Eireann go Brach ! -- Ireland forever !

Leave it to me to buy 600 euros worth of new garden furniture, only for the weather to turn bad one week later. It's been raining quite a lot, since. It's been rather cold, too. So much for my solid investment in ecologically approved eucalyptus wood...

Gardening has been reduced to the most urgent essential tasks: a bit of weeding in-between rain showers, clearing out some creeping vines (I hate those things with a passion !) from my berry patch... When the sun does come out, the wet earth steams and the athmosphere is tropical.

I used to miss Ireland - my second 'homeland' (not by birth but by feeling I belong there) when it rained like this. Not anymore. This is either cold and uncomfortable, or as I indicated, steamy and tropical... not like the sweet gentle rain I remember from the emerald island... but maybe I am idealizing now !

I do still miss Ireland though. I miss the green space, the smell of horse dung and wet leaves in the morning, the sound of horses in the fields. I spent so many riding holidays there in the nineties, holidays that changed my life for good. I met people there who became friends for life. I realized that I was able to ride a horse cross country even though I'd only started learning to ride when I was 32... a wonderful boost for my self esteem ! I also drove through Ireland on my own many times, exploring, meeting people, literally discovering new horizons. Those were magical years.

I miss Ireland, I miss horseriding, I miss having a cup of strong Bewley's Breakfast blend in the morning...

So here is my promise to myself (and to my daughter): we will return there, the two of us, to ride and to laugh, to live and to love, to experience the country I love most beside my own. Andf who knows, if we play it right, we might even meet up again with the old friends I once rode through the fields with.