IRISH GARDENING 



VOLUME IV. 



No. 36 



A MONTHLY JOURNAL DEVOTED TO THE 



ADVANCEMENT OF HORTICULTURE AND 



ARBORICULTURE IN IRELAND 



FEBRUARY 



The Making of our Home. 



" Chips ot Rock." 



Bv Charlotth G. O'Brikn. 



WE read on every hand nowadays of the 

 bountiful blessings of youth, the free- 

 dom and the joy of movement and of 

 love, the excitements of travel and the pleasures 

 of physical perfection when one is young. Is 

 there no one to be found who will singf of the 

 virtue of old agfe? Surely it can be done, and 

 with a good heart, too, if the path of life — broken 

 and jagged and thorny though it may have been — 

 has yet led' steadily between the blooming 

 banks ot flowery youth in the country till one 

 sees the full development of trees planted by- 

 one's own hand, and can gather the roses grown 

 from one's own cuttings. 



My " chips of rock " make a fine nest for trees, 

 and as I walk about and show newcomers my 

 thujas, or piceas, or pines, and say to them, 

 " There was not a tree in this place when I took 

 it up, but look at that tree and that, and see 

 what an old woman I must be, I glory in my 

 age." Surely one may be as proud of a green 

 wig on one's trees as of a yellow wig on one's 

 skull — both are fleeting, but at least the green 

 lasts the longest. I made a mistake in claiming 

 that no tree was in the place before my time. 

 There were three small oaks which had a history. 

 The father of the present Sir Charles Barrington 

 (or his grandfather) had a fancy about oaks, 

 and is said to have always carried acorns in his 

 pocket, and planted them in handy corners along 

 the roads, and these three trees are believed to 

 have sprung from his acorns. My near forty 

 years of tenancy has not made much difference 

 to them, whilst all around the upstart foreigners 

 forget the shortness of their youth and the haste 

 of their maturity, and the swiftness of their 

 decay, while ever and always the slow oaks 

 sigh to the flowing river and gaze on the mir- 



rored clouds, seeing in them both the swift 

 passage of their summer leafage and the far- 

 beckoning distances of immovable time. 



I observe here and in other places, both in 

 Co. Limerick and Co. Dublin, that small seed- 

 ling oaks are very frequent amongst grass in 

 the meadows ; indeed, if one could fancy 

 Ireland without cattle, I believe fifty years would 

 see the country clothed with oak, ash, beech, 

 sycamore, horse-chestnut and Scotch fir : a 

 hundred years would see it once more Banba the 

 Isle of. Woods. But oaks spread more away 

 from the parents than the other trees, owing to 

 the rooks dropping them "over and hether." 

 Here lauristinas, bays, berberis, cotoneasters, 

 and many other foreigners run wild, and bid fair 

 to hold their own. The laurel does so inland, but 

 not' here. But the trees and they live their own 

 lives, little helped or hindered by me, even little 

 noticed ; still a background of nature's joyful 

 endeavour framing my " Hub of the Universe." 

 My flower garden — and to the flower garden 

 I come back. When I turn over in my mind 

 the tons of seaweed, "road stuff," bog mould, 

 " made soil," and manure that poor little garden 

 has eaten up, I say to myself, " Sure never was 

 such hungry land," and of all the manures the 

 most useful is the ground-down limestone from 

 off' the roads. One can do nothing without 

 continual putting in of new material, hut with 

 that the compost suits bulbs splendidly, and 

 anything that can be given time as a rule. 

 Stoney, it remains hot and dry ; but winter is 

 almost as flowery as summer, "barring" 

 December and January, and spring is early and 

 glorious. Summer after 15th July is always, 

 alas ! a check. We blaze up with a superb rush 

 of flowers up to that date, but no persuasion will 



