March 2007 - The Green Wave

Today is St Patrick’s Day. Peering through drifting drizzle, my heart goes out to all those parading to celebrate our national Saint and all things Irish, particularly the visitors from afar in skimpy marching-band costumes. Shivering and dripping, I learned my lesson in previous years, so I limit myself to pinning on a few trefoil leaves, Patrick’s metaphor for the Trinity, and going to church, while Susanna retires under the duvet to avoid the dismal day. Fat chance of getting any work done in the garden as I’d planned!

In theory, the job for today should be planting a row of first early potatoes. The old tradition was to put them in on Patrick’s day, for an early first harvest in June. But my heavy clay is always too sodden to work, the soil is too cold, and even if the tubers don’t rot, the first shoots can still be cut by frost until mid May. I think the tradition more suited to Wexford than the Midlands, unless global warming changes things. The potatoes are chitting in the greenhouse, but the end of March will do for planting this year.

Frost and snow are forecast, a brief return to winter. But spring races ahead, unstoppable, as the days lengthen to the equinox. The grass I can’t get out to cut grows ever faster. The daffodils along the drive wave cheerfully in the chill wind – old varieties, they came as volunteers in the topsoil when we built the extension. Lavender Iris stylosa sits in a vase on the kitchen worktop. Susanna’s sweet peas reach upward on the windowsills – soon they will need beheading to promote shrubby, branching plants, ready for planting in May. The first blackthorn blooms in the hedge – old Shannon fishing lore says the fly will be up in four weeks to the day in sheltered bays. Fat fruiting buds on the pears are set to burst. And the first leaves are out already on the Amur maple (Acer ginnala), though I expect to find them shrivelled by the frost.

We are told that if you could look at Europe from outer space, you would see a Green Wave moving north across the continent in spring, caused by the buds on the trees and hedges opening. The Green Wave begins in the south in February and moves up across the continent as temperatures rise, at about 160 kilometres per week. If this is true, it should take about three weeks to move across Ireland from Mizen Head to Malin Head, about the same speed as you might walk. School children across Ireland are joining in a mass experiment to check this, by dating locally the first appearance of five signs of the Green Wave:

• the first primroses,
• the first swallows,

and leaves opening on three common trees:

• Horse Chestnut,
• Hawthorn
• and Ash.

Repeated year after year, this can provide a scientific measurement of the effect of global warming. To find out more, see http://www.greenwave.ie/.

The little drama of spring burgeoning in my garden is just a small part of the greater drama of the Green Wave, unfolding across Ireland, Europe and the temperate world. And this is mirrored in the great drama of our Faith. Starting in Lent, Jesus leads his disciples to travel the road to Jerusalem, a road that leads inexorably to the Cross and Resurrection, on to Ascension, and then to Pentecost, when the Spirit bursts forth and changes everything.

February 2007 - A Doxology

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;

This morning Susanna and I breakfasted on poached eggs with asparagus! Not a lot of asparagus – just three fat spears, more white than green – but taken from our own poly-tunnel, coarsely chopped, gently stewed in a little butter, and poured over the eggs and toast. A blessing indeed, a taste of heaven!

There is warmth already in the sun: it is as if the morning’s hoarfrost had never been. Tiny shocking-pink flowers of Cyclamen coum glow under the espalier pears.

Down the avenue, Crocus x luteus flares sodium-orange in the sun, and further on the little species Crocus chrysanthus looks like cream spilt over the short grass. The clumps are bulking-up well, but do not seem to be spreading as I hoped. Looking closely, the delicate petals are torn and eaten, no doubt by slugs that also eat the seed capsules. I suppose I must help nature along by planting more corms to achieve a really big display.

Clumps of Lenten roses, Helleborus orientalis, in mixed shades of white and pink and burgandy, started from seed by Susanna, glow under the young trees and shrubs along the wilderness path. Years ago a friend gave me a seedling plant of Stinking helebore, Helleborus foetidus. Its unusual cymes of acid-green flowers are starting to open, and there are several seedlings from last year around it, which will give me plants to swell the display and pass on in turn to other friends.

Praise Him, all creatures here below;

I turn to look for signs of creatures here below. I look under a garden ornament, and sure enough there are the slugs and snails that have been at the crocuses, and a centipede too. No doubt they add their praises to mine in their own way. But part of me wishes they didn’t!

The fox’s path by the hedge is looking rather overgrown. I’ve not seen him since the New Year’s Day hunt passed close by, but I heard nothing of a kill. The garden hare too is nowhere to be seen, but I did put him up from the black-currant patch a little while ago. I pray they are both in a position to praise their maker.

But what I do find is five-spot ladybirds on the young pines, where they have emerged from their crevices to bask in the sun. Their red colour is a warning sign to anyone thinking to eat them, but to my eyes is also a joyful hymn of praise.

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;

Whatever about the creatures below, the heavenly host are certainly loud. It sounds as if every small finch and tit in the County has chosen this garden for You’re-a-star auditions! The racket is unbelievable, but lifts the spirit like few other things can. With the onset of the hard frost, Susanna has started to feed them with bird seed and lard balls, which perhaps explains why there are so many. But at this time of year I’m sure the words of their song are: ‘Here I am! I’m fit and healthy! We can make beautiful babies together!’

With country all around us, we are so lucky to see and hear so many varieties of the heavenly host. Yesterday at dusk the great armada of rooks flew over, returning to their roost from a day’s foraging, calling the gossip back and forth to each other. And drifting across the fields came the indescribably sad call of a curlew.

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

January 2007 - Signs of Global Warming?

Rain and wind, wind and rain – what a time of it we are having this January! But this winter is still amazingly mild – a couple of mornings of hard frost in November, but barely a ground frost since. Summer bedding Nicotiana is still in blossom by the back door, and a Dianthus in Suzanna’s labyrinth garden – I have never seen the like before. Like everyone else I’m sure, I wonder whether these are signs of global warming.

Today the rain has stopped, and the sky is bright, but the wind is still blowing a gale. I offer a little prayer for the families of the fishermen lost in the Pere Charles and the Honeydew II, and go out to check the garden for damage. A young Monterey pine, Pinus radiata, grown from seed collected by the sea at Monterey, is listing alarmingly: I didn’t stake it properly and must do so now. In their Californian home they also suffer wild Pacific gales, and typically survive clinging to the earth at crazy angles, but I want to see a straight tree standing proud in my garden! A Cordyline is also leaning, propped up by an Olearia shrub behind it.

It is more than a week since I checked the vegetable garden. The spring cabbage is looking good, and hasn’t been blown out of the ground as I feared. The sprouting broccoli has put out good spears, some of which have started to show yellow flowers, and I pick a good bunch. They will be delicious first fruits of the year, steamed and tossed in butter with a little pepper. I have never had broccoli so early: is it the variety, or global warming again?

Have you ever noticed that the Book of Genesis gives us alternative stories of the purpose for which God created humankind? Chapter 1 tells us that we are created to have dominion over the animal kingdom, and Chapter 2 to till and keep the Garden of Eden. Our modern civilisation has placed too much emphasis on the dominion and not enough on the tilling and keeping, I think. We use God’s promise of dominion to excuse our greed for resources, and ignore God’s injunction to conserve our fragile world. The result: the intensifying ecological catastrophe of global warming. What foolish, sinful people we are: we must mend our ways before we are ejected from Eden!

December 2006 - Pruning in the Sun

After what feels like weeks of rain, at last, a dry day, for the winter solstice! The sky is a heavenly blue, without cloud. In the sun, with no wind, it is almost warm: can I find any signs of the turning of the season? I pull on my green boots, and go out to check on the lower garden. Surprisingly the avenue lawn is quite dry. No sign of life yet from the daffodils I planted this autumn around the wildflower meadow, nor from the crocuses of previous years. Just as well, because I should run the mower over them one more time, so their flowers, when they come, are not concealed by rough grass. But soon, soon: Spring will come soon!

Walking back up the Lime alley, the twigs glow scarlet in the low December light against the blue sky. A ravishing sight. The ten foot saplings Susanna and I planted four years ago, brought bare-rooted in a trailer from a nurseryman friend in Clara, are now approaching 18 feet. I realise this is the ideal afternoon to do the job I should have done last year, to ‘raise their skirts’. The lower branches reach out at eye level, threatening injury and partially blocking the paths. They must be cut out now, before the sap rises in Spring, so that the higher branches will make a canopy under which we can walk in years to come. I fetch the pruning shears and the saw and start work. I feel like a butcher as I cut out the stout branches and crossed stems. But the job must be done: the trees will be better for it in years to come. The stumps of branches look untidy and raw, gashed wounds on the silver trunks. I remind myself how important it is to leave a good collar around the stumps: the collar will grow out to seal the wound with bark as the stump of the branch dies and falls away. If I cut through the collar, the tree will struggle to heal the larger wound, and rots and fungi may gain entry to sicken or kill the tree. It is better this way, even though it will look untidy for a while.

The work makes me warm. I take off my fleece, stopping for a moment to enjoy the sunshine. I marvel and give thanks for the wonderful golden light, today of all days, the shortest day of the year. It is a herald, a reminder that in four days time, in St John’s words, ‘the true light that enlightens everyone, is coming into the world’.

November 2006 - Death and Suffering, Life and Love

The first frosts, later than usual, have cut down the dahlias in the autumn border, and the tender salvias I failed to bring in. Their skeletons stand black and rotting where flowers so recently danced like bright hoors, to remind me of the fate of all created things, myself included, and all those I love.

And murder has been done on the wilderness path. A sad sprinkling of chaffinch feathers among the fallen leaves the only clue for CSI: I suspect the sparrow hawk, but a visiting cat might equally be the culprit.

Feet suddenly chilled in green wellies, I stop and stare, reaching inward to touch dark fears and anxieties. Tim, the father of two darling grandsons, lies in intensive care after surgery to replace a defective heart valve. For two years since diagnosis, we have known this time would come. We have watched his energy falter until he could no longer work, while the doctors monitored his condition, waiting for the time to be right. I so much admire Tim and my daughter for their fortitude and good sense facing this slow-building crisis, and how they have lovingly prepared their family for it. We are told his prognosis is good, and we pray that this will be so. But why, oh why, did our loving father God allow this suffering to fall on such a fine young man and his young family in what should be the prime of his life?

I cannot answer this question, perhaps the most difficult one there is; no more than anyone else can. It is clear that death and suffering go hand in hand with life and joy in this wonderful world we are a part of. CS Lewis suggests in his book The Problem of Pain that perhaps God could not have created one without the other: our freedom to respond to God’s outpouring love may depend upon it. Whatever the truth, we do know that Jesus shared our human suffering, and I believe he shows us how to make it holy.

The gardener knows that what seems like death in winter yields to new life in spring. The red leafless twigs of the limes in the alley already bear fat red buds. The daffodil bulbs I dug up by mistake already sprout white roots underground. And I know that Susanna’s beautifully tidied labyrinth beds will throw up another crop of annual weeds demanding yet more hoeing next year. The cycle of life and love will continue!

October 2006 - Harvest of Souls

The Harvest Festivals have come and gone, and we have given thanks to God for the plenty he has given us.

As I dig the last row of potatoes, I reflect on my own harvest, and start to plan for next year. The story is mixed. These knobbly tubers are the old late potato variety pink fir apple – difficult to peel, but to my taste unrivalled for flavour. The crop is good, though small due to the dry summer. It will feed us for a few months yet. The beans were another matter. The broad beans grew well, and produced hosts of flowers, but almost no pods formed. I suspect poor pollination. Bees were scarce: perhaps local swarms have been killed by the varoa mite, which is making life so difficult for beekeepers. Just three climbing French beans came up from a long row, but they and a late sowing of dwarf beans have fed us well for weeks. Last year’s seed, I tell myself: I must throw out the old and buy fresh next year. The plums were very good, the apples too. With great joy I watched the first pears form on the young espalier trees. And Susanna’s new labyrinth garden has produced a rich harvest of flowers to delight our spirits and passers-by.

In the summer arable farmers were worried by the drought, and I heard of first-cut silage being fed to beasts in July. But the Irish Farmers Journal now forecasts a 2 million tonne grain harvest, 6.8% above 2005, and after-grass is good I hear. Altogether, we all had a very great deal to give thanks for!

All Souls tide looms in the church calendar. I lean back on my fork and I wonder: What will Jesus make of his harvest, the harvest of souls? I am a sinner, and so are you, we all know that - though some of us are more miserable than others! Surely Jesus too will find the harvest mixed: among disappointments, I pray he may find some encouragement. He loves every soul, however knobbly, however poor the yield, we are assured. Jesus taught us to pray to our Father in heaven, and I take comfort that our loving-father God continues to show his love by giving us each day our daily bread. Without his grace we would have no harvest, though we do not deserve it.

September 2006 - Clouded Yellows and Swallows

Do you find God in your garden? I certainly do. I think I feel closer to God in my garden than I do anywhere else – except perhaps in the Burren, or similar great sweeps of wild landscape. Intellectually I can give my assent to the proposition that ‘He is everywhere’. But yet that sense of awe and wonder at the majesty and loving kindness of God seems more intense amidst living, growing things. Am I confessing some kind of failure of imagination?

Now, in early September, I am busying myself with the chore of strimming the wild-flower meadow, and raking up the cuttings: the plan is to allow the seeds to fall and multiply the flowers for next year. While leaning on the rake I catch sight of a yellow butterfly visiting a clump of Birds-foot Trefoil, a Clouded Yellow: not exactly rare, but a little uncommon, it is a migrant from warmer Mediterranean shores. A perfect specimen, newly emerged, it would have started life as an egg laid in June on a trefoil leaf by a female swept on southerly winds from France or Spain. Unfortunately, our winters are too cold and wet for them, and its offspring will not live to reproduce. But next year, a cousin of this beautiful maiden-aunt will visit to enchant us again.

Meanwhile, overhead, a twittering flight of swallows weave and bank, fattening themselves on flies and midges. One chases another, squealing piteously: perhaps a child of 2006 still seeking to be fed by its parent? They will leave soon, but their return next April will herald the burgeoning of another summer and lift our spirits. Gilbert White, the Rector of Selborne in Hampshire and eminent 18th century naturalist, believed that they hibernated in the mud of ponds. The truth is even more amazing: these tiny creatures fly 6000 miles, traversing the Sahara desert and the jungles of central Africa, to winter in southern Africa. And ringing studies have shown that the same birds find their way back to the very same nest the next year!

What little miracles of life these wanderers are! They are our distant cousins in the web of life, and they too are wrapped in God’s loving kindness. Matthew reports Jesus saying: “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them”. How will they cope with climate change, I wonder? In our greed and thoughtlessness we human kind pollute and damage this amazing world we have been given. Experts warn us that we are causing a rise in global temperatures unknown for 55 million years, and an accelerating crisis of species extinction, with uncertain but probably nasty consequences for us and our children. We badly need a big, big miracle: we should pray for it, and try to walk a little more lightly on God’s earth!