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DoChara's Ireland Blog
Random Writings about Ireland and the Irish
Monday
September 19 2005
Changing Times
This weekend I spent a little time sweeping leaves from gutters, picked the last of a bumber crop of apples from the three tiny trees in the garden, wore a sweater indoors and lit a fire. Summer is gone.
Another reliable sign of the passing of the seasons in Kilkenny is the disappearance from the streets of tourists, who are there in numbers from May to September but like rare birds the rest of the year. Neither tourists nor leaves have all left yet though judging by this picture taken outside the castle last Saturday afternoon.
This year may be the last that sees the natives left so completely to their own devices in Autumn with the opening of the new Lyrath Estate hotel and conference centre just weeks away. It's a stunning hotel in a great location but I have very mixed emotions about it.
Lyrath House was home until about 12 years ago to Captain Anthony Tupper and his wife and was a wonderfully tradtional estate farm, with a herd of the most gorgeous Jersey cows. There were hens and geese in the yard, lovely doe eyed calves in the haggard field and a big old fashioned kitchen with dogs and cats rambling in and out at will. It was a pleasure to visit and anytime I did I always came away feeling the better for it.
There was an auction at the house when the Tuppers left, all the furniture and the bits and pieces accumulated over several lifetimes laid out and labeled and for sale. I found it unspeakably sad but I bought a coal bucket, just to have something. This weekend I filled it for the first time in months and hauled it in to the livingroom and thought of a way of life that is dying out and of some of the people who lived it.
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