The Fat of the Land

And just like that, It’s a new year.

Fresh start, new plans.

Last year, I had many plans. So many plans. Some came to fruition, some not. Mostly not. I had a list of resolutions a mile long and a spate of good intentions.  But, you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men. That Robert Burns was a smart man. I was thinking that the other day on the way to my allotment, how the best laid plans always go awry, and of course I began to hark back to that great Steinbeck novel. How all Lennie wanted to do was to “live off the fatta’ the land”. The simplicity of it. His simple plan, it’s not too far off from mine (I don’t however want to end up like he did, that would be all sorts of a headache).

I realised today that I can plan the garden all I want, life will always come along and throw me a curve ball. Mother nature will whip up a storm, a blight will hit, a slug will eat a cabbage, I’ll be stung by a nettle, I’ll have a work crisis, a family crisis, a personal crisis. However, I have a constant. I have a constant desire to garden, to grow, to get my hands all dirty. To dig up weeds, to drink tea while picking herbs, to squelch around the mud in my wellies. To plant seeds and watch them grow. To taste carrots straight out of the muck. To make fresh mojitos from my mint. To chat to my fellow gardeners, they know all of the dirt.

So I guess my plans can fail all they want but I will continue to try, because it gives me such joy and sometimes, the unexpected can make the garden far more interesting.

For 2014, I have huge plans, serious plans for the plot. I want to install a polytunnel, I want to grow tomatoes and chillies and peppers. I want to finally grow some courgettes! I want to have a pretty plot, I want flowers and herbs and pretty colours. I want a sanctuary for me and the bees. I’ll call it my very own bee loud glade, I’ll do Yeats proud with it.

We’ve had some really bad storms in Ireland the past 10 days. Floods and high winds, serious damage to roads and infrastructure. On site, there were sheds littered around the site, I saw a few destroyed greenhouses and polytunnels. Somehow, I escaped relatively  unscathed. One of my fence posts snapped so that’ll need to be replaced but otherwise all is good on plot P26, albeit a bit barren and forlorn after the winter months.

It’s the lean season, when you can’t plant much and there’s not much to harvest. Except of course for my parsnips, of which I dug some this week, it made me deliriously happy. I also dug up some Jerusalem Artichokes and picked some of my asian winter greens. It might be winter, but there’s life in the old girl yet.

This is the perfect time of the year to plan. To plot and plan, plan the plot. Get digging, get growing, get a small pot on your balcony, build a raised bed in your garden, grow some herbs, grow some potatoes in a sack, get a bee hive, some chickens, a pig. Experience they joy of producing food.

Last year was a stormy one for me, but here I am, after the storms, still planning, always planning, still yearning to grow and ready to garden the hell out of the year. I’m currently drawing up the layout of the plot for this year so I’ll share it as soon as it’s done. Always interesting to see how differently it works out come the following winter. Best laid plans……etc, going over old ground now (see what I did there?).

Happy New Year to you all and get growing, you’ll thank yourselves this time next year.

xxx