Making welcome

Friday 26 Jun 26 was International Day here & up the hill. Θ, my old roomie at The Institute, announced that she was bringing here research team away from the Mean Streets of SmallTown, Midlands . . . to get some fresh air and see some green fields. It was the end of a not-quite-record-breaking week of heat-wave and it was muggy hot in our kitchen. In prep for an alfresco tea-party I started putting up the garden parasol under the big old dying ash tree at the bottom of the yard. Two young women appeared pushing street-bikes past the gate. I made some quip about mountain bikes being quicker but more dangerous going downhill and they paused to chat. They turned out to be Danish and were heading for the telecoms mast on Mt Leinster having borrowed the bikes from where they were WWOOFing in the next county.  I urged them to leave the bikes in the yard and continue their trek unimpeded; they agreed.

An hour later Greece, Egypt, Kenya, Senegal [I think! defo Afrique-Occidentale française, AOF] and Mexico arrived . . . bearing gifts b/c Θ was ever of the generous hand: two enormous punnets of  enormous strawberries. I had already picked wild strawberries and golden raspberry earlier as finials for ziggurats of scone, butter, bramble jelly, whipped cream. See L for comparison: from what an unpromising natural base modern commercial strawberries have sprung. I like our wild strawbs, I graze them as I pass, but it would be work to gather a kilo for cake or compôt. It was like my pal Dan who picked a handful of fraocháns Vaccinium myrtillus as a gift for the daughters of his AirBnB host but was pre-emptively presented with a whole fraochán pie made by said daughters.

By the time the two Danish cyclists returned for their bikes having yomped up Mt Leinster there were no scones left, forgive me they were delicious. There are no mountains in Denmark: the highest point Møllehøj is 170m above sea-level. A pimple compared to the modest hills we call mountains in Ireland. Indeed, the two strawberries [L] are an apt metaphor for the comparison.

We've been here before with some of the same players. I was hop-skip delighted to hear that, of the July 2024 party, India is now a research officer for the DeptAg, while Benin is working for Tipperary County Council. GO! Ar aghaidh! the New Irish.