The Dog Days of Ireland

If I were a dog, I’d live in Ireland.  From Dublin to Kinsale to Galway, I’ve observed dogs living the good Irish life.  They wander about as they please, ducking in and out of yards and doorways, romping with a pack of friends or laying across the side walk in the rare heat of summer sun.  Few dogs here are recognizable as any particular breed, except the retired greyhound racer mom admired the other day (I’m pretty sure its gentleman owner was admiring her, too.  Love my dog; love me).  Dogs here don’t seem to wear collars much either, nor are they walked with leashes.  Like their human compatriots, they’re a casual lot, I guess.

It’s been the dog days weather-wise, too.  Of the eight days of the Ireland tour so far, we’ve only had one day of rain, and that was yesterday, which we spent predominantly on the bus anyway.  Although we did view the Cliffs of Moher,  the starkly beautiful western edge of Ireland.  As I peered from the ramparts of the old tower down onto the 700 feet of cliff wall, the wind threatened to swoop me up and drop me over the side.  When it decides to be stormy here, it isn’t kidding.  But today we are back to almost sauna-like conditions.  When you couple 80 degrees with lots and lots of moisture…well, you know; you’re all back in Washington.  The locals tell us that for the last couple summers, they saw nary a day of sun, so they are quite cheerful this year.  While I think a good nature is the nature of the people here in general, the weather and the tourism adds a kick to their steps.

Having exhausted my ability to smile for a group photo, I opted to spend the day on my own today, and waved Mom and the tour group off to the Aran Islands.  They were to spend the day on a minibus touring Inishmore, including a 2000 year old fort.  I decided that if you’ve seen one old pile of rubble, you’ve seen ‘em all–though I thought better than to mention that observation to the group.  So the tour guide wished a good day, and by myself, I spent the whole day wandering Galway.  I think my feet traveled every street in this historic–yet quite contemporary–city.  Galway is perched at the mouth of the very short Corrib River on Galway Bay, so it’s located by a lake, on a river, at the end of a beautiful harbor.  Swans, cormorants, ducks, and seagulls of every variety are so numerous in the inner harbor, that one could nearly pop across the harbor on their backs.  After walking the town and snapping pictures, I pulled up a seat at an open-air coffee shop for a cappuccino and had the waitress take my picture to document my indulgence.  Walking paths trace the meandering water ways of the town, so I returned to the B&B, changed into my running gear, and made my way back around town jogging along all the waterways.  I finished up my run in the university district, where the buildings are majestic Romanesque and Gothic architecture–not nearly as old as Lynch’s castle or other old city sites, but awe-inspiring anyway.  It’s now mid-afternoon, and time to head back to the B&B again to wait for Mom’s return from the island.

Tomorrow we travel through Connemara and will spend the night in Westport.  I can only hope the weather holds and the dogs are as friendly to the north as they have been in the west.  In the future, I need to bring pictures of Maggie and Ruby to share with all my new canine friends who bark with a brogue.

Laundry’s Done

It’s disappointing, a relief, and surprising that we’ve reached the seventh day of our two week tour of Ireland.  As with so many good things, it seems we just started, and yet as our last day in Dingle Town comes to an end, tomorrow we begin our ascent of the western coastline, arcing to the east over the next several days, only to be done in Dublin next Saturday.  My brain is near bursting with the day upon day of stunning views layered with crisp commentary on the history and culture by our very Irish guide, Declan.  Today was to be a break from the pace.  A chance to wash out the socks, buy a trinket or two in town, and otherwise recoup.  Mom took that advice.  I did not.  Along with a foursome of equally active tour-ers, ranging in age from me to 70-something, I tromped from Dingle Town to Connor Pass, maybe four or five miles of one-lane, gorse-lined, sheep-shited, crazy tourist driver-frequented roadway to the most spectacular views I’ve seen yet.  From one side of the pass we gazed at the Atlantic across Dingle to the southwest, then turning our bods 180 degrees, took in the dramatic valley of Tralee, Mount Brandon to the northwest, and Atlantic, again, to the northeast.  Upon reaching the pass, I exclaimed, “How unexpected!” to see the atlantic on both sides, whereupon, I was corrected with, “Not to an Irishman,” by a wide-smiling and jocular cousin from Cork.  Or so I learned once we’d introduced ourselves and chatted for a bit.  He pointed out a landmark near the water’s edge, barely visible from our elevation.  A lighthouse, he said, that would have been the last bit of Ireland the poor starving peasants of the famine ships would have seen before setting off with hope for a better future in America.  With all that poignancy, I did what anyone would:  snapped a bunch of photos and headed down the mountain again.  What a wonderful morning.

Back in Dingle for the afternoon, Mom and I lunched and shopped a bit together, then she went off to buy wine for a group happy hour while I hit the library to update you all on our progress.  A tour-mate just stopped off to ask me if I wanted to join her on a lighthouse hike–which I do–so I’ll have to keep this short.  How I’m supposed to fit it doing my laundry when there’s so much to see, I don’t know.  Who cares, anyway, if I’m down to wearing my last pair of shorts.  Tomorrow we’ll be at another town, and I can always do laundry or go shopping there…unless of course there’s something to see.

Mom is on Craic

Kinsale is the model for the colorful fishing village postcard.  It couldn’t be lovelier and the people couldn’t be more welcoming.  The narrow streets meander like a dreamy girl, leading you to one string of quaint shops after another.  Walls and doors are lacquered in rich reds, violets, yellows, and blues.  I find I want to pull up a chair on a street corner and just gaze at it all.

Mom, on the other hand, just wants to drink beer.  I think she managed two pints of  Guinness today.  Right now she’s out at a pub with some folks from the tour group to keep drinking and listen to traditional music.  She’s communing with her ancestors, I believe.

The weather here today is perfect.  Bright sun, blue sky, dark blue water.  I bowed out of the early party at the Tap Tavern this afternoon and went for a run on the quay.  The fresh air and movement did far more for my spirit than a pint of anything could have.  I’m pretty sure Mom toasted my health as I left.

Tonight I had lobster and Irish cheese.  A strange combination, I know, but I wanted to taste other authentically Irish produce besides beer.  Mom had a Guinness.  Oh, I suppose she had some other stuff, too, but the Guinness was so large, I couldn’t see.  And besides, she was at the other end of the table yakking it up with some new friends.  They did save me a stool on the end though.

Needless to say, we’re having a wonderful experience.  We’ve seen dozens of old, ruined Norman round towers surrounded by sheep and cows as we traveled down from Dublin today.  This is the Ireland I anticipated.

I’ll report more later, but I need to go check on Mom now.

A Bovine Abroad

Moooooo!  Dublin’s fascinating, but I’m not sure I’m cut out for tour groups.  First of all, I have a kind of deep-seated reflex to do just about anything other than what I’m told to do, so playing “Follow Me” all day cuts across the grain.  This morning we walked all over the city at a pace that ensured I would end up trailing the group because I actually wanted to look at those old buildings and read those interpretive signs and scrutinize the Book of  Kells–or at least come within two bodies of it.  (The treasure of Trinity University will always appear in my mind as a glimpse–one I stole after I wedged myself between some folks not squeamish about physical contact with a stranger.)  I was even late to meet the group once today because I was enthralled by a display in the Trinity University library–an amazing floor to thirty foot ceiling collection of antique books.  My kinda place.  To be clear, though, my prickliness with the tour is just me being me; our guide is fabulous.  He is a native of Cork who grew up in Dublin and now lives in France, so he has an international perspective that he uses to connect our American bunch to what we are seeing.  He is an artist, too, with a depth of knowledge about art history and history in general, and in that inimitable Irish way, he paints vivid images of Celtic history with lilting phrases as he introduces us to the places and people of significance to Dublin’s–and Ireland’s–past and present.  And because he is a man of the arts, he took us to the National Gallery of Art to view a newly discovered (I think…but I was at the back of the group, so I couldn’t hear all that well) Carravaggio and a famous Vermeer.  After he gave us a bit of background on those two paintings, he told everyone to go and enjoy the art, so I slipped off to an exhibit of Modern Irish painters, which was as engaging for the spectrum of artistic expression as for the chance to be off on my own.  Mom followed the guide for more commentary and was smiling with satisfaction when we met up again for lunch, which just happened to be a bowl of soup and a play.

Tonight the group will dine together at some famous Irish restaurant in Temple Bar called Luigi Malone’s–if this place doesn’t have potato gnocchi I’ll be hollering.  Tomorrow we head south, and we all have to be at the bus ready to load by 8:00 AM.  We were all warned that if we are late, we’ll be left behind and have to find our own way to catch up with the group.  Mom walked me into a department store about an hour ago to buy a watch.  Imagine.

In the end, all grumpiness and contrary nature is righted by tea and cake.  A slice of blackberry and apple crumb tart with a dollop of stiff, Irish whipped cream at the oh-so-cute Queen of Tarts sugared up my sour don’t-tell-me-what-to-do-ness.  Mom’s idea.  I guess she wants me to be good, so I’ll bring this to a close and go steel myself for dinner with 28 of my newest friends.

A Walk in the Garden

As I anguish over whether to include another pair of underwear in my luggage, and count the hours until the plane lifts off tomorrow afternoon, I want to invite you all on a virtual walk in my garden.  It’s beautiful this June and will become more beautiful in my absence.  The Grosso lavenders will explode in purple like earth-bound fireworks, my New Dawn rose has just begun pumping out pale pink blooms, and the oriental and day lilies are covered in tight  buds just waiting for a shout from Mother Nature to toss off those green jackets and flaunt their fancy selves.  If color were noise, Tom would be fined for disturbing the peace while I’m gone!  (He could be anyway, for all I know…)  Thank you in advance to Tom and Sharon for keeping everyone fed and watered and in good company while I peek at other gardens.  I wonder when I return if the spirea and fuchsias will give me a sniff, like the dogs do, to see where I’ve been?  They’ll find whiffs of the spectacular Powerscourt Gardens if they do–give a look for yourself.  Then enjoy a linger in my corner of the garden world while I’m away.

Susan In the Drought

26 days of dry weather here in Western Washington and counting!  I can’t recall another June in my lifetime that was this devoid of rain.  Don’t think for a second I am complaining, but it feels quite odd to be traipsing about my garden with a watering can before August.  I find myself hurrying the lavender and sunflowers, forgetting that they are quite on schedule; it’s the weather that’s not.

This month-long spate of summer before summer has turned things upside down a bit.  The slugs have finally packed their bags and left for moister climes, and apparently, the snakes have taken over the ‘hood.  I have to keep my guard up when weeding the spinach and beets, because  the snakes aren’t slimy–which I appreciate–but they move a heck of a lot faster than the slugs.  It’s hard to weed and jump at the same time.  Not efficient anyway. 

Last Thursday morning, in keeping with the strangeness of late, I woke up about 5:30 AM to find Tom stripping off his g0-to-work clothes instead of putting them on.  In response to my groggy inquiry, he said with a sigh and a roll of his eyes that Maggie was stuck under the dog house.  He needed to dig her out.  Not to be one to miss out on the fun, I rolled out of bed, dressed, and joined the party.  On our way to the dog yard, Tom grabbed a shovel and a cat’s paw.  A cat’s paw to free a dog.  The irony. 

The dog yard was all dust and noise, with Ruby frantically circling the dog house–or castle, as we call it–yapping in her soprano pitch.  After a few loops, she’d throw herself to the ground and shove her head into one of four holes leading under the dog castle.  Funny thing about holes and tunnels and such.  They tend to prove the mysterious and never truly recognized fourth law of Newtonian Physics:  What goes in doesn’t necessarily come out.  Beating percussively beneath Ruby’s fuss was the thrum of Maggie’s tail thwopping at the floor of the dog castle from her location in the new basement she’d dug.  Somehow Maggie had excavated her way into a space that, up to that point, hadn’t been a space at all.  When Tom had built the dog castle–a six by eight foot shed with a built-in dog cave and additional room for storage–he had set it on pier blocks then filled in the perimeter with cement bricks to keep out the riff-raff.  Apparently he had underestimated the fortitude of the riff-raff.  Raggedy Maggie, having come from the streets, enjoys a good breaking-and-entering challenge now and again.  I guess all the dry, Yakima-like weather had provoked memories of life as a tough girl, and Maggie decided to do some remodeling.  Maybe she thought she and Ruby needed a root cellar or tornado shelter.  I really had no idea…at first.  And Ruby!  What empathy she reflected as she whined, and yapped, and shoved herself between Tom’s legs to peer at his progress in digging poor Maggie out.  We both kept saying “awwww,” touched at her capacity for caring for her kennel mate.

Tom spent about an hour shoveling, laying on his side to scrape away the dirt with the cat’s paw, and alternately cheering Maggie to try to climb out and shoving her head back under the dog castle to clear space for more digging.  As Tom made headway, and Maggie perisisted in trying to squeeze out, the four of us wound up nearly in a frenzy.  Hooray!  Maggie’s almost free!  A little more digging!  And yes, yes, she’s out!  Yippee.  Oh, wait!  She’s climbing under again, grab her!  Now Ruby’s trying to get under–what’s going on here!  Tom and I grabbed the dogs and chucked them into the garage, and Tom peered under the dog castle.  “Maggie has a tennis ball under there…no, too big.  It’s a, a…possum,” said Tom.  We’ll if that didn’t explain the entire slap-stick, early-morning escapade.  I think we’ll rename the girls Lucy and Ethel.

With one quick blast from the garden hose, the furry squatter beat feet for the woods, and exhausted, we turned the dogs back into the yard, not caring one whit if they decided to finish the basement remodel or even add a new wing to the dog castle.  We both still had work that day, and Tom was grateful his boss likes dogs and understands the craziness of living with them.  While I ate breakfast and Tom showered again, I let Ruby and Maggie hangout in the kitchen with me.  Maggie flopped herself onto her pillow and fell into a hard sleep.  Tom left for work two hours late.

The long range forecast is for rain next weekend.  We really need it, I hate to admit.  Not only will a good dousing help the plants and eliminate the dust, I think the negative ions may calm everything down.  The snakes’ll go back to the rocks, the slugs can return to the buffet, and maybe the dogs will be happy enough to chase each other ’round the yard and leave building design work–or small game hunting, whichever applies–for another season.  Yes, I’ll hope for rain–for here.  For me, traveling the Emerald Isle, crossing my fingers for a longer break from the rain is justified. 

Check here for updates from abroad!  And be sure and enjoy the pix below ( :

More coming!

Don’t despair!  More Susanintherain is on it’s way.  I’ll post again before I leave for Ireland next week, and then stay tuned for updates from the Emerald Isle.  Don’t forget, you can always read from Susan’s archives if you need a fix ( :  And for heaven’s sake, put on some sunscreen!

Susan in the Sun

Sometime in late May the rain stopped in Western Washington, and we’ve been living in sunshine ever since.  It’s been a bit of shock.  This time of year, a couple days of warm and brightness are to be expected, but no one I know is so optimistic to anticipate the couple weeks of summer we’ve now had.  And it’s not even summer yet!  I don’t know what this unexpected pattern of weather foretells for June, July, and August, but I’m not going to look for a gray cloud behind a sunny day. 

A walk around our gardens attests to the power of sunshine after months of rain.  Anything that can grow in the dirt is thriving, except for those microsprouts of lettuce and spinach I wrote about six weeks ago.  They are permanently stunted, salad in miniature, and today I plan to dump them and their bedding into a wheelbarrow full of composted manure, stir everything up, and try again with new seed.  Shaming those reluctant greens are the strawberry plants, added just this spring, that are bountifully beaded with lime-green fruit, sure to turn to ruby as soon as my plane has left for Copenhagen and Ireland.  I pointed out to Tom this weekend that, while I’m gone, he will have to pick and eat daily the shell peas, whose trellised vines are bright with white and yellow blooms this morning,  promising plenty.  Between the strawberries and peas, I know he will eat well.  There may even be a carrot or two ready to be liberated by mid-June.

When Tom and I planned our landscaping for this house, we wanted to be stingy with water.  The precipitation trend for Western Washington is increased rain in the winters and much drier summers.  We, therefore, planted a few favorite ornamentals with water needs close to the house–hydrangea, a couple clumps of iris, a few hosta–and otherwise landscaped with natives, like currant, huckleberry, and salal, and other drought-tolerant plants, such as varieties of viburnum, spirea, and lavender, all of which are happy to soak up the sun even when the ground stops steaming.  Tom was so motivated to save water–and work– in summer that he researched species of grass that could do well with little tending.  Through his determination, we discovered an alternative to lawn, and planted a meadow instead, which we mow only a few times during the growing season.  The biodiversity of the meadow, including dense grasses, Marguerite daisy, clover, and other broadleafs, means we need to water only rarely and organic fertilizer is its favorite food.  The result is a water-sipping, bug-friendly ecosystem that has become a picnic area for birds of every feather.   Rufous humming birds jet from tree top to stamen so fast I expect a sonic boom one of these days.  Robins can be seen everywhere at once, perching on the branches of the Giant Maple, scratching for worms  in the shade of a buddleia, and gliding low across the daisy-dotted meadow.  Last summer, as I sat on the porch swallowing iced tea in the heat, I watched an eagle–yes, bald eagle–swoop suddenly from on high to swipe a babe from a nest in one of the tall, old trees steepling out of the bank at the end of our yard.  Who needs to watch Planet Earth when you have a “Wild Kingdom”  out the front door?

Only in Washington, after a good two weeks of sun, would slug herding be the biggest gardening challenge.  Enviro-freaks that we are, Tom and I refuse pesticides, herbicides and sythetic fertilizers as solutions to natural phenomena.  Instead we invite ladybugs to dine on aphids, pull weeds and feed our plants generous portions of compost.  All that natural, life cycle stuff.  We are stymied, however, by what part in the ecosystem slugs play.  Worms we get–and love!  But slugs don’t improve the soil.  They don’t eat grubs.  Slugs, to my observation, are good only for sliming everything they touch and reducing a hill of squash to…well…nothing.  As a girl growing up on the farm, I would watch my mother’s ducks manage the slug population by slurping them up so greedily that the ducks’ bills would become bound with slug slime, and Mom would have to cut those gummy bills open with a razor blade.  Certainly ducks were effective slug disposal units, but they had a tendency to contribute other slimey deposits themselves.  So, Tom and I have bent our convictions just a tad south and use an all natural, won’t-harm-anything-else product to keep the slugs at bay.  Even on the sunniest of days these past couple weeks, I have been playing Lucrecia Borgia to my gastropod nemises.  I haven’t survived the winter of endless rain and toiled in all weather to share my spinach with the slugs.

It’s supposed to be in the mid-eighties today.  June 2nd and the mid-eighties.  It’s almost as if my months of lamentations and longsuffering have provoked pity from the weather gods, and they are giving me, personally, a much-needed respite.  But I have a kind of Greek mythology view of such things as weather, which means the gods who give sun can just as quickly give rain if it pleases them.  Greek gods don’t have a highly developed sense of empathy.  So I’ll not fool myself any longer about why we have enjoyed a couple weeks of sun, and I won’t expect it to continue just for my sake, either.  Instead, I’ll fill up my watering can with worm tea, give all my hanging baskets and pots of herbs a good jolt of vitamins, and for the rest of this day, busy myself with the tasks of life in the sun.