Weeds And Thinning

 

The Flourishing Weeds!

Courtesy: rhs.org.uk

Weeds and Thinning 

“We’re all goin’ on a summer holiday”, so sang Cliff Richards.  This was a dream too far.  What about the thinning, weeding, turf, hay-saving, corn cutting et cetera?  The final two words would be our only Latin commentary during the summer months.  While the official names of weeds were in Latin, in Abbey, we just had the ‘cupla focail’.

As regards going on holidays, we were far too young and healthy to need the healing waters of Lisdonvarna and would settle for the secret trickle of sulphur water in the Shannon bog.  No iron.  The off-putting taste of the sulphur was poor advertising for Lisdoon but it was generally accepted that the best medicines tasted worst.  Weeding was a bit like that, an unwanted and undesirable hangover since the Fall of Adam.  A never-ending repair job.  Like an untidy house with so many things in the wrong place.

On the positive side, thinning of the turnips could be incorporated into the weeding, leaving one turnip plant every eight inches.  We were ensuring that the citizens of our household, at least, would have an adequate supply of turnip soup over the whole winter.  It was said that some cooks, on higher ground, strained the water away.  Soup had a bad name in Ireland; we have kept some of the mixing pots or cauldrons as museum pieces.  Visit Finnerty’s mills for confirmation.

Any well-worn trousers were appropriate wear for thinning and a jute sack, cut in two, with surrounding binder twine gave some cushioning for one’s knees.  It looked like a horizontal ‘fear bréige’.  Jute bags were scarce, as we required another to bring the turkey to Ballygowan; a turkey’s head in the corner of a bag was guaranteed safe transport from any threat of neighbouring bicycle spokes.

To get back to the weeding: We had put treasured flowers like daisies, buttercups, bluebells and primroses on our Maypole just a few weeks earlier and now these were on the enlisted weeds category. Added to these were dandelions, thistles, nettles and any plant that had “weed ” in its name.  I never had anything against nettles.  I had experienced their curative properties when mixed with butter and applied as a poultice to skinned knees.  Also, the turkeys thrived, when introduced to a part nettle diet and the black donkey could manage the thorns on the thistle.

Things were not as bad as, at first, seemed.  The length of the drills was still prohibitive but the week in the bog was just around the corner.  Weeds had to go.  Back pain, sunburn, dry hands would all be part of the removal contract.  It had always been so, and our generation would not be found wanting.

Forking hay or straw had inbuilt reliefs, the same applied to wheeling turf.  Change was possible with such jobs; no such outlets when weeding; the far end of a drill was a constant.  I have seen a meitheal at a threshing and in the hayfield but never weeding.  Weeding and thinning were completely true to themselves and there were no shortcuts.

St Teresa of Avila, in the 16th century, elevated weeding to a new level when she compared a soul to a garden full of weeds.  “Beginners must realise that in order to give delight to the Lord they are starting to cultivate a garden on very barren soil, full of abominable weeds.”  With the help of God, we must strive like good gardeners to get the plants to grow and take pains to water them so that they don’t wither but come to bud and flower and give forth a most pleasant fragrance to provide refreshment for this Lord of ours”.  No need to remain forever, at ground level, in St Teresa’s book!