It was on my hike up to Lough Anna that I came across these shamrocks growing near an abandoned stone cottage at the side of the road. It was my intention to write a St Patrick’s Day post on the seventeenth...c’est la vie.
The sun has just burst through for the second time today. Five minutes ago I was driving across San Juan Valley in a down pour over the wobbly road in the wetland where the waterfowl float in a green soup rain flooded field. As I drove down Wold Road the mist shrouded Mt Dalla made me smile when I thought of delivering Allaye’s irish bread with her and playing our fiddles by the peat fire. Rain is synonymous with breath in Donegal, Ireland. Now, for a moment my Chinese red back door is lit up like a fire engine in the late March sun. Mon petit jardin is a fête des colours with majenta primroses and grape hyacinths a bloom and the faded prayer flags Robin brought back from India last year hanging across le cour like this was laundry day for the garden fairies…
So to Ireland and St. Patrick, to Allaye O’Conner and all the great tunes I have played each March since 2002 at the Friday Harbor Irish Camp, I remember you in these photographs of Donegal, Ireland. All the rain this month reminds me of visiting Donegal in January nearly three months ago now.
alisoninfrance 