Musings

Foreground: ruins of medieval (13th C?) cathedral at Ferns. Five window arches survive on one side, and one on the other. Rear: current mostly 19th-C church.

Wexford winsome trio.

Dublin schoolgirls learning about high crosses at heritage park (HP). “Monk” guide did a great job.

The Guru captured a heron and friend in the crannog’s lake at the HP.

Stenciled quote (lines skipped) from Hávamál on wall at HP.

Emo petrol? Killeens swirls?

Tintern Abbey; that is: Tintern Minor abbey. Much modified, but most of “the bones” of what we see is probably 16th C. Used as a residence until 1959.

Today was busy-farm-equipment day, including many tractor-rigs on the road. Two days ago, it was paint-your-front-fence day—we saw three being painted and one being pressure-washed‚ none before or since.

I want this label!

The Guru made Droney fly for the third time here.

Given that the iPhone darkens a shot like this, you must compensate. I could easily read a book in the ambient light, although it seems darker in this version. This was at 9:02pm. And it’s light out very early, too.

Good night, all.

Posted at 5:07 PM | 2 Comments »

I told the Guru I wasn’t going to write much today…so, mostly photos. Wild strawberry.

Holsteins arriving at fence at end of new pasture area. Bawling. This is atop an early medieval place of major importance called Uisneach. The scale of the hilltop with scattered features was difficult to grasp even standing there. Just think of it as the cattle site.

Our access to the hilltop passed by this somewhat mysterious cattle management structure.

I laughed that someone thought it necessary to mark this one-and-a-half lane road with an aon scoitheadh sign—no passing.

I’m standing on another major architectural feature. Me and this momma sheep and her two babes, one black, one white. Think of it as the sheep site. The formal name is Rathcroghan.

I guess this one might be the person site? It’s called Rathra, and I think this is an old field boundary cutting through the early medieval ring fort. It has two pairs of wall-ditch combos to my left and right. Also you can see a barrow mound just visible over the walls to my left. Darned exciting.

We laughed at this sign. Crappy snapshot, however.

We stopped at the famous monastery ruin named Clonmacnoise. Here’s a view of the oldest structure here (foreground), called Temple Ciarán. It dates to the 8th/9th C, and is considered among the earliest mortared stone shrine chapels in Ireland. That’s the Shannon River in the background; there was a bridge across it as early as ~804. The Guru sent Drony on a mission here getting a great view of a nearby 1214 Anglo-Norman motte-and-bailey castle ruin on the riverbank.

We happened upon turves of peat drying. These are regular shapes from mechanized harvesting. Several (parts of) bog people have been found during such operations.

This abandoned factory is the town of Clara. We spotted another one, too. On the way into town, we drove by the ruins of a monastery. St Brigid founded the original wooden monastery, records indicate. Clara seems pretty resilient; keep on biking.

Posted at 4:27 PM | Comments Off on Aon scoitheadh

Twice in the last twenty-four hours I have encountered the word tattersall. I can’t remember the last time…two decades? And I knew “plaid” but it’s more than that, it’s an even plaid, with more space between the stripes than not, and the grid is in two colors, a darker and a lighter one (typically). It’s like funky, fabric graph paper (kinda). Apparently, the pattern is from horse blankets at a market with this name in London well over a century ago. Of all things.

Posted at 9:20 PM | Comments Off on A pink flower is not tattersall

Based on the calendar, we’ve all de-Lented. But that’s not quality word-play.

Posted at 9:36 PM | Comments Off on Re-Lent

One of my dad’s personal vocabulary was volunteer. By personal vocabulary I mean words he was likely to use that other people were not; they weren’t used incorrectly, just far more common with him than most people. He used the word volunteer with plants to mean that they germinated and survived in a location where they weren’t planted. He was into a curated landscape…around the house—not in the woods.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Columbines can be maroon

These vegetal gems were labeled “junior bok choy.” Turns out that this is a vegetal vendor category; the store I was in didn’t make it up. I would have called them mini bok choy, or perhaps age-challenged bok choy. Nah.

Anyway, quite tasty in the corruption of stir-fry we had on Saturday night, and tonight, too. (Skipped a night, there.) If WikiPee is correct, bok choy (a phrase that makes my spell-check blotto even though it’s in my standard digital dictionary) is a subspecies of Brassica rapa L., along with bomdong (put on your Korean hat?), napa cabbage (from a Japanese term, not the valley in Cali), and turnip.

Posted at 9:48 PM | Comments Off on Not baby bok choy

I read a NewYorker article about loss and lost. It started with losing track of keys and the like, then veered off to emotional loss. The macro lens had been misplaced; in active voice: I forgot where I put it. Turns out it was right under my nose. That’s the way it goes, eh?

Above is a hyacinth that’s beginning to open in the front yard. I forgot where the bulbs came from, but I relocated them to take advantage of more light/less tree cover, and they’re taking advantage of the relative warmth we’ve been having.

And this is a knurled dial. I instinctively want to express that it’s knurling, but I’m not sure that is correct.

Posted at 8:05 PM | Comments Off on Little things in life

We found golden light on the backside of a renovated hotel/apartment building, way down in SoGA*.

No where near as flashy, but I liked this arboreal skeleton, also created by uber golden light.

And, funny thing, we discovered that we could cross the GA–FL line on a dirt road. Packed sand, that is. Great surface (today). And a canopy road at that. (Yes, that’s a term.) Only saw one deer family, and none were close enough to be dangerous.

* That is, south GA.

Posted at 7:26 PM | Comments Off on Golden light: present, then going, going…

The other day I read that narwhals are excellent at finding cracks in the sea ice (breathing holes) and mapping their environment using echolocation. The part that stuck with me is that they use “phonic lips” to make the clicks and buzzes. Not sure if that’s a typo…phonic lips to make phonic blips?

I also read today that in Medieval Europe they seeded fields with both rye and wheat, and both the mixture and the flour/bread made from it were called maslin. Turns out the word is etymologically related to miscellany, and can also be used for a metal blend mimicking brass, so that there could be a maslin kettle. Chaucer spelled it maselyn. Note that I checked, and King Arthur doesn’t sell a maslin flour. You could make your own….

This program accepts phonic lips but wants maslin to be marlin. Not.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Do I read too much?

The last of the summer’s flowers are doing the fade as the leaves fall. Here’s a lovely memory of the lushness that’s gone. And, yes, the color hasn’t been boosted. [I have a version on my iPhone’s lock-screen.]

My dictionary says that hark comes from a hunting term referring to hounds retracing their steps to find a scent they’ve lost. Appropriate with a flower picture.

Posted at 5:28 PM | Comments Off on Harking back