By my reckoning I have had a wedding day on each of the last ten days and this may continue…or it may not. It all depends on the weather, you see, and the Irish weather is anything but predictable. Of course, it also depends on my darling wife, The Head Gardener, for no wedding is complete without a bride, a comment probably completely politically incorrect these days but that is how it swings with me!
Let me explain: It all began in 1961 though it entered my life later, in 1979, when we married. The film Blue Hawaii, starring Elvis Presley, was released in 1961 and obviously ingrained itself on The Head Gardener’s brain at that time and has never left it. More specifically, Elvis Presley singing The Hawaiian Wedding Song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1GPK4Mx_lg)has been with her since that day and – you may find this difficult to believe – when the day breaks brightly, when the sun is shining and the sky is blue, The Head Gardener opens the bedroom curtains and immediately breaks into “Blue skies of Hawaii on this our wedding day. I do. I do etc.” Yes, every such morning; every morning that the sun is shining and the sky is blue! Yes, every morning! And, it still throws my mind into utter confusion. I am not the brightest person in the world early in the morning (say from 7a.m. up to 5p.m.) so coupling the Blue Skies of Hawaii with the blinding light entering the bedroom as the curtains are suddenly drawn can upset my poor brain. As we are in our forty fifth year of marriage I today wonder how many wedding days we have had, blue skies and all.
The long and the short of this story is that we have had, for 2024, an unprecedented run of good-weather. After all those dreadful days of incessant rain, we have at long last some dry weather and a return to proper gardening, to long, full days of gardening. The grass has been cut and edged; all flower beds and borders have been given a once-over, a weeding, a freshening up with some division of perennial plants and planting out of divisions and a realisation, after the long winter inactivity, that this is an awful lot of work and there are thoughts that it may all be a little too much for us.
Some views of the garden from recent days:
Paddy Tobin, An Irish Gardener 
the garden looks wonderful.
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What an old romantic you are!!!!
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Your love for each other and for your garden is so inspiring! How do you even manage to take care of such a BIG garden? Does your back not hurt? I dream of having a garden like this, but I am afraid my spine will crack when I do. Looks like a LOT of work, but then again, I am also aware that one cannot create a paradise being idle. If someday you have the will and time, will you please write a post on how to make it happen?
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There are many days when we end up very tired, especially at the moment at the start of the season when there seems to be so much to do.
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And yet you made it through so many seasons. It’s incredible!
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I understand your feeling of urgency in the garden. Suddenly there seems so much to do and so little time after months of twiddling fingers. I confess I did wonder if there was a spelling mistake in the headline. These are my weeding days! And everything else! Congratulations. A few days of sun make all the difference. And the swallows are back. All is good.
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You are a lucky man, Paddy, to have a wonderful wife who is both a talented gardener AND a tuneful romantic. If I’d broken into song every morning when the sun shines Mrs P would have left me decades ago.
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It’s having to catch up all at once that brings on the ‘I’m too old for all this’ feeling.
I tend to sing first thing in the morning, before the full horror of the day ahead impinges, but as I have the voice of a seal no one could identify the lyrics…
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My singing is regularly greeted by a “Oh, stop it, Paddy!” as I have a habit of slipping from one song into another without realising it as, to be honest, they all sound the same to me!
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happy anniversaries … again, and again! ❤
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long May the wedding days last!
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