Grow Write Guild #5 What Does Your Garden Sound Like?

My garden is loud with the sound of birds. Not just the wild birds but the big flock of ducks, chickens and geese in the small farm that is right next door to me. I have made videos of my children in the garden and during playback realised the symphonic avian soundtrack that I have become so used to.

There is a small lane that runs parallel to the end of our garden and very occasionally a small, old tractor passes. I hear the engine starting and the tractor slowly rolling to a move before I see it through the thick cypress trees.

The road to the front of the house is quiet and I hear the chatting voices of the pairs of walkers approaching the house, or the barking from the neighbour's garden letting me know that someone is walking a dog. 

In the summer, particularly in the lower half of the garden, insect sound levels rise, primarily bees and flies. I left loads of ragwort bloom last summer and it was the star of the floral show when it came to attracting invertebrates.

I love the sound of my garden.

Grow Write Guild #4 Write about your Garden Mentor or Muse

 You may notice that I have skipped the third prompt - Describe Your Garden Right Now. My last post pretty much did that and I am bored of writing about my own garden, which is why I started using these prompts. Onwards!

I started gardening in 2012, after doing pretty much no growing of any sort before this. I think it coincided with the beginning of a natural inclination to nest (I had my first baby the following year), an addiction to the self-sufficiency promoting TV series, River Cottage, and a throwaway comment by a person I admired saying that they grew their own veg.

As my interest grew and I started to check out gardening books from the library, I became  acquainted with Joy Larkcom whose books I now own and who I even met in person which she gave a talk in my local GIY (Grow It Yourself) group. I loved her story of taking her husband and children on a year long campervan tour of Europe in the 70's to research vegetables, bringing new seed varieties and growing/harvesting/cooking techniques back to England. I was also encouraged to hear that she took time out of work to raise her kids, and then returned to have an important, creative career. Any story of parents who go on to have interesting careers after spending time out of work to raise their kids makes me excited as I am currently in the staying-at-home stage (well I guess plenty people are in 2020 with the covid lockdown but my housebound state has been going on for four and a half years).

Another element of growing food that gets me excited is seed production and saving. The previously mentioned GIY group also held a talk with Madaline McKeever who owns Brown Envelope Seeds in Skibbereen, one of only two places in Ireland raising and harvesting their own seeds (the other place is Seed Savers in Co Clare). Again, she was a woman who had raised her family and had changed careers when she switched from dairy farming to seed production. The idea of having a business that concentrates on a micro element (micro in focus, not in importance or workload) of food production draws me in far more than an expansive endeavour.

Writing this post makes me miss educational talks incredibly! There are plenty more people whose work and contributions I admire, especially local people whose gardens I see and hear about. And it is the local gardens that are really sustaining me at the moment as I walk the roads again and again and again….

Grow Write Guild #2 My Dream Garden

* Read about the Grow Write Guild writing prompts here.

My dream garden is lush and moist and has many canopies. There is very little manicured grass. It is on an incline, with rocky parts, and some scattered small flat areas. There are lots of native Irish trees and a massive Scots Pine. There are other Scots Pines in the neighbouring lands, which are not my responsibility, but they are teeming with red squirrels, which will visit my garden on occasion. It is a place of refuge for the local wildlife but the variety of species keeps a healthy balance in the garden. I don’t kill the slugs but the resident thrushes help to keep their numbers down. The nasturtiums give me a place to relocate the caterpillars that I have removed from the broccoli. My two cats take care of any rats or mice that come close to the house.This garden is difficult to cultivate certain plants on, but is nonetheless lush with beautiful growth. There is enough space for containers to widen my choices. It is not an easy terrain designed by a human but a landscape cut out by time and weather. I have a small glasshouse that I have crammed with healthy flowers, vegetables, fruit and herbs. There is a sheltered area which is a suntrap and completely private. I have a bench here. I have a small patio area just outside my back door which has some chairs and a small table. Apart from these little areas of space for human use, it is beautifully wild. A small stream runs down the incline just inside the outermost boundary of one side of the property. The sounds of nature are loud.

Grow Write Guild #1 My First Plant

* Read about the Grow Write Guild writing prompts here.

My first plant was a 35 year old cactus that was gifted to me by my father, a relic of my grandmother’s decades spanning collection. It was akin to adopting an adult in the place of a child - an imposing specimen, unmoving and deadly to the touch. In fact I once accidentally drove one of the spikes through my fingernail and had to patiently allow my nail to slowly grow to a sufficient length to allow me to cut the spike away. The reason for enduring this injury-afflicting plant on my kitchen windowsill, always threatening to harm me with a misplaced brush of my hand, was that once a year, around April, it would bloom an incredible large white and pale pink heavily scented flower, seemingly out of nothing. The flower would last a day, delighting my olfactory system while washing the dishes, and then turn flaccid and withered where upon I would carefully pluck it from the cactus and throw it in the compost. The cactus would also regularly sprout baby cacti from its motherboard and I could remove and pot them on. They made wonderful gifts, whether people wanted them or not and if you are reading this story, I would wager that you have been the lucky recipient of one in the past.

Garden Writing Challenge

I've always been drawn to writing. I will never avoid a chance to consciously communicate with the written word, whether it's something as simple as a grammatically correct text message, as technical as proof reading CVs for my family or as indulgent as long contemplative emails to long distance friends. But right now I am looking for something more creative and intense and direct - a step above blog posts about my home and garden. My kitchen table is inviting though messy, I have a nice lamp, a map of my local Cork harbour and a my much loved globe. The stove is lighting regularly and I am extremely comfortable.

I started searching for garden writing prompts and found a perfect challenge - the Grow Write Guild challenge on a wonderful looking website You Grow Girl. The challenge is a few years old now but each post has loads of comments and links to other gardening blogs. So I've started writing little stories built around the prompts and am hoping to post one every week here. Hopefully some of you will join in too or add links to similar challenges in the comments.