Calendar: Two Thousand Ten - February

This is the third year in which I've created a calendar of my photos to share with family and a couple of friends. I decided to use the calendar as blog-fodder; once a month I'll be able to write about the calendar picture. (For all pictures, click to see a bigger version!)

February's photo is from The Burren, in Ireland. It's a wind-swept, rocky place, rather hilly. I drove there with my friends Sue and Deirdre from "our" cottage in County Clare (Sue's cousin's, really, but who's counting?).

Driving there was quite exciting, an hour's drive on the teeniest country roads you've ever seen - and on the wrong side, of course! It takes a LOT of concentration to drive down a steep road with hairpin curves AND stay in the leftish lane.

We parked near a farm, barely able to squeeze off the road, and then hiked up up up the hill to the top of the world.  Our car is down by that farmhouse in the center of the picture:

I loved the stone walls that served a dual purpose: they cleared the fields of rocks, and penned in any cattle that might be grazing in the now-cleared fields. The walls were rather porous, a fact I illustrated in the top photo (which wound up being February), and here, in a close-up:

Some of the walls clearly didn't serve any real purpose any more (if ever they had):

Except maybe to provide safe nooks for flowers to grow:

Above: Common Dog-violet; below: Early-purple Orchid. Both were SO small.

 

It felt like were were on the top of the world. It was great!