What Inspires My Garden

Gardening has become an outlet for me when I want to feel useful or creative. I've become to think of my gardening space as a big blank canvas that I must slowly fill. It's February now and it is especially during this time of year that I must remind myself not to wait till spring or summer to feel full of life. There is always something I could be doing. Right now I am cleaning up the debris that has amassed over winter, clearing away dead plants, getting excited over new life emerging, planning for the planting season and moving plants. It's also a time to reflect on what I want from my garden and how to achieve it. This is why I am thinking about gardening as an artistic project, to keep me looking for inspiration and thinking about aesthetics. I loved art in school but I don't think I was ever suited to the mediums of paint or ceramics etc. I knew I wanted to create but didn't know my niche. I've always loved writing and keeping a gardening blog turned out to be extremely satisfying, not least because gardening suits me as a person who loves solitude and staying at home but wants to be out in nature. So now I'm thinking about what inspires my gardening ways.

The Sea

We have great stony beaches nearby. I've never enjoyed the sandy sunny beach days of high summer but I love the tactile experience of a rough coast line littered with interesting stones, shells, seaweed and rock pools. I use beach stones and shells for decoration in the garden and harvest dead seaweed for mulch. I love art and jewellery that uses found beach material. Even driftwood is full of possibilities.

Polyculture

I started gardening because I wanted to try growing something to eat. I never felt interested in flowers or decorative plants until I realised I was thinking about it all wrong. Buying ready made plants in plastic pots will do nothing for me because the purpose of the flower is not simply for my enjoyment, it has a part to play in a much wider biodiverse picture, as food and shelter for pollinating insects and as a layer in a complex canopy. Once I started thinking of plants as part of a living landscape, it encouraged me to think about the relationship between plants and to move away from monocrop straight lines. Now I endeavour to mix vegetables, fruit, herbs and flowers while sparing a thought for companion planting without over thinking it.

Friendships

The mark of success I am aiming for is to be able to go to my garden on the birthdays of my friends and family and harvest a bouquet without feeling anxious about depleting my stocks. It feels great to offer someone a bunch of edibles, a cutting or some surplus seedlings, just as I love to receive them. I want a bounty I can share. Rather than bringing a token shop-bought cake when visiting someone's home, I'd like to be able to bring a punnet of home grown strawberries. There are many situations where buying a gift might be overkill but a homemade token is understated and almost always appreciated.



So get inspired, get going and get growing!

Things I Learned Travelling Alone

I've always loved travelling alone, be it a short bus journey or a ferry to another country. It's a way to wipe the slate clean, assume any identity you wish (not in a weird The Talented Mr Ripley way) and learn more about yourself by observing others. Now that I am working part time, I have more freedom, but am almost always with my almost three year old. I've seen so much of what Co Cork has to offer in the last three years, but always with my side kick in tow, so I was very excited to get the chance to go to Brussels for a weekend in May to visit a friend. I flew from Cork to Amsterdam and took the train to Brussels, a wonderful trip along canals and walkways with beautiful summer houses and allotments dotted along the route. The weather was beautiful, leisurely cyclists were everywhere just making me feel good by watching them, I was travelling light with a small back and feeling free.

For entertainment and enlightenment on the train, I had downloaded lots of TED Talks on random subjects. I watched presentations on creative design, outer space and the human psyche and thought about life, well my life mostly. And here is what I learned on my trip:

• The power of time off

There is an amazing scheme available to me at work that allows me to apply to take a block of unpaid leave. For the last two years I have taken a six week break. Apart from a weekend away, I've spent the time living the slow life - cooking good meals, gardening, visiting family and just not rushing anywhere. Not that I live a particularly fast paced life normally, but I work to live so the less time I can spend commuting and in an office, the better for my health and my head. My earnings are dismal in comparison to a few years ago but my money seems to go further.

• The power of self-reflection and anonymity

Once of the biggest challenges, I found, becoming a parent was the loss of [my perceived] identity and becoming suddenly more visible in public. Simple things like having to navigate a buggy on a busy street makes me feel unmoveable, awkward and at the mercy of others. My smiley toddler who says hello to everyone attracts attention that sometimes I don't want. Travelling alone I can move quickly and silently, wear different clothes because I am more lightweight and make decisions based on my own desires alone. It also helps me appreciate the joy of my normal life - the fact that I am never lonely because I have an exuberant child who will accompany me to the ends of the earth, even if it is hard work at times.

• 100 reasons not to be negative

Terrible things happen to us all, more to some, and it's healthy to react emotionally during difficult times but positivity is such a warm and contagious trait to have. I'm not sure if it can be learned or if it is innate to a person, but the more time I spend around negative people the more I see how your attitude to life determines whether or not you will be happy. How awful it must be to be miserable most of the time. Sometimes it's better to look out, rather than inwards, and not put yourself at the centre of the universe.

• Sometimes being in a crowd can be beautiful

I'm usually trying to find the quiet place but being in a busy city on a fine day with music playing and festivities surrounding me just made me love people, all so different and interesting.

• Olives are a great portable snack!

I never leave the house without food and always looking for filling foods that don't need refrigeration. Hurray for olives. And I discovered cream cheese stuffed peppadew peppers. Oh my god.

• Sometimes, do nothing

It's harder than it seems and it's why I still haven't bought a smart phone. It's nice to be truly idle sometimes, just looking around and taking it all in.

• Everyone looks fabulous in the sunshine

Clothes get more colourful and experimental and everyone seems so much happier.

• People care about me

I expected to slip away for the weekend and return as if nothing happened but I was pleasantly surprised when people made contact to see how I was getting on.




So if you are feeling at a bit of a hiatus in life, and have the freedom to get away for even a day, go on a little adventure by yourself and hopefully you'll come home feeling better for it.

Why Frugal Living Works For Me

A constant state of dissatisfaction is, I think, a pretty accurate description of today's quintessential sedentary 9-5 urban modern life. In Ireland, where we have freedom, opportunities and safe living, people are still not truly happy.  And you might be surprised to discover the kind of people who are happiest. In my experience, it is not wealth, social status, beauty or anything tangible that increases a person's happiness.

But we are all different and have to do the best with what we've got, so everybody's path to happiness will be different. For me, free time is my ultimate goal. That is time to do anything I want, whether that be to do nothing at all. I am lucky to work in a job that allows me to apply for unpaid leave so keeping my living costs down means I can afford to work less. I have been working a four day week for six months now. My expenses are still the same from when I was working five days (slightly greater in fact as I now have a child), and I am still saving money. My job is not a high paid job. I pay rent of €350 a month. I pay for part time child care. I have a car (which I bought for cash with savings).

I began to look at purchases in terms of time. I see a beautiful pair of boots in a shop window and I want them. I look at the price - €80 - or one day's work. So it's the boots or a day off work. The day off wins and I walk on.

I just don't buy things anymore. By things I mean non-perishable items (not food/medicine/cosmetics/cleaning products/fuel - of course you can make frugal choices with these life necessities too). It took me a while to get to this point. I built up my possessions for the first few years that I started working - long lasting pieces like a guitar, cooking appliances, reference books, a range of jewellery, good clothes and shoes. But once you get to a certain level of personal and household items, you just don't really have to buy much anymore. What I need was a reason. Becoming a mother was the driving force, but I had been thinking about paring down my lifestyle for a while. My time is everything to me now. When you wear the same clothes for years, they eventually come back into fashion!

Say No to Convenience Products

In matters of food and home, convenience can be expensive and quite often, unhealthy. A person working long hours can’t be expected to do everything from scratch all the time but here are some easy tips that I hope identify the main convenience culprits.

1. Avoid single serve portions. They are evil. Even if you are only feeding one, you are much better off investing in a good freezer and buying food in bulk, where cheaper. It is a simple habit to get into, and once you get into that mindset, it is hard to go back to paying premium prices for nicely packaged portions for one. Chopped plastic wrapped vegetables are the worst. The mark up for the convenience of having them peeled and chopped is astronomical. On a recent trip to Tesco, the normal celery head was 89c, where a bag of celery stalks, chopped from the base was €1.65. The actual size of the edible portion was about the same.

2. If the reason for buying smaller portions is to control weight, don’t be fooled by marketing ploys. Stay clear of low fat “weight watchers” products that claim to be healthier but are really just a smaller portion of the same food you could buy from any brand. Instead of buying your diet sliced pan, which is just reduced in size so the portion calorie count is smaller, learn how to make a decent brown bread and enjoy a full portion knowing that it is better for you. Better still; rise above the notion that low fat, processed products are a good way to control your weight. The healthiest, fittest people I know are those who eat well, enjoy their meat, carbohydrates, full fat dairy products, a daily treat and so on, but do not eat processed junk which often falsely parades itself as healthy. Belvita breakfast biscuits? Special K? No thanks; I’d rather have a boiled egg and brown bread. You can poach an egg in the microwave in less than a minute so limited time is no excuse.

3. Instead of buying packets of biscuits, bake your own. It is too easy to open a packet of supermarket biscuits and scoff five without even thinking. If you put in the time and effort to bake your own, not only are you getting physical exercise from the actual task of cooking and cleaning, but also you will appreciate them more and will be less quick to eat them so fast. Plus they defrost in no time so you can control your portions by freezing the batch and taking one out daily. It is more rewarding.

4. If you do not have a problem with eating sweet treats, just make a slab of chocolate biscuit cake every week and keep it in the fridge. I make a 6inch x 6inch x 1 inch portion once a week using a 125g bar of Lidl Madagascar chocolate [€1.25], 4 tbsp butter, 1 tbsp golden syrup, handful mixed dried fruit and 75g rich tea biscuits [you can buy a 300g pack for about 35c in Lidl]. It costs less that €2 to make and keeps two of us in chocolate for a week or more. If we were buying a chocolate bar a day for each of us in the local newsagent, we would be spending €2 every day - €14 a week!

5. Make a “rag bag”. Well make two – one for clean and one for dirty. Cut up any old clothes that have gone beyond wearable, store in a cotton bag and when used, put into a material net bag. The whole bag can be thrown into the washing machine with your usual load. You can stop buying paper towels and the by using the bag system, you’ll have a neat and tidy system.

For an ultra neat system, use plastic containers to contain the bags:

Uplifting homemade rags made from clothes!:

And don't get me started on take away teas and coffees..... If you have to have it on the go, buy a flask.