Once upon a time there was a small, barren patch of land in a field in North County Dublin. This square of muck was unloved and unworked, yearning for a gardener to come along and tend to it. One day, a young woman stood at its borders, surveying it’s potential and the patch of land […]
Happily Ever After Read More »
Here’s how it is. You get up early when all your mates are in bed. You can’t go to the pub because you need to prune your hedges. You spend your winters out in the cold and your rainy days out in the rain. You dig and you plant and you weed and you water. You
One of the most common questions I’m asked is “what do you do with all your crops?” And my answer is invariably a confused “Ehhh, I eat them”. There’s something undeniably satisfying about picking crops from your garden and using them in a meal and when you grow your own food, you learn to use your
Fiona Cooks Food: Lemon Balm & Rosemary Shortbread Biscuits. Read More »
May hovers over the city on wings of promise; that the summer sun will awaken the garden and warm rain showers will wash away the long cold drought of the past month. It seems that in a matter of days, Dublin has been painted with the colours of late spring. While last week, I was
The arrival of April is an exciting prospect for the vegetable gardener. The clock has moved one hour forward, the seemingly endless winter nights are truncated and the daylight hours stretch out their arms into a summer embrace. We uproot ourselves from the Netflix binges and shed our winter coats, we plant our feet firmly
Gardeners are wonderful. They are resourceful, creative, generous and hard working. Gardeners are from all walks of life, all ages and all races and I for one believe that gardeners are some of the best people I’ve had the good grace to encounter in my lifetime. The two greatest gardeners however, that I’ve had the
International Greenfingers Day Read More »
On your mark ready set let’s go, Garden pro, I know you know I go psycho when the spring time hit, Just can’t sit, Got to get diggy with it, thats it. It’s finally spring time, the temperature is rising, the mornings are brighter, there’s a grand old stretch of an evening, the winter coats are stored away,
Gettin’ Diggy With It Read More »
I find myself in the throes of mid-January blues, broke, tired, a bit soft around the edges; dark mornings made even darker by evenings spent dreaming of May. With no crops to harvest and an allotment that has felt the swift slap of winter winds and the rot of relentless rain; I am definitely suffering
Hi All. Since moving house a couple of months ago, I haven’t been blogging at all. New routine, new challenges, new life. I’ve also had to learn how to cook. The horror. Considering that up until now, my idea of cooking consisted of sticking a pizza in the oven (and most likely burning it) this
Fiona Cooks Food: Kale and Apple Soup Read More »
Gardening is a wonderful, fulfilling and rewarding hobby and like most things, the more you put in, the more you get out of it. Having an allotment is a full time hobby and unfortunately when, like me, you work a busy full-time job far away from your plot, it’s difficult to always get time to
