According to Ireland’s meteorology service, Met Éireann, our provisional weather data shows that the Autumn of 2021 was the warmest on record.
The temperature between the start of September and the end of November averaged at 12.02°; 1.8° degrees above average, making it the 11th consecutive year where Irish temperatures increased above our norm.
A bitterly cold northern breeze this afternoon has now changed all that, with temperatures reduced to 6.00°.
Meanwhile, poking about in the garden today, I find that the daffodils bulbs, while arriving a month later this year, are now rapidly emerging above ground.
Their arrival always reminds me of that wonderful poetry of American Poetess Emily Dickinson, (December 10th, 1830 – May 15th, 1886).
Emily, who choose to live much of her life in isolation, once stated that she was “a lunatic on bulbs”; same statement referring to her absolute passion for daffodils and other spring perennials, which she grew at her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S.
Her poem “Perhaps You’d Like To Buy A Flower?” shown hereunder, fully confirms her true love of gardening and flowers and possibly reveals, for the first time, the secret feelings of all passionate gardeners.
Perhaps You’d Like To Buy A Flower?
Perhaps you’d like to buy a flower?
But I could never sell.
If you would like to borrow
Until the daffodil
Unties her yellow bonnet
Beneath the village door,
Until the bees, from clover rows
Their Hock and Sherry draw,
Why, I will lend until just then,
But not an hour more!
END
The word ‘Hock’, contained in the poem above, refers to a British term for German white wine, made from an aromatic grape variety grown in the Rhine region.
Leave a Reply