Summer has arrived!

Oh, what a gorgeous weekend we have just had! I think we can finally declare Summer has arrived at last, after the wettest May I think I ever remember. And that is as it should be. Last Thursday was Ascension Day, which I always think of as the first day of summer, perhaps because it was a school holiday and we were allowed out by ourselves to explore. I must have been just 13 when I went with a friend the same age on the train to Arundel. We boated on the River Arun in front of the Castle, and ate chinese goosberries - now called Kiwi fruit, but then a rarity - with our picnic.

Beautiful Borrisnafarney Church

After lashing with rain until noon on Saturday, the skies cleared and we went to beautiful Borrisnafarney Church to celebrate the wedding of my good friends' daughter Kirsten to Christian, followed by the christening of their baby daughter Zoe. The tiny church was full of children, and Paddy Anglican really needed his stentorian voice to make himself heard. I was fascinated by the fashionable, skimpy, feathery hats the ladies wore. Afterwards we were royally feasted at the Yacht Club by the bride's father Jack. And to cap it all, Leinster won the Heiniken cup!

Kirsten & Christian celebrate in the Roller

Zoe, Kirsten & Christian

Sunday broke with clear skies and news that the Volvo yachts had arrived in Galway in the early hours, with Green Dragon in 3rd place. I had a beautiful drive with Susanna to Shinrone and Aghancon to lead Matins - you can find the address on child abuse and John's kosmos-world here. This was the last of my regular jaunts to the Shinrone Union, because their new Rector will arrive in June. Afterwards Jean Talbot treated us to a superb Sunday roast lunch. On our return I should settled down to course work, but in the lovely sunshine I decided I just had to get to grips with the Drive Border, cutting back an overgrown Spanish broom, pulling nettles and giving Penstemon Ruby Garnet a hair cut.

The Drive Border

The Nenagh Carbon Watchers is a group of individuals concerned about global warming who decided to continue meeting after last Lent's Omega Climate Change course. We wrote to the local and European election candidates with questions about their views on transition to a low carbon society. On Monday I pulled together the responses we received - I would have hoped for more - to write an article for the local newspapers. The candidates all support reducing carbon emissions and taking initiatives to help our communities flourish in a low-carbon future. It is good to know that the need for action is now so widely agreed that all are in favour of motherhood! I also put the responses up on a website - http://nenaghcarbonwatchers.blogspot.com/ - so that they are now a matter of public record.

New Growth

I'm so pressed with course assignments, a sermon and a View from the Pew for Newslink, that I really don't have time to blog my own garden, but here are a few photos for Rogation Sunday!

Now it's May, the garden is burgeoning with fresh foliage:

New leaves on a young walnut in the wild-flower meadow

The Lime alley with daisies

Bursting shoots on a Korean fir, with the first young cones

New shoots on the Quercus ilex hedge, showing colour variation

The herb garden, l-r: Lovage, Purple Fennel, Lemon Balm, Sage

low Box hedge in front

Artichokes, promising a fine harvest

The summer flowers are starting too:

Lupins just begining, in Susanna's Labyrinth garden

Cowslips spreading in the side lawn

Meadow Rue and Paeony buds in the Drive border

Wisteria blooming as standards in the Labyrinth

O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord

Praise Him and magnify Him for ever!

Vertical Gardens

Susanna and I recently returned from a week's holiday with the Irish Tree Society on the Riviera, staying at Menton, just a few miles from the Italian border. We saw some beautiful gardens, but almost all of them were vertical, as you can see from these photos. Where the Alps run down to the Mediterranean, that is the only practical way to make a garden, building on existing olive terraces. They are beautiful, but difficult for those who do not walk well, including Susanna, when to see it properly you must go down 200 steps knowing that you must climb 200 steps back up again!

This photo shows one of the olive terraces at the Villa Noailles at Grasse which has not been planted with exotics. The flowering meadow underneath the ancient trees was very beautiful, full of wild flowers including Green-winged orchid and a variety of Bee orchid.

And this photo shows the view of the sea from the terraces of Boccanegra at Vintimiglia, punctuated with cyprus trees.For me the most exciting plants to see were the exotic conifers which we cannot grow in Ireland, including several species from Australasia, including Araucaria bidwillii, A. cunninghamii, A. heterophylla (Norfolk Island pine), and Agathis australis (the mighty kauri of New Zealand).

The weather was mixed - 2 fine days, 2 days of rain which I choose to ignore, and 2 fine days to finish.

Susanna and I took one day off visiting gardens, because her legs were giving her such problems, and I climbed up the hill in Menton to the old cemetry, which is stuffed with foreigners with English, German and Russian names. The inventor of Rugby football William Ellis is buried there, as is Aubrey Beardsley the strange English illustrator. But what fascinated me most was to discover an Irish relative of mine, one Caroline Laetitia Otway, daughter of one Admiral Robert Waller Otway of Castle Otway in Templederry, where I regularly lead Matins!

On our return I took Susanna over to see her orthopaedic surgeon in Galway, to see whether he could do anything to ease the pain she gets in her knee. The result - the problem is not with the knee, but with the hip. My poor dove must prepare herself for yet more surgery. It seems most unfair.

View from the Pew - Tilling and Keeping

View from the Pew is a regular column I write for Newslink, the Limerick & Killaloe Diocesan Magazine. This article appears in the May issue.

What a wonderful, blessed place the Burren is!

I jumped at the chance of a day trip to introduce my wife’s Finnish colleague Paula and her friend Anu to this unique landscape. I suppose we each have our personal dream landscapes on which our spirits feed. This is one of mine. I’ve spent many long days walking its green roads in all weathers, climbing its bare hills, and visiting its monuments, by myself and with those I love.

We were blessed with the weather - glorious early April sunshine, an invigorating breeze, and just enough cloud to give depth to the sky. We had a magical time. I feel sure the magic will draw Paula back when she moves to Limerick in the autumn. Here are some highlights:

• At Kilmacduagh, beside the ruined cathedral and leaning round tower, a lady lovingly tending a grave regaled us with legends. The founder, St Colman, begged a site for a monastery from King Guaire, of Dunguaire near Kinvara. The King agreed, but told Colman he must walk away from Dunguaire until his belt fell to the ground. At Kilmacduagh Colman’s belt finally broke, and there he set up his monastery. Guaire was wise to send Colman as far away as possible, I think, since the holy man could be an awkward neighbour. St Colman was celebrating mass on Easter day after his Lenten retreat in a Burren cave. Hungry, with no food, he prayed for a good dinner to break his fast. Immediately a band of angels descended on Dunguaire and carried off the King’s own banquet for Colman to feast on!
  
• We walked the green road from Corker Pass around Abbey Hill, past Patrick’s Holy Well with its votive offerings, to Burren RC Church. What a walk: blackthorn sparking silver in the shelter of the flanking walls; on one side a patchwork of green and brown fields stretching down and away to the waters of Galway bay; on the other rising terraces of grey rock, and arching overall the blue sky.
  
• Hungry from walking, we lunched at Linnane’s of New Quay on a feast of native oysters, prawn cocktail and crab sandwiches, with wholemeal bread. Afterwards, at nearby peaceful Corcomroe Abbey, beautifully dedicated by its Cistercian builders to Sancta Maria de Petra Fertilis - St Mary of the Fertile Rock - we admired harebells carved on the capitals of the chancel arch.
  
• We scrambled up the craggy limestone hill at Black Head, across the old green road, searching for the dry stone walls of the fort, Cathair Dhúin Irghuis. It’s always higher than I remember, over 600 feet: constantly expecting to see it over the next brow, I start to worry I’m lost when I don’t. But suddenly there it is, perched below the hilltop on a wide platform from which its stones were levered, walls still standing in places to nearly 20 feet. Built sometime between 400 and 1200 AD, no one knows just when, it was surely meant for a look out, since it commands a gigantic view: west over the Aran Islands to the vast Atlantic; north to Connemara and the Twelve Pins; and south to the cliffs of Moher.



• Though too early for the famous Burren wild flowers, of which the Spring Gentian is the emblem, I found Early Purple orchids, so much smaller than those which grow in inland woods, gleaming alongside primroses and violets in sheltered hollows.

The Burren landscape is not wild at all – it is hand made.
For millennia human beings lived here, working in sympathy with nature, not against it. They tilled and kept this land, as Genesis tells us God put Adam in the Garden of Eden to do. They have left us traces of their presence, often signs of their faith, but in forming the landscape they did not ravish it, wisely preserving the fragile ecosystem which they lived in and were part of.

We are not so wise today. On the hill above Black Head I found cans and beer bottles thoughtlessly discarded, ugly and a danger to stock. Fanore beach is littered with plastic trash washed in on the tide. Mass tourism degrades what visitors come to experience: the Poul na Brone dolmen has been roped off by the OPW, walls keep people away from the Cliffs of Moher, and steer them to the expensive visitor centre.

Wherever there is enough soil, farmers have grubbed up the species-rich rough grazing their ancestors formed, to make rye-grass swards which glow emerald with nitrogen from bags. I mourn the loss of the bio-diversity, but I hope those who have borrowed and invested so much will make a sustainable living from their fields. I fear they may not, when fertiliser and energy become scarce and dear in future. If farmers no longer till and keep this place, what will become of it? It is only their patient work with crops and animals that maintain its integrity and beauty. Already large areas lie abandoned, degrading to hazel scrub.

Sustainable Living
Sustainable is the fad word of the moment – I even heard a Minister talk about a sustainable budget the other day! Though the word may be ugly, the idea it signifies is beautiful – sustainable living is living in balance with the world and all it contains, so that our children will be as bountifully endowed as we are. We have not been doing that for a generation or more.

The gathering crisis of climate change means this must change, and change urgently. If you are interested in an explicitly Christian view, you can do much worse than read an excellent new book, Christianity, Climate Change and Sustainable Living, by Nick Spencer & Robert White (£6.99 from Amazon.). Drawing from science, sociology, economics and theology, the authors make the case that Christians must respond and can make a distinctive contribution, and they propose practical actions at the personal, community, national and international levels.

As an example of practical action, a multi-denominational group of around a dozen of us followed the Omega Climate Change Course in Nenagh during Lent (for more details email me at joc_sanders@iol.ie, or see http://omegaclimate.wordpress.com/). What we learned made us want to continue meeting together as the Nenagh Carbon Watchers. As a group we plan 1st to support each other as we monitor and reduce our personal carbon emissions (both helping the planet and saving ourselves money!), 2nd to use the European and local elections to raise awareness of the issues, and 3rd to explore the potential for our communities of the Transition Towns initiative.

But sustainable living is about more than just climate change. It is about creating vibrant relationships of love and respect: with our fellow human beings, with the world we inhabit and its web of life, and ultimately with God, who has given everything to us. And it is about protecting and handing on our dream landscapes like the Burren too.