Did you ever notice how many ancient gardening quotes or sayings have become daily adages for the vagaries of life itself.
You have: Led up the garden path; What you sow you reap; The apple didn’t fall far from the tree …. and so on.
And quotes from those who know / knew their gardening also abound.
‘My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece’ – Claude Monet; ‘April hath put a spirit of youth in everything,’ – William Shakespeare; ‘In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.’ – Aristotle; ‘Small apples will grow big.’ – Johnny Foran.
Castleisland Community Garden
The old gardeners’ adage, You Reap What You Sow is certainly coming through these day at Castleisland’s Community Garden
Baskets laden with the produce of hours of honest endeavour, tilling, turning, planting / sowing, watering, weeding, thinning and weeding and waiting and still more weeding.
But there’s a certain satisfaction in going out the gate with the makings of a dinner from ingredients just picked or pulled and which went into the earth under your own hand.
The seeds of a Castleisland Community Garden idea was sown several years ago and some fell on stony ground.
Evidence of Production
However, since Willy Reidy took the project into his care, it has blossomed. From the odd, lonely gardener on a summer’s evening, the plot is now developing nicely and is showing several signs of inventiveness and, certainly, evidence of production.
The great pollinators are being taken great care of too as flower planting in border areas around the garden has been encouraged.
Wild flowers and weeds are also allowed to flourish in designated areas and spraying with chemicals of any kind is an absolute no-go-area.
Allotment or Community Gardening
Few families like the Keane’s, mom Noreen and daughters, Linda and Lorraine have thrown themselves into the notion of allotment or community gardening.
And on Saturday evening they were availing of the groundwork they put in last spring as they filled their baskets with what they and mother nature had conspired to grow.
An idle bed in the corner of the garden gave Lorraine an idea: To create a greater awareness of its presence and potential. She got a handful of pumpkin seeds from a fellow gardened and launched a ‘Pumpkin Challenge’ there and then.
Dipping In and Out
Since the community garden was founded in 2013 I have been dipping in and out and keeping an eye on its progress. In the course of these few years, Willy has been encouraging people to give gardening a go.
Willy himself or Paul Brosnan will get you going and then you can plough your own furrow. They won’t find better ambassadors than the family of Keane gardeners I met there on Saturday evening.
You can still take and prepare a plot of ground for the spring 2018 planting season and Willy Reidy can be contacted on 087 96 19 351.
You can contact The Maine Valley Post on… Anyone in The Maine Valley Post catchment area who would like to send us news and captioned photographs for inclusion can send them to: jreidy@mainevalleypost.com Queries about advertising and any other matters regarding The Maine Valley Post can also be sent to that address or just ring: 087 23 59 467. Please Note: A click on any of our adverts will reveal all you need to know about what our advertisers need to tell you.
Copyright Notice: The images and text which appear on The Maine Valley Post site remain the exclusive property of John Reidy, (unless stated otherwise) and are protected under International Copyright laws. Images or text may not be reproduced, copied, transmitted or manipulated without the written permission of the author, John Reidy, in this instance. Use of any image as the basis for another photographic concept or illustration (digital, artist rendering or alike) is a violation of International Copyright laws. All images are copyrighted © by John Reidy 2017 087 23 59 467.
