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.

spring

When the sun shines in Ireland everyone agrees it is the best place in the world. All worries are shelved as lawn mowers are started up and people wander around in summer clothes in case they don’t get a chance to wear them again.

This time last year I would be have been driving to some part of the country, trying to reach 4 or 5 appointments in the day to do presentations to engineers for a web service. This could mean that I got up at 4 or 5am to drive from Galway to Donegal or Cork perhaps. I would then spend the night there and do more presentations the next day before heading home late evening. The other three days would be spent desperately trying to catch up on the computer, setting up meetings for the following week and trying to keep children quiet when the phone rang. I covered the whole country so I would pick a county each week, the upside being I did get to see a wealth of scenery on the way. It was a good job, with a car and a phone etc. and I was based from home, connected by a portal straight into the office in County Armagh, 123 miles away. I should have done a survey on hotels. There were a huge number of beautiful hotels built in the last few years, in fabulous locations, fitted out to the highest quality, most with leisure centres and spas. So that is one good thing that the Celtic tiger left us. And now the competition is so tight you can easily find the cheapest deals in Europe

When the sun shone, as it only does for a few random weeks a year I was almost certainly in the car or stuck to the computer. I am so grateful not to be working for the last week. It has been glorious, sunny, hot, calm, Spring weather.

Oh the perfect pleasure of mowing grass.

I bought a bargain lot of wild roses and planted a hedge, cleared the branches out of the little walled garden next to the house and mowed it for the first time in years, weeded the flower beds, planted strawberries and dreamt up a vision for paths and seats and water features and cottage garden planting…..

Yes, in the poor man’s garden grow

Far more than herbs and flowers-

Kind thoughts, contentment, peace of mind,

And joy for weary hours.

Mary Howitt

There are three large hares on the farm this year, they lollop around like small ponies and there is a pheasant that shouts a lot. He managed to avoid the open season and took refuge in the bushes near the cows’ feeder over the winter, cleaning up the oats when they had finished. The small birds are out in force, rioting in the morning and tearing around looking for nests. One pair of thrushes has taken up residence in the vent to the extractor from the cooker, so we won’t be extracting for a while! The colony of crows are deep into the construction phase of their big nests on the tall ash trees, squabbling deafeningly over the best sticks and pieces of moss and sheep’s wool to line them. The daffodils have peeked too early apparently and will be over by Easter.

The trees are budding and you can feel the grass growing.

yellow

 

The volunteer job that I applied for last December has started. It took this long to set up because of references and Garda vetting procedures. It is ‘Coordinator of the Galway region for Irish Therapy Dogs’. I will be dealing with administration, setting up programmes with care centres and assessing the local teams. On Saturday Brenda and Brian from Dublin showed me the ropes in the Galway Hospice and we assessed four new teams. The emblem for the Galway Hospice is a sunflower and the atmosphere was light and bright. It is run by efficient volunteers who do the cooking and driving etc. and the good will was palpable.

I met Laura with her therapy dog Freda, a rescued Chihuahua, who are already active in the hospice and do weekly visits. When she got Freda from the sanctuary the tiny dog just ran around in little circles as she had lived in a cage on a puppy farm. She was lucky to find Laura! In her yellow I.T.D uniform with bright blond hair, big almond eyes and the largest perma-smile I have ever seen she looked like the sunflower fairy. 

The dogs and the owners are carefully assessed. The owners need to have a strong commitment to weekly visits and a kind, understanding, loving nature. The dogs need to be calm, obedient, well groomed, comfortable around strangers and in strange surroundings, not smell and have their nails clipped. Also the insurance insists they must not have any blood lines from dogs listed as restricted breeds.

The visits become very important for long term residential patients or people that cannot leave the centres but the real therapy takes place with the severe cases; patients with stroke, dementia, mental health problems or social interactive problems like autism. The aim is to make a connection to people locked into loneliness and work to improve their emotional health.

There are many success stories:

One man had been visiting his wife for eighteen months after she had had a stroke, she hadn’t spoken since but then one day she said ‘that is a lovely dog’.

Another long term resident with intellectual disabilities who no one had ever heard speak started beckoning to his lap after weeks of having the therapy dog put on his knees, saying ‘DOG, DOG’

A huge wolfhound called Setanta has had great success in a special needs school. One of the most popular activities is lying down and reading to him.

Brenda the founder of I.T.D. says ‘what ever the mental capacity of the person there is always a window to make a connection.’ You place the person’s hand on the dog and let them stroke it if they are happy to do this. She said ‘you know when a connection is made if you look above their eyes and see a light turn on, then maybe a glimmer of a smile.’

www.irishtherapydogs.ie

my little pony

I am in the arena, going round in circles, trying to hypnotise the young Connemara pony that I have trained over the winter. I glance up the fields to see a lone yellow cow lie down in the corner and give birth to the first calf of the year. The sky is a metallic grey, the grass that shade of neon green that is only found in the West of Ireland. The black calf gets up after a minute or two, all good so far, then the yellow cow sits down. She is still sitting three hours later. The calf won’t totter around for ever if it doesn’t get a drink. I am wary of approaching her since I was chased last year by an angry cow in a pair of flip flops (I was wearing the flip flops) and fell over before I got to the gate. Luckily she must have thought that she had won and retreated. There is always a spot on the news at the end of every year with farm fatalities. A cross cow is no joke.

I rang my expert farm advisor Bob who has been putting out the bales for us since our tractor packed up. Always keen on a farming challenge he arrived up instantly with his son David to assess the yellow cow situation and offer reams of advice. Maybe she is having twins, or having trouble with the after birth, or maybe she is lazy. We walked her down to the crush and he rooted around inside her and decided there wasn’t another calf; she was probably fine. The little black heifer did what all good calves should do and butted around enthusiastically under the cow looking for something that instinct had implanted. She soon found four, full fat, hot, frothy options.

‘Now she’s sucking diesel’

The cow munched her nuts, the calf sucked the precious colostrum that has to be ingested within a couple of hours of birth, the sun broke through the grey and baked our backs and all was well. A bright rainbow decorated the broody, blue hills.

There is a feeling that although the country is broke we have regained our integrity. It is an expectant feeling, it could nearly be hope, that we are on the road to recovery.

I brought down eight bags of horse manure to the school and we are going to plant spuds tomorrow as a step towards healthy school dinners and gender empowerment… a traditional task the week of Paddy’s day!

I have registered for a FAS accounting course in the dual prong strategy of; if we get a nature centre up and running on the farm I need to know, and if we don’t, someone else might need to know and employ me. And I have started drawing the plans for the renovation of the cow shed into a café.

We will be in the parade on Thursday in the village throwing out sweets from the little red Austin Healy that my husband has renovated- open top- so let’s hope its not raining.

Winter is never really over until after Paddy’s day.