Tale of Two Parks

We visited two parks within the past couple of months, and I never sat down to write about them.  Thought I'd remedy that right now.

On March 8, I made my first visit to Ticknick Park which is a short walk from our house.

We saw a couple of kitties on the walk there.  One was huddled outside a patio door; I don't know if he lived there or if he were a stray looking for food/warmth.  The other kitty was inside one of the houses and had the most gorgeous sea-green eyes.

Someone's small front garden had some tulips and a butterfly bush, and there were daffodils lining the trail to the park entrance.

There are slopes in Ireland that seem almost imperceptible....until you're at the top and you feel your legs burning.  The road to Ticknick had one of those.

But near the top of the slope, I was rewarded with some pony frens who were out chilling in a pasture.

There was some signage which talked about bats.  They apparently have some bat houses up and said to look for them.  I didn't see any, but I didn't go that far into the park.

While Eli walked the trail, I went into a copse and found a spot to lie down and look up through the trees.  I was craving nature, craving a quiet spot where I could just listen to the wind and the birds and the land.

I couldn't get as connected as I wanted, distracted by the steady whoosh of cars going by on the M50.  Even so, I put my hand on the bare ground and cried, trying to absorb the steadiness of the earth.

Last autumn, Ticknick experienced a fire so there were patches of burned bushes and trees, which always makes me sad.  In the copse, many trees had been cut down.  I don't know if they did that as fire mitigation or what.

On June 20, we decided to visit the park near the Milltown LUAS stop.  It was mostly cloudy and a bit warm.

As we waited for our train, a tram heading in the opposite direction pulled up.  There was a baby sitting by the window, just staring at Eli.  Eli waved at him and as the tram pulled away, the baby finally waved back.

We walked to Grace O'Donnell Memorial Park on a willow-canopied trail that ran along the River Dodder.  Lots of people and their puppers were also out on the trail, and we had to step aside multiple times for joggers to pass by.

I bet you didn't know there were wild rhinos in Ireland, did you?  Here is the proof:

Apparently, this statue was installed during the middle of the night back in 2002.  No one knows where it came from; no one has taken responsibility for it.

At least in this area, the river was only about knee-deep.  There was a man and his dog in the water.  The man was throwing large rocks for the dog to chase.  Pupper thought this was a tremendous game - he'd run to the spot of the splash, then look back at his owner expectantly.  Owner would toss a rock in the opposite direction, and doggo would happily gallop through the water to reach the spot where it landed.

On the map, this waterfall is named both Ritu Falls and Dartry Park Waterfall.  In the second photo, you can see two ducks who were standing in the falls.  I imagine they were finding insects, small fish, or plant matter as they stayed there quite some time.

  

There was a couple walking a pair of dogs as we stood near the falls.  We always ask if we can engage with any doggos we encounter so we gave them a good pet.  Our accents betray the fact that we're probably not from Ireland, so the guy asked where we were from.  

We said we were from Minnesota in the US.  He said something about Trump, and I said, "We're here to get AWAY from that idiot."  And the guy smiled ruefully and with great understanding.

A tree near the waterfall had this cool fungus/shelf mushroom thing going on.  I thought it was pretty so I grabbed a photo.

There's a pub called The Dropping Well near the park, and right at the edge of the parking area, there's a shipping container that was turned into a coffee kiosk called Box'd.

We had passed behind it during our walk to the falls, and there was a cut-out of an ice cream cone on the back wall.  As we were leaving the park, we went around to the front side of the kiosk to get an ice cream treat.

There was a hand-written sign taped to the window stating that the ice cream machine was broken.

Eli looked at me and said, "Is Box'd Irish for McDonalds?"