The fatigue from radiation has finally gone away, just in time! I’ve been neglecting my blog because we’ve had a lot of company and I’ve been over the moon cooking for them, having folks at my table again, and getting out and about with them.
Nate tells me someone has been trying to hack my blog, several times, and he’s spent hours investigating and remotely taking measures to protect it. I am so grateful he knows what he’s doing!
A new little brother or sister for Katherine will be arriving in Ireland near the end of October!!! Of course I will be spending a month or two over there to help out. Wouldn’t miss this big event for the world. 🙂
5.25.18 ~ Eastern Point Beach ~ Tim, Aunt Delorma and Allegra ~ when I suddenly noticed I was being watched while taking pictures of the great egret
I’ve taken a Photoshop course at the senior center so I’m looking forward to using my new skills. We’re still taking our Tai Chi class. Not sure I will ever master it. If I pay attention to my leg movements then my arm movements and breathing can’t seem to stay coordinated. And vice versa. But I get an “A” for effort and the instructor is very encouraging.
On Friday my sister and I are flying to West Virginia to visit our aunt and cousin. We’ve never been there before so it will be a new experience. I hope to bring back some good pictures. The last and only time Beverly and I have flown together was in 1974 when we flew home from Greece.
In September Tim & I will be driving to Kentucky for our niece’s wedding and a 3-day family reunion immediately afterwards. On our way home we plan to stop at a few places in western New York to do some family history research.
I do believe in an everyday sort of magic — the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone. ~ Charles de Lint (Grief One Day at a Time: 365 Meditations to Help You Heal After Loss)
5.2.18 ~ Draken Harald Hårfagre with Charles W. Morgan behind it Mystic Seaport ~ Mystic, Connecticut ~ photo by Tim
It’s been a whirlwind here since December, with lots of traveling to visit loved ones, surgery, radiation treatments, and exhaustion (for me), unemployment, an unrelenting cough and a diabetes diagnosis (for Tim). After a few months of contemplation Tim has finally decided to retire. And so begins a new chapter of our lives.
5.2.18 ~ Draken Harald Hårfagre
We won’t be bored, that’s for sure. One thing we did was visit Mystic Seaport on a weekday to renew our membership. It was an unseasonably hot day and we had a good chuckle over the sign inviting us in to warm up with a cup of hot cocoa. 🙂
5.2.18 ~ Mystic Seaport ~ Mystic, Connecticut
The Draken Harald Hårfagre has spent two winters at the Seaport now and the crew is planning to leave in June for “Expedition America – East Coast Tour 2018.” I hope I will be here when the Viking ship sets sail because I missed her arrival. I’m also looking forward to a special exhibition coming May 19: The Vikings Begin.
One of the world’s finest early Viking-age collections is coming to Mystic Seaport. Priceless treasures, including helmets, shields, weapons, glass, and other artifacts are safeguarded at the Gustavianum Museum of Uppsala University in Sweden, Scandinavia’s oldest university. These collections, dating as early as the seventh century, are now the focus of a major research initiative designed to significantly advance our understanding of how the Norse culture evolved. Thematic sections on Viking warfare, trade, the Baltic Sea, a ship burial, Norse gods, and relations to other cultures will employ rare archaeological finds in the discovery of how this maritime society lived more than a millennium ago. This exhibition represents the first instance most of these artifacts will have ever left Sweden. ~ Mystic Seaport website
5.2.18 ~ ship figurehead
Tim has been enjoying more time for his ham radio clubs and activities. We signed up together for a Tai Chi class at the senior center. And I signed up for a Photoshop class. Katherine has been here for short visits several times since we left Ireland. We love our busy and playful little munchkin! Life is good.
But the most astonishing thing about trees is how social they are. The trees in a forest care for each other, sometimes even going so far as to nourish the stump of a felled tree for centuries after it was cut down by feeding it sugars and other nutrients, and so keeping it alive. Only some stumps are thus nourished. Perhaps they are the parents of the trees that make up the forest of today. A tree’s most important means of staying connected to other trees is a “wood wide web” of soil fungi that connects vegetation in an intimate network that allows the sharing of an enormous amount of information and goods. Scientific research aimed at understanding the astonishing abilities of this partnership between fungi and plant has only just begun. ~ Peter Wohlleben (The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate ~ Discoveries from a Secret World)
4.8.18 ~ Sandhills Horticultural Gardens, Pinehurst, North Carolina
Spirituality is life itself. Being life. Being this moment. Not as a practice or an attainment or something an imaginary person does in order to get somewhere else, but just because it’s What Is. It’s the natural state, the ever-present, ever-changing thusness of Here / Now. The part that falls away (if we’re lucky) is the search, the endless search to “get it,” to become “okay” at last… the belief in (and identity as) the psychological self and its problems and the endless attempts to cure them. … As I see it, there is no end to awakening, no end to spiritual exploration and discovery, no end to devotion and celebration and wonder… but what can end (and only now) is the search to fix “me,” to unstick “me,” to enlighten “me,” to finally get control (by understanding how the universe works, by getting The Answer, by finally vanquishing all “my” neurotic quirks and tendencies and solving “my” problems). When all of that ends, there is simply this moment, as it is. Boundless and free. ~ Joan Tollifson (Facebook, July 18, 2017)
Center of all centers, core of cores, almond self-enclosed and growing sweet — all this universe, to the furthest stars and beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.
Now you feel how nothing clings to you; your vast shell reaches into endless space, and there the rich, thick fluids rose and flow. Illuminated in your infinite peace,
a billion stars go spinning through the night, blazing high above your head. But in you is the presence that will be, when all the stars are dead.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke (The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke)
4.8.18 ~ Sandhills Horticultural Gardens, Pinehurst, North Carolina
Science has never drummed up quite as effective a tranquilizing agent as a sunny spring day. ~ W. Earl Hall (Always Look on the Bright Side: Celebrating Each Day to the Fullest)
April Comes like an idiot, babbling, and strewing flowers. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay (Selected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay)
Blossoms will run away — Cakes reign but a Day, But Memory like Melody, Is pink eternally — ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1614)
Spring comes on the World — I sight the Aprils — Hueless to me, until thou come As, till the Bee Blossoms stand negative, Touched to Conditions By a Hum — ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #999)
A little Madness in the Spring Is wholesome even for the King, But God be with the Clown — Who ponders this tremendous scene — This whole Experiment of Green — As if it were his own! ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1356)
Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed Their snow-white blossoms on my head, With brightest sunshine round me spread Of spring’s unclouded weather, In this sequestered nook how sweet To sit upon my orchard-seat! And birds and flowers once more to greet, My last year’s friends together. ~ William Wordsworth (The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth)
Every spring is the only spring — a perpetual astonishment. ~ Ellis Peters (Spring Meditations)
2.5.18 ~ Rock Close, Blarney Castle, Blarney, Cork, Ireland
If you look closely you will see me peeking from through the doorway. Another enchanted forest lies beyond this wall. This post is going to be terribly long but it was impossible to edit it down any more than I have. 🙂
There were paths and stone steps leading every which way between boulders and gnarly trees. Following the map provided was more than a little confusing.
But an occasional sign would sometimes give us a clue as to our whereabouts.
Druid’s Cave Said to once be the home of a religious hermit who was fed and cared for by the Jefferyes family… it may well have sheltered many others through the centuries.
entrance to Druid’s Cave
inside of Druid’s Cave
window at the back of Druid’s Cave
looking at the window (looks like a black hole near the bottom of the picture) from the outside of Druid’s Cave
The roots of the trees, I think most of them were Yews, were growing around the stones, and their branches made huge canopies over the rock formations.
Rock Close
Wishing Steps
looking down the Wishing Steps
For hundreds of years, the Blarney Witch has taken firewood from our Estate for her kitchen. In return, she must grant our visitors wishes.
at the bottom of the Wishing Steps
If you can walk down and back up these steps with your eyes closed — some suggest walking backwards — and without for one moment thinking of anything other than a wish, then that wish will come true within a year.
looking left from the exit of the Wishing Steps
We say only that the steps can be slippery and that we take no responsibility…
cannot remember what this was…
Witch’s Kitchen
Witch’s Kitchen
Historians will tell you that this was home to the very first Irish cave dwellers.
But if you arrive early enough in the morning, you may still see the dying embers of a fire.
Firewood, paid for by your wishes on the Wishing Steps, is lit every night by the Witch of Blarney, as she fights to stop shivering on her nocturnal escape from the Witch Stone.
another leprechaun bridge!
another friendly robin
Witch Stone It takes little imagination to see who is imprisoned here. The Witch of Blarney has been with us since the dawn of time. Some say it was she who first told the MacCarthy of the power of the Blarney Stone. Fortunately for visitors, she only escapes the witch stone after nightfall — and we close at dusk.
Witch Stone
Fairy Glade
The faerie folk of Ireland are famed the world over for their mischief and charm.
They have of course been here longer than any of us and it is our duty to keep them safe in this special glade.
They do, however, have a native cunning.
we just missed seeing the fairy who darted inside and firmly closed the door
So if you spot one, don’t let it be fooling you.
more tempting paths to follow
There is so much to see at Blarney Castle & Gardens! Of the 14 things we could have seen here at Rock Close we saw only 5 of them. Elsewhere on the castle grounds there are more gardens, arboretums, woodland and riverside walks, the Blarney House… I could go on. There’s no way to see all this in a single day. I do hope I get to return here some day.
so many majestic trees…
On our way out something else caught our interest:
Where Two Rivers Cross
Prior to 1870, the River Blarney joined the River Martin near the Rock Close, but the course of the river was altered and the gradient was changed to increase the outflow of water when Inchancumain Bog was drained. The River Blarney was re-directed under the River Martin, which was channelled overhead via a short aqueduct.
where two rivers cross
At the point where the River Blarney emerges can be seen the remains of an old flax mill. It is a rare occurrence really in that one does not often find a place where one river passes under another. As a matter of interest, the River Martin was known as the River Aumartin in the 1600’s while the River Blarney was known as the River Whey.
Larisa picked us up and we headed back to her home. My cold by now had reached the runny nose phase and I went to bed early. Later that night Tim’s brother Josh arrived from England to visit with us for a few days. But this is the end of my photos.
The next day we went into Cork’s city center and spent the day shopping and visiting different pubs. It’s all a blur to me now because I left my camera at home and spent the day blowing my nose and feeling miserable. But I did manage to find some connemara marble for my sister!
And the day after that I stayed in bed while the others went to the Titanic Experience Cobh and saw Josh off at the airport later that day. That night Tim & I spent our last delightful evening with Katherine and her wonderful au pair, Anna, while Dima & Larisa went out on a date.
We arrived home on a Thursday and flew down to Georgia on Friday. Not pleasant flying so much with a clogged head! As it turned out Shannon had a sinus infection so we sat around talking ~ misery loves company. Tim and Nate were puttering around tending to techie projects and bringing us food. One afternoon we got ourselves out to a flea market and then a nice dinner out. And it was good seeing Julius and Dominic again ~ I cannot believe how much they have grown!
We flew home on Tuesday and I had my final radiation treatment on Wednesday. Phew! That was quite a vacation!
Today old man winter came back for a morning visit and left us 4 more inches of snow. A perfect day to snuggle in and finally finish these posts about our trips to Ireland and Georgia.
