Petrovska

The First of February winter is officially over in Ireland and there is a definite increase in daylight hours and generally St. Brigid’s Day is regarded as the start of Spring and the gardening year .

OK we know the First of February does not mean an end to the lousy weather nor is it really the beginning of spring but we like to kid ourselves it means the beginning of good weather at last !

St. Brigid was reputedly a fifth century nun and one of the three national saints of Ireland along with St. Patrick and St. Columcille … I say reputedly as in reality Brigid was originally a pre Christian Celtic Goddess whose cult was too embedded with the people for the Church to eradicate so they coopted it into Christianity and  in  recent years it has been adopted as a feminist icon and I must say their events celebrating the day with the face paint and the whooping are certainly an improvement on the more traditional male dominated saints !

It is also the time of year that Snezana and I actually work together in the garden when we set about chopping back trees as she operates the chain saw which I dislike intensely from slicing through a steel capped boot  forty years ago in Rosslare narrowly missing two front toes and since that time I have maintained a healthy distrust and distance from chain saws … Snezana on the other hand absolutely loves cutting and has no fear but it is not an easy alliance as my insistence on a strict programme of finishing each task before moving on to the next does not sit easy with her more laid back approach and usually each day ends like today where her cutting becomes more lackadaisical and words are exchanged such as “ you shouted at me ” and “yes but you cut down a branch with me under it that nearly brained me ”… you get the picture and sometimes it ain’t pretty !

These winter months it is important to have colour and contrast through evergreen foliage shrubs and trees and I mentioned last month about the eleagnus varieties gilt edged and pungens maculata and that while fabulous shrubs they are slow growing .

Eleagnus limelight is also a great shrub with a soft yellow marking on it’s evergreen leaves and I have planted it all over the garden here when starting out and  it is fast growing but … the big but here is that it reverts almost as you watch and certainly you need to keep an eye on it and prune all the green new shoots out ruthlessly as left unchecked it will take over the entire shrub over the course of a year .

I am reluctant to promote eleagnus limelight because of this reverting problem as we all forget to keep a check on it and then like today with a line of limelight here I had to reduce each shrub by  almost a quarter which is not only annoying but difficult to have the heart to do as you are leaving some beautiful shiny green branches on the ground …but I love the plant , it is big and floppy spreads across  it’s neighbours and I am going to keep a closer eye on it in future to spare myself this Valentine’s Day type massacre in the future !  

However if permanent green is your thing then there is eleagnus ebbengii to consider as this is a glossy green large shrub all year and no worries about hard pruning out … a nice shrub for the back of the border that you need never go near , let it do it’s thing quietly and it bulks out nicely  … not exciting though and I still prefer the variegated eleagnus even if you have to keep an eye on them .

It can be difficult to motivate yourself to get out in the garden in mid winter and this month has been both cold and damp  however I do like to get out in the garden at least once a day even if only for a short time such as today when I found a packet of five allium purple sensation in the boot of the car buried under shopping bags and there since last October .

Too late to plant them now in mid February … of course but the bulbs hadn’t sprouted and were quite firm so I put in a useful half hour digging out a planting hole for them and most likely they will be late flowering but OK for next year .

Suddenly olive trees are popular in Ireland and selling in Lidl and Dunnes , nice height at about a metre and a half and well covered from top to bottom with leaves and from the size of the trunk I would say ten year old specimens pruned back hard … fine looking and worth  taking a chance on but pricy at 200 euros a pop … at least 75 % will not survive the Irish weather after two years if planted in open ground but  plant in a large pot in a sheltered south facing area preferably in front of a wall and you have a chance of success .

Memories of Mexico in February 2025

Snezana was in Portugal with her parents for most of February so I thought I would do something different with my time alone and as my eldest son , Kevin , has been posted to Mexico for the past three years and is leaving this year so I thought February would be a good month to visit him when it would not be so hot .

Since childhood I have been reading about the Olmec , Maya and the Aztecs so it was a bucket list destination for over fifty years … it did not disappoint !

Mexico City where I was based for the first week is on a high plateau at 7000 feet surrounded by many extinct volcanoes which you can see quite plainly as you fly in and Kev who is a frequent flier throughout Central America for work is not a fan of either flying generally or this particular flight path said through gritted teeth as we landed from a trip down to Yucatan “ I hate flying in Central America it is full of volcanos ” … I am not a fan of flying or volcanoes either so said remark did nothing for the nerves !

What did I expect or know about Mexico before my trip … well the obvious history from my previous reading about the Aztecs, the Maya and their conquest and destruction by the Spanish in 1521 but mainly of course the modern drug cartels and how dangerous Mexico was for the tourist and locals alike and how likely I was to be accosted on the buses or streets and robbed at gun point .

Well luckily none of that happened and I was met with nothing but kindness from the Mexican people I met be it looking for directions on the street or in shops and it was a lovely experience for me .

Although I had been warned about Mexican tummy and that street food and salads were problematic but after a meal with a local family in the jungle in Yucatan with only local water and where the produce was cooked over an open stove with pet racoons and iguanas running around we stopped being so western and finnicky and ate everything they served up .

The food and music was terrific of course as was the Mexican love of dancing and I came home knowing how to fill a taco , mix the spices and sauce and a liking for a margarita made with mescal not your common tequila and mariachi music is firmly on my Spotify playlist !

During the trip we also flew down to the Yucatan area basing ourselves in Merida to take in the historical Mayan sites for which Yucatan is famous for … the landscape is as flat as a pancake hot and humid with wall to wall jungle and clearings made for large towns and villages .

High points of the trip ?

The Pyramids of Mexico City are outside the city at Teotihuacan and date from 200 AD

The Mayan sites of Chichen Izla and Uxmal in Yucatan dating from the 8th Century

The marvellous Frida Kahlo House and Museum in Mexico City where the iconic artist lived all her life and which is so popular you have to book six weeks in advance … thanks Kev !

I first heard about Frida Kahlo when Madonna bought a painting of hers for a million dollars in 1990 and was hooked on her unique art and sense of style , her partnership with Diego Rivera and how though crippled by pain from a car accident she lived life to the full “ they cut off my leg but I have wings so I can fly ” and here I was thirty five years later walking through her house and garden … in the bedroom where she died I was admiring an original thousand year old Toltec vase on her dressing table to be told that this contained her ashes .

The Anthropology Museum in Mexico City , the best outdoor museum  in the world, was so good that I visited it three times and I am sure even then there are things I missed .

Mexico is a catholic country however more than any country it is catholicism mixed with the native ancient religion where the people have retained the old traditions of the spirit world and wisely the Church has from the beginning accepted that these traditions are impossible to break and for example there are catholic priests who also are shamens and conduct the older rites … it is not unusual to see people on the street being cleansed by all over body smoke and young girls on their fifteenth birthday are given a small plaque of the earth mother usually made from a semi precious metal such as obsidian which they carry throughout their life.

Yucatan is famous for it’s many cenotes which are huge underground deep fresh water wells caused by meteorites hitting the area millions of years ago and these were regarded as sacred doorways to the underworld by the Mayas where they threw in gold and human sacrifices to the gods … some of the most famous cenotes are open to the public and you can swim in them … years ago I had read about them and I remember photos of crocodiles lazing around the edges … crocodiles ? … we were assured there were no crocodiles in the one we visited … well we  did swim …. nervously !!

The Day of the Dead “ Día de Muertos ” with it’s reverence for the departed is huge in Mexico with decorative skulls and special dolls called La Caterina on sale everywhere and while in most of the world it is celebrated at Halloween , in Mexico it is a year round thing and at first I was a bit taken aback with the skeletons and skulls  but when it was explained that actually it is  a special remembrance for your deceased loved ones I really liked it,  to the degree that I bought a very nice Caterina in the Saint Angel district of Mexico City  to bring home to Ireland in memory of my Mam .

In Merida I fell in love with a hand carved cedarwood life size head of the Palenque Mayan King , Kamal Kin … the original is in jade and dates from 650 AD and is on display in the Anthropological Museum in Mexico City … after some haggling in the shop my cedarwood version came back safe in hand luggage !

The Mayan and Aztec Ball Game

Anyone who knows anything even vaguely about the Mayas or the Aztecs has heard about the human sacrifices they were partial to where the heart is ripped out of a living body by a knife wielding blood stained priest at the top of their temples and the body is then rolled down the steps… sometimes as many as 20,000 male prisoners at a time were sacrificed and these were chosen from the losers of a ball game which was decided by whoever knocked a ball the size of a modern football through a stone hoop set at about ten feet above what was known as the Ball Court … only a strike of the ball using the hips or the shoulders counted  … not easy and I think even a Ronaldo would struggle to have that accuracy !

Now for something less blood thirsty … while in Yutacan and as a diversion from Mayan sites … well OK there may have been some words exchanged along the lines of no more f..king archaeological sites Dad …  we took a boat trip on the Gulf of Mexico to Celestun where we saw the famous pink flamingos of Celestun … a lovely unspoiled part of the Yucatan peninsula with few foreign tourists unlike it’s more famous cousins down the road at Cancun and Tullum which are over run with US visitors and is more like Florida than Mexico .

Mexico is a mix of extremely wealthy and god awful poverty especially in Yucatan where the bulk of the original Maya population live and driving through these areas I feel there really is no hope or escape for these people in this life … like all indigenous people shoved off their land by invading “ superior ” civilisations such as happened to the North American Indians or the Aboriginal people of Australia,  they end up marginalised and ignored .

We were in Izamal , a small town in Yucatan to visit and climb the Mayan Temple to the Sun God and everything about the place was dismal and mean looking and I remember thinking how awful it would be to be brought up in such a place when suddenly a man on horseback trotted down the street and it just about summed up the town for me .

Two weeks is not enough to get more than a pen picture of a country but I came back from Mexico with only positive memories … now I need to read up more on the culture for my next visit !

And now down to earth ! The Garden in February

February is really the last month for planting bare rooted trees although March can be also OK unless the trees are beginning to sprout in which case I wouldn’t risk it and I bought some bundles of five native Irish trees from Clonmel Garden Centre , single specimens about a metre high of silver birch , oak , wild apple , cherry and mountain ash and these went in to the rewilded meadow area that I have been throwing bare rooted trees into for the past three years … a wet area generally but with pockets of dryish soil into which I am concentrating native Irish trees.

Winter evening in February