A fleeting signal

 The Boy is back home in Ireland with his family for Easter. We had planned to run an Easter Egg hunt in our 1 acre woodland. Last Summer we had the arborist in for two days work putting manners on the 13-15 year old trees with some judicious thinning. It's lovely down there, with the canopy gone, some colourful spring flowers are getting their time in the sun before nettles Urtica dioica and brambles Rubus fruticosus choke them out. Some natural pathways are meandering round the acre: so that those so inclined can do walking meditation: after the arborist I went round pruning off the eye-pokers. 

But the optimistic elder care roster collapsed under coronarama and other interventions - we are none of us getting any younger. Accordingly we were down on Costa na Déise. We made a couple of visits to the quietly delightful Japanese Garden in Tramore, where Irish / Greek / American / Japanese story-teller Lafcadio Hearn spent some time as a youth. Gorra season ticket now, so we'll be back!

Easter Monday, after lunch, between showers, The Boy and The Bob took his daughters down to the strand at Kilfarrasy. The wind was really too bitter brisk to go swimming so we ambled about doing beachy things: digging holes, throwing stones and writing messages to the naiads. Whereas I have a fine cursive hand for sand-writing, I cannot frame a picture to save my life:

What I meant to say was

THE SAND IS A
PALIMPSEST

. . . which is surely true between the tides. Less so in the Sahara where jeep-tracks from WWII are still etched. I had more to say:

I think, with Linda McCartney widely available, even vegetarians can agree with that sentiment. The Gdaus are in beach-combing school and found this large rusty buoy on Inisheer on a visit the week before Easter.  

The parents stoutly maintained that there was no room in the car; so that buoy was sadly left behind.