This is a good month to decide if you want to have herbs growing in your garden as the seed catalogues and gardening advertisements whet our interest. So many of the ones used therapeutically may be obtained from the wild but some, such as marshmallow, elecampane and lovage need to […]
Columnists
When I was a kid we ate sausage rolls every Christmas. They came out when visitors called or when we got home after Christmas shopping – which was the day before Christmas, not the entire month before, so sausage rolls were quite a treat. Sausage rolls are a great invention. […]
We are all familiar with the swede turnip, more often than not calling it a swede or just a turnip. In Scotland, the swede is called neeps and in France and the US, rutabaga. It is a regular part of winter fare in Ireland, and along with carrots, parsnips, and […]
Introduced with much fanfare earlier in the summer, Agri-Climate Rural Environmental Scheme (ACRES) has taken up a lot of head space of late. Having spent a lot of time since its introduction reading about it it’s only in the last few weeks that I’ve been trying to work out how, […]
Following on from last month’s column on the Miami Showband Massacre, Shane Daly shares more on involvement of the soldier with the ‘educated English accent’, Captain Robert Nairac. “When it awarded him The George Cross, was Buckingham Palace aware that Captain Robert Nairac was named, in an official Ministry of […]
Of all the Christian festivals, Christmas was considered by the Irish people as the most important. The mid-winter solstice (December 21) is a turning point in the year, with the sun weakening day after day and then miraculously recovering. It was a good time for a feast and mid-winter festivals […]