Ireland still has a healthy local culture of butchers that use meat from local farmers — but meat from supermarkets, fast food and restaurants often comes from farther afield, and we just trust that they know what they are doing

Cultivating plants on your roof creates a patch of natural habitat

I took the bus to a Dublin office every day for 12 years – three hours on the bus, nine hours in the office – and one day measured how much of that time I spent without loudspeakers blaring in the background. It was zero.

The plants themselves are amazingly nutritious

A few generations ago, though, children had virtually no toys and didn’t need them

They add variety to fields that would otherwise go sterile

Nom-noms

These will hit the spot

THIS time of year, my daughter has one favourite story: Raymond Briggs’s Father Christmas

Meaning is something we often lack in modern Christmas celebrations, where we feel pressured to spend too much, eat too much, drink too much, listen to the same few terrible pop songs over and over

"I want to cultivate such questions early, and acknowledge the limits of what I can answer, and help her find the answers on her own"

The technique, called hugelkultur (HOO-gul-kul-tur), has the advantage of being simple to understand and easy to make, and lasting a long time

Ireland today has become like most modern countries; the aged are no longer valued

Most people today seem pretty miserable, ignorant and superstitious, and few people I know read books anymore

Greenhouses are a handy option for gardeners in most climates, albeit an expensive one

Most of our homes require large amounts of energy to run, which we burn fossil fuels to acquire

One of the most nutritious of vegetables overall

Medieval people regarded smiths as they did alchemists, people who could transfigure bits of the world into something else, and doing it feels a bit magical

An elegant-sounding, delicious, nutritious way to disguise leftovers.

The environment is the trees and weeds and insects around where we live, and how many of those could most people notice or name?