Beans in the Garden

I join the blissfully content mothers, who plant stuff in their gardens, nurture it, watch it grow over late-afternoon cups of tea, have their children pick it, cook it - and they eat it!

Today, the Pumpkin picked the first 12 beans from the bush beans, the ones from seedlings, not my own seeds from 2 years ago. My own ones are much slower, but also growing well. They will find their way into a stirfry and be shared around.

THIS is what's good about being home.

Define home

Among only 'bout 1000 jobs around the house, yes our own house, back in our own street, I miss this geographically-free space of the blogosphere. There's a liberation in this space. I feel very much at home out here, as I do in the galleries, museums, public gardens and bookshops of the globe.

That said, it has been rewarding to get in and DO here, and it is, slowly, feeling like home again. One day last week, turning over the sods to reinstate our vegetable patch, I dug up a silver earring hoop of my own. So that's what coming home means, you dig and turn up your own stuff - from 2 years ago. And the soil which turned up to fill the bed is curiously inert, lifeless by contrast, not a worm in there. Lucky for the racecourse nearby which has a great big painted sign on its corrugated iron fence: free manure. You shovel and haul it yourself. Six sacks done.

And in Cork, the families are getting ready to go back to school after the long summer holiday. On Monday, I will miss them again, as I so often have been.. I see some of them in the streets here sometimes, or think I do.

Our new school is great too, we are happy at the change, with the Bean settling well into his age cohort now. The furniture is assembled, boxes despatched, shelves restored, office set up, letters sent, start-up costs paid, uni courses enrolled in, tip run done, garden jobs done. What's left? Oh just the rest of our lives.

And on Monday, I resume my own postgrad studies. A door closes on a wonderful year of lightness, of returning to myself, of pursuing long-held dreams.

Dirty Veg from Caroline

We're back from a big trip, so it's time to settle now into another kind of life here: school, making lunches, dropping and collecting both boys (I'm off the 24/7 shift, hooray, that WAS a hard 2 months), getting to a workout often if poss, and shopping local.

Caroline's pesticide-etc-free vegetable stand at the Coal Quay every Saturday is pure pleasure. A request for a handful of spinach gets me a boy's backpack FULL, and then throw in some carrots, beetroot, cucumbers, salad leaves: with the dirt still on. She is definitely the gardener, with the dirt deep in her hands: I admire them and her, it must be a hard life, growing here in Ireland with this weather that won't really play nicely.

So I get home, wash dirt off and plan what to make with all this indigenous stuff - soup's good, parsnip goes with most everything as it turns out. Multi-veg mash is another Magic food: boys eat parsnip, celeriac, zuchini, carrot and potato, and I'm happy. Magic. Not all at once, but they all go in. Under sausages, it makes a regular appearance as dinner. Spanakopita. I love it. They all taste so damn alive, different from one another, like a true vegetable should! Makes me think of my father standing in the garden in Canberra, dirt on his hands, colanders full of the latest abundance. He grew, and still grows, most everything.

A thread right through from my Saturday mornings here in Cork, to my father's sensational plots in Canberra, with echoes too, of all the grandfathers that had their gardens in Bohemia long ago.

The View From My Window 1

I love it here. Out of every window, there's a different spire to be seen - the Red Abbey, St Finbarrs and St Nicholas. The density of housing, of history just outside, the quiet of this place is just exactly what we came for.

Someone must have been watching on our whole journey into this flat in Cove Street, one street down from the river Lee, right in the middle of Cork! Just enough room for all of us, and the minimal stuff we brought. It's odd to move in and not own the linen, kitchen stuff, furniture - yet call it ours now. In all our moves, it's never been as easy as this.

St Nicholas is my favourite, out the kitchen window, only about 50m away. There's a floral reclining armchair ( I know I know, but here's to the beauty of a fully-furnished flat) positioned with a small table just so, so that when I sink back with a book, I can see straight up to Nicholas. He's there as I work in the kitchen too, we're forming a solid, quiet relationship. The pic shows kitchen tap, window and Nicholas; this is taken from said chair.

Barbara Kingsolver's book: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, is absolutely wonderful: phwoar can she write, I love the format, with contributions from her husband and daughter too. Makes me laugh out loud, weep tears of recognition and read to anyone at any occasion! How does spaghetti grow! Strange to be reading a book about feeding a family from your own garden, now that I've just left mine, but inspirational. This food-theme is going to be big this year - local, fresh, high quality. And I've every intention of starting it all up again once we go back: the compost will be great, hope the avocado tree makes it!

And out the door, we've found the chemist, the corner shop with newspapers, phone top-up machine and friendly faces, the local pub, the internet shop we can use to print letters, as there's no printer here with us.

UPDATE: By February, the Bean is allowed to go down and buy milk by himself, returning with a HUGE smile, the correct change and maybe a packet of Actimel yoghurt drinks! "I worked out that I had enough if I only got the 4-pack!"