Day of Decision and Spring Flowers

Yesterday unexpectedly turned out to be the day Bill and I made our decision about whether to move and where to go.  After months of back and forth about where we might go, we decided to stay here for the time being. We decided that this was a good place to be and to have as a home base while we use our travel pass to explore other areas of the country. It is centrally located when looking at things from a north-south perspective and I am not that interested in Dublin and other points east, though I suppose we will visit Dublin at some point. Honestly, I have never read anything about it that makes it sound appealing to me, so it's way down on my list. Anyway, this will give us a chance to familiarize ourselves with different towns/areas. Bill has been particularly antsy because he doesn't care for walking the same few available routes over and over again and he has felt uninspired when it comes to his photography, so this will mix things up a bit.

From what we can tell, Ballinrobe has been starved of resources and that's too bad, really. There is a lot of walking and cycling going on in Ireland by locals and tourists alike and while other parts of Mayo have received grants to build trails and things, Ballinrobe has not. For example, there is a lake a couple of miles from town and the river empties into it. There seems to be no way to walk to the lake safely unless you walk through a farmer's land and through some forest. We have done this, after getting permission from the farmer, and it was amazingly beautiful, but it would be great to continue the walk by the river all the way to the lake. Walking on roads can be a scary proposition here--narrow roads, stone walls and speeding traffic do not equal a nice walking experience! There is so much beautiful landscape here that it's a shame people can't experience it as well as they might.

All that said, this is a great little town and I like it. I am glad to be staying.

More signs of spring were evident today when we were out. It was a warm, grey, misty kind of day. Bulbs are starting to flower.

Saw these little white flowers on the library grounds. I don't know what they are.

They are doing some serious tree pruning on the church grounds.

The birds were in a tree outside the library and they had plenty to say!

I have probably walked past this library wall hundreds of times and I never noticed the skull and crossbones!

Inside I've been playing around with my peace heart motif some more:

I stitched the purple one first--4 motifs around--and after I finished the third one I realized it would make a cute flower like that, so I did one like that.

I woke up this morning feeling settled for the first time in a long time. Once we made our decision yesterday I felt such peaceful relief. It felt like the right thing to do. Now we can move forward and not feel like we're in limbo! And we could tell our friend, Karen, who is coming for a visit this summer where she will be able to find us!

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