I have just cooked a meal. Nothing out of the ordinary since I enjoy cooking but it is yet another milestone for me to savour the produce of my backyard. I have always thought it a gargantuan task to grow any vegetables lest harvest them since I have spent most of my life living in a city. But now with a humongous backyard, I felt that it would be a shame not to sow some life into it.
So began my adventure into planting seeds and bulbs. Emma O Dwyer, who conducts gardening classes at St Munchin’s Community Centre gave me valuable tips on how to prepare the soil, sow seeds, propagate cuttings and even make fertilizers out of nettles. Apparently the gooey mash is excellent fodder for the ground but the only snag is the rotting weed stinks. She is a great teacher, explaining everything in detail and never failing to answer even the simplest questions. Through all the sessions, I felt wonderful to be a student all over again.
For weeks, I would scout out slugs and snails in the dark of the night with a torchlight and dogged determination. With quite a number of disappointments given the weather and pests, I was blown away when I saw the heads of cabbages forming, the heavy tomatoes bursting out of the delicate stalks , beans appearing among tendrils and potatoes emerging from the soil. Most of all, it is the eating of food that is free from pesticides, plant growth regulators and genetically modified organisms that makes it all so meaningful. It may sound strange but home-grown food actually tastes sweeter than commercially produced ones.
To add protein to the dinner table, my brothers-in-law Martin and Gerard and my step sons Michael and Mark brought home pike and perch caught from the river near my house for the frying pan.
Not knowing what to do with the abundance of berries in the backyard, I immediately signed up for a workshop held at the Irish Seedsavers in Scariff on how to make jams and chutneys out of fruits and vegetables. Hilary Taylor showed us how to boil fruits and vegetables and how to bottle them so they would last. She was a natural and explained to us step-by-step on how it was done. After all the hard work of tilling the ground and minding the plants, I wanted to be sure that nothing was to go to waste. It was a delight to be in the company of like minds: a newbie among veterans.
I like the system here where preserving the environment takes precedence over most things. It is not uncommon to see bird feeders filled with nuts and seeds to attract wild birds. It comes as a surprise to me that most people actually know the names of the birds and the flowers in their vicinity. When I was in Malaysia, the names of wild birds remained in books for bird lovers and the names of flowers were the forte of nursery owners in Sungei Buloh. So lately, I have started to learn the names of the birds that visit the bird feeders and the names of the flowers and the shrubs too.
What I have embarked on is an amateurish route to sustainable living. But over here I have seen some groups of people who are into it full force. There are accountants and lawyers who have left their professions to till the land or to become craftsmen. Organic farming is also the craze and we even have organic salmon.
Another major factor of back-to-basics living involves that which no human can live without, water. We will be installing water butts which are plastic or oak drums for collecting rain water. With rain almost all year round in Ireland, this is a wonderful device. Most things are sold in do-it-yourself kits. The look of having to install anything is daunting but information is readily available here. There are very good regular gardening programmes over the national television station teaching us how to fix a water butt, protect potato plants from blight or build a barbeque pit in the garden.
What I started out as a hobby has also turned into a sense of pride. It is nice to walk down the street and meet neighbours or strangers who tell you that the window boxes of ruby red geraniums are beautiful or the baskets of yellow viola are breathtaking.
And they have not seen what is in my backyard yet.
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