I beg your pardon, they promised us a rose garden, not a cabbage patch

HERMIONE was excited. I was excited. The offspring were anything but excited and promptly lined up other things to do lest they be rounded up and obliged to come with us. The Pooch is easily excited but he had to be left behind as there is no place for dogs at the country’s premier garden festival.

So it was just the two of us. Just the two of us. Yes, Hermione and I were bound for ‘Blossom’ and such was our excitement that we roused ourselves ridiculously early for a Sunday morning. It felt almost as though we were eloping, daring, laughing, starcrossed lovers escaping to Gretna Green or Las Vegas as The Jalopy chugged and wheezed its way down the drive.

‘Just the two of us!’ we sang while breezing up the motorway, along the not so rocky road to Dublin, with the wind at our backs and the dew melting from the fields on either side under a warming sun. We were Thelma and the Sundance Kid, or maybe that should be Butch Cassidy and Louise – anyway we were on the road and bound for the big smoke, the world our merry oyster.

Of course, it was never going to be just the two of us, as became obvious when we joined the tailback of cars queueing for the car park. The last part of the journey, the final two kilometres, seemed to take almost as long as the 100 kilometres which went before.

‘Blossom’ is big, big business. An hour after Thelma and Butch made it in, the one millionth customer since the great event first started back in 2007 followed us through the gate. It felt as though most of the accumulated million were present on that one sweltering day, such was the crush around the prize exhibits and such were the long lines of people waiting to use the portaloos.

Amidst the multitude, Louise and Sundance were fortunate enough to find seats side by side at lunch time but it was emphatically not a just the two of us experience. As we tucked into our bowls of Pakistani style biriyani rice, we shared our space with a very nice woman from Mountmellick as she demolished a consignment of fish and chips. This was miraculous mass outdoor catering of a ferocity and intimacy not seen since the feeding of the five thousand by Jesus Christ…

Now back at the potting shed in Medders Manor, I suppose in retrospect and with the benefit of hindsight that the clue is in the name. ‘Blossom’ suggests flowers. They promised us a rose garden – not a cabbage patch. Nevertheless, I arrived feeling confident that there would be some little part of this grandest of garden festivals devoted to vegetables.

At first, with all the din, I mistakenly thought Hermione only wanted three lilies but in fact her intention was to bring home tree lilies – tree lily bulbs by the dozen. And there were plenty of suppliers vying for her custom. Tree lily bulb vendors with Dutch accents competed with tree lily nurseries from the UK and tree lily merchants from all over Ireland. She was spoiled for choice while my quest for parsnips proved fruitless, if fruitless is the right choice of adjective in the circumstances.

A few years ago I chanced to grow a batch of plump parsnips which were as big as babies’ heads. It proved to be beginner’s luck and crops since have been poor to mediocre, often racked by canker and always skinny.

This year’s programme of parsnip cultivation is threatening to be the worst ever despite incantations uttered over the seed trays and the application of an infernally expensive bespoke manure made from the droppings of organically reared Rhode Island poultry.

The real problem, of course, has been the weather rather than any fertiliser issue. During the usual sowing months of February to April, the dismal cold and wet conditions played havoc with germination rates. I arrived at ‘Blossom’ like a gambler muscling up to the casino’s roulette wheel desperate to make up for a run of losses – by finding a source of late growing root vegetables. I was turned away without the opportunity to take a punt. This was was a parsnip free zone.

No doubt the tree lilies will look magnificent but they will never be roasted and served with Christmas dinner. Ho-feckin-hum.