trees

Everyone is turning to nature. Nature is free, and we have a lot of it. Larry, the engineer who did our soil test (for the planning application for the farm café) is doing what everyone is being advised to do, retraining or ‘up-skilling.’ He is doing a course on herbs at the weekends. So far he has done two full days on dandelions- no shortage of those… The pre Celtic Tiger generation had quite an amount of knowledge about herbs and such, so when he added chopped nettles to his parent’s cabbage (for the vitamin and mineral benefits) they took it in their stride. A pint of bright green seaweed smoothie now seems more acceptable than a pint of the black stuff.

I met three beautiful trees over the Easter weekend, a vast beech, over 100 years old, in her prime. I sat below her on a bench and strained to see the sky through the depth of her fresh new foliage. Each young, lime green leaf vibrated with existence. Thousands of tiny solar panels converting light into chemical energy…an oxygen spa… a long cool drink of nature.

I barely noticed the tall birch beside the lake, she was that polite. Her narrow trunk was soft and papery and it was comforting to watch her thick swathes of feathery leaves gently wave in the breeze.

The pink cherry stood alone like a piece of Japanese art. The angled trunk somehow balanced in perfect symmetry by three slanting branches. Petals applied as if by a master Zen painter, on her branches and on the grass below to mirror her shape.

’If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.’

Lost ~ David Wagoner ~

 We were staying in the Breaffy House Hotel (2 nights bed and breakfast one dinner for 2 adults 2 children, free kids activities all day including a pirate disco until 10pm and use of the leisure centre €219.)

gentians

John Kilroy died nearly a year ago, jiving with his wife at a local wedding. She had been recovering from sickness and a broken hip and this was her first time up on the floor in a couple of years

He stopped dancing, gripped her tightly, looked into her eyes for a few intense seconds and collapsed to the floor. They couldn’t find the defibrillator.

The funeral was huge; they played Garth Brookes ‘The Dance’ as we walked into the church.

Looking back on the memory of                                                                                               
The dance we shared beneath the stars above
For a moment all the world was right
How could I have known you'd ever say goodbye
And now I'm glad I didn't know
The way it all would end the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance I could have missed the pain

But I’d of had to miss the dance

He is missed by many and on his anniversary his family are throwing a party for 200 with food from the local restaurant and a band.

The day after the funeral I took a walk with one of his closest friends on the green road to St Patrick’s Well, on Abbey hill, in the Burren. She saw her first ever Spring Gentian. That is always a magical moment. People who have seen Spring Gentians search the Burren compulsively in April for the prize. News spreads like wildfire when the first one flowers. It is like finding the treasure at the end of the rainbow, a handful of blue gems scattered on the short spring grass. Bliss.

If you are looking for them there is always a hopeless feeling you will never find them, they are so small and the hills are ten square miles. But when you do, you know you could never have missed them. They are the most piercing, laser bright, cobalt blue that exists in this world. The bluest blue you will ever see, an intensity that can not be captured by film, only be witnessed by the human eye. Five diamond petals surround a tiny, white, five pointed star. They signal the start of the wild flower season on the Burren, with all its promise of rare alpine flowers and orchids.

I spotted a small patch yesterday down by the Flaggy shore and that was when I realised it must be a year since John died.

In his memory, a first responders group has been set up in the village and so far 3 defibrillators have been installed in weather proof boxes. Over 30 people have been trained in CPR and there are three emergency mobiles that rotate around the group. I have had the emergency phone for the last week. It hasn’t rung; if it did I think I would need resuscitating… You must try to get to the victim within 2 minutes. Eventually there will be so many people trained that hopefully someone will be able to perform CPR at the scene until the defibrillator arrives.

So John’s death, at some stage, will save a life, and every year when I find the Spring Gentians I will think of him.

happiness

The recession is squeezing creativity out of every corner of the country.

The Golden Egg Fashion Innovation Awards

( www.goldenegg.ie ) were on in Galway last week. My old school friend Susannagh Grogan, who I used to smoke Sobranie cocktail cigarettes with in the nun’s orchard, had her scarves nominated for the accessories award.

We were pretty excited on the way in to the Radisson as the scarves have done very well in the last year, but it quickly became clear that the standard was exceptional and the competition no walkover. Our attitude changed to ‘let’s just enjoy the evening’, which we did, a lot, slipping back easily into our teenage relationship. There were three milliners and two handbag designers in her category. Hats had won the previous year so they may have been at a disadvantage, but it is hard to compete against a nice handbag.

I asked Susannagh what had pushed her to strike out on her own after twenty years of international freelance design.

She said one day she was listening to a chat show on the radio and she sent in a text about a broken extractor fan in her bathroom. They rang her back to ask her to talk live on air and she said she couldn’t possibly do that- too embarrassing. When she put down the phone she berated herself for being so wet, and decided the next time someone asked her to do something, whether she liked the idea or not, she would face the fear and say yes, you only live once and all that… The phone rang and she was asked if she would like to go on a reality TV programme ‘5 women go back to work’. The format was that 5 women, who had taken a career break to have children, would work in a publishing house in different capacities for a few weeks and one would win a job.

Susannagh was taken on as graphic designer and was the first victim, on the very first episode, to be emotionally targeted. The project for the week was a mood board for a fashion feature. Her two bosses, one male, one female, proceeded to rip her ideas to pieces and suggest she was useless. I expect she was meant to cry (great TV) however she did not crack. Having studied at the Chelsea College of Art and Design and worked as senior designer for prints in London and New York, she quickly recovered with:

‘I think that is completely unfair…’

She came away with her dignity intact and the two arrogant Celtic tiger bosses looked like bullies. After the show she realised that she could compete with any of the high fliers she had met and with a small dose of assertiveness, in 2009, she launched her own label. This was her second scarf collection.

She did win:

‘Accessory designer of the year 2011’ and €1000.00 worth of advertising.

She held her 2 ft high bronze lady aloft on the catwalk and shouted ‘THANK YOU’ into the microphone and everyone turned to admire the beautiful scarf I was wearing.   

I am now the proud owner of ‘Floral Happiness’ an exquisite, huge, 100% silk twill, 4ftsq fringed scarf. (http://www.scarf.ie/)

Unfortunately the next day was my first official run. I have been training since October with the Carron ladies meet and train, 8.30 on a Thursday night, under the lights in the GAA pitch, wet or dry. A glass of wine didn’t seem like a  bad idea the night before…

The whole of Ireland has taken up running. There is a big initiative to get healthy and fight depression, without spending any money of course. No gym memberships these days. Ray Darcy from Today fm hosted five 5k runs at lunchtime in different parts of the country last week with a free downloadable training schedule ‘from couch to 5k’. Over 700 of us started on the Claddagh in Galway city and ran along by the sea to Salthill and back. The atmosphere was fantastic, Luke Ming Flanagan, independent TD and former depression sufferer, started the race and we got a T shirt, a bottle of water, a bar of chocolate and a banana!

The primroses are out, the whitethorns are loaded with blossoms like snow drifts, the farmers market is back on every Friday in the village and entreprenuers are popping up everywhere.

fairies and nazis

Our townland of about ten houses is called Cloonasee, ‘meadow of the fairies’ My daughter has seen a couple of colourful fairies under a bush and my neighbour’s sensible, 6yr old son had a white one on his shoulder recently when he kicked a ball into the orchard. He tried to come in from the garden with it to show it to his Mam but it vanished.

The Cloonasee ladies were invited to dinner by the same neighbour on Saturday night and the conversation turned to strange but true tales from this little patch of google earth.

Plastic Paddies (people with Irish parents but born and raised in London) they had bought their farmhouse off a Belgium lady about ten years ago, whose husband, Staf, was living in a mobile home in the garden (they didn’t get on). When my friend moved in they had to dispose of his enormous collection of newspapers that left him barely enough room to breath. He now lives in a council house in the village and is a strange, shrivelled, angry looking creature in a wheel chair with long curly white hair. He once lay down in the post office and refused to move, protesting about something but no one can remember what. For years there was a rumour that was brushed off, that he was a Nazi. But in 2007 a documentary by Cathal O Shannon came out RTE about Nazi war criminals who had found refuge in Ireland (including Albert Folens founder of Ireland’s leading academic text book publisher). Staf van Velthoven, one of the last surviving ones, appeared on the program, he stated without remorse that he was a Flemish member of the Waffen SS (the Waffen was the armed unit of the SS)

Another bit of juicy scandal from Cloonasee is the story of Tommy St George, whose fields bounded ours to the South. Tommy was a gentlemen bachelor who also owned the pub ‘St Georges’ on the quay in the village. The pub had not been open for years when a friend came to visit me and happened to knock on the door looking for a drink. Tommy’s ancient sister, Mary Ann, let him in and he asked for a beer. After enjoying the bottle of beer and the view of the tide at a little table by the window for an hour or so he asked how much he owed her. She sweetly said

‘O nothing, we’re not a pub at all anymore’

Tommy died a couple of years ago and left all his property to the church. One day soon after it was said that a fella looking remarkably like Tommy, but with a white ponytail, had stopped for a drink in Ballindereen claiming that he was his son. Tommy was duly exhumed and DNA tests proved this to be true. Peter St George inherited the property. A local lady had become pregnant by the respectable Tommy and moved to London to live with some cousins and have Peter. She used to bring him back every summer when he was a child claiming she was his nanny and she was looking after him for the holidays. Not everyone was happy about Peter reappearing, he died soon after of an asthma attack. It then turned out that Peter had a daughter he had not known about and she popped up and inherited and sold the farm and the pub. It is now being converted to a café, due to open at the Cuckoo festival in April.

There is no shortage of conversation in Cloonasee.