A Walk Around Seagahan Dam on a Summer's Evening

My heart is full and sure how could it not be? A warm summer's day in Ireland is a magical place.

The sunsets these past few days are like nothing I've ever experienced anywhere in the world. With the long evenings - sunset at 9.45pm - the sun takes a long amble to the horizon in tones of pink gold. Everyone is in great form and each greeting includes, "Lovely day, isn't it?" And a lovely day (or few days) it has been.

The fields are bursting full of flowers...

...and cute baby animals.

And there's the mysterious headless horse of Ballymacnab!

Okay, maybe this is a better angle of him, grazing contentedly under the full moon.

Yes, my heart is full of the joy of being home in Ireland on a warm summer day.

On one such warm evening this week, we took a walk up around Seagahan Dam, a reservoir a few miles south of Armagh City that features in my new book.

A new walkway allows a circuit of the dam. It's so peaceful, as night drops down, and the fishermen try to catch that last elusive big-guy lurking in the shallows. His advice to us - buy a rod! I must say I'm tempted...

 Not only did we have a spectacular sunset but also a stunning moonrise.

 And there was me travelling around the world, crying for the moon when all along it was here in our very own Armagh drinking water. Does moonshine come out of the taps here? I'd say there's the evidence for it!

 Byddi Lee

Gardening in the old country.

It's been so wet this week in Ireland that even the stone statues in my Mum's garden are taking shelter! My Husband and I flew home last Friday, the day after the Master Gardener graduation. It's only rained twice in the week that we've been here so far - once for three days and then for four days. We've had all kinds of rain too - mizzle, drizzle, bucketing, pelting and even sideways rain - actually, mostly sideways rain. Gale force winds have kept it interesting in the garden.

Today was payback time. I helped my Mum in her garden - only fair after all the help she has given me in mine. The big difference is that here it was wet and windy, but surprisingly invigorating and after shoveling the contents of her compost bin into her new raised beds, I was even down to short sleeves - until I set the shovel down and quickly cooled down.

I was enamored with her PVC raised beds. I don't think they'd last too long in the Californian sun, but I liked how light they were and how easy it was to position them.

After filling two of them with compost, we finished them off with a finer grade potting soil, a birthday present from her neighbors - what would you do without neighbors? It looked just like chocolate cake and reminded me of the lovely cake Mareese made last week.

And here's some she made earlier:

Planted with onions and garlic. and another one with a bountiful crop of Bok choi. 

And like mother, like daughter - Mum too, grows potatoes in anything she can find. Here she has a crop growing in used fish boxes that she found when she was beach combing. How's that for reduce, reuse, recycle?

The massive cherry tree that towers over her garden promises a load of cherries in July. Some of the fruit has already started to pinken. No problem with chill hours here.

And I'd love to be here for the strawberries ripening also.

There is a song that describes Ireland as being forty shades of green. In the next photo there also seems to be forty shapes of leaf!

Mums garden is full to the brim of lush vegetation and not a single irrigation pipe needed. It is the main advantage of gardening in Ireland.

When I was four years old, apparently I told my mum that Ireland was like TVs. When it rained it was like watching a black and white TV (of course, way back then there was plenty of those around!)

 But when the sun came out it was like watching a color TV.

  

I caught this picture during a brief sunny spell (about 10 seconds long). As we worked away out side in the wind and the rain the most sensible member of the family was to be found curled up on the sofa.

 Byddi Lee

April Showers - in May! Whats up with that?

When people ask me when is the best time to travel to Ireland, I always say “Go in May.”  At this time of the year the weather is pretty good, though in Ireland that is never guaranteed, but at least the rain will be warmer.  The apple blossom will be out, and County Armagh turns pink and frothy with it - beautiful.  In green fields,  hillsides and mountains, the dark yellow gorse flowers spill their sweet, coconut scent into the air.  Bluebells blossom in drifts on woodland floors.  Am I sounding homesick?

Newcastle, Co. Down, Ireland, May 2009

Back in those days this blog wasn't even a twinkle in my eye, so unfortunately, I have no photos of these blooms from home.  Instead, I shall sprinkle this post with a few pictures that I took last Sunday in honor of May's Bloom Day.

Last year, I went home in May for my Mums birthday, another reason why I hate to miss May in Ireland. The weather was awful!  At one stage I was wearing every single item of clothing I had packed and brought with me.  I’m a shameless wussy – Note, I did say Wussy!  

It was also the first time I noticed just how optimistic the Irish are.  As I shivered my way around high street shops, I noticed that the clothes on the racks were more suitable for hot summers and Tropical climates.  Where were the layers of sheep’s wool sweaters to keep these 'poor creathurs' warm in the summer rain? 

As I tried to commiserate with them about the gale force winds and horizontal rain we encountered in May, 2009, the standard reply was, “Sure, a bad spring means a hot summer!”  The rumored heat wave never did strike last year, as it rarely does, but still the Irish live in hope that some summer it will be warm enough to wear their strappy dresses and high heeled sandals (and that’s just the guys!)

I’ve softened to the easy climate of California, and though it’s May, I’m still wearing socks and shoes…In Ireland, I’d have ditched the socks in order to feel that summer was just around the corner.  Chilblains or no chilblains, I’d sport those blue feet with pride and the attitude “I’ll look summery, even if it kills me” (pneumonia most likely)!

This is the only the second time I have ever spent May outside Ireland.  The last time I was in the South Pacific.  It was hard - missing my mum’s birthday, feeling guilty, lying on the white sand beaches, by the Blue Lagoon (from the movie), swimming in bathtub-warm, azure-blue water.  OK - so it wasn’t that hard.  Who am I kidding?

Even with the above average rainfall this month, May is beautiful in California too. Ironically, last weekend, after my husband installed the drip irrigation system in the garden, it rained for two days!  Even in California the weather is out to spite me.  In 2007, back when I still lived in Ireland, we had a lovely sunny day and I, realizing that I didn’t have a sun seat, ordered one to be delivered to my apartment.  From the day it arrived, it rained – I left for California before I ever got a chance to take the plastic wrap off it!

That wasn't the first time I experienced weird rain Karma.  In 2003, I toured the Australian Outback – they’d had years of drought – no rain at all.  We weren’t even allowed to flush the toilets for Number Ones!  I was there a day – and it rained…And Rained…AND RAINED!  At least we were permitted to flush the loo!

After the rain on Sunday, my poor husband, who was trying to finish off a few bits and pieces of the irrigation system (in the rain - go figure!) called me out with the camera to take pictures of the rain drops.  As an Irish person, I've probably never appreciated rain as much as I do now, in California.

 Byddi Lee

Who was St Patrick? (NOT a Religious Education Essay!)

St Patrick is hailed as the Patron Saint of Ireland because he brought Christianity to Ireland.  We Irish, as a nation, show our devotion to our Patron Saint by going out and getting totally trolleyed¹. 

Sometime during the fourth century, St Patrick was kidnapped from somewhere near Dumbarton in Scotland² when he was about 16, and brought to Ireland as a slave, ending up on a mountain tending sheep.  It seems impossible that a person could live outside at all in Ireland, never mind on a mountain, for six years.  I can definitely understand that Patrick spent a lot of his time praying.  Who wouldn’t be asking God to get them off that awful mountain to a nice warm dry bed, food and some company? 

It seemed that God answered his prayers, and after six years, St Patrick did escape and returned to his family.  Quite an accomplishment without GPS!  Imagine the youth of today surviving kidnapping, enslavement, living outside on an Irish mountain to tend sheep, escaping, stowing away across the Irish Sea again, and then finding a way home after being away for so many years.  I can hardly find my way from the airport to my hometown each time I go back, it changes that much.  I suppose they did not have as many road works in the fourth century.  At this point, I reckon the chap had earned enough brownie points to become a saint already!

            So poor Patrick, upon receiving the oft prayed for bed, food and family reunion, whilst reposing in said bed, had a dream, a vision of the Irish people calling him back to Ireland.  Now really, most sane people would have wakened up in a cold sweat, and thought “That was one hell of a nightmare!” got up, had a drink of water, gone to the loo, then gone back to sleep and forgotten all about it.  Oh no, not our Patrick!  He followed the instructions proposed in his dream.  If I were prone to doing the things suggested by my dreams I’d have spent half my life turning up to School (both as a pupil and a teacher) in my pyjamas, or less!

            It must have been an interesting conversation that the twenty-two-year-old Patrick would have had with his parents, who some sources claim were actually Romans looking after the colonies…

            “Mum, Dad, do you remember when I disappeared and got taken into slavery?”

            “Ah hum!”  Father rattles ‘Ye Olde Roman Chronicle’ newspaper and continues to read, ignoring Patrick.

            “Yes, dear, go on,” says Mother putting another boar’s head on the spit above the fire.

            “Well, you see, I had this dream, and the Irish want me to go back.”

            “They weren’t very nice to you the last time, were they dear?” points out Mother, as she scatters new straw over the earthen floor.  “What does your father say?”

            “Irish what?  Who?” starts his Father, as if he has just woken up. 

            “You see, Dad, I dreamed of the voice of the Irish calling me back,”  says Patrick.

            “Well you’re a middle-aged man now son, that’s for you to decide,” says his Dad, turning to the sports page to see how the Christians were faring against the Lions in Rome.

            “Well, if you must, dear,” says Mum “but don’t forget your sweater this time!”

            So St Patrick, possibly suffering the first case of Stockholm syndrome ever recorded in history,  returned to Ireland after studying for the priesthood and becoming a Bishop.  In fairness, he did have a plan.  Personally, mine would have been to batter the cruel slave driver who had treated him so badly when he was in captivity, but in true saintly fashion, Patrick went back and by some accounts, actually paid the guy for his freedom and then forgave him. 

It would have been impossible for him to have kissed the Blarney Stone as Blarney Castle would be not be built for at least another 700 years, but he certainly had the gift of the gab.  He converted the Irish to Christianity from Druidism, and in true Irish fashion his doings were told, retold and exaggerated tenfold.

            Allegedly St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland³.  So what did Saint Patrick say when he was driving these snakes out of Ireland? 

What I envisaged as a child, was St Patrick all decked out in his green bishop cloak and pointy hat sitting in a Morris Minor.  For some reason, it’s a navy blue car, though you would have thought the Patron Saint of Ireland would have a customised emerald green car, but nope, in my infant mind’s eye, it’s navy blue. 

            Piled up on the back seat are coils of snakes, slithering off the seats as the car brakes, and St Patrick drives over potholes.  (There must have been an awful lot of potholes in the fourth century if the twenty-first century is anything to go by!)  St Patrick hits a really big pothole, and the car bounces a foot off the ground.  The snakes in the back seat are jolted up, and their spring-like shapes extend momentarily and then compress again as gravity pulls them back down onto the back seat.  St Patrick, knuckles white as his hands still grip the steering wheel, shouts over his shoulder,

            “Are you all right there in the back, lads!”  And that’s what St Patrick said as he drove the snakes out of Ireland!

            The very first St Patrick’s day in Ireland really wasn’t his day at all!  It was the day he died.  Still, he loved the Irish, and I’m sure he doesn’t mind that they have turned the anniversary of his death into a Guinness drinking festival on a global scale.  I also hope that he forgives my facetious style of recreating events in his life, though I wouldn’t expect anything less of the great man, who forgave his cruel captors and came back to save their souls.

Notes:

1 While the Inuit have over 150 words for snow, the Irish have nearly the same number of words to describe being inebriated!

2 There are conflicting accounts of where St Patrick was actually abducted from.  Some say Wales, others England and I choose to believe Scotland because it is the closest to Ireland.  You can even see Scotland from parts of the north coast of Ireland.  Interestingly enough, articles that differ in stating his place of origin seem to concur that his parent's names were Calpurnius and Conchessa!

3 Postglacial Ireland did not have snakes.  Snakes may have been symbolic of pagan beliefs or Druidism.  Good job too because Postglacial Ireland didn’t have Morris Minors either, until the twentieth century!