Weather, at times, appears to be as much a matter of opinion (or prejudice), as of fact. And of course in Ireland, we have almost as many climates as we have townlands, or counties anyway. Call from the heart of Co Meath: "Had to give up working after lunch: soaked to the skin, even with my special kit, and it's making tree pruning impossible." Odd. For in Dublin, 40 miles or so away, it's been a bit covered during the morning, but now sun is breaking through.
The biggest error of all is most evident to those who garden a lot in pots, or who have many small trees coming on in pots. "Never," says a man who concentrates on oaks and a discriminating few conifers, "have I lost so many, overnight, it seems. One or two might have had inadequate amounts of soil or compost, but they were out in the open all the time. And suddenly, without warning, the leaves are crinkled and brown. And this is for the first time in maybe 40 years of bringing on these trees - chiefly for giving away among family and friends. It seemed daft to be taking out the hose or the watering cans nightly when all around are groans about the damnable rain." Anyone agree?
And, of course, to add insult to injury, never has there been such a triumphal year for nettles, cleevers and, just now at its height, the lovely, deadly, convolvulous. Richard Mabey in his magisterial Flora Britannica has kind words to say about this. Hedge bindweed, he writes, with its large white trumpet-flowers and mats of arrow-shaped leaves, is a handsome plant and, in urban areas particularly does good service in cloaking wire fences and derelict brickwork. It can be found across Britain in "scrambling about hedges, ditches, wood margins, reedbeds and the tall vegetation of river-banks". And in Ireland, as we know.
Here's a quotation he has taken from someone else: "In the garden of our house in Cornwall stands a supressus macrocarpa which I estimate to be about 55 feet high. A huge liana-like growth of convolvulous clothes the tree nearly to its topmost twig - perhaps a carpet 52 feet high would describe it best." Presumably he likes it. Y