Time to leave

It will seem strange to leave Moyhill – no more animal chores twice a day – substantially less sh*t to shovel and no more Burren – for a while. Despite a very wet period in July/August and of course the flooding in November, we have had a lot of great days. None more so than the last week or so with icy temperatures (-5C this morning) and clear skies – it feels as if winter has really arrived. According to a local writer - PJ Curtis, the author of ‘The Music of Ghosts‘ and ‘The Lightning Tree’:
"Christmas in the Burren –regardless of the weather - is serene, beautiful and strangely mysterious. The grey mantle of winter has long since been cast over the land and in this silent world of stone, the pale, low-lying sun, when it peeps through the shroud of leaden cloud, highlights a rich tapestry of deep-winter colours. There are deep carpets of fallen leaves and also of furze, hazel-bush and of bracken, in every possible hue of russet and dark-brown. So too are the varied mosses, and other winter shrubs. The trees of Christmas, the Rowan, the Holly and Ivy, are in their full regalia of blossom. You will experience no green so startling as that of a lone holly-bush pushing up from a craggy limestone fissure. Startling too is the sight of red holly-berries on a bush which was previously barren. Peer a little closer and you may be rewarded with a glimpse of a tiny robin perched among the prickly holly-leaves glistening with silver droplets of rain; its red breast competing madly with a profusion of red berries."
Hard to follow – except to wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy and healthy 2010.