In order

Monday came, and so did a purple truck--hurrah!
And so did some fellows from the Wicklow County Council, who posted this sign at the entrance to the golf club.

For those who aren't inclined or able to read the small type, it appears that the management is applying to retain the buildings they built--apparently without a permit. It is not uncommon for county councils here to require unpermitted structures to be bulldozed, and there were some lovely pictures in the newspaper just last week.

Here

The middle of last week, I sent my big brother into Dublin city with my eldest, where they rode the green hop-on-hop-off double decker busses, toured Kilmanham Gaol, and bought prepackaged sandwiches and ate them at Trinity College. To cap it off, we all met up in the evening and went to the Mill, where we had a good pub meal and a pint. No one really believes they serve fries with lasagne here until it happens to them.

It was, according to any guidebook, a good, solid tourist experience. However, if all my brother wanted was that, he could have done this anytime. And we have purposely eschewed this type of activity, partly because we've done the double-decker bus so many times already (it is a good tour, even the natives agree) and partly because we prefer to live and be here.

And this weekend, we were.

Friday evening saw a summer gathering to mark the end of the school year. Steiner (Waldorf) schools traditionally celebrate the four changes of season, but their American brethren tend to miss out on the summer celebration because they let out too early. We arrived early for this St. John's festival, since I had a violin lesson, and preparations were already in full swing: Barney had used his tractor to stack the bonfire and was hauling logs and hay bales as seats around it, Kate had lit a fire in the clay cob oven, Cassie was kneading bread dough for pizzas in said oven, and one of the guys was chopping a box of onions while burning wood under the new barbeque (two old pieces of thick sheet metal that had served as the side of a ship, complete with rivet holes).

More and more cars arrived, filling the car park and the adjacent field; musicians arrived and started noodling together, the long table began to groan under potluck offerings. Someone brought a waffle iron, and started stocking children and a few lucky adults with hot waffles. Pretty soon, the sausages and burgers sizzled on the grill, bubbly thick pizzas emerged from the oven, fiddlers played for dancing, and used paper plates were lit under the bonfire.

As the evening wore on, fiddles and flutes and a guitar and a bodran and an accordeon came out in an impromtu session next to the fire, and folks settled into cozy conversation while the kids ran themselves ragged. The sky finally darkened as the kids played in the ashes, dooming them to bathing before bed. No one wanted to leave. But as the first star emerged, we packed filthy, tired children (well, only one was filthy) into our cars and headed home, where we scrubbed off the worst of it and tossed ourselves into bed.

A slow start to Saturday was predictable. When I finally arose, we put together a big fry (another name for the artery-clogging traditional Irish breakfast) and fed the hungry troops. We had only one thing on the agenda for Saturday: road bowling.

Now, none of us recall when we first heard about road bowling, but the premise sounded so outrageous, we weren't sure if is was some sort of snipe hunt, an elaborate practical joke played on the unsuspecting and naïve. But knowing what we do of the Irish psyche, it sounded like something they just might do. And so we had to witness it. Scheduled for 2 pm, we headed out the lake drive early, passing a burnt-out house along the way, and enjoyed ice cream and the view in front of the Lacken general store.

And just what is road bowling, you say? A bunch of strapping Irish lads (girls don't seem to be interested in such frivolity) find between two and five kilometers of peaceful country lane, and bowl 28-ounce steel balls along them toward a finish line. The person who completes the course in the fewest bowls wins. There are a few challenges, such as oncoming traffic and finding lost balls in the overgrown verge (with predictably scatilogical jokes ensuing: "You didn't take a picture of me on my knees looking for Tom's balls, did you?" "Did you find them?""I found one, and then I found the other." "Were they close to each other?"). In an informal game (yes there are leagues and championships in the West), innocent bystanders are enlisted to keep count throws and help spot where the balls go off into the ditch, which explains how we all ended up with clipboards and red pens.

We learned that this was an annual event between Ballyknockan and Lacken, two neighboring villages on the shores of the Blessington Lakes. This year Ballyknockan was severly handicapped by having celebrated a wedding the night before; the steel balls feel heavier when you're hungover. By mutual agreement or compassion, the course was shortened a bit (it's five kilometers between the towns; cut to about three), and off we went, up hills and down, around curves, down driveways (the solid balls make a satisfying sound against corrugated metal barn doors), dashing down the roadway after little balls.

Chatting with a woman waiting at the finish line, we learn that that we were spotting her son Kevin, that yesterday's wedding was in her family, and that the groom was once married to our neighbor in Tulfarris. Indeed, she has heard of us ('those Americans in Tulfarris'), since the Wicklow grapevine is alive and well, aided and abetted by mobile phones and the postman.

Not coincidentally, the course ended only a few hundred feet from Cullen's pub in Ballyknockan. Assured we are part of the bowling team, we are invited to join in the tallying of the score ,which happens over a pint or two at said pub. Kevin's mom begs off joining us, as she has 2000 sausages to cook for breakfast at tomorrow's tractor run. After a few pints, the publican dished up plates of chicken curry--on the house. A photographer for the local paper also lined us up for a photograph, so we'll have to pick up a copy of Wicklow People later this week.

As we sat there, we waved at our neighbor's little girl passing by (she lives in Ballyknockan with her mother, but we see her on weekends), and she waved back. The party broke up as folks were headed home to clean up before the supper dance in the marquee next door, so we said our farewells, and assured them we would see them at the tractor run the next day.

And we did. The big event of the season around these parts, the Hillybilly Tractor Run, has grown too big for its Ballyknockan britches, and this year moved to a large field in Humphreystown, just up the road from Tulfarris. Attentive readers will remember this as the place we get our eggs, so it was close enough to home to forego the car and walk there. As if a parade of over 300 tractors isn't enough to clog up our web of rural roads, AC/DC was playing over in Punchestown, so we had an interesting overlap of tractor fans and rockers in our neighborhood. But I digress.

Breakfast was still being served when we arrived under the Ponderosa style archway at 11 o'clock, and since it was Kevin's mom pushing the sausages, we stuffed the donation box and stuffed ourselves with another breakfast. The Irish take on the American hillbilly was humourous at times (Pochahontus wearing silver shoes and young girls all in ponytails) and spot on at others (the collection of stuffed armchairs on the lawn and plaid aprons). The collection of huge pots hung over the fire was nothing short of impressive. Equally impressive is that this seemingly hokey gathering generated €57,000 for local charity last year.

The ice cream truck from Manor Kilbride pulled in, served up, ran out and went home; the local Romas arrived to ply their wares; a fudge and candy floss (what we call cotton candy) truck set up; and the fire - wood and local peat - was stoked under the colcannon.

The garda finally showed up to do traffic control, crowds gathered behind the ropes, and the run started, only about an hour late: it was a good hour of parading vehicles, mostly tractors, some vintage cars and some floats (=trailers pulled by tractors full of people in various themes). Striking to me, more so than the sheer number and variety of tractors, was the intergenerational appeal: men driving their girlfriends in the tractors, their wives, their babies (in carseats!) and then their children, until you see young men driving alone, pre-girlfriend and old men, post-wife.

You would think that we couldn't possibly stuff anything more into the weekend, but wait, there's more: we left the tractor run before the vehicles returned from their loop to Blessington and before the colcannon was done. Not because we don't like colcannon--we do! But we had been invited to toast the christening of the newest resident of Tulfarris, another neighbor's baby daughter. Cake was eaten and little girls in party dresses ran about in a giggly pack, while wild boys got their best clothes dirty in the pampas grass.

When the drizzle got serious, the crowd thinned and moved inside. Pretty soon it was just the neighbors in the pub, enjoying the craic. Before we headed home to yet another late bedtime, we learned that the burned out house we had seen outside Ballyknockan was our neighbor's childhood home, and that his mother's life had been saved by popping by for takeaway food last Thursday.

Which all seems a long way from double-decker bus tours of Dublin.

Big town

When I was a girl, we moved to Redding, California. At the time, Redding had a population of about 15,000, a far cry from the burgeoning Bay Area we had left behind. My father took to perusing the Redding Record-Searchlight to find something to do with the kids every Saturday. There was usually only one thing every weekend, so if there was no Nubian Goat show, he would have to come up with something on his own: exploring, swimming, even shooting tin cans off rural fences.

At some point, the paper started listing more than one thing per weekend, and by the time Redding had 70,000 inhabitants, the event column had grown to a pullout section of the paper. We had to decide what to do; we realized Redding was a big town when there were two attractive things to do in one weekend.

Here we are in Rural Ireland, where we have spent much of our time with the mundane, trying to make something of weekends when the Leinster Leader offered up nothing for a rainy weekend in our neck of the woods. We explored and found obscure museums (most closed for the off season), and read up for the tourist season. One of the books mentioned that the number of tourists who visit the Emerald Isle exceed the population of the island. We laughed, but it's true: it's summer, and the influx means we live in a big place now.

We noticed these things the day we returned from Seattle and wended our way out of the city. As we entered Blessington, a large hand-painted sign proclaimed "Hill Billy - Tractor Run - June 28th." Within ten minutes of our arrival, a neighbor knocked to welcome us back. He'd been out walking the baby, and saw our car in its usual spot. He also wanted to let us know the christening party was on the 28th. Two things on one day. Our neighbor Tommy figures it will take about four hours to get from the church in Blessington back here for the party with all those tractors on the road.

Now with my brother visiting, we had thought we might head north that weekend, to the Giant's Causeway and Donegal to do some sightseeing. But one of the things we had on our list to see was road bowling. We had determined that it was a weekly occurrence in County Mayo, but that would mean missing both the tractor run through our neighborhood and a party. But wait: close inspection of the Hillbilly Festival website reveals that road bowling is happening Saturday as a warm-up for the party proceeding the parade.

We'll just have to head up north later in the week, when school is finally out and the dust from the tractors has died down.

Dare to hope

This morning, a big purple truck pulled up and dropped off six dumpsters. It was exciting enough to get the kids -- even the teenager -- out of bed. Four are purple, and two are green. That's right, garbage and recycling in our little village. The driver informed us that our bin day is Monday.

But lest we get too excited, my visiting brother reminds me that in most places you can take your water glass to the tap to fill it. And then I had to remember to buy credit for the second mobile dongle so I wouldn't have to share the Internet connection anymore.

And then the boys went for a walk and came back to let me know that the hotel was going to be closing on Sunday-Wednesdays beginning July 4. That's right, at the height of the tourist season, the hotel is cutting back.

A few tunes

The note on the great planning wall of our house says "attend a session" and a few weeks ago, my teacher said, "we're playing a few tunes after, will you come?" We did, and I wrote about it here. But I didn't have the courage to bring my violin with me.

So imagine my pleasure when the phone rings a few days after our return, and it's my violin teacher, Phil. The grapevine has let him know we're back in town, and he's wondering if me and the boy might be up for playing a few tunes for the opening of the Dunlavin Arts Festival on Friday. His request, not surprisingly, is met with enthusiasm, and so we found ourselves tucked in the corner of the old courthouse (which serves as a library most of the time these days), fiddling for a few while folk nibble on cheese and look at pictures.

We stay for a bit, and look at some paintings, but I know my jetlagged visitor is tired. As we head home, we see the sign outside the pub. I finally know my fiddle teacher's last name.

Steamy

The nice weather has at long last arrived in Ireland. We fling open the windows, run to the garden centre for bedding plants and eat on the terrace. The days are deliciously long this far north, and before we know it, our kids are still awake and it's 10 at night.

My brother is getting a skewed view of this place, drenched in sun and devoid of puddles and mud. But we're not complaining! We've been able to provide him with some authentic experiences, including petting lambs while we fetched eggs from the farm up the road.

The weather burst joyously into summer on solstice, and we celebrated by attending a vintage car rally in nearby Stradbally. It coincided happily with a narrow gauge train ride in the same town, and we thought it might be of interest to my brother, who is doing his part to swell the population.

What we didn't expect was that the car rally had anything that moved, from tractors (which nearly outnumbered the cars) to stationary machines (thresher, oat mill) to fire trucks. Yup, hog heaven for a certain young man, who actually ended up bonding with the club of collectors of said engines, and scoring a ride in the arena in one.

We have been here once before, on a cool May day, and the crowds were thin; they say they will have their steam engine up and running for the August bank holiday. They're expecting a crush of people, and we're planning on joining them: The fire truck rally isn't until August 15.

Bathtub pictures

I spent a good part of the last three weeks putting together a multimedia slide show for the graduating class. The retrospective takes all of 17 minutes to watch, but took days of sorting through pictures, videos and audio of school events, outings, and just plain classroom snapshots.

Part of the slide show involved wading through baby and toddler pictures provided by the parents: The teenagers were relieved that no bathtub shots were included. We showed up at the farewell party with our meager potluck offering knowing we would not starve, with 68 megabytes tucked on a memory stick in our pocket.

By happy coincidence, my dear husband had used the same USB key to take some representative shots of our Irish adventure in to his team at work. Because of the vagaries of digital photograph numbering, the kid-focused slide show led straight into our favorite bathtub picture:

While we were gone, summer came: the verges have grown into wildly lush overgrowth obscuring the previously muddy edges, making the narrow lanes seem all the narrower. The sweet little lambs are nearly the same size as their mommies, both through their own growth and their mothers' encounters with the shears. And the days are excruciatingly long--particularly as we struggle with jet lag-- with the sun not really going down until nearly 10:30 at night, and rising with loud birdsong at 3:30.

Perspective is everything, and we realize that we are spoiled. My veg box supplier has informed me that the European avocado season is over, and she quite rightly will not purchase them airfreighted from Mexico. The roadside stands with Wexford strawberries are out, and new potatoes spill out of the bins at the grocers. We will simply count the weeks and eat spuds and strawberries and ice cream.

For the weather has turned nice as well, which helps our mood even as we resume our windmill tilting: less than 24 hours after arriving in Ireland (after a mad dash in Heathrow and the by-now routine delayed baggage report), our Internet connection simply dried up. The golf resort is miraculously still in business, so we can trek over to the hotel and scab off the connection there for as long as our batteries hold out. But the backup dongle solution provider seems to be having problems as well, which means we must forgo voice communications until one of them gets their act back together.

Upstream

Seems like we just got back, and it's time to head out again. It's an eerie echo of last year, complete with pulled back muscle, meaning I need help to pack again. The good news is that we're taking very little back, even resorting to the suitcase-in-suitcase technique to provide enough room to bring all our treasures back with us. We may not have had excess baggage going over, but I'm pretty sure we will on the way back.

Our three weeks here have been an indulgence of hours of retrospective with our kids and school community, luxuriating in each other's company and mountains of shared food. We have inhaled three dozen avocados and at least as many thick, handmade corn tortillas. We sprawl on our oversized beds, and rejoice in the fat DSL pipeline.

Our dryer has gone unused, as have our thick sweaters we brought back from the Emerald Isle: the Pacific Northwest appears to have started summer already. The windows are wide open, spring cleaning undertaken, leaving the house fresh and clean. It makes it hard to go.

But we are frankly sad to be packing up and leaving once more. We will start the parade of guests next week, and the remaining two months will likely fly by. We will return home, like geese and salmon, when the leaves begin to turn.