Thomas Hardy had a great eye for the world around him. Just now, when you may be cursing every morning at the layers of brown bud-casings of the beech tree which covers the bonnet of your car, you may not see the charm of these lines from his famous poem Afterwards: When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,/ And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,/ Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say/He was a man who used to notice such things? For, indeed, the new leaves of the beech are delicate as silk and so are the leaves of the oak at the opening; especially, perhaps, the red American oaks. Later they all thicken up. Last Sunday, on a drive of about 100 miles through Kildare and Laois, a member of the company kept remarking on the green of the grass, also on the quantity of yellow, principally from the acres of whins - furze if you like - on the Curragh plain. But there was also brilliant yellow along a stretch of road. No time to stop to take a closer look - but then the question was answered : a bit farther along was a field of oil-seed rape. And in the towns, here and there, laburnum in full flower. Not to mention dandelions, though they seem mostly to have gone to seed now.
But grass, that's a really serious matter to us all in this island. Has there ever been a year when it has grown faster? Enviable for animal-raising farmers, hell for the ordinary householder with his lawn to mow. Lush is the picturesque word for it. Gross, some would have it. David Cacot, in his recent book Ireland, A Natural History, writes: "The most striking feature consistently noted about Ireland by visitors is the greenness, due to the extensive carpeting of permanent grassland pastures which, in the absence of low winter temperatures, keep on growing, thus staying green for a longer period than in any other European country. Growth can continue to December and restarts in March. Grass to the Irish is like snow to the Eskimo (Innuit?); it is all-pervasive and has played a pivotal role in the social, cultural and economic development of the country for nearly 6,000 years since the arrival of the first Neolithic farmers."
A friend, whose job involves grass-cutting on a big scale, as well as tree-culture and so on, says grass in his area in the Midlands, grows in December, too. He cuts it up to Christmas. Grass is less seen in small front gardens in Dublin these days. Put it into gravel (usually pink) and you are saved mowing. Pity?