Start of Summer – Bealtaine.

I

This week was the first of May, Baltaine and the start of summer. It is a Cross Quarter Day, half way between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice. In Irish mythology, the beginning of the summer season started with the Fire Festival at Bealtaine. Great bonfires mark a time of purification and transition, heralding in the season in the hope of a good harvest later in the year, accompanied with rituals to protect the people from any harm by otherworldly spirits.

A good time of year, a beginning and yet another day to plan and scheme on how to better manage life. Running to the tree is going just fine but improving on that in speed and distance is a challenge as the totally unambitious self just plods ot the the tree and back and ticks that box for the day. Have to work on that. The new boy toy also arrived.

Bright and yellow and in way too many individual parts, the Honda civic CRX racing car has replaced the mini in the open shed across from the office. Sadly, the owner of same spend yesterday at a rally car fest in Galway and I can feel him plotting how to race this “investment” from the other side of the country. It’s going to be a long summer.

.After the bread round, at this time of the year,  I used to out into the garden, plant the potatoes, grow the seedlings and enjoy working in the polytunnel while the rain was falling on the plastic of the tunnel. I love gardening and have not done it in at least two or three years. These days I don’ t even pretend anymore that I will have the time as I watch the garden grow closer and closer. The polytunnel has a big rip while the only plant still thriving in spite of all my non-effort is a ginormous rhubarb that comes back year after year in spite of total unappreciation of a family that does not eat rhubarb. Every year I hope to restart the garden and every year it doesn’ t really work. Since the business paperwork has grown with the business, after the bread round time has moved to the office - with a few window boxes and potted plants the extent of my growing success. Since all young adults are back for the summer, we are trying again to make time to have a garden and jobs have been divvied up. The lane is done, the grass was cut ( until the lawnmower broke...) and my jobs remain stubbornly undone. The two car fanatics are trying to keep to the deal of balancing all hours worked on the car with hours done in the garden and we’ll watch this space with the optimism of early spring where everything seems possible. Especially when the first day of summer actually and completely unexpectetly turns into the first gloriously sunny day. It is progress if the tax returns are done in May rather than November, it is progress if I can run again and it is progress if the shed was tidied between cars – or is it? 

We’ll light a fire next weekend ( that Christmas tree is still sitting in the hedge)  and we’ll celebrate Bealtaine with all our plans and hopes and ambitions. It’s the season of hope for a good harvest, which does not only mean food successfully grown. It also means a good leaving cert for some, a good start to college for others, a summer well spent, a business grown another bit and maybe, just maybe some of that garden to be salvaged.