I have grown accustomed to the slow, relaxed rhythm of the seasons changing in Knockaderry. I look out from my front door at a verdant tree-filled valley with its rim of hills on the horizon, stretching from Barna to Broadford and Freemount and beyond. The people in these border regions of Limerick, Cork and Kerry are prone to exaggeration, so the hills are known locally as The Mullaghareirk Mountains. This is from the old Irish, which translates as ‘the hills with the view’. The area is also known as Sliabh Luachra, which translates as ‘the hills of the rushes’, famous for its poets, polkas and slides, its sets, and half sets. The valley that I look out on is also an ancient valley with an equally ancient name, Mágh Ghréine, ‘the valley of the sun’.

Any discussion of Irish weather risks the odd cloudburst of cliche, often fuelled by naive American tourists who believe everything they read in their Aer Lingus in-flight magazine. However, we have to admit that in Ireland we have weather, while every other place on the face of the planet has a climate. Proof of this is the recent European Commission’s decision to stop talking about Global Warming and focus instead on the term Climate Change – albeit only when they realised that Global Warming didn’t apply to Ireland. Here in Ireland, it’s either Baltic or the sun is splitting the stones, usually on the same day.

The main problem here is that most of us don’t welcome rain like the people in sub-Saharan Africa would a deluge. Our inner weathervane says things like, ‘It looks like rain’, or ‘It’s trying to rain’, or ‘It’s boiling for rain’, or ‘It’s a soft day’, or even better, ‘It’s a grand soft day’ if you’re an American tourist in Adare. We say, ‘It’s lashing rain’, ‘The heavens opened’, ‘Twas bucketing rain’, ‘Twas pissing rain’, and when it rains when you’re just going to bale the hay, we say, ‘Twas only a sun shower’, just perfect rainbow weather!

I have looked out from my porch on many an April evening and admired the sheets of rain being blown towards Ahalin across Stack’s big field. I’m also reminded of Austin Clarke, my favourite Irish weather poet, who talks of ‘the mist becoming rain’. In my opinion, our biggest problem in Ireland is when we get a settled period of very fine Summer weather, the farmers invariably start praying for rain on day three, and everyone knows the strength of their lobbying power with the Man Above!

For years, my weather watching was linked to my job, just like farmers and fishermen and such. You’d hear people talking about ‘Exam Weather’ each June, and ‘Back-to-School Weather’, which always consisted of a mini heatwave in September. Invariably, the farmers were also using this long-awaited window of opportunity to literally make hay while the sun shone.

Each year for thirty-odd years in June and July, I undertook a mini-Purgatory for my sins by correcting Leaving Cert exam papers. The six or seven-week period was usually filled with sunshine and heatwaves and Munster Finals in Thurles and holidays in Ballybunion for some, while I feverishly tried to meet completely unrealistic deadlines set by mandarins in far-off Athlone. That left August to eke out a wet week in Schull, with the prospect of torrential floods from burnt-out hurricanes in the Caribbean scorching in from the Atlantic while we diligently painted smooth stones which we had earlier retrieved from the beaches in Glandore or Ballydehob, while it lashed rain from leaden skies. Since those days, I always, for some morbid reason, expect news reports in August to announce the annual destruction and flooding caused by the monsoon season in India and Bangladesh.

May has always been my favourite month. It’s probably because of my love of gardening, but May puts on a great show in the garden before the harsh wind and rain wreak havoc with those delicate leaves, shoots and grasses. I’m always reminded of Thomas Hardy’s lines in his poem, ‘Afterwards’:

And the May month flaps it’s glad green leaves like wings,

Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk …….

 I have a May Garden, and by late April or early May, the climbing Dublin Bay red roses are abloom by the south-facing front door, and the bluebells and the Aubretia are cascading as they do. I marvel at the delicate new leaves on the beech trees that I got as a present from a dear cousin back in the 80s. My two oak trees, which we bought in Van Veen’s Nursery, are late as usual, and the sycamore that grew from a tiny seedling dominates the plot. Even though we continually moan about our Irish Weather, we also rely on it to supply us with a variety of joyful vitamins and feel-good hormones. Because of our unique weather, we have endless green fields, flowers, forests, lakes and pastures. And I love that special time when the thunder and lightning strike after one of those rare Azores Highs, when you can breathe in the calm smell of rain! Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us, and snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather in Ireland, only an endless variety of different kinds of good weather.