For a spell now, and very much so last week, the water has risen pretty high. Three days, or rather nights, 5.3 metres. Enough for me to set my mobile alarm time each time at 45 minutes before the highest mark. Once I even sat behind the wheel for an hour, on my mark, occasionally beaming my headlights into the advancing bashes. Late one afternoon the water even grazed the roof garden of my kitchen. I stood there, watching in dismay at my uplifted labour, some 25 buckets of sand, five of chopped-up seaweed, another six buckets of sand on top of that. And only yesterday, five more buckets of sod soil, cut with a bread knife from the ridges raised by the tyres of the bus. At least some yield from the muddle at the bottom of Funny Lane comes my way.
In the furrows I sowed another eight buckets of shingle from the cove of the rolling stones. Comes a rainy day, I'll be very grateful to myself.
By the way, a little up the Lane doesn't look quite well either. Over a 15-metre stretch the bus slides
chest-borne over the median strip, because the hollows on either side have deepened from my driving. In itself this is no washout. I could simply cut off the middle strip and distribute the sods over the tracks. But the meaner the Lane becomes for cars, the less drivers will venture to traverse it. The rain always rinses the steep sweep down to the pebbles. Once I reach it I'm home free again.
For the same reason I leave the runners of the brambles intact, so they screech along the lacquer of the bus like a chalk on a blackboard. Not that I mind people coming to the meadow. I rather like that, as long as they leave their cars up the road.
While I'm sorting my photos for the Ennistymon Courthouse Gallery exhibition that is up for June, the waves are playing leapfrog with the rocks. That doesn't happen always, though. Lots of them are smothered in the backwash. And I know quite a few. Even by name. Picturing waves happens to be my hobby. I had a near 6,000 of them, but I reduced them to a bit over 1,200. But these are A-(every) 1 of them, that separate themselves into different categories.
By far the biggest bursts are the 'Tempest'uous ones, those that bash into Akeen, a protruding head some three kilometres of a rock run from here. There the water sometimes explodes up to 20 meters. You shouldn't come too close there as you won't capture the entire wave and you run the risk of getting soaked or worse.
Then there are three locational series, one at Crab Island off Doolin, one at Spanish Point and one at Goat's Island, captioned as 'Washed up in Ireland’. I also have a series I call 'The Emeralds'. These are waves that shine green through their tops. They give Ireland the name of 'The Emerald Isle'. I also have a collection of waves of which each one is different, if not to say very different. I call these 'Face Waves'.
Another series I call 'The anatomy of a wave'. These look like being taken from out of the water and for some it was a close call indeed. The final large collection I call 'Slosh'. These are foam fingers and fists frozen by the camera into minute detail. The appearances water can assume in its ferocity are quite unimaginable. Once you have seen these, a drop of water will never look the same again.
This also goes for the animals that live in the tidal zone. Tonnes of vehement violence crash over them, yet it does not prevent the inhabitancy of mussels, limpets and other shellfish.
In particular I want to mention the Honeycomb worm. This apparently vulnerable creature has a hippie hairdo and lives in communes that are assembled by more or less hexagonal tube cells. If you take a close look, you'll notice that each cell has been built with colourful shell grit. You can stamp upon it all you like, but not a fragment will snap off.
What a powerful architectonic achievement for such a trivial soul.
As for plant life, darling buds hesitate through the meadow top soil. For now it's still in slow-motion, but you can see Nature's work in progress.
Research Honeycomb worm Verena Schwalm, Berlin