windscreen of the car, which is unnecessary now. This decline is probably one of the reasons why so many of our native bird species are also in decline.

If you want some ideas on what you can do about this, whether as an individual or as part of a parish eco group, do have a look at the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan website.