The Walking Gardens

During the West Ireland trip in the past week, I uncovered a new interest: gardens. Specifically walking in them. Our stops at Kylemore Abbey and the Muckross House were surprisingly my favorite of the whole trip because of the history and ornateness of the gardens. They were peaceful! It was freeing to wander, uncover new areas, and be in nature. The idea that someone designed these for ambling made the experience of them like none other. 

I've been the type to plan a garden, but to let it fall to weeds in the late summer heat. The purpose of those gardens were always for food, and never for beauty and enjoyment. The gardens at these places were different because they were made for enjoyment. I was caught in the ideas of uncovering new paths, exploring, hearing the birds around me, and even in experiencing the garden in different speeds of movement: a stroll, meander, walk, jaunt, jog, and run. This wonder and curiosity helped me to reframe my experiential idea of a garden. 

Killarney House Gardens

This trip to the gardens also taught me to see the everyday beauty in discovery. I'm beginning to love walking every day, simply to explore and move, and got the chance to discover the Killarney House Gardens near the Dromhall Hotel. The sun rising over the morning dew, over the gardens and trees and swans, are pure bliss. I loved the little adventures I got to take solo and with others during this trip, as they were all about exploration and getting swept up in the current of things. 

It reminds me of Seamus Heaney's poem "Blackberry Picking" because of the changing beauty in each moment. I'll include it here: 

Blackberry Picking, Seamus Heaney

 For Philip Hobsbaum

Late August, given heavy rain and sun

For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. 

At first, just one, a glossy purple clot

Among others, red, gree, hard as a knot. 

You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet

Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it

Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for

Picking. The red ones inked up and that hunger

Sent us out with milk-cans, pea-tins, jam-pots 

Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. 

Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills

We trekked and picked until the cans were full, 

Until the tinkling bottom had been covered

With green ones, and on the top big dark blobs burned

Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered 

With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's. 

We horaded the fresh berries in the byre. 

But when the bath was filled we found a fur, 

A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. 

The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush

The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. 

I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair

That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. 

Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not. 

The poem moves fluidly from the present moment to regret of what's lost. For me, I think it captures the beauty of everything. Beauty cannot be contained, because it always must be copied and strived for, as humans see things. I think this takes the beauty of the moments of innocence and childhood, and moves toward a realistic representation of the hope in each moment. There is beauty in the descriptions of the fruity, but I think the real beauty is in Heaney's recollection of the story. 

Muckross House Gardens

The hope of finding the present, which is ever-changing, is driving force in the poem and walking gardens.