The Morning After

BLOOM 6

 

It's amazing what a good night's sleep can do for you.
Sleep has been a bit here-and-there-ian, a fickle bedfellow recently.
While tiredness, inevitably, has been a Siamese twin.
Is it not ever thus?
However, this morning I feel as fresh as a daisy, as my mother used to say.

I suppose there is truth in the old adage. Not about daisies - but about the enemy you know being less fearful than the one you don't.
The trees for my Yeats garden at Bloom have certainly been a foe beyond the gates - but, in tree terms, this was the week that was. Bad enough for me, but I don't even want to think about how it's been for Jack.
Jack, as you may recall, has put his shoulder to the Bloom-wheel and now also goes under the alternative title of 'My Hero'.
He spent last week, in gales, rain, mizzle and more gales, gouging, slinging and lifting trees out of the ground, into pots, out of pots, to this location, to that location and generally getting soaked, re-soaked and beyond frazzled.
All - I am reliably informed - without losing it.
Some trick.

As you can probably tell, I wasn't there.
I wasn't idle last week - I'm feeling the need to justify myself here, I just put in my hours elsewhere. My only contribution to the Tree Operation was sleepless nights.
A futile offering indeed.
Yesterday, I drove down to Jack's armed with a bottle of good whiskey.
It seemed wholly, woefully inadequate.

The deep trenches gouged in the verge of his laneway told their own sorry tale of overburdened vehicles in-coming.
We reviewed the trees in minute detail. They are all on drips in his Intensive Care Ward, as he calls it, and no patient in any ward has either been better cared for or had a more probing doctor's round than ours.
They are all in one place, they are enormous and they look great - but, admittedly, it is a bit early to say. They might still suffer from fatal arrests and turn up their muddy toes. I hope not. I feel bad enough wrenching them from their cosy, unremarkable homes.
Or rather, having them wrenched.

I came home and spent the rest of the afternoon with a tape measure and a bag of flour in the orchard.

The In-Charge, at my request, had cordoned off a plot the size of the garden at Bloom. I need to get a feel for the reality of it, trees and all.
The hens thought it was a terrific new game, and followed on my heels like the birds in Hansel and Gretel, but eventually even they got bored with eating it - white, self-raising wouldn't be high on their list.
The trees are big, there's no doubt about it, but they need to be. They need to look mature, like they've always been there.
I still have flutters of unease. Suppose they are too big? Suppose they die? HOW am I to get them to Dublin in one piece - in leaf, by then? Suppose they don't come into leaf - dead trees don't come into leaf...  Suppose, suppose, suppose...
But at least I now have them - they are safe, in one place, in the ICU and for the moment at least, present, correct and ticked off.
At some level I suppose something has relaxed, because I slept like the proverbial baby.
Even though I wasn't the one drinking the whiskey.

And this morning, Easter Day, despite the battering, freezing, howling weather we have had this week, my garden is calm and still and full of timid flowers.
Perhaps I am calm and still and full of timid optimism.
For today anyway.

Glorious Lives

The trouble with hens is that they die, often suddenly and unexpectedly.
We have, occasionally, had hens grow so old that I don't think they'd have recognised an egg if you'd thrust it under their beaks. The original Wilhelmina was once such. But more often than not, they are creatures that lead short - and in my orchard, glorious - lives.

We have lost two hens in the last month or so.
The first one just disappeared. With no corpse to mourn over, I suspected M. Renard, but our red-pelted neighbour always leaves a telltale pool of dismal feathers, and they were not to be seen. Definitely a point on the plus side.
However, there was no Bambina.


I was rather sad about Bambina. She wasn't my darling in the way that Napoleon, or the little Empress or Mrs Smith, the Golden Princess were - but even so.

We searched high and low and then went back to the beginning and searched again, but I didn't lie awake at night agonising over her vanishment. It was a shame, though, because she was actually Napoleon's granddaughter, given to us by our friend Colin, who'd had some of our eggs to hatch way back when.

Before I'd had time to get used to losing one little bird, Mrs Scissorhands fell ill.
When hens get that hunchy, huddled look, you kind of know it isn't likely to end well. I have tried various remedies, but rarely with success.
Once, years ago, I asked our vet - visiting a sick ewe - if he'd take a look at a 'hunchy' hen. An expression of sheer panic flitted through his eyes and he opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. 
'The average vet wouldn't know a great deal about poultry now,' he eventually managed. 'Generally...' He gave up at that point and ran one finger significantly across his throat.
I got the drift. 
I did take the Little Empress to (a different) vet when she became so poorly, but even though the vet knew what was wrong, there was nothing she could do.
So alas, it came as no surprise when Mrs Scissorhands - she of the most unfeminine spurs - died a day or two later, despite me hand-feeding her and coaxing her to get better.

Two hens in a couple of weeks. Not good.

But then, about a fortnight later, on my way back from the market a text came blipping into my phone.
I pulled over. It was the In-Charge.
'Hen and 10 chicks in turf shed', it said. (He doesn't waste words, the In-Charge.)
Oh joy of joys! Over the moon and back again.
What a clever girl - I've no idea how many times we searched that shed, and I don't know if she even came out to eat or drink in all that time, let alone how she managed to incubate 10 eggs - she's only a little half-pint.

Bambina is only a little half-pint

So what does that make these two?

Napoleon would be very proud - his grandchildren! One or two of them might even be chips off the old block.
We'll have to see.

Who does this remind me of?

A distinct top knot. Will it develop into a tricorne, I wonder?

But ten baby chicks aren't the only new kids on the block.
Two little beehives arrived last week, courtesy of our friend, the Artist-Extraordinaire. His wife, the Shiatsu-Queen was telling me that he wanted to split his hives, and I rushed in.
'Please, please, please,' I said. 'If you think they'd settle here.'
'Settle?' She laughed. 'They'd be moving to bee-heaven.'

The little bee hives arrive

They are, I think he said, Irish black bees, and they are sharing the hen's paddock, where the morning sun will wake them up, warming up their hives; but the whole property (and beyond) is, of course, theirs to share with the bumble bees that live here.
We haven't spotted them around the garden yet, but they're probably still getting their bearings and rearing a new queen, or whatever it is they do in a new location, but I can't wait for them to come over the wall into the flower garden like the cavalry.

Maybe we'll even get back to the days of yore, long ago when the boys were about eight.
'Listen, mummy,' my curly-haired son said as we sat on the bench together. 'That's the sound of summer.'
I listened.
Behind us, the fuchsia hedge sounded like a helicopter about to take off. It was, literally, humming with honey bees.
'That's the sound of happiness,' he added.
I couldn't have summed it up better myself. The sound of happiness. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.
But that was long ago, and the hedge has been silent for far too long.

In a few weeks, my curly-haired son will be back from a long sojourn in the far-flung antipodes.
I hope he will be greeted by the sound of happiness.

Daring to Bare

I hardly needed my alarm clock to wake me at cock-crow this morning.
A savage wind had already woken me several times as dawn crept in.
Here we are at the solstice, the longest day of the year, and Irish bonfire night - all crammed into one summer weekend - and you would think it was mid autumn.
I think it's my fault. A few days ago I wrote that it was hot and dry and wonderful. Needless to say, it started to rain the next day.

As I hauled myself reluctantly out of bed, I wondered whether the lads from the marquee company would even try to put the tent up on the beach. How would they ever fasten it down?
I had visions of a kind of marquee-shaped hot air balloon gusting across Donegal Bay with various people dangling from ropes. I tried to quell such negative (but graphic) thoughts, grabbed the flapjacks, my winter coat, hat and wellies, and headed out the door.
Marie Christine - one of our wwoofers -  was waiting by the car, despite the appalling hour and weather.

We were off to help at the 4th annual skinny dip to raise money for cancer research.

After last year's Dip in the Nip, I no longer had romantic visions of driving into the dawn, which was just as well, as nothing was visible on the horizon except low grey cloud hanging like soggy fleece, obliterating everything.
But to my amazement, when we got to the beach, a half-erected marquee met our eyes, with - yikes - men clinging to ropes...


I was instantly and efficiently directed to a parking slot and from that moment, everything fell into place with oiled ease. Before the tent was even fully up, it was filled with tables, portable gas rings, boilers, catering flasks full of piping hot coffee and tea, not to mention endless tins of flapjacks and buttered scones.

Talentui Organics  face and body oils

In a separate corner we laid out Talentui organic soaps and oils, cards and crafts - including lovely little pottery dishes with Dip in the Nip 2013 hand printed on the bottom. Our resident potter had made them with clay from the next bay along the coast, each one different.

The sea, the sea - caught in a bowl. Marie-Christine chose this one

Beltra Country Market was in full swing.

Dip in the Nip's inventor and organiser then informed us that everyone had recommended cancellation. The Irish Coast Guards, The Irish Surf Association and Life Guards, even I think the County Council, not to mention all those sane enough to be still in their beds, snug and warm.
Glancing out at the wild, messy ocean, and listening to the wind battering the tent, it wasn't hard to apply the logic.
But the suggestion that people ought not to fulfil the morning's purpose was met with loud boo-ing, and within minutes the men and couples had headed off to their stations at the far end of the beach, and a stream of pink wigs and dressing gowns was flowing down after them, if not eagerly, at least with determination. Marie and I took a few minutes off our tea-lady duties to watch as they gathered for a photo, away down the strand, before flinging their dressing-gowns off and racing towards the sea.

 

Looks like the men and the women could be going head-to-head this year

High up where we stood beside the tents, we watched items of clothing dancing along the sand like Disney characters. A pink wig somersaulted towards us like tumbleweed, followed a moment later by a t-shirt, flapping through the air like a strange, pink bird.

We never saw them again, but it wasn't long before the Dippers started to reappear, eager to wrap their numb fingers around a hot drink.
'It's warmer in the sea than on the beach,' they said.
I could believe them.

But it was warm in the tent too. Not because the temperature was higher, but because everyone was there for the same reason, and everyone was in it together, dippers and helpers alike - trying to raise money that might save a life, or to commemorate a loved one, to support someone suffering from a horrible disease, to forge new hope.
The air was filled with friendship and laughter. Despite the innate sadness of the cause, it buzzed with life and love.


There were no wishing trees this year, the wind was too strong.
But as Marie and I left, I saw that the car park was full of pink feathers, torn from boas and now settling into the sand and gravel like confetti.
Each one a silent prayer.



I am sad to see that sections of this post have been randomly used in an article about Dip in the Nip in the online publication, Sligo Today - without prior permission or acknowledgement as to the source.


The post I wrote after this same event last year, Nippy Dipping in the Briney, has been the second most popular post on my blog, ever.
You can read it here if you would like to.

Candlemas

Today is Imbolg. 
A friend I met by chance on the headland this morning told me that literally the word means 'in the belly'.
As in fecund, I presume.
But of course Imbolg's meaning is much greater than that.
It is St Brigid's Day - it is the First Day of Spring, and was - so another friend told me - a pagan festival associated with the goddess Brighid long before it had saintly overtones.
Is it not ever thus?


Not being Irish, or a Gaelic speaker, or even Catholic- and meaning no disrespect whatsoever to any of those - to my Philistine ears, it is a curiously unromantic name for a very beautiful day.

I much prefer the name Candlemas, which is the Christian Festival widely celebrated tomorrow.
One of the common names by which the snowdrop was known in England was the Candlemas Lily, or Candlemas Bells, and I often think that is a quaint and pleasing description. They are also called Fair Maids of February, another fitting name.

Candlemas Bells

Candlemas was a day for celebrating light - it is when candles were brought to be blessed, and many European countries mark it in some way, or used to do so. In France they make crepes, but then, in France, any excuse is good enough for making crepes, and who can blame them?
In Spain they have a feast.

To me, it doesn't really matter whether Imbolg or Candlemas came first, or whether one is merely the 'sanitisation' of the other by the Christian church, or even if the two are completely unrelated.
As far as I'm concerned, the day has more to do with being in touch with the world around us. Marking the first, beautiful flowers of spring; rejoicing in the two extra minutes of light that each day brings, which suddenly, in early February, really make a difference; relishing the growing warmth of the sunshine, the deepening blue of the sky, the extra eggs appearing in my hen-house. Giving thanks that the longest, and darkest stretch of the winter is behind and the year, ripe with potential, is opening up ahead of us.

Snowdrops bringing their own sunshine to my windowsill

According to folklore, Candlemas is when the badger pokes his head out to see whether he feels like waking up yet (a tradition which seems to have been encompassed by Groundhog day in America).
It could become known as Badger's Day.
Although, in view of the imminent - and, according to much scientific opinion, pointless - destruction of so many of our badgers, the day might come to signify something mind-bogglingly appalling - a badger equivalent of the St Valentine's Day Massacre.

Perhaps we should leave it as it is, and keep on picking our snowdrops and, on this side of the water at least, making rush crosses.

My gorgeous French visitor put everyone to shame   Photo courtesy Beltra Country Market

Last Saturday, at Beltra Country Market a friend showed anyone who was interested how to make St Brigid crosses. It was a terrific morning, and I - like many others - now have one hanging on my door. In years gone by the boys used to make them at school and I would take down last year's and hang up the two new ones, but it has been many moons since I've seen one, and I've never made one before.
No one seems to know which of the Irish Bridgets first started making the crosses, but apparently they are traditionally put on the door to protect the house and all who dwell therein from fire and evil.
And to instill hope for the year to come.


Consider it instilled.

As the rushes dry, the ties have to be tightened.

Endings and Beginnings

We have been going to the beach every day since we got back from England. It gives the days a real holiday feeling, which is daft because we live within sight of the sea, and it's only a five minute walk to the water. But even so, we don't go that way every day. Usually I go to the woods.

I will go to the woods again soon, but not yet.

Distant Benbulben and Knocknarea across the bay

We had to pick up a trailer-load of logs from Charlie, so we went to Portavad, a beach we rarely visit as it's further away. It was beautiful. Quiescent. Perhaps because it isn't imbued with memories of other walks.
A ghost-less beach.
We went there again today, to take the trailer back.

It's where the sea comes into the estuary at Ballysadare, so the roar of the ocean is muted, and the water laps calmly along the shell-littered shore. A short distance out, seals flop on the sandbanks, and Sligo's iconic mountains lounge just the other side of the bay.

There was no one else there.
A spit of land, rough with marram grass, stretches for a mile or so, the sea and the beach on one side, a shallow lagoon and pasture on the other. Cattle and sheep graze there, and one or two fishing boats keel into the muddy flats when the tide is out.

One-dog Badminton

Model Dog, true to her name, is not interested in the sheep or the cattle. She spent a good while tossing a piece of dried up seaweed around and catching it, like a shuttlecock, trashing the smooth sand.

Afterwards, she watched the geese and oystercatchers along the shoreline, and stared intently across the water, no doubt seeing the dogs and walkers strolling the wide beach on the far side of the bay better than we could. To us, they were just moving dots below the sharp, sun-drenched dunes under Knocknarea.

Beautiful Model Dog

It was very peaceful as we strolled along, picking up pieces of sea glass and looking through our binoculars at the heron, the distant walkers and a lone seal periscoping up through the swell in the middle of the bay. Two men were painting the hull of their fishing boat in the lagoon.

A quiet way to end the year.
A year that, like all years, has been a bit of a lucky dip.

On the way back, a rainbow arched its way across the bay and plunged into the sea. There are many rainbows here, but they never cease to be special and they always catch at me, always make me stop and look.
They are filled with promise. They light up the heart with hope.

Early this morning, as I walked through the cool, damp orchard, something crunched lightly under my feet.
It was the tips of the new daffodil leaves, piercing up through the grass.
And under the copper beech, the first snowdrops are already in flower.
'Nothing is certain, only the certain Spring.' *
The certain Spring - and the belief that no matter how hopeless things seem, there is always hope.

Happy New Year

The first snowdrops

* from The Burning of the Leaves by Lawrence Binyon

Friends

Knocknarea in a silver sea

 
I was thinking about variety today. How rich and diverse everything is. So many different plants, and landscapes - personalities - friends.
It was the friends that started the thought process.
Each friendship is a microcosm - a spectrum - all of its own, containing the same essential elements as others perhaps, but different dynamics, different points of contact, different anchorings.
And each is indispensable to the nurturing of our wellbeing, the feeding of our souls.
And through some indefinable, blind instinct, we turn to the friend who can give us what we need precisely when we need it.

Rosa Crazy For You

I poured out my heart to someone this morning - someone who becomes increasingly dear the more I get to know her. It was a moment of spontaneity - an unexpected outburst that tapped into a slowly, oh-so-slowly healing well of distress that lies very shallowly buried beneath my surface.

I felt afterwards that I had burdened her with something that burdens me, and apologised.
She smiled and shook her head. 'Don't! You haven't!' she said.
She hugged me tightly, and I know she meant it.
She wasn't burdened, but I have felt lighter all day for the loss of it, for the release.
How grateful I am.
And blessed.
Little by little, the healing steals in like winter sunlight - barely discernible, but effective, and, ultimately, self-perpetuating. 

Campanula

And this afternoon another friend's words came to mind.
While I was out replenishing the sadly depleted garden tool department - there is only so much you can achieve with a one-pronged fork and holey gloves - I inevitably got waylaid by the glorious plants on offer.
I have always found that the plant-buying triangle loops nose-to-tail as surely as night follows day.
First there is the delight at discovery, then there is the glorious vision of the plant embellishing your very own garden, and later there is invariably the pang of guilt when you remember those imminent household bills whose budget you have just wantonly slashed.
I confided this to my friend a year or two ago.
'Don't,' she said. 'Your garden is your art. You have to let it out.'
And she was right.
I'm not the quickest, but there is one thing I have learned, which is that we stopper our creativity at our peril.
I believe it's the cause of half the frustration and unhappiness in the world.

Peruvian lily

Years ago, a third friend said something to me that I have consciously tried to take to heart ever since.
I haven't always been successful, but there's no doubt in my mind that she went right to the crux of it.
'Don't worry about anything as trivial as money,' she said.
Neither of us had any money at the time, and still don't. Like most people in Ireland, I'm constantly going through my coat pockets in the hope of finding a fiver and always grateful beyond words for any windfall that keeps me afloat, but that's missing the point of what she meant.

It took me awhile to 'retrain' myself  - I remember well the nights I used to spend lying awake grinding my teeth over finances. I still worry about all kinds of other rubbish, but I've just about got there on the money bit.
Somehow the electricity bill will get paid. Maybe we'll have to live on beans on toast for awhile - again. (It's known as a Gourmet Treat in our house.) Maybe we'll end up selling all our worldly goods at a carboot sale, but ultimately, which is more important? Something that makes your heart sing, or all the bills paid?


Life is short, and as far as I can make out, richness isn't about money, it's about the simple, beautiful, ordinary things and people that surround us. It's about walking round my garden with my first cup of tea and enjoying every new flower. Perhaps that all sounds a bit naive or twee, but I think the key to being happy and fulfilled has little to do with hard currency, it's about doing the thing I was born to do. I am a writer and I love gardens. Those two things are what give me equilibrium, and it doesn't matter if I have spent the electricity money on a new rose or a purple passion flower. Just as it doesn't matter that I have written this post instead of clearing up the kitchen and getting supper ready. Getting in a tizz about the ups and downs of everyday life is so easy, but it's the surest way I know of neutering the creative spirit - the individual, intrinsic, elusive essence that waits in each of us to be discovered and used.


So, dear friends, how glad I am to have you.
I think it must be because of you that when I can't sleep in the wee small hours, I don't lie in bed wrestling the black dog that walks the night, I get up and join my own, real, sleeping hounds in the kitchen, put the kettle on and write, or immerse myself in a book of other people's inspirational gardens - sometimes for hours on end. I often feel quite tired the next day, but not fraught, or hunted, or guilty! And little by little, the hurts we all carry can be healed, and nothing is wasted, nothing is lost. Every part of our life has a bearing on what we produce.

Don't is generally considered a negative command, but sometimes it takes a friend to turn it into a life-line of positivity.
Thank you, dear friends.

Purple Passion Flower

Nippy Dipping in the Briney

My alarm went at 5am on Sunday morning.
A tad early for me, especially as I then discovered that the weather forecast had lied, and it was raining.
However, while I may not have leapt exactly, I got up, drank last night's glass of water (I could have just stood outside with my mouth open), loaded the car and set off, munching a flapjack in lieu of breakfast.

It was not the inspiring drive I had envisaged. I'd imagined driving into the dawn, the sea pearlescent in the early morning sun, the day new-minted, the air effervescent with anticipation.
Instead I couldn't even see the coast, the sky lowered and I had to play slalom on the soaking roads to avoid the baby rabbits.

When I arrived at the designated beach, it was to see an array of vehicles and a mini-army of faithfuls struggling to put up tents in the rain. The Beltra Country Market tent was already up, but various others were in sodden heaps on the ground.
Oh joy!

Some of the trusty Beltra Team

 

Today was the annual Dip in the Nip - the fourth of its kind - to raise money for cancer projects, research and charities around the country; and we were all delighted that the Market's local beach was playing host to the dippers in the north west.
We had an hour and a half to get ready for the kick-off.
And the rain obviously intended to be there for it too.

Everyone pitched in (well, we were putting up tents!) and gradually the wet car park changed from cluttered, crowded chaos to cheerful, co-operative camaraderie and suddenly, hey presto, despite the wet - we had a tent full of craft from Beltra Market, a tent for some ladies selling cookery books, a kitchen tent for Eithne from Source in Sligo who was supplying most of the breakfast, and a cheery gazebo!
Time for another flapjack in the rain...

The dippy dippers started to arrive around 8am and the Zumba dancers set up their music on the beach. (At this point I should say there were some male dippers, who had a private end of the beach, but it was primarily a female event.) There was a lot chat and laughter, and it was immediately obvious that pink was the new black - pink was hot: a plethora of pink boas and even pinker wigs, lots of polka-dot dressing gowns, some pretty amazing, half glimpsed body art, and even bunny ears, fairy wings and pink Indian headdresses. And lots of umbrellas!

I think it was at this point I realised that the weather was SO keen to join it, it couldn't wait for the actual Dip  - it just had to soak everyone as soon as possible.

The Registration Office keeping dry

Planting the prayer trees

The first intrepid dippers lead the way down the beach

Waiting for everyone to arrive

Alex and Frantiska lead the Zumba dancing

Registration complete and the prayer trees planted, people started to make their way to the cheery red gazebos on the beach for a spot of warm-up Zumba dancing with Alex and Frantiska. Then the Queen of the Dippers, Maire herself, got everyone to line up on the sand, turn round to face the ocean and started the exhilarating, terrifying, inexorable count down.
10 - 9 - 8 - and suddenly with screams and yells and shouts and laughter, countless dressing gowns and towels hit the sand and a mass of naked women dashed for the ocean, arms waving, wigs bobbing, hair streaming, warm flesh braced for the chilly plunge.
It was a rare and wonderful sight to behold, and I felt privileged to witness it.
Even the rain stopped to watch.

Breakfast!

More flapjacks, anyone?

Later we dished out hot sausages in baps, cups of steaming tea and more Beltra Market flapjacks, and anyone who wanted to wrote a message to leave on one of the prayer trees. I left several there myself, including one for my grandmother who I never knew - she died of cancer when my mother was a child, and another for my mother-in-law of whom I was very fond, who also died too young.
I paused, as many people did, to think of friends fighting the disease, and read some of the other messages that had been left.
They were touching, sad and heartfelt.
But the morning, while full of inward thoughts and emotions, wasn't sad.

Leaving messages on the prayer trees

Watching everyone standing around the tents in the sudden sunshine, I was struck by what a wonderful atmosphere there was. So much positive energy, so much laughter and friendship. Each and every person was there in memory of someone lost, in support of someone suffering, in thankfulness for recovery, in protest against a disease we struggle to control, and to raise money to conquer it. But they were also there in fellowship and unity - a sisterhood of like-minded women seeking to bring something positive out of loss and pain.
What a marvellous thing the human spirit is.
Indomitable when we stand buff together - in the buff or otherwise.

All quiet on the western front

For more information and the official photos (mine were taken for Beltra Country Market) see Dip in the Nip's Facebook page or Dip in the Nip's website.