Connemara, Ireland: Generally Gorgeous Gaelic Gawkables

I still have a ways to go with my unpacking and laundry chores, but I have finished sorting out my photos from the three weeks I spent in Ireland. I couldn't wait to look at them on a bigger screen. I didn't know where to start my story--I'm overwhelmed--so I decided to plunge in to the middle, actually near the end of my journey, and show my dear readers the Connemara region of western Ireland. Kathy and I took a bus tour from Galway last Sunday and enjoyed the scenery as well as the narration by our driver, Martin.

Low clouds over the Maamturk Mountains

 Those Maamturk Mountains are made of quartz schist and granite, and rocks of those substances pop up all over the landscape. In order to make the land farmable, farmers have been digging them up for centuries and making dry stone walls with them. Apparently farmers do this in the U.S., too, but what do I know? Kathy says the fieldstone dry stone walls in Pennsylvania look different because the fieldstones are flatter. I thought it was interesting that the stones are just piled up without benefit of sand or concrete or grout. They've lasted for centuries like that.

The walls are used to mark property borders, field borders, to keep animals in, and to give animals shelter in bad weather.

Gawkable Connemara scenery

Speaking of fields, many of them are inhabited by Connemara Black-faced sheep. Sheep are a big part of the economy here, and I almost hate to tell you this, but these sheep are mainly used for meat and the wool of the survivors is not spun into sweater yarn. It is spun into yarn for carpets. Typically, farmers have anywhere between 100 and 500 sheep in their herds and they brand their own with big splotches of color on their backs. We saw red, blue, and orange.

Have you seen the John Wayne/Maureen O'Hara movie, The Quiet Man? It was filmed in this region of Ireland in 1951. There's a little bridge here that we saw from the bus. It is seen in the movie and now known as The Quiet Man Bridge by the locals. The movie in DVD form is available in gift shops all over, but I'm confident my friends at the TCM channel will show it soon. I'm going to make a guess that old-fashioned thatched-roof houses also make appearances in that film and in another, The Field (1989), starring Richard Harris. These houses still exist, but they are mostly used for tourist "holiday" houses now, and the roofs are no longer straw but reeds. (Underneath is a layer of metal to help prevent fires from spreading.) These and other houses are heated with turf taken out of bogs. The turf is dried and burnt as fuel. We saw from the bus where turf has been removed in a few places, and Martin the driver told us there are laws limiting how much turf can be taken out. It takes hundreds of years to form.

Actual thatched-roof house

We passed a fjord near the town of Leenane. A fjord is a finger of deep water forming an inlet surrounded by mountains. Glaciers were involved in their formation. Keep your eyes open for a play called "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" because its playright Martin McDermott was inspired by this location.

Fjord

This area of water is also called Kilary Harbor, and it was here that we saw a Fairy Tree!

Fairy Tree

The legend goes that if you leave something of value on the Fairy Tree and make a wish, fairies will make sure your wish comes true. It looked like most people left rags and socks and gloves, and we saw a child's rain boot also. (It probably had value to the child.) I didn't leave anything, but instead took a picture. By the way, that is a hawthorne tree. We saw many of them shaped like this from the Connemara wind.

Waterfalls are found all over Connemara, and our bus driver Martin knew we'd be interested in photographing them.

Small waterfall

Larger waterfalls

The highlight of this tour was Kylemore Abbey and its Victorian Walled Garden. This gargantuan gawkable home was built by a wealthy doctor for his lovely wife, Margaret in 1920. It then became a monastery for nuns who ran a boarding school there. The nuns eventually gave up the school and devoted their time to tourism. There's a small Gothic church nearby where Mitchell and Margaret Henry are buried. I'll be quiet now and share some shots of the property...

I look confused.

What ARE these?

More yellow

Cape May's Secret Garden Tour

 My usual sidekick couldn't make it to the garden tour because of an illness in her family. Pneumonia scares me, so I actually encouraged her to stay home even though this would mean I'd have to navigate the tour and the lunch following at the Chalfont Hotel by myself.

Or would I? I stopped at the Washington Street Information Booth to pick up my tour packet and I was aware of a name-tagged garden tour official giving a big welcome to a pair of women who had arrived just after me. Before I claimed my tickets and packet, I realized that one of the women was Janice Wilson Stridick, who is a second-generation celebrity in Cape May. She wrote a stunning book called Light, Particularly about her mother, painter Alice Steer Wilson, and Alice's watercolors of Cape May. If you love Cape May, gardens, or watercolor paintings, you should probably have this book. If you love all three, you should definitely have it.

Janice and I run into each other periodically in Cape May. I offered her my extra ticket and we were off to visit the ten gardens with Janice's niece, Kim. The houses were in parts of Cape May that I don't frequent often--outside of the touristy beach and historic areas. I'd seen some of the homes from the front and admired their public, front-facing gardens, but being allowed in the private back gardens was a treat. These are the outside places where residents enjoy their homes in privacy.

All ten gardens were gorgeous: "One more beautiful than the next," as my mother would have said. There were begonias, ferns, magnolias (I bragged about the giant magnolia my father planted here), geraniums, and hydrangeas, all of which love the Cape May climate and sandy soil. I learned from Janice about lobelia, a plant featuring small blue flowers that grows very well in Cape May and looks great in blower boxes and planters.

lobelia

Janice also pointed out the Japanese ferns and mentioned that they are quite hardy. At the Aurorean Cottage on Corgie Street, we learned about the pair of Harry Lauder Walking Stick trees in the front. The branches of these trees are twisty as you can see from the picture.

Harry Lauder Walking Stick Tree

In-between gardens, Janice and I caught up. I met her when she was teaching English Composition at Bucks County Community College because being a librarian there, I work with that faculty often. She's not teaching college courses anymore but filled me in on what she is doing, besides touring for the book about her mother. Click on her name in the first paragraph to see what she's cooking up. Kim and Janice were both very interested in Cape May's Sherlock Holmes Weekend which I have participated in a few times. No, I assured them, you do not have to wear a costume. I blogged about that experience here.

Many of the gardens included on this tour featured garden "rooms." Under an arbor covered with old, hardy wisteria might be a lounge chair and end table for reading,

That's some 'established' wisteria!

but tucked away in a corner might be a sunnier bistro area. If you keep looking you might find a hammock among the ferns, hosta, and elephant ears. One garden featured a waist-high raised bed which seemed to be growing all of the ingredients for salad.

Really raised bed

The ornaments! Gardeners seem to love whimsy judging by how they decorate their gardens. I saw frogs, a frog fountain, a patchwork pig, mesmerizing artistic whirligigs catching the sea breezes, and antique statuary. There were gazing balls and stepping stones. Did I mention there were flowers everywhere?

Each garden also boasted a painting of the garden in which it was displayed by a local artist. These paintings were being silent-auctioned off. These were marvelous and showed how much thought and planning went into this day! Most of the artists were around to greet admirers, and how lucky am I: Janice knew almost all of them and the garden hosts, too!

After we visited the ten secret gardens, we were to report to the Chalfont Hotel for lunch. I was looking forwardto seeing the inside of the Chalfont Hotel,

and I did, sort of. The luncheon in the Magnolia Room was mobbed. On the one hand, this shows how popular the Garden Tour was, and it was good to see how many people turned up for it. Proceeds were to benefit a good cause--the Cape May Forum--and it is satisfying to see cultural Cape May celebrating itself. On the other hand, I was wondering how I was still standing after all that walking in increasingly sweltering heat when I hadn't been properly hydrating. I didn't want to be impolite, but it was going to be a while before we got to the buffet table...so I said good bye to Janice...and ghosted out...

As luck would have it, right near the stitchery store (where I picked up some DMC 3345 for a current project), I discovered Cione Gelato. According to the woman who scooped my Stracciatella and Chocolate, they have been there eight years. HOW have I not noticed that shop before, especially when it is sandwiched between the stitchery store and the gourmet shop which makes its own fresh pasta? Maybe it was a mirage, but I'm pretty sure that gelato (or the idea of it) saved my life!

So here's a round-up of Saturday's discoveries:

• LOBELIA
• JAPANESE FERNS are hardy
•  HARRY LAUDER WALKING STICK TREES
• GARDEN "ROOMS"
• WAIST-HIGH RAISED BEDS
• CIONE GELATO 
• STRACCIATELLA means chocolate chip

I'm inspired!

Dead Writers of Concord

Orchard House, Concord

Oh how I enjoyed our three days in Concord! We were excited to see Louisa May Alcott's Concord House. Her classic novel Little Women was set in this house and the sisters in the novel were based on her own sisters. The tour was delightful, and we learned about Louisa May--she was very much like the fictional Jo, but not completely. The house felt welcoming, even after all these years, and it was more than a little thrilling to be in this famous house. Later, we visited Sleepy Hollow Cemetery which may sound morbid, but consider this: on a hill overlooking the park-like graveyard, Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Ralph Waldo Emerson are buried. If you go, and would like to leave something to honor them, bring some pens and pencils.

Louisa May Alcott's collection of pens and pencils

The Alcott family monument

You remember Henry David Thoreau from Walden Pond, yes?

(That's not him, but that is Walden Pond)

 The Thoreau family is buried next to the Alcotts.

The Thoreau family monument

Henry David Thoreau the naturalist has a nice collection of natural items along with his pencils and pens.

Nearby, we found Ralph Waldo Emerson's grave in a sea of other Emersons.

Ralph Waldo Emerson has a distinctive grave marker, yes?

 

The Emersons were a big Concord family and there are Emerson artifacts all over town. RW's study has been reconstructed in the Concord Museum, and his house, just down the street from Orchard House, is a museum in its own right...

Ralph Waldo Emerson's house

...and Emerson's grandfather, Rev. William Emerson, was an important minister in Concord whose house is also a museum:

Rev. William Emerson's Old Manse

The Old Manse is important because Ralph Waldo Emerson lived there for a time during which he wrote "Nature," and Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife "rented" the place for a few years although they never paid any rent. They were very romantic and etched notes to each other in the window glass with her diamond ring:

Can you see the Hawthornes' etchings in the glass?

Outside another window we could see the bridge from which The Shot Heard 'Round the World was fired--this started the American Revolution, right here in Concord!

Hawthorne's grave is on Author's Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, too. His wife and daughter Una died in England and were buried there in 1871 and 1877, but were moved home to Concord in 2006 to be with Nathaniel.

Hawthorne's daughter Una was born in the Old Manse!

I came home with many photographs and a car full of books from this interesting, historic town, birthplace of Transcendentalism. But most importantly, I'll have the memories, thrilling memories, of standing in these authors' houses, gardens, and favorite haunts, and paying respects at their graves. It was a different kind of vacation, and a transformative one.

The Monks' Mandala

You'll never guess what I did at work today! After lunch, Brian and I walked down to see the Tibetan Monks from the Drepung Gomang Monastery who are spending this week "in residence" at Bucks County Community College. They are making a mandala out of dyed sand on the floor of the Solarium. This thing is so intricate and colorful that I doubt my iPhone photos will do it justice.

When we arrived at the Solarium, the monks were taking a lunch break, but there were many visitors and Bucks-affiliated people gawking at this fantastic work-in-progress. If you look closely at the photo above, you can see the design sketched out on the blue base. Sometime tomorrow (approximately 12:30pm), that blue section will be finished and the mandala sand will be swept up in a ceremony and brought to the park where it will be dropped in the creek. Some of the sand will be distributed to the audience as a blessing.

After a few minutes, the monks finished their lunch and returned, one-by-one, to their work.

One monk...

 They hold two long, thin funnels made of metal. One funnel holds the colored sand, and the other is used to tap the sand-holding funnel controlling how fast the sand comes out.

...two monks...

If I were to say that these mandalas are created one grain of sand at a time, I would not be exaggerating. Nevertheless, these expert sand artists covered quite a bit of the mandala while we watched.

...four monks and a basket of tools.

These "sand-painted" mandalas are considered tools for consecrating the earth and people. They represent the universe and its inner and outer meanings. I am no expert on their symbolism, but these monks were kind enough to furnish us with thorough background information on this tradition which is hundreds of years old. All who view the mandala are supposed to experience "profound peace and great joy." This was a welcome inspiring experience in the middle of a mundane work day, and thus did give us peace and joy. ;-)

But wait there's more... everyday this week when I walked past the Solarium on my way to the cafeteria I heard the singing bowls. It's a beautiful, hollow, metal sound and has a pleasing quality. Well, the monks had a table set up with jewelry and prayer flags for sale...and...bowls. Reader, I bought one.

My singing bowl on my desk.

I will now try to make it sing for you.

My video isn't great, so chill out with this guy who has many singing bowls, gongs, and crystals: