THE JOURNAL

2 November Thursday

The house was cold when we got home yesterday but that was not surprising after several weeks away. The Stanley would not start. We did all of the things that we knew to do to make it function. Nothing worked. We even checked the tank out doors to be certain that the fuel had not been stolen. Pumping out the fuel from someone else’s tank is a serious but not unusual activity at this time of year. I rang Richie and he told me to open the bottom door and poke at a button there with the stick end of a wooden spoon. I did that, but nothing happened. He said that he is mighty popular at this time of year because everyone has heating issues, but he promised to make a trip up to check out our problem soon. We made a fire in the wood stove and went to bed early.

This afternoon Richie arrived. Everything there is to be known about Stanley Stoves is known to Richie. He used to work in the factory down in Waterford that built them. He keeps abreast of changes and new developments in the manufacture of the stoves. He enjoys being an expert. He took the large flat cooking plate off the top of the stove. He looked inside and said it was just as he thought: there was a dead starling inside. The bird’s body was blocking the hole where the flame should ignite, so the air and the gas could not meet. The starling was as hard as a rock.

He took it outside and threw it into some bushes. While he was out there he looked up at our chimneys and noted the crow guards on top. He called these The Chinaman’s Hats which he announced was probably not a politically correct name but sure he knew that we knew what he meant, didn’t we? He said the starlings are devils for getting in as they can squeeze through tiny openings. Once the bird got down the chimney and into the stove, it could not get back out and there was a lot of scrabbling of the fire insulation inside the Stanley. We could see the detritus  of the struggle. He said he has often found starlings in stoves, so they are not a surprise, but the biggest bird he ever found inside a stove was a crow. He still cannot believe that. He gave the Stanley a complete overhaul while he was here and then sat down and drank a cup of tea with us. He is still on the hunt for a woman with whom to share his life. His daughter is keeping an eye out for him and he asked us to look too. He asks this of us each time we see him. He says to mention that in his favor he is a good cook and that he enjoys cooking for someone else. He added that his house is warm and fully paid for. He will turn 60 next year and he says he would rather not get old all alone. He finds these long dark nights especially lonely.

3 November Friday

Simon found a man standing outside the kitchen door. He was tall and thin and he was not young. He was not a man we knew. Simon asked him if he had knocked the door but he said no. He had simply stood still and waited for someone to appear. He told Simon that The Hunt would be around on Sunday. The man in charge of The Hunt wanted us to be forewarned so he sent this man as there was a good chance we would be trapped here by the horses and the dogs and the activity in the boreen.

4 November Saturday

The stain reminds me that this is the season to buy mouse poison. I prefer poison to traps.  I am tired of finding squished bodies in traps. This stain is a small circle of blood. It is immediately outside the kitchen door. Earlier there was a chewed up mess on that spot. The mess was the head of a shrew that had been bitten a few times and then spit out. The body of the shrew was a few inches away. Harry told me that cats often kill shrews, but when they bite into the shrew’s head a bitter and unpleasant poison is released so they drop whatever they have bitten into. When a hungry farm cat kills a mouse, nothing is left behind.

5 November Sunday

I woke up early after a sleepless night plotting ways to blockade the lawn and the garden to keep The Hunt out, or at least to keep the horses out. It is impossible to keep the pack of dogs from going everywhere. They run in a group of 30 or 40 hounds. They are all running low to the ground, sniffing and barking and splintering off into smaller groups and then re-grouping. The rushing running dogs become a liquid mass. When they arrive following a scent, they are everywhere, and there is no controlling their movements. I hate The Hunt but I cannot hate the dogs.

I dragged a long ladder across one narrow access point. Then I parked the car in order to block the way to the lawn and I tied ropes across from the car door handles to a few trees. The opening down at the bottom of the meadow was the hardest place to block off. I used ropes, a long plastic pipe and a cardboard sign. The problem there is that there is a good chance the horses will jump in from Joe’s field and come across the lower meadow. By blocking them running in from one direction I am also blocking them going out again. I know that the Mass Path is badly overgrown so the horses will not be able to ride up that way. I was exhausted by my efforts. The long ladders are too heavy for me.

Simon was neither interested nor bothered by the imminent arrival of The Hunt. He did nothing to aid me in the blockading. He did not even want to listen to my ideas for keeping the horses off the land. I spent all day rushing in and out of the house, listening for the baying of the hounds. They never came. The fox led the whole circus somewhere else. It is dark now and I cannot decide if I am relieved or disappointed that they did not come after my sleepless night of planning, and all of the rushing around this morning. I hope that the fox evaded them. I hope the dogs did not corner him and rip him to pieces.

7 November Tuesday

Being in and out of hospital several times, and then in both Rathkeeven and Clogheen with his ongoing lung infection has been difficult for Tommie. As a result of his bad lungs, we have not taken a shopping trip together for at least three months. Maybe four. I took Tommie in to Dunnes’ Stores today. He never considers going anywhere else. He was waiting for me wearing a clean sweater and his suit jacket when I arrived to collect him. He had been up since 6. He had promised to make a shopping list but he did not do it. I got him headed into the store with a trolley while I went to park the car. He found the going difficult in the supermarket. Each time I found him in an aisle, he sent me off to find something he wanted but could not find. His legs were weak and even while leaning heavily onto his trolley, he did not find the going easy. I did a lot of running back and forth offering him choices and often arriving with the wrong things. How could I know that when he said he will eat any soup at all what he really meant was that he hates chicken soup?  The woman at the till recognized him and she talked and flirted a bit. He has been talking with this check out woman for decades. She remembered his wife Margaret fondly. He perked up with the extra attention but he was glad to sit into the car when we got to it, and he was happier still to sit down in his chair when I got him back to the house.

9 November Thursday

We have some firewood but we need more firewood. Johnny the Timber is all out of wood so we need to find a new source. We are all thinking about firewood: where to get some and how much to order and what kind of wood is best. We are stacking the wood and moving the wood and stacking more under cover and in good rotation of the other already stored firewood. We eye piles of timber in other yards.  We experience firewood envy. We do not use peat. We tried it many years ago but found it soporific. A peat fire puts me to sleep. The government has now banned the cutting and burning of peat for ecological reasons and many people are outraged. They consider the cutting, drying, stacking, gathering and burning of peat out of the bogs to be an inalienable right of every Irish person.

10 November Friday

A toothbrush seen on the ground in a busy city or town or in a train station or an airport is not much of a surprise.  People are always in a rush and people are always dropping things. A toothbrush spotted while out walking on the short stretch of tarmacadam road is a something to think about.

11 November Saturday

At first I thought that the small amount of green growth inside the wheel well of the car was just stuff that had been thrown up and inside while driving through the muck and mud at the farm.  Now I see that some of it is growing.  I have a healthy nettle growing out of the side of the car.

13 November Monday

The three dogs down at the McGrath farm own their bit of road. Some days they move when a motor car comes along but some days they do not move, not for cars nor for tractors. They watch a vehicle coming along and then they watch some more. They are interested in anything that might happen, but because not much happens, there is more watching than looking or chasing. If I toot my horn they might move, but they might not.  If they do move, they do not move quickly. Most days it is easiest to weave around them.

14 November Tuesday

Hazel announced that she loves nothing better than stripping the carcass of a cooked chicken. She loves getting every bit of meat off the bones before throwing them into a pot for a broth. She swears that the fat in the flesh keeps her hands lovely and soft.

15 November Wednesday

The morning is bright and crisp. From inside the house, the world looks wonderful. The fields are bright green. The sky is mostly blue. There are yellow and orange leaves on the trees. But one step outside and the world stinks. The smell of slurry pervades. I gag because the smell is so strong and sharp. It burns the back of my throat and it makes my eyes water. The smell is astringent and it hurts.

16 November Thursday

I nearly fell out of my stand up! I hear this expression often, but it never fails to delight me. Somewhere else a person would say that they were so astonished that they almost fainted.  Falling Out of My Stand Up is a much more exciting way to say the same thing.

11 September Monday

I cannot go near to the book barn without colliding with a bee. The honeybees in the roof are wildly busy.  They are making up for the many weeks of wet weather this summer. Even if I am working in the garden at a distance, the bees crash into my head and my body. I try not to swat at them because I know that makes them angry so most of the time I just stay away, except to walk in and out of the barn. Their entrance is right above the door so it is impossible to avoid them completely. Beekeepers everywhere are bemoaning the poor honey production this year because it has been too wet for the bees to do their job. All of our honey is all up in the roof, completely inaccessible to anyone.  The Clonmel Honey show is coming up in a few weeks. There is discussion and worry that this will be the worst showing ever. The Irish for Clonmel is CLUAIN MEALA which translates as Meadow of Honey. The Honey Show is a big event. But without honey it will be less of an event.

12 September Tuesday

Tommie is in the care home in Clogheen. First he went to hospital with his ongoing lung infection and while he was there he contracted the new variant of Covid. After two weeks in isolation, he has been sent to St Theresa’s but he is still not allowed any visitors. I send him cards.

13 September Wednesday

There are more spiders around than ever.  I learned on the radio that at this time of year the males are out hunting the females to reproduce and the females are all hiding. The reason for the hiding is not clear. There are enormous numbers of spiders on the prowl. I do not know how to recognize a male from a female. There are large wood spiders with hairy legs trying and failing to climb the slippery walls of the bathtub. There are delicate spiders with long thin legs like fine hairs and all kinds of quick moving tiny ones and along with the massive quantity of spiders there are huge droopy cobwebs in every corner of every room. They never talk about the cobwebs on the radio.

14 September Thursday

There is a tendency for any walking path in woods that is gentle enough for children and families to be littered with little doorways for the fairies. The small doorways might be made of painted wood, or the doors might be colored plastic. They give the children something to rush around and discover while they are out getting fresh air. I am not a fan of these little doorways. I hate them. There is never just one doorway. There are usually 20 or 30 in a given area. I avoid any place where the fairy doors have invaded. The window in the hardware shop has a display of little fairy figurines and several little doorways. Added into the mix is a variety of Fairy products, which have nothing to do with fairies. Fairy is an English brand name for washing-up liquid and laundry soap. It is difficult to decide which idea came first in this display.

15 September Friday

My mother never gave us carbonated drinks except when we were sick in bed, and then we were given a tiny glass of flat warm ginger ale. All soft drinks were called Tonic in New Hampshire, but we were allowed none of them, so flat ginger ale seemed like a treat. When I left New Hampshire, I learned to say Soda instead of Tonic. In some parts of the US people call it Pop. And some people call it all Coke, even if it is not Coca Cola, but another flavor of fizzy drink. When I moved to Ireland, my vocabulary had to adjust again. Even though I never drink these drinks, I need to know the correct word: carbonated drinks are called Minerals.

16 September Saturday

Everyone feels beaten up. Twenty-eight hours of straight heavy rain will do that to a person. The rain fell hard and heavily without a moment of pause. Many people said they never stepped outside their door once all day and all night. The roads were running with brown water. The water was full of topsoil rushing off the fields at speed.

17 September Sunday

For some time and in some places, milk cartons had pictures of missing children along with police phone numbers to ring if one spotted a lost child. It was something to read while eating breakfast. Now there is a Q-code on our milk cartons. If we click on the code we can hear the sounds of cows in the field. Or we can just go outside and eat our cereal. There are plenty of cows in either Joe’s field or the other Joe’s field. We do not need the recorded version.

18 September Monday

Raspberries. I am picking raspberries as fast as I can in between the cloud bursts. I am also picking blackberries, but my priority is always raspberries. I like raspberries more than blackberries and I hate for them to get soggy in this endless rain.

19 September Tuesday

The news is full of The Ploughing. Today is the first of the annual three day event. The radio has been noisy with excitement and anticipation for weeks now. There is new terminology to accompany the types of competiton: reversible, conventional, stubble, three-furrow and two furrow. This year the event is being held in County Laois. The location changes every year but the event is always plagued with bad weather, terrible backups of traffic and parking issues in places where parking has never before been a problem, free servings of Flahavan’s porridge, and lots of mud. It is the place where farmers from all over the country gather to see new machinery and to learn new methods for various jobs, and how to tackle the climate issues as European laws evolve. Politicians know that it is important that they attend The National Ploughing Competitions. They need to be available to answer questions and they need to have the right solutions to problems if they are going to have any chance to be re-elected. The Ploughing itself is a National Sport and the Irish winners will be rushing off to the European Championships in Denmark soon, along with their tractors.

20 September Wednesday

I like to see what is going on as I walk through the farmyard, but most days there is little to see. The road makes two sharp right angles and we call it The Dog’s Leg. High gates block off a lot of the activity. The machines get bigger and bigger and they do more and more of the work. People are less visible. Ann picks apples at this time of year, but she only picks once. The rest of the apples fall onto the ground and rot. Otherwise women are not visible at the farm. The newest farm worker helping Joe is named Rafael. He is from Brazil.

21 September Thursday

I have seen the young fox three times this week. Each time I have been walking in the boreen. When he sees me, he leaps high into the underbrush, and is gone almost before I can register his presence.

22 September Friday

The nights are cool and the mornings are misty and cold. Already the sun sets earlier and earlier, but there are plenty of flowers still in bloom. Daisies, honeysuckle, purple loosestrife, buttercups, rose hips, wild fuchsia and meadowsweet fill the hedgerows, and in the garden the roses, daisies, lavender and Lady’s Mantle keep blooming. Lady’s Mantle is perfect for this climate because it’s leaves look splendid with drops of water.

23 September Saturday

Today there was a Twenty Year Anniversary Celebration at the Farmer’s Market. The day was celebrated with lots of balloons and pennants and a group of musicians from The Cahir Men’s Shed. Their music was not lively. Everything sounded like a dirge and there were too many of them to fit under the little tent covering when the rain started. Pat the Fishmonger made little sandwiches for each customer with cream cheese and his smoked salmon.

24 September Sunday

Slugs abound. This wet weather is just what they like.

25 September Monday

Beautiful sunshine today after yesterday non-stop pouring rain. Yesterday was not a day to step outside if it could be avoided. I walked through the farm as a long truck was backing up to deliver wood shavings. This is what the cows stand on on top of their slatted mats. The driver dumped a huge load of shavings and now it will take a few days for Joe to move it all from that pile to wherever he stores it until it is needed for the cows. Then the driver will come and dump another load. Or two loads. The shavings in the yard smell wonderful.

26 September Tuesday

I visited Tommie today with a large bowl of raspberries and a jug of heavy cream.  He arrived home yesterday in the afternoon. He had been away for nearly five weeks. By seven o’clock he had had his tea and he told me that he felt depressed. He felt lonely and alone.  His neighbor  came over with two sausages on a plate and he told him to go away.  He did not know if the sausages were for him or if Pat just wanted to display them to him. He did not want to see Pat. He said he missed all of the nurses and the activity of people around him with food and cups of tea and smiles. His hair looks thick and shiny.   I told him that it looked nice and he said they were good to shampoo it for him at St .Theresea’s. He said he doesn’t bother with shampoo much himself.

28 September Thursday

Yesterday we were heartily thrashed by Storm Agnes.  I do not know why the naming of storms has gone from Betty to Agnes.  Why would we be going backwards through the alphabet?  The winds were fierce and a lot of people lost their electricity.  Even inside the house it was hard to think for the noise of the gusting wind. Today the winds are weaker but still blustery. There is nothing but the weather to focus upon.

10 August Thursday

Rain has been falling on and off every day and every night. We can no longer remember the weather being any other way. The sun comes out and the day is suddenly hot. Everyone relaxes. Hunched shoulders drop and people stand taller. Then it rains again and people crunch their bodies again in attempts to make themselves small while scurrying to get under cover.

11 August Friday

Rolls of Silage Tape have appeared on the counter at the shop.  It is a reminder to those farmers who need it to remember to buy it.  The silage is being cut and baled in between cloudbursts.  The men in tractors and large cutting machinery race from field to field during even the briefest of dry spells.

12 August Saturday

I am Squeezing the Figs. I run up the stone steps to get close to the higher branches where I can reach the largest figs. I make the trip to squeeze four or five times a day. There are not many figs this year and if one of them is going to soften, I want to be sure to get it before the birds do. They will rip open the thin skins and eat away at the fruit inside. I want to find each fig first.

13 August Sunday

These wet days are warm, so windows are open. Open windows become an invitation to slugs. I never really know if they enter the bathroom through a window or if they ooze up through the plug hole in the bathtub, or the sink. They just appear. At night. And always in a surprising place. I am never happy to find a slug in the bathroom. I thought that by now I had been startled by a slug in every imaginable and disturbing location. Tonight I grabbed the tube of toothpaste and found my hand squeezing a large slug that was stretched the length of the tube. Lucky for me, I did not squeeze hard enough to kill it nor for its body to ooze through my fingers. I scraped the slug off the tube on the edge of the open window and got on with the job of cleaning my teeth.

15 August Tuesday

So far the birds have had one fig. I have had three. There are a lot of small fruits that will never grow large enough to ripen. It is not going to be a large crop this year so I am keeping count.

16 August Wednesday

We thought the thrush in the garden was one thrush singing non-stop. Now we recognize that there are several voices. They sing and sing and sing all day. There is not a moment of quiet.

18 August Friday

A storm is coming. It promises to be a big one. It has been named: Storm Betty. One woman said she tried to go to Dunnes’ Stores but the car park was full because everyone is rushing to get their food shopping in before the threatened rain and winds and floods descend. There are discussions about whether to bring in the lawn furniture, or maybe just the cushions? Since we have barely sat outdoors all summer some people have already put their lawn chairs away. Some people never brought them out of the shed. What about small plants in plastic pots: will they blow away? And Hanging Baskets are another worry. Preparations are frantic. People are feeling uncertain because they might well be trapped by floods or they fear that their electricity might be cut off. They want to be ready for every possibility, so everyone is rushing about so that they are not the ones to be caught out by Betty. The storm has quickly gone from Storm Betty to just Betty. Everyone feels familiar and on a first name basis with her.

19 August Saturday

In this part of the country, we escaped the Betty’s battering without much damage. Some branches are down but no roads are blocked. Other areas lost electricity and there was some terrible flooding. Betty is already fading as a topic of discussion.

20 August Sunday

Mickey Nugent died this week. He died in hospital but he was brought home to be laid out. A neighbour asked Tommie if he would like to go to the wake, so he was driven up to the house on Friday evening. He said he felt like The Pope for the welcome he received. The warm greetings and the friends he saw made him even sadder to know that Mickey was gone. He told me that Mickey was the kind of friend who would Fill His Car before he drove off to any event.  He never headed off for a match nor a funeral with Empty Seats. Tommie was never unhappy to be taken on an journey with Mickey as he himself rarely felt confident about locating any place that he did not know already. Mickey was never bothered with such worries. He was Without Fear. Tommie said that Mickey was both a Generous Man and a Gentleman. He said that several times. I think he enjoyed the sound of the words together. Tommie had decided to stay at home on Saturday because his knee was so painful, but after he heard about all the musicians who arrived carrying their instruments into the church, he regretted that he had not attended the Funeral Mass. He was sorry to have missed the musical farewell for his friend.

21 August Monday

I have a note to remind myself to keep checking the figs, but really, I do not need a note. I am obsessed with the figs. I bring them into the house when there is just the smallest amount of softness, a mere suggestion of squeezability. The figs then ripen in the house slowly over a few days or a week. There is no hurry. Once they are inside the birds cannot destroy them. Once they are inside I am happy to wait.

22 August Tuesday

The compost bucket is an ongoing problem in this dreadful endless rain. We all commiserate about the weather. It is important to take the compost out when the weather is dry. It is not pleasant to carry it out in lashing rain and to open my compost heap especially with its sliding heavy cover that no longer slides with ease. Emptying the bucket before it is full is becoming even more of an issue since the handle broke. It is now necessary for me to clutch the bucket to my chest with both arms as I walk. If I wait until the bucket is full up, it is heavy and if it is raining too, I must perform a staggery kind of a run to complete the task.

23 August Wednesday

Lads is a collective noun. People are described as Lads. Not Mates. Not You All. Not Guys. The Lads might be a clatter of small children, or it might be a rugby team made up of grown men. The Lads might be out on a Stag Night or The Lads might be out on a Hen Party. The word Lads does not seem to be restricted to one sex or the other. It is just a word for a grouping of people where names are not the issue. I might be mistaken, but it seems that Lads is always plural. Not Lad, but Lads. As soon as I decide this, I find an exception.

24 August Thursday

This endless wet means that there is always mud and there are always puddles. As a result, whatever trousers I am wearing, I always have a smudge or a clump of mud on the calf of my right leg. This is where the back of my leg rubs as I step out of the car. The muck splashes up onto the bottom of the car as I drive through the farmyard. If it is a warm day, the smudge is on the back of my bare leg. If the smudge is a green-ish color, it is not mud, but manure. It is green because the cows are feasting on nothing but grass in their fields.

25 August Friday

I watched as a man opened the back of his vehicle to load up a new gas bottle. Another man carried the bottle out to him and then he sat down on the back of the car. The two men talked quietly for a while and then they loaded in the gas bottle. One man drove away. The other one walked to wherever he was going.

26 August Saturday

Breda and I consulted the weather and we picked a time. I walked out and waited for her at the end of the boreen and we drove up to the Boulders in her car. We figured we had two, maybe two and a half hours, before the next cloudburst. We tied lightweight rain jackets around our waists and set off with long strides on our walking poles. We walked 40 minutes uphill to the cairn, with the sheep scattering and rushing away from us. We dropped down towards the river, just as the sky opened and the rain bucketed down hard. We were unable to get our jackets on before we were soaked to the skin. We hoped it might be a short downpour but the rain kept lashing down. It was hard and it was heavy. There was nothing for it but to head back to the Boulders and the car. There was not one tree nor shelter of any kind. We could not run because there was so much mud. We lurched and slipped along as quickly as we were able. The rain never let up for one minute. It felt like hail. By the time I got home I stripped off every bit of wet clothing and jumped into a hot shower. When I came out, I saw Simon’s shirt and trousers hanging off the rail. He was not interested in my report of heavy rain. He had his own report. He had been sitting out in the sunshine where he fell asleep in his chair. He was woken up by the rain pouring down upon him. He got completely drenched in the short run back to the house.

28 August Monday

I could not pass the farm because the gate was across the road. I shouted around the gate to the man at the cattle crush and he shouted to Joe and Joe came and opened the gates to let the car through. He told me that they were testing the cows to see which ones were in calf. When I returned two hours later, I had to shout up the yard again and Joe came down again and let me drive across. I asked how many calves he was expecting and he muttered that he feared they would never be finished with the testing because he had to keep letting men or machines or me in and out of the yard or up or down the road.

30 August

We ate caramelized figs on a pancake. Now I am slowly collecting more. The indoor ripening system is working well. The birds are deprived and we are winning. I have picked buckets full of apples from the meadow, both off the trees and the windfalls off the ground. The freezer is not going to be able to accommodate all the fruit I am gathering. And now the raspberries are ripening fast. I need to go out and pick them every afternoon. Overripe wild damsons are falling off the branches in the boreen. The branches are too high for me to reach. Four years ago I parked the car on the corner under the tree and I used a ladder to climb up and pick the plums while standing up on the curved roof of the car. I no longer feel safe using this method.

1 September Friday

The man stood outside the station and he pointed to a tree. Everyone who walked by followed his finger and looked up at the tree. There were not a lot of people around. Some were waiting to board a bus and others had just gotten down off a bus. Some were just off the train. We all followed the man’s directive. We all looked up at the tree. I heard a cat miaowing. Every person responded to the sounds of the crying cat. Each person stopped and looked and looked for the cat in the tree. After some minutes, the man laughed and said, “It’s ME! I am the cat. The cat is me. Can you give me some money for lunch?” Most people gave him some money. They were impressed with his act of throwing his voice into the tree. They were appreciative of his talent of imitating a cat in distress and they were relieved that there was not a real cat in trouble. Not everyone gave him money. Some people rushed away, embarrassed to have been caught up in his trick.

2 September Saturday

We would not have bought the strawberries. They were pale and sickly looking. And we have too much fruit to eat at home. The girl at the market assured us that they were the sweetest of berries and they were only pale because there has been so little sun. She explained that we are all suffering from a lack of sun. She said they were delicious and that we needed to eat them all today or they would disintegrate into a mush. We began to eat them right after lunch and we did not stop until they were gone. The girl was right. They were the best strawberries we have ever eaten.

4 September Monday

I am picking raspberries every day. Some get taken to friends. Some go into the freezer. Most of them we just eat.  I am seeing the blackberries ripening all up the boreen and I am now feeling the pressure to start picking them too.