A break from the garden

Inspiration corner.

I walked into the kitchen last night and faced all the tidying up that needed to be done; groaned, moaned, guided a few plates into the dishwasher and OH arrived in. "What's up with you" he cheerily enquired. "Hate housework, hate delph, feel like a holiday but we're not going away until September...GAWD I HATE housework!". Monosyllabic answers, and two red spots on either cheek were enough to warn him that yours truly was in fed up and feisty form.

There comes a time when we need a break from routine, and routine has been the order of the day lately, particularly since I recovered from that dose in May. "Right," sez he masterfully! "We're taking the day off tomorrow and heading off to wherever a cent lands on in the map book. Open the page for County Dublin". I did, and just before I dropped a cent on the page I plaintively asked "what if it lands on where we live, or near too" - "then we're in the garden for the day" he cooed. Hmmmp! He'd love that of course. However, the Gods were kind and we chose Balbriggan for our destination. A town in North County Dublin.

We had intended to leave around nine a.m., after a good full Irish breakfast; trust us to fall out of the bed round ten thirty; stagger into the kitchen and throw something into a bowl each; using our inbuilt radar we found the dining room and then, fed, cleaned and presentable we hit the M50 for Balbriggan, having decided that we would go out the motorway and come back down the coast road.

Just near the airport we discovered IKEA. I have never been to IKEA before, and have to say from what I had heard, wasn't willdly enthused. It was complicated enough to get there what with twists and turns, but get there we did. Five minutes inside and I wanted out; it was like being in the Ghost Train with all these colours coming at me, and my lazy eye and I don't like overload. However, we eventually found ourselves in the kitchen area, and there I fell in love. It is white, square and porcelain. It is a kitchen sink. It will, when I go back to purchase it - grace my new kitchen; if, that is, our future builder ever comes back off honeymoon. I even discovered the sink I want for the shower room; so, although I was seriously underwhelmed by IKEA I have to say that I found exactly what I was looking for there. Getting out of it was another matter.

Two and a half hours after we went in we arrived in Balbriggan. A small town, as I mentioned, in North County Dublin. This is arrable farmland, home of potatoes, veggies - as in cabbages as high as an elephant's eye; and it is on the coast just three bays up from where we have our own piece of heaven. If you're not Irish or at least not from Dublin, you have to understand that the great and large County of Dublin is divided in two by the river Liffey. Northsiders regard southsiders with suspicion, convinced that only stuck up would be rich folk live south of the Liffey, and southsiders view Northsiders with EXTREME caution; not quite sure just what planet they come from. It's rather like the view Kerry people have of Cork people and vice versa. It always amuses me that a Northsider called Bono settled in the Southside...mind you he does get around a bit on a global basis so maybe he hasn't noticed he's southside yet.

North County Dublin is rather flat, whereas the South of the county is hilly, mountainous in fact, and - well, not that I am biased, you understand, of course, - spectacular. However, I was interested to see how this town had prospered in the Celtic Tiger, as it must be fifteen years since OH and I brought the children [as they were then] out for the day. In those times it was dull, grotty, down at heel in fact, trying to make up its mind was it a satellite town of the Greater Dublin Metropolitan area or was it a country town. Well, it developed, got a face lift, but it still doesn't quite know which foot it is standing on. We drove up through the town, hindered from stopping by non-stop yellow lines and well hidden parking facilities.

Eventually we turned at the top of the town, disgruntled and irritated with jaywalkers and bad town planning and, driving down the main street, we took a left hand turn which put us on the coast road. We spotted a likely place to get to what we imagined would be the seafront on Fancourt Road, - and what a lucky turn it was. It proved to be a private housing estate right almost on the water. Porpoises played, cormorants were diving, sea gulls wheeled overhead and there, closer to us than we usually see them were the Mourne Mountains in Northern Irelnd. Children played in the rock pools not six hundred yards from home under a gloriously sunny July blue sky and it was heaven. If only we had remembered the camera; left sitting on the hall table! Typical!

We enjoyed our picnic lunch sitting on the grass taking in the vista, with the Mournes on our right and Lambay Island on our left. What struck me was, apart from the three or four children down on the rocks, the place was virtually deserted. Are children nowadays so removed from such joys as hunting crabs in a rock pool in favour of Gameboys? Has WII taken over the world? Dear Lord I hope not.

We ambled down the coast stopping in Skerries to look across to our own headland; I was fascinated to look across from, for a change, the view I usually look at when having breakfast. We stopped off for ice cream in Rush, the market garden of County Dublin, and finally we decided, as he wanted to see the WC match, we would bypass Swords and Malahide and Howth and take the M50 back home again.

When we got back home I sat out in the patio relaxing and occasionally getting up to potter around the plants and to chat with my neighbour who is painting his brother's cottage. Overhead the magpies welcomed me back and the bullfinches flitted from tree to bush to plant - pretty as a picture with their salmon pink breasts, black backs and grey waistcoats. Arriving back here was like coming back to heaven. It was only a day away from home, but it felt like a weeks holiday. I feel invigourated and ready to tackle housework again; sometimes you need to step outside the comfort zone and see how the rest of the world is getting along.

Garden Blog

Overhead, against a thundery sky swifts cut a dash through the air as they gorge themselves on flying insects. Down at the old cowhouse fledgling blue tits perform Immelman turns as they dart about the place. Biggles flies again, except the Kestrel took Bertie out this morning, leaving us with three aces, Biggles, Algy and Ginger. Von Stalhein has nothing on our predatory Kestrel; Baron Von Richtofen and his Jagdstaffel would be put to shame by our three heroes.

My neighbour will be devastated when he gets home from work and sees Berties feathers, bloodstained and tattered, lying at the foot of the gate. The Blue Tits grew up in a nesting box in his sycamore that had lain unused for a decade.

We don't credit birds with feelings like ours, but since noon, when the dreadful deed took place, there has been a succession of birds landing nearby. Maybe they hope to lelarn something about Bertie's death that might aid them escape Baron Von Kestrel for another while. Flight Lieutenant Bertie Blue Tit, RIP.

Since I moved back here in 2008, we have always had a plethora of Magpies. Six in next door's Lawsonia, eight in the firs over the wall at the end of our garden. Many's the pitched battled waged overhead, and indeed, on our lawn as the Over the Hill gang took on the Seaview Eight. Magpies and Hoodie Crows would gather from all over the hill to watch the great aerial battles, sometimes joining in. No doubt a political manoeuver to incur favour from whichever side won. We are reduced to three magpies from the Over the Hill gang and one lone Seaview clan magpie who sits sunning himself on the grass forlornly. No breathern to keep an eye out for predators.

The relief from the Siewview Apartments [fir tree] residents - i.e., The Woodpigeon family, is palpable, the numbers of woodpigeon, blackbird and thrush has escalated dramatically. You could be in danger of loosing an eye from a low flying Great Tit. The Long Tailed tits, heretofore twelve in number, now rejoice in a squadron of 18.

Last night OH, YD and I sat out on the back patio until ten to one in the morning. A mild, humid night, we investigated the contents of a bottle of Merlot Pinot Grigio - perfectly satisfactory! Check, the latest young fox to grace our garden, strolled onto the patio around eleven, bypassed us within 2' and, not finding any juicy tidbits, passed on by. She has no fear of us; her grandmother would nearly vanish up her own brush at the mere sniff of a human, times - they are a changing.

At 2p.m., Torquil and Dean, the two donkeys bray their contentment as Old Alex arrives with a tasty morsel or two for them. The sound of their ectasy carries far and wide and can lift you out of your skin with shock, and yes, that IS Torquil and not Torville. May read the name Torquil in a Georgette Heyes novel many years ago and decided it would be a nice name for a donkey. No comment!

The elderberries are in full bloom and roses are prolific everywhere, Mum's Gertrude Gekyll is coming out and I lookforward to a sterling display. Apparently all the rain during the winter has made for a great Rose year. I have nearly achieved a dream - roses 'round the hall door. I took a cutting of a dog rose from down at the cowshed, liberally dowsed it with comfrey tea and it has raced up through the Pyrricantha. By next summer it will be possible to bring it up and over the door to meet with a newly planted Albertine rose.

Fox gloves abound this year. From one seedy looking character in'08, I have seven, self seeded. The bed under the front bedroom window is beginning to look like a proper cottage garden flowerbed. Antirriniums, foxglove, bizzy lizzie, campanula, poppies, wall flowers and pansies. We will get there. The three year subplan of a five year plan is beginning to come to fruition.

I have kept one flower bed solidly and forever Mums. Bit by bit OH and I are making our changes. Yd has set up a bed of her own, boy! wouldn't Mum be thrilled? YD is the last person she would have thought would take to gardening. See Mum, told you so!

The cabbages took off so well and the lettuce in the veg garden that our friends are starting to grow white tails and whiskers and, in truth, I am getting a bit weary of salad teas, lunches etc. OH will plant slightly less next summer and probably less will grow!

Aha! The long tailed tits have arrived in the Blue Cedar. Time for afternoon tea. they always land promptly at 4p.m.

June is bursting out all over...well the sunshine helps

Back to work on Monday week after two weeks feeling dire; the only consolation was a bright round orb in the sky that, I was told, was - The Sun. Neighbours stood at garden gates looking at it, wondering if it might stay around for long, would it heat up the country and - could we get more than four days of it and have to deem that Our Summer????

Having been on the 'sick list' for the previous two weeks, the house was in dire need of a good shake out, and nothing loathe, I set to on Tuesday morning, determined to hit every nook and cranny. I forgot two things, one being dust and allergies, and just recovering from a chest and sinus infection, and t'other was the fact that this house has more nooks and crannies than the Wicklow house. Add to that chaffeuring OH around because his car, which went in for a routine check up discovered that liked being 'hospitalised' and spent another day in the garage getting a new gear box. At least damage to the gear box cannot now be laid at my door, I have my own jalopy and she's singing like a bird.

The reason for the big clean up? Mother-in-law and Sister in law visit in sight. Mother in law might be in her nineties, early dementia approaching [so we are led to believe] but I do not particularly relish a walking stick being waved at a ceiling corner and a stentorian voice demanding "how long do you intend to keep that spider in permanent housing?" or words to that effect.

I spent Wednesday coughing and spluttering like a mad thing, but had the place spick and span by Wednesday night. OH was threatened with having dire things done to him [i.e., his prize cabbages infested with slugs] if he so much as even looked into the study and I confined him to the sitting room and the World Cup. Rather he than me, I lost interest after Thierry handed Ireland out of the running. As a nation we are not bitter over that, much, but hark, is that the sound of glee I hear coming up the hill from the green fields and lean streets of Ireland now that France's WC chances have died a death. Let us give them a big Thierry...'er I mean a hand up off the pitch.

Friday night saw E.D. and I head off to the Gaiety Theatre in King Street in Dublin, "The Importance of Being Ernest" [Wilde] was on. A wonderful performance that gripped the audience from beginning to end; we got to meet Stockard Channing in the Green Room afterwards. A wonderful performance from this diminutive but powerful actress. E.D will probably come back to earth sometime in the near future, the programme with Ms Channing's autograph has already been put safely in a plastic cover. She brought it up to show her Dad on Sunday, and as sister in law flicked through the pages of the programme I feared for her life [well, her hands] in case she tore a page, or The Page, by accident. No mother ever watched a child as protectively as E.D watched her programme.

We have been basking in sunshine and warm weather since Thursday, it is always a bit colder up here than down in the plains; on Sunday I was delighted to be able to serve the inlaws Sunday lunch out under the Blue Cedar. A gentle breeze kept us cool, the flies away and we had a very relaxed afternoon. Mother in law is, however, concerned that there is an above average number of woodpigeons about the place and they might damage her sons cabbages.

OH and I haven't had an indoors meal since last Thursday, we dine on the patio and life is made easier not to have to traipse the length of the house to the dining room from the kitchen, by next year hopefully a different tale will be told. I have found my builder and as soon as he comes back off his honeymoon we will sit down and discuss "the doings". The three year plan is beginning to come together. At last.

Tonight, after the WC Match was over, OH and I took a gentle ramble around the hill. The lanes are redolent of the smell of woodbine, clover both red and white, purple loosestrife, purple tufted vetch, campion, ladies fingers, and the humming of bees. We stood at a break in the hedge to look out over the golf course and admire the rabbits grazing in the evening sunshine. These are the days when the day will last a bit longer until it starts to slip back bit by bit. We stopped along the way home to chat to neighbours. The weather, as always, the main source of gossip.

As I grew up with a lot of the people we chatted to this evening, and played on the hill on long summer nights with them, our thoughts turned to evenings spent making daisy chains, playing chaineys, hopscotch, rounders over on the commons, and collecting wild flowers for our Mothers, a good way to get out of a scold for being in later than the deadline. To-day is the feast of St Winifrid. Happy feast day to all Winifrids [or Winnefreds or Winnifreds or Winifreds as my elderly cousing used to spell her name].

Yesterday, being the longest day, I sat out in the garden until well past midnight. It was wonderfully tranquil after a very busy day solo in the office. I have re-vamped the back patio, the frost and snow had damaged Mum's plants, we managed to save a pelargonium and I am nursing another one that climbs all over the place. In place of the lost plants I have started filling all available pots with bizzie lizzies, and I came across some beautiful double flowered ones that enhance the whole place by looking like miniature roses.

As I sat there, Check, the latest youthful fox incumbent of the garden [ancestry traceable to her grandmother the Silver] trotted around the side of the house and into the patio. I don't know who was the most surprised. I sat still, spoke quietly to her and she backed off up towards the veg garden. She sat there watching me for twenty minutes, sniffing the air delicately, looking around her. She was quite unfazed by my presence. After a bit I think she realised I wasn't going anywhere so she trotted off around the flower bed down by the patio wall, past the kitchen window to pick up the bread we throw out for the birds in the evening. The poor adult birds have had a busy time of it with the fledglings, so they need a bit of a helping hand. Check and her family are not unwilling to clean up the leavings.

Long may the fine weather reign.

En4ced Rest & life b4 txt frm me 2 u

Things were going along swimmingly since the last blog; but a suspected sinus infection sent me to the doctors [three units of ambulance men were nearly needed to revive me when I got the bill] and a chest infection showed itself to accompany its fellow ailment. If that lot sounds pompous, try sixty euro to be told what you already suspect and another 48 euro to pay for medication that makes you want to call for the priest!

Short form is: Antibiotic's made me feel like passing over, doc recommends drop to one a day and I know stomach will never be the same again. Enter Trudy; "Yogurt, me dear, Glenisk is the best - it'll help your stomach". Trudy has now been voted lifesaving pal of the century. We go back a long way, 56 years to be precise, our Mums were three beds apart in the same ward of the same maternity hospital. Our Mother's came from neighbouring villages and we never knew each other until thirty seven years ago, come August, when we were introduced by a mutual friend. It was dislike at first sight. We l-o-a-t-h-e-d each other. Mutual friend emigrated to the USA and we continued to travel home together by train in thinly veiled truce. All this ended when a pal of hers let her down over a summer holiday and she came along to Greece with my friends and I. We had a blast! Things were never the same again...well, they couldn't be could they? After all I remember her and that night with the Ouzo, and she recall's my being chatted up by whatshisname...all very tame really by today's carry on in such places as Ibiza, but a mutual bond was formed and we took to the disco's upon our return like they were going out of fashion.

We have been firm friends ever since. Mind you, most of her and my other friends are convinced we are arch enemies - the level of what they see as sarcasm and what we see as never ending 'slagging' or leg pulling being high. We refuse to text each other, despite both being fairly competent with texting vocabulary. It's a sort of "lets be old-fashioned" about it. It's also an excuse for very long, very hilarious chats which keep Eircom in business, despite both having "packages" to save on calls.

As the week progressed the text messages started to roll in, it was obvious I was not seen in my usual haunts so Lisa landed this one "wer u? Nt cn u 4 4tnite - u ok?" or, for the text illiterate Where are you, haven't seen you for a fortnight, are you ok?...she got back, "nt so gud, antibi's mkng me fl yuk" to which she replied "por u, cn i gt u n-e tin" or, poor you, can I get you anything. Ger's "herd u r sik, hop ur betr, u up 4 cofy nx wed?" up for coffee next Wednesday, darling girl, I was hoping to reach the "able to eat tea and toast and keep it down" stage by then, never mind sit at our favourite cafe and slosh back cappuchino's and latte's by the gallon!

And it went on. And I started to think. And it hit me that by 2025 there will probably be classes in schools in Old English, and for those really interested Olde English. What will differentiate the two? Olde English will be the English of Chaucer and Shakespeare, and Old English will be the sort of thing we currently write our blogs in. Most communications will probably be in Nu Nglsh or Txt speek 4 u. When people speak to each other, ninety per cent of the words will be drowned with the "like" insert as I call it. Like, it will be, like speaking, like, in, like short4m, like, and, like, if, like, we can ever, like, get a sentence, like, out, like, we will, like, be, like, doing good. Like.

Have you ever eavesdropped on non-national English speaking conversations? The Irish have their own format, and it is not necessarily filled with shure and begorrahs! The English have theirs [regional variations included], American English and Canadian English is different again, take in New Zealand and Australia and the varying formations of a sentence are interesting. Like.

Anyhow, I am now off out to the patio, to like, sit, like, and read a book, like, and recouperate, like, before I have to, like, txt a fu pals 4 d l8st nuz! like.

A blog from the garden

It has been a busy week, extra days at work, hospital visit for a check up and the wonderful news that I have lost 15lbs:3ozs and kept it down; major high. All in all I was glad to see the end of the week and looked forward to Friday immensely. Friends came for supper, and my great plan to dine al fresco came to naught - the mist rolled in from the sea, and you couldn't even see the garden gate! The upside and the downside of a heat wave. Brilliant temperatures, and rolling sea-fog. So, windows opened to the sound of the fog horns from the Bay, we dined indoors and had a hoot. Good company is a blessing from God and before we knew it the hours from eight to three in the morning had flown by and we never felt their passing.

I was up bright and early, despite the lateness of the hour when we retired, and after watching Edward Petherbridge as Lord Peter Wimsey in "Gaudy Night" [Dorothy L Sayers}, I was busy catching up on laundry and other household chores. There is something very satisfying about seeing a clothesline blowing in the breeze full of fresh clean linen. I brought the laptop into the garden in the afternoon, and after a refreshing cuppa decided to blog from the garden...however, the best laid plans of mice, men and this blogger are always a floating issue. Not one but two daughters decided to arrive - just in case you were lonely Mam. Mentally I wailed that I wanted to grab this rare opportunity to sit in brilliant sunshine, shaded by an umbrella advertising a nation's favourite drink (!) and blog about the collar doves racing each other around the leylandii in next doors garden, the enormous bumble-bee that had a face off with a dunnock on a cherry tree branch...and yet I was delighted that they had come to see me. Who knows, this time next year we might all be leading different lives, so grab your graces when they come as my paternal Grandmother used to exclaim - and rightly so.

The ladies stayed to dinner, OH headed off to work and I cleaned up...God bless the dishwasher, a mother's greatest asset. We did manage to dine al fresco this time and it was heavenly. The Collar doves cooed, the Dunnocks sang their cheery song and a nosey Robin decided that this al fresco lark was wonderful, all those crumbs, and look, some generous human has decided to throw me tid-bits. All quiet at eight o'clock I rambled down the garden and sat under an elderberry tree. We have recently reclaimed this area from the gorse and general scrub and I love it. As a child we used to have picnic tea's out here. We had the idea, my childhood friends and I, that we were the Secret Seven, The Famous Five, and we would head off with bottles of cold tea, apples, cold sausage sandwiches and a slice of gur cake each. An old blanket thrown down and we would idle the hours planning what we would do, when we grew up; we solved mysteries. Big mysteries such as Why Did Beatrix Potter write about rabbits in her garden when we didn't have any in ours. I wonder did we ever think that a preponderance of foxes might have had something to do with this lack of bunny habitation? We trawled through Bunty, Judy, The Beano, The Dandy, The Hotspur and other publications, "swappies" was the order of the day, and we swapped for all we were worth. The Wolf of Kabul was my particular favourite. Oh yes, you guess correctly, I was a tomboy. Happier hanging out of a tree than playing with tea sets. If Mum could see me now, afternoon tea on the lawn with the pals during the week. She did say it would happen, I laughed...I can hear a ghostly chuckle even now. You haven't lived until you have bitten into a batch loaf bread sausage sandwich and a green apple and washed it down with cold tea from a Fanta bottle. Sheer heaven.

I digress, typical me, I sat under the elderberry until the sun sank in the west. One thing to be said for the Eya...whatsit volcano, the sunsets are pure Turner and breath-taking. I sat on in the dusk until every last bird had gone to sleep. The song Thrush had entertained me with his "Dia Dhuit" [deeya-gwit] obviously an Irish singing bird, the layering started after that with the blackbird up in the Douglas Fir seranading the sunset and the robins, dunnocks and indeed the bullfinches adding their chorus to it. The Sunset Opera, fabulous!

This morning back out at nine, papers in hand, breakfast on the back patio, tempramental sunshine, fog horns in the distance, birdsong aplenty and the smells of lilac, apple blossom wafting past, enhanced by gillyflowers [wallflowers]. The tulips I planted last autumn are eyecatching and the front lawn is showered like a bride with the confetti of cherry blossom. I have lilac all around the house in vases, even an old tea-pot. There is something very gentle about lilac, relaxing. The phone rings and I am too lazy to answer it; who would want to break the magic spell a springtime garden binds us with. I am far more interested in watching a ladybird explore a leaf!

The darling spuds of May

So here we are in the month of May, April seems to have flown by so fast that I nearly missed it. I have been busy "collecting" builders; at last, two years down the line the "extension project" has moved up to getting prices. So far two have impressed me, one floored me with his"...it might be better if you knocked the old house down and rebuilt completely..." but I think the Euro signs floating about behind the pupils of his dimly lit eyes alerted me to "Builder In Crisis Needs Cash". He got a short visit, sweet smile and a "be in touch" NOT! I have a few more I want to investigate before I finally decide. One has really impressed me, he has a great reputation, is salvage/period of house/eco friendly and, providing his submission is reasonable may well win the day. Fingers crossed. Meanwhile ED and YD are enjoying life as parental tenants in the old marital home, rent free and utilities to be paid for only. I sense a restlessness in YD and I think she is now ready to move back in with the 'rents as soon as her bedroom is built. Happy days.

Speaking of YD, we had a great night last night. She came to stay for the week-end; so a bottle of Merlot, Chicken Balls, Fillet Beef with Mushroom and Prawn Crackers later we watched "It's Complicated" and then sat and chatted - between drifting out to examine what was on offer when the outside light went on. The Bracken Fox was seriously distressed last night. His behaviour was odd to say the least. He spent over half an hour walking around the cottoneaster bush, spraying, muzzling at it and walking around between two other bushes, marking territory. We later discovered that there was a gang of "gurriers", to use the old Dublinism, up on the hill drinking, shouting and roaring and generally acting in time dishonoured anti-social behaviour. Since the Local Council decided, in its total lack of wisdom, to put in nature trails through the gorse, we are beleagured with youths spending time on the hill with "nefarious intent".

We have cleared more scrub from the garden and this has provided the birdlife with a new supermarket. We have five robins, no less, hanging around this part of the garden and I have termed them The Round Robin Society (!) they are like brown puffballs of feathers with a red daub. Feeding is rich here in this garden with the newly reclaimed land. The lilac and the cherry trees are in full bloom, and the tulips, a disaster last spring, are a joy to behold. Bit by bit OH is putting his stamp on the garden while keeping Mum's area's well tended and I am putting my stamp on the house.

I decided last year that I would put in shelving and a press in each alcove beside the fireplace in the sitting room. OH persuaded me to use a "local man" from his home-place and, reluctantly, I did. Marital harmony and all that don't you know. Well, six months later and they are up, exactly what I designed, and painted brilliant white by OH. They add light to the room and everybody is taken with the Art Deco doors [a pattern I copied off a dvd of Lord Peter Wimsey tales] and I am struggling to come to terms with what Yer Man charged. Let us just say that I had had a generous budget in mind, very generous indeed, and let us just say that Yer Man was even more generous - still, they are bespoke and solely mine...but...€'s later and I still get a cold chill. It has made me very cautious and although one of the builders I am getting a quote from is the son of the man who built this extension - in which I am presently sitting - I will not be racing to throw my money away on sentiment.

I spent our cold and icy winter looking forward to spending lazy afternoons in the Maytime garden, afternoon teas with friends - you have the picture in your mind, and this cold weather is killing off all those lovely daydreams, it's tea in the dining room looking out at the sunshine, and a warm jacket on when gardening. We are delighted with our new veggie garden, all right, his vegetables - my herbs, and growth has been spectacular with the potatoes rocketing up. He has taken to planting potatoes in unexpected and newly cleared areas of the garden, so it will be an interesting summer.

Mme Pounce is coming for her holidays for the June Bank Holiday. I put a barring order in place on her coming here in case she attacked the bird life. With all the changes in the garden in the past two years we took some losses with avian tenants; I am keen to reestablish the numbers of birds and apart from Ginger Tom from over the cliff, they are thriving. He has a penchant for Fresh Blue Tit avec Feathers. Miserable Moggy. He is a great pal of Mme Pounce, and together they make an effective hunting team. I am not keen on giving hostages to felines.

March - in like a lamb...out like a lion - this year

This has been a busy month for OH and I. On the 15th we celebrated our Pearl Wedding Anniversary, the 20th my OOth birthday and Dad and Mum's 40th and 2nd Anniversaries respectively on the 21st and 22nd. Time, as the saying goes is the great healer and time, or thirty years in this instance, is wonderful.

Thirty years ago, when I walked up the aisle to exchange vows with OH in our local parish church, the fifteenth of March was a bitterly cold day. A vicious day with sleet and ice in the rain. On the following day we headed off to Tralee for our Honeymoon to a warmer climate down south in Kerry while family and friends trod their way through snow in Dublin to their varying destinations. Upon our return to Co. Wicklow the new bride started married life with a huge fry-up which was nearly more of a necessity than a 'big breakfast'. The house was cold, his relations who had been staying there over the week end of the wedding had departed on the Monday morning and had 'thoughtfully' put the central heating off.

We returned late on Saturday night to frozen pipes, a snowed up driveway, and a house that bore close resemblence to a freezer. I still shudder to think what the story would have been had we been away for two weeks. Mum, snowed up here on this hill, wasn't able to get out to check on the house before our return; it sat there freezing miserably and, no doubt wondering what the new broom in the form of the new bride would do to it. Thirty years on and no longer living there, if I could take it - lock, stock and every brick, bit and bob of it - and put it on to this house as an attachment, I would have perfection. Just as we had it entirely the way we wanted it, life stepped in and changed our direction.

We celebrated our Pearl with the girls, I cooked a meal for the four of us - the days of dining out in fancy restaurants are not a priority now. Between the gluten intolerance and the diabetes, I am happier to do the needful myself - the dishwasher does the really hard work. It was a lovely evening and I sat back after dessert looking at the three people, oh yes! I had better add Mme Pounce too, that shape my world. I have much to be grateful for.

We departed, as they say in travel terms, bright and early on the sixteenth for the Kingdom of Kerry and my beloved town of Tralee. The recession has bitten hard across the country; as we travelled down to Tralee I could see the for sale signs and the whited out windows of failed business in the small towns and business where, last June they were still thriving. In any given town in Ireland this year there is at least one business going to the wall each week. The Banks have much to answer for, but they don't - they just look for more taxpayers money to keep them in the style they imagine they are entitled to. There are go-slow's in Government departments, the public service and the field of education. The saying "somebody should do something about it"... "Somebody" is like Romantic Ireland, it's with O'Leary in his grave...and not the modern famous airline O'Leary at that.

The break was just what we needed. On St Patricks' day we were up bright and early and after a huge breakfast we headed out to visit my Grandparents grave, followed by early Mass in my beloved Grandfather's favourite church The Dominican's. OH was amazed by the turn out. Churches seldom get that full in Dublin nowadays. There were green jumpers, jackets, ties, scarves, and breast pocket loads of shamrock aplenty.

Seasoned travellers in the Kingdom, we made up our own packed lunch and headed down Princes Street and out towards Blennerville. The day was with us as they say in that neck of the woods, and the temperatures were 17-20 degrees. The sun shone on the Sliabh Mish mountains and we had the Conor Pass, in all its narrow glory, to ourselves. Out past Dingle, awash with few tourists and more locals awaiting their St Paddy's day parade, and on towards my beloved Slea Head.

There is much to view, and a different season gives a different perspective. Everything etched in stark lines, hedges brown and burnt with the hard winter's snow and frost, cut hard back in complete contrast to Summers softer floral dress of Fuschia and Monbretia. There is a gaunt architectural beauty to the bare trees, lifting their arms to Heaven as if pleading with God for compassion; given that Easter is just around the corner - there is added significance to the beauty.

Fox coat coloured leaves of Monbretia line the roads, a proud pheasant browses for delicacies beneath the gorse. Blackback gulls soar above the ocean wave, cormorants sit ladylike on the rocks, wings outstretched. In a small field above the rocky cliffs a few native black Kerry cows, dainty and as pretty as a Jersey herd, cling to the hillside grazing on the salt blasted grass; their meat tastier because of the wild herbs growing there. We round a bend and there, to the mewing of the seagulls lie Ná Blascóid, half hidden in the mist that rolls in across the broad Atlantic. I am in Heaven. The magic of the Blasket Islands never ceases to enrapture me.

It is St Patrick's Day and I am in the best place to feel my native Irishness. Road signs of Gó máll [slow down] pronounced guh mowl, or Tóg bóg é - take it slowly [tog, as in toga, tog bug ay]. Ireland, Mother Ireland loose not your native tongue. OH romantically informs me that I look like an overgrown snowdrop - white shirt, green jumper and brown trousers. Thank you darling, you'll always keep me grounded anyhow!

We pull into the parking area at Dún Chaoin, watching the waves roll into the shore and cliff, a surfer's dream, turquoise and white and inky blue out into the depths. We sit awhile in companionable silence. Small holiday cottages align the road, houses that once were family homes to people who once lived on the islands, Peig Sayers among them. My mind is focussed sharply on their lives, fraught with hardship, surviving wild winters of gale and cold. They were fine hardy people God bless their like. We pic-nic'd overlooking Smerwick and its dragon backed cliffs. I always think of the film Reign of Fire when I see them.

On Thursday the morning's rain gave way at mid-day and we headed out for Mount Brandon and then up to Ballyheigue. A sadness came over me, or maybe the Irish word uaignais [loneliness] came over me. For most of my life there was a wish to live in this wonderful county hidden deep in my heart. Time and it's attendants have changed that for me. I have come home in more ways than one to my hill where I grew up, the Kingdom will always be Paradise, but for visiting rather than putting down my own roots there.

I am a 'jug' collector, Shannonbridge Pottery to be exact. Lovely floral jugs of all sizes and a trip up Rock Street to Loramar and it's lovely chatelaine is a must. She gives wonderful discounts, and I am in need of restraint before I purchase all her stock. She remembers me everytime I go in to her, even if there is a gap of a couple of years since my last visit. She is the heart of the rowl as Dubliners say, her warm welcome is the quintessential "Ireland of the Thousand Welcomes". In Kellihers at the bottom of The Rock [Rock St.,] I come across a willow pattern pepper and salt set, a man and woman in oriental dress. At a mere €9 it will grace my table on special occasions. It always fascinates me that in Kerry the name Kelliher is spelt with an 'i' and in Cork with an 'e' as in Kelleher. Prefer the 'i' myself.

Friday and homeward bound but not before we lunch in Cork with Dad's only surviving sister. She is now 80 and I adore her. We have always been close, and it pains my heart to see how frail she has become in the past year. When she is gone that is it, I have no one to say "do you remember when" to about my family childhood days. God spare her the years, may she see her century. I am overjoyed to learn that she will be in Dublin the following week for her Grand-daughter's concert, I immediately grab my chance for more time with her. Last Wednesday I picked her up from my cousin's house and we had afternoon tea before a cozy fire and she travelled down memory lane with me. Those were golden hours and I treasure them.