Garden Reborn, Food Gardening Trick & Irish Time-Travel

Plus a new kind of pickle...

Each spring, when the garden wakes up from its winter sleep, feels like a little miracle.

Native red currant in April

Yes, it’s a cliche, but it is miraculous! Tiny pink knobs emerge in the rhubarb patch, and before you know it, they’re unfurling into crinkly green leaves. Buds on the  apple trees and blueberry shrubs begin to swell, and soon the blossoms look ready to pop.

And after the long, silent winter, you can hear birdsong—and just as precious, the hum of bees in the air.

Red currant, featured above, is a native shrub that grows abundantly in our woods. One of the first flowers of any kind to open here in the Foothills, its small but vividly pink flowers are a big draw for hummingbirds and native bees.

For prime hummingbird viewing, my husband John and I transplanted a dozen or so currant shrubs into our yard.  Just today, I saw my first bumblebee of the season, foraging in the blossoms.

The bees aren’t the only ones getting a move on—here’s a view of some early spring action in my garlic and rhubarb bed. In the space of a mere week, they’ve had a real growth spurt!

Garlic at the end of March

Garlic added a 4th leaf stalk this past week…

Here’s a week’s growth in my rhubarb patch!

What’s new in your garden? Any spring surprises this year?

Using Nature’s Cues in your Food Garden

Thanks to the very knowledgable Laura Lemon over at the Hippiebilly Homestead Substack, I just learned a new term: “Phenology.”

Phenology is defined as “the study of cyclical natural phenomena and events.” The Smithsonian Gardens website provides some examples of using phenology in your food garden, and says that “paying attention to nature’s timing can help guide you when to plant and harvest.”

The phenology tip Hippiebilly Homestead Laura mentioned was planting onions when the forsythia blooms.

I don’t have any forsythia in my yard, but when I saw the rich yellow forsythia blossoms in the little town 15 miles away, I decided to give it a chance.

For many years, I would get so occupied with my favorite spring task— April blueberry pruning—I wouldn’t get around to planting my onion seedling starts until early May.

Despite daily watering, half of the seedlings would shrivel away within a couple of weeks. Even sooner, if we got a warm spell.

Two years ago, a light went on. Onions need cooler soil and weather for a good start—duh! I got myself in gear and planted seedlings in mid-April, and the survival rate was more like 80%.

This spring, using Laura’s phenology tip, I planted them during the forsythia bloom-time, the end of March!

So far, all the seedlings look vigorous—no sign of yellowing shoots. And forsythia just might be one of those spring bellweathers: the Smithsonian Gardens also mentioned planting peas at this time. Which seems just about right.

Still, phenology is not a failsafe strategy. Another Smithsonian Gardens example is to plant potatoes when the first dandelion flowers open. Today, I saw my first bright yellow blossoms!

But planting potatoes at this time here in the Foothills would be, in my experience, a disaster. The soil is just too cold right now. he one time I planted potatoes in April they rotted in the ground.

So my advice is, assess your own garden’s conditions, try what feels right, and sometimes take phenology with a wee grain of salt!

If you’ve tried phenology, I hope you’ll share your tips!

The Luck O’ the Irish

Still in a very Irish frame of mind after creating three Irish arts and entertainment blog posts for St. Patrick’s Day, I got inspired to jump into my time-travel machine.

I dialed it to 20 years ago, when I fell hopelessly in love with Irish culture.

In the early to mid-aughts, I was immersed in writing my first two Irish novels, and whether it was serendipity, synchronicity, or the Universe calling, Irishness in the U.S. was suddenly everywhere.

I can’t say if my “writing Irish” came first, or the Irish stuff showed up and influenced my writing, but either way, I was hooked.

From the earliest Irish immigration, the Irish have brought their culture with them—then proceeded to develop a huge fan base. In “Booking Passage,” Irish-American poet and memoirist Thomas Lynch says there are 40 million people of Irish descent in the U.S. alone.

But the way Irish people and stories are so much part of our cultural landscape, I don’t think it’s only Irish-Americans keeping the spirit going.

Like I said, from the early 2000’s, Celtic-ness in the arts were just exploding. And I loved it all.

“Riverdance” was still going strong, and mesmerized, I watched it umpteen times on PBS. (Way back when we had cable TV).

Its star male dancer, Michael Flatley, created his own Irish extravaganza, “Lord of the Dance,” then apparently he couldn’t stop there. Flatley went on to produce and star in “Feet of Flames”!

Irish hits in the early “aughts”—the tiny Irish dancing shoes inspired my first novel!

Another Irish musical, “Once,” was a hit film in America—a tender love story and all-around delight. “Celtic Woman,” an ethereally-voiced quartet of female singers, was on a national tour, and John and I were entranced by their DVD.

In the literary world, readers were having a heyday with Dublin author Maeve Binchy’s bestselling Whitethorn Woods.

But it was Frank McCourt’s memoir Angela’s Ashes that I think truly set off all this Irish love in America. With the hunger and neglect in McCourt’s family, I found the book unbearably grim at times.

But McCourt, who emigrated to the U.S. as a young man, had such a winning voice I couldn’t stop reading.

Apparently neither could a lot of other people—because the book stayed at the top of the bestseller lists for years.

The one Irish hit I didn’t experience was “The Pirate Queen,” a Broadway musical based on the life of the historical figure Grace O’ Malley, brought to you by the makers of “Riverdance.”

Regular readers of Little Farm Writer know I’m a big fan of Grace, or Grainne O Maille in Irish (please forgive the lack of proper Gaelic accents!), the Pirate Queen herself. So much so that she inspired an Irish Grainne character in one of my novels.

Interestingly, when my husband John and I traveled to the West of Ireland a few years back, we visited the little town of Westport, County Mayo, the hometown of the real Grace O’Malley.

While we were there, Westport’s small community theatre was playing—yes, “The Pirate Queen”!

Back to Irish books: after Whitethorn Woods, I didn’t know how I would wait a year for a new Binchy book. Luckily, I found another opportunity to deep dive into Irishness with the novel, Recipes for a Perfect Marriage by Morag Prunty.

It was a terrific novel that has stayed with me, even after all this time. I’d always wanted to re-read it, so today, as I clambered out of my time travel machine, I decided to check it out.

Sadly, Recipes for a Perfect Marriage appears to be out of print—only available used, from dodgy-looking sellers.

Lately, I’ve been on a zero-tolerance for procrastination kick (see: planting spring crops early!), so I immediately called my local library to see if “Recipes” was available. (Short answer: maybe.)

I wondered if Morag Prunty, the author, had also disappeared into the mists of time. Since I did love her book so much, I looked her up too.

She did not disappear!

As it turns out, she now writes as Kate Kerrigan (sure, a more musical-sounding moniker, but “Morag Prunty”  just so Irish). Her latest project isn’t a book, though. Kerrigan has transformed her career—and is currently performing in her own play, “Am I Irish Yet?”

There’s an Irish saying, “I’d rather be lucky than smart.” Kerrigan, I think, is both lucky and smart!

Her Ireland production, which on her website looks like an absolute blast, just goes to show that people, like gardens, can develop and evolve in intriguing new ways.

Homesteady Pickling

I’ve posted a couple of refrigerator pickle recipes for summer on my Little Farm blog, which worked beautifully with cucumbers. But last week, I discovered a brand-new pickling situation…

In warm weather, we’d learned it’s a good idea to put a splash of apple cider vinegar in the hens’ waterer, to keep the water fresher. I’d been storing a gallon jug of vinegar in the shop among my garden tools, and the lid somehow disappeared.

Since there was little more than an inch of vinegar left in the jug, I figured a few flies might be attracted to the vinegar. Otherwise, it would be fine.

With spring gardening shifting into high gear, I was tidying up my garden stuff when I spied the jug. I figured I could find a replacement lid so I pulled it out.

There was something floating inside it. Something far larger than a fly.

I looked into the jug, and EEUUUUWWW!

It was a mouse!

A pickled mouse!

“Oh, GROSS!” Fortunately, John, our mouse disposal manager, was nearby. I swiftly handed him the jug. “You would not believe what got into the vinegar!”

Despite dealing with many a mouse, John was surprised. But he dutifully dumped the corpse into the woods. And I learned my lesson about uncovered vinegar containers.

When it comes to mice at our place, I really thought I’d seen it all. Especially when two of them got into our kitchen pantry last year.

But this absolutely takes the cake…or the pickle!

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I’d love to hear your thoughts on your spring gardening tips and favorite Irish food and entertainment…Thank you so much for reading, and to my new subscribers and followers, welcome! I’m so pleased to have you here!

~Susan, from the Foothills