Ireland Beckons

I have a green thumb. No question. And I swear that's my inheritance from my Irish grandfather, Joseph McDonnell, of The Pike, near Bagenalstown, Co. Kilkenny. He had a large farm, a large family (15 kids including my Mum), and always had a brace of large dogs at his side. Judging from his photo, it's clear, too, that he had a large personality. At Sunday Mass, he'd swing his pocket watch back and forth to signal the priest that the sermon had gone on quite long enough.

He and my grandmother, Clare Maher McDonnell, were in their very early 20s when they set off together down life's highway.

Next week, I set off on a journey — back to Ireland to visit The Pike and the remnants of Grand Dad's garden. He had a passion for roses and arum lilies (I wonder do they still grow below the drawing room window?), and an apple orchard where he gathered violets and primroses for Grandmother on her birthday.

I first visited Ireland when I was 10, then lived there in the 70s for a brief period before moving on to London. I spent time at The Pike, at my Aunt Clare's farm in Tullow, my Uncle Joe's rectory in Abbeyleix, and tooled around with a childhood friend, Lucinda O'Sullivan, as she is now. We shared fish and chips on the seafront at Skerries, after a swim that would freeze a polar bear.

And we're about to do it again...without the swim. Lu is the travel and food editor of the Sunday Independant, Ireland's best national newspaper, and the author of The Little Black Book of Great Places to Stay: Ireland — a way with words is another McDonnell trait...or maybe it's just part of being Irish. Check out Lu's website at www.lucindaosullivan.com.

Amy Goldman is joining me in this journey to revisit old haunts. When we were doing the story about her garden in upstate New York ('Simple Abundance', September 2005, page 178), we discovered that we'd both been in Kilkenny at the same time during the 70s. "Let's go!", said Amy. And so we are—from Dublin to Kinsale and back again.

Thanks to Lu's insider knowledge, we'll be touring some of Ireland's most beautiful gardens and houses, enjoying the best of Irish cooking (Carroll Stoner's article, 'Balleymaloe', April 2005, page 114, has tuned up my tastebuds for tasting the region's fine foods), and generally relishing the beauty of the country and the "craich", or the lively banter and conversation for which the Irish are renowned. Watch this space, since I have every good intention of sharing some of our touring highlights though this blog. Thomas Wolfe claimed you can't go home again. But then, he wasn't an Irishman...