Ever since we arrived in Ireland I had wished to live in a house with a garden. We made do for a year and a half with windy and dark cement patches, potted annuals and leaf slime. So, once we moved into our current house, complete with three (count ‘em, three!!) expanses of lawn extending all the way around the house, I was understandably eager to get out there and get gardening.

As always, there were obstacles. Early February wind and rain made the garden forbidding at first, then there was my absence during the week, a broken lawnmower and the lack of gardening gloves. The gloves and the lawnmower were the biggies – there was no way I could cut that forest of grass without a mower, and no way I could rip out brambles and nettles without gloves. So I planned and waited and nagged and prodded, trying to gather the force to produce the tools required.

And lo, the tools were bestowed into the waiting hands of the patient gardener! Actually, all it took was a trip to the DIY store and a couple more calls to the landlord. This weekend was the spring reckoning – armies of dandelions were chopped down in all their yellow glory, spying brambles were nabbed and snipped off at the root, a new generation of tender blooms were sown and protected by a clear plastic greenhouse contraption. Weeds flying through the air! Earthworms making a run for the trenches! Blackbirds scouting the unfortunate beetles too slow to crawl beneath the rock! Such power I could wield bearing my spade and my lawnmower blade!!

When the dust settled and the water was soaking down into the seed husks, the magical scent of germination rose all around us and we sat in the warm spring sunshine listening to the birdcalls and breezes. After all the carnage, there was peace in the land.

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