Mother Nature knows best when it comes to creating a summer festival

I MAY be the only homeowner in Ireland who doesn’t have custody of their own garden.

I do have visiting rights, but that’s about it. It’s owned, lock, stock and wheelbarrow, by my next door neighbour, Mary Lynders, AKA Mother Nature.

She knew it 40 years before we bought the house to which it’s attached and she could make flowers grow on the dark side of the moon. She tested me out in the beginning and me not knowing a chrysanthemum from a sunflower established, in her mind, that I was good only for weeding. Then she found I had thrown away bulbs belonging to a unique brand of carnation — the ones currently filling the garden with the most wonderful perfume — and demoted me. I was to confine myself to picking snails off the plants and throwing them over the fence into a patch of waste ground.