Butterflies are my flight of fancy

“DO I dare to eat a peach?” J Alfred Prufrock, the sad anti-hero of TS Eliot’s eponymous love song asked himself in his old age. I recently dared to eat an Irish-grown peach in a Kinsale garden, and very fine and sweet it was, too, every bit as juicy as the peaches my brother grows in Spain.

It came from a tree grown by a retired veterinarian whose hobby – vocation, dedication, obsession – is his garden. In the glasshouse are peaches, apricots, cherries, figs, oranges, melons and grapes, to mention not all but most. Outdoors there are apples, pears, plums, quinces, kiwis, currants of many colours, goosegogs, raspberries, strawbs, and berries black, cran, logan, tay, mul, blue and justa. I’d never heard of, let alone seen or tasted, half these fruits before.

The veg garden has all the regulars and the exotics, like courgettes and chard, while the herb garden has a dozen aromatic plants to enhance any culinary concoction. There is a budding arboretum, with walnut, sweet chestnut, maple, ginko and more. All of this has been created around the home he bought just nine years ago.