Spring cleaning

working in the back garden

Did you ever get a song stuck in your head? Since last Wednesday all I can hear is trad(traditional Irish music ye non-Irish people), playing away all day and night inside some room in my head and refusing to be switched off. It's like a broken i pod with a repeat loop that never ends (or Fr Ted's infamous disco with the one record).It reminds me of studying for the Leaving cert in the sitting room when Dad would barge in and demand we turn off the radio " you can't study listening to that NOISE" only to immediately start playing the fiddle next door(the irony of the situation was unfortunately lost on him). Years later I realise it was his way of getting a bit of peace and quiet so he could practise.

He made it up to us all last Wednesday night when he got his lifetime achievement award and we shared in the best music session I have been at in an age.It was a funny night, meeting lots of my musical cousins and many of Dads pals who are a real international bunch. For years none of them knew he was married, let alone that he had 6 children! Dad had his own private music life and that's his true passion, he is what we have always called "the accidental farmer".

Hellebore marks the start of flowers in the garden

Unfortunately it was the ghost of teachers and employers past too. Some I was delighted to see, others just reminded me of detention, the principles office and other disturbing stuff best left in the 1980s and 90s. I managed to be polite and reasonable with them all and resist the urge to run screaming out of the building!

It took a few days to recover from the long and wild night in Corofin, but over the weekend it was back to the peace of the garden for a badly needed spring tidy up. Unlike other more organised gardeners I choose to leave the late summer wilderness intact over the winter. My theory is that dried stems and fallen leaves give ideal hibernation homes to lots of useful insects (as well as unpopular insects too no doubt) and its only safe to begin clearing away when Spring is finally here. So spring has arrived and the clean up begins!

Now that I have an ornamental garden it feels completely different to the vegetable plot which was the focus of almost all of my time since I moved here.In the vegetable garden the beds sit quietly, minding their own business, patiently waiting for their first crops to arrive, meanwhile out the back in the raised garden bulbs and plants are sprouting to life without any say so from me! Roses are crying out to be pruned, primroses have resurrected themselves and are tossing their pretty heads at me and even summer lilies are starting to bud up. It's all noisy busy action and it calls for attention, I can almost hear the chorus of plants roaring at me across the yard to "hurry up and get this stuff off my head!"Very high maintenance this ornamental bunch! So on Sunday morning, i took out my wheelbarrow into the lovely sunshine and spent a solid few hours cutting down and clearing away all the bleached and battered debris of last Summers growth. Now all I have to do is move some plants like buddleias that are in the wrong place, does it ever bloody end? Let me back to my vegetable garden for a bit of rest!

Almost restored to good order