Growing for the soul

Gardening

Like some kind of off-kilter Fibonacci sequence the numbers 15-0-15 and 20-10-10 have been indelibly etched into my psyche. That, I've found, is the cost of first dead-lifting, and then carrying two-and-a-half tonne of top-soil at chest height on repeat. About midway through the second thousand kilos you find your mind plays tricks like some kind of hard work ayahuasca.

In this case, to regain focus, I began by reading the words on the old and worn fertiliser bags I'd been using to lug this weight of virgin muck firstly from the top of the garden, then down a flight of rapidly disintegrating wooden steps, and finally with a last heave, depositing my bounty where it would soon be required.

No motorbike, or flash car for this midlife crisis. Becoming a gardener for the first time age 40, having been a very reluctant one until now, is the exhilaration I was seemingly destined for. Who knew?

Some context is important. I grew up youngest and only boy. So playing Sega Mega Drive, quaffing my small body weight in Cavan Cola and reading the Beano on Saturdays were highest in my ordo cognoscendi, despite all best efforts by my green-fingered dad to corral me to the contrary.

A forester by trade, my late father Jim had, in hindsight, an enviable encyclopedic knowledge of all things that grew.

Softly spoken and generous in his patience, he turned his productive hands to growing everything from constantly pilfered strawberries, to cabbages and potatoes, and plenty of other stock that'd invariably make its onto our family's dinner table.

My fondest memories are of him taking pride in a decent crop of potatoes, then steamed til the skin split and lashed with rapidly melting butter.

Or how he'd enter the best three of any crop into the old Belturbet Agricultural Show, the blue rosette guaranteeing that at least some of the prize money would wing its way my direction to be suitably wasted on another run at the swing-boats.

Where is all this going one might ask, except for a long and winding trip down memory lane? As my dad would say right after a Hail Mary for safe arrival: 'Roads are made for journeys, not destinations'.

So to the near present and right after I'd survived a 40th revolution around the sun, I was presented with the most unique of gift - a polytunnel.

It had cropped up in conversation between myself and my better half, but like most things that require thinking beyond the end of the week, it was pinned beneath a mental magnet and stuck on the fridge in my mind's eye.

It's important to note I've at least two sisters as equally adept as my dad was at tending to their respective gardens. I however resided longer in the Green Hill Zone (Sonic 1 reference) than ever threatening to see my fingers turn anything other than soft pink.

This though changed with a single tomato plant- a 'Marmande'- bought from a Polish lady at the Sunday Market in Cavan Town. The next week she convinced me to buy another, and then another.

Before I knew it I'd snapped up 10 different varieties, and set about planting them in rows of three, and in between those installed threads of garlic bulbs, leeks, and spring onions.

There is no room for flowers in my polytunnel. My rule of thumb, to date at least, is if I can't eat it I don't want it.

One of the more memorable tomato varieties enthusiastically sold by the same woman was a ‘Venusbrüstchen’, one she'd tasted abroad and was so enamoured with its uniqueness that she began to propagate for herself. The Téton de Vénus’ (French for 'Nipple of Venus') is bright red and luscious, with a clearly pointed fruit. “Like a lady's titty,” she screamed at me with laughter from across her fold-up table, her wizened face erupting, and then repeated her joke even more loudly to better serve my public discomfort.

My dad passed away January 27, 2021. Grief is something I tend not to process in a personal way every day, despite the myriad of sometimes tragic stories that too often cross my work desk. I do often wonder how some people cope, and my professional brain buffers the worst. So three years on from that life-defining familial development I found myself struggling to process why I feel the way I do about some aspects such as visiting my dad's grave. The disconnect is one of those counterproductive instincts, the sort that will for years keep the world’s therapists in holiday homes by Lake Como before ever being fully solved.

I never established a ritual to honour him after he died, and I'd tell myself in the quiet times, it really shouldn’t make that much of a difference. But those shaming voices in my head get louder during important moments, family occasions, at landmark life events.

So shouldering, tugging, dropping, refilling, and dragging bag after bag of rich brown and sweet smelling soil brought me back to those juvenile days. To happier times when my dad would take my hand and we'd walk the ridges, him pointing and sharing a wealth of information, me half-consciously taking it in, with thoughts no doubt drifting back to a 16-bit pixelated destiny.

In my polytunnel, as much as I've enjoyed the process of growing for my own home, to no great degree of success, I surprisingly recaptured some of that sense of happiness by my dad's side.

It's been cathartic, and the quiet moments as I rummage for weeds sprouting between the curly kale and failing string beans, has afforded me with an opportunity to measure thoughts and feelings I’d never consciously tried to navigate through before. Despite myself I might've even picked up a few things.

Now back to the Sunday market, and on one of my recent pick-throughs, my eye was drawn to one of those ornamental printed signs embossed with actress Audrey Hepburn in that style icon pose, replete with gardening mitts instead of those classic black satin elbow length gloves. It quoted her as saying: 'To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow'. I know my dad would have enjoyed seeing me toil away outdoors. He'd probably have shot a wry smile at my struggles, a sort of 'told you so' nod, but no doubt would have offered a helping hand and comforting word of encouragement.