The Friday View 02/09
A French film festival, art exhibitions abound and is it time to try something different with our lawns?
Consider the lawn
The lawn has reigned supreme for generations of people in Ireland lucky enough to grow up with a garden out the front and/or back. There it stood all year round, growing at length in the summer and not so much as temperatures dropped and the days grew shorter in winter.
The lawn is a feature of millions of gardens across the country. But in our fastidiousness to religiously mow pretty much all life out of the lawn, are we overlooking what else could be (and is being done) with gardens instead of a holding place for a largely ornamental lawn?
According to Dave Goulson, a professor of biology at the University of Sussex in Britain, “there is almost no life force in a mown lawn.” While it looks verdant and healthy, a lawn comprised of one type of grass is a type of biological dead zone, everything that biodiversity is not.
With a lawn “you’re not going to support many insects, which means you’re not going to support many insect-eating birds or anything else,” Goulson was quoted in this excellent piece in 1843.
But what if we could start again, and turn lawns into gardens, into little zones that supported more life, and grew food? I get it sounds New Age-y and aspirational, but potatoes will grow almost literally anywhere in Ireland, especially in your front garden.
And it doesn’t have to be spuds, it can be pollinating plants, shrubs, vegetables, the possibilities are endless, well at least compared with a lawn they are.
There are over 2 million houses and apartments in Ireland, and granted a considerable percentage don’t have a garden, which is why accessible communal green spaces are so important, but taken together all those lawns add up to a massive chunk of grassland. If we could move beyond the lawn, we could collectively do quite a lot.
As the saying goes, you reap what you sow.
JJ
News in brief
It’s not just TDs that are making headlines when it comes to second property ownership. Colm Kelleher, a Fianna Fáil councillor from Ballincollig and Lord Mayor of Cork city up until this summer, was in the news this week following a judgement taken by The Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) in which they ruled that Colm and Siobhan Tierney, who had rented a house from Kelleher, were entitled to €150 in damages after waiting months for their deposit to be returned. The Tierneys took the case with the rental watchdog in order to get their €960 deposit refunded. Full story here by Amy Molloy in The Independent.
Planning watch:
The City Council have recommended that An Bórd Pleanála refuse planning permission for 319 houses on land owned by the GAA at Kilcully on the northside of the city. According to The Irish Examiner, the council contends that the “applicant has not demonstrated, to its satisfaction, that the scheme would not impact negatively on the environment”, highlighting how the development would impact on the marsh fritillary butterfly and the waxcap mushroom.
Photo of the week
Out + About
🖼 100 Seconds to Midnight by Tipperary brothers James and Michael Fitzgerald (The Project Twins) opened this week at The Crypt under St Luke’s. The brothers went big for their latest exhibition, which runs through September, and features many of they signature motifs on massive tarpaulins. Free admission. More information here.
Time, date, place: Thursday- Saturday, 11am - 4pm, Thursday to Saturday until September 25 at The Crypt, St Luke’s.
🌳James McBarron will lead a walk and talk in Glenbower Woods in Killeagh this coming Sunday. The meeting point is the playground at the entrance to the woods after which James will lead the group on a walk through the woods. More information here.
Time, date, place: 11:30am, Sunday, September 4, Glenbower Woods, Killeagh
🖼Artists Monika Kosmowska, Ronja Lagerqvist, Klaudia Lasota, Roisin Moloney, Aoife Nolan, Morag Ransley and Baibe Sisene all feature in the Graduate Group Exhibition now showing at the Lavit Gallery. The artists are all recipients of the Graduate Group Exhibition Award 2022, presented by the Lavit to selected students from MTU Crawford College of Art & Design. They’re also the first crop of students since the outbreak of Covid-19 to have a publicly accessible degree show at the art college. Free admission. More information here.
Time, date, place: 10:30am – 6:00pm, Tuesday to Saturday, running until September 17 at The Lavit Gallery, Wandesford Quay
🎥The 33rd edition of the Cork French Film Festival kicked off this week and the mini festival runs through to Sunday. It’s a packed line-up of films all of which will be shown at The Gate cinema and this year’s offerings include Delicious, Full Time and Playground. Full programme and more information here.
Time, date, place: daily until September 4 at The Gate Cinema
🚴♀️Cycle Against Suicide will embark on a 42km coastal cycle of the harbour this Saturday. Participants are asked to meet at The Marina Market, and there will be stops at Passage West and Carrigtwohill before returning to the Marina Marjet for a family event at 3pm.
Time, date, place: 11am, Saturday, September 3 meeting at The Marina Market
This week on T +D
Last Saturday’s long read was from Mahon and looked at why the suburb adjoining Blackrock has never had a library of its own. Full piece here.
On Sunday, three participants of “Before The Rainbow….And After” documented their experiences of coming out and living through decades of change in Ireland. You can read that piece here.
On Wednesday we published a review of “This, That & The Other”, a new play about running a marathon by Pádraig O'Connor. It wraps up on Saturday, September 3 at the CAT club. Review in full here.
On Thursday guest writer and artist Ciara Chapman wrote about her experience of living with Chronic Pain, and the invisibility that people living with Chronic Pain often encounter for her first piece on T+D. "Chronic Pain is NOT make-believe”, a new exhibition by Ciara will be on display at Cork Opera House from September 2 to September 30.
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That’s it for this week’s Friday View. Any tips, news or events you’d like to share with Tripe+Drisheen, you can contact either of us at jj.odonoghue@gmail.com or emailellieobyrne@gmail.com. We are always happy to speak to people off the record in the first instance, and we will treat your information with confidence and sensitivity. Get in touch.
