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Summer Day on an Irish Island
08/16/2002
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook.
CK: "Sipping my morning tea on this most southern of Irish Islands, I look west over swaying masts, spot a tractor with a buck rake depositing haycock over a stone border.foundation."
Commentator Chuck Kruger.
CK: In no time, I'm trampling away and bits of hay, bits of banter cover us all. The stack rises. Tramp, tramp, tramp. Every step I try to compress the hay. I'm in the rhythm of a beast of burden, trudging around, a menial; yet essential task. Periodically, I place my pike along the edge of the stack, step on it, and the barber below, with a long-toothed rake, combs out loose hair. The reak grows, my trampling slows. Three men pike up to me. I lay occasional pike-fulls across the middle, so that the new hay interlocks with that on both sides. The top, twelve feet high. I have to reach my pike down and snag efforts from below. And it's finished. The cattle guaranteed hay through the winter. I return home, take my first afternoon nap of the year. When I wake I peer out the bedroom window, and there, across the harbor, she stands; four square, straight, and golden.
Commentator Chuck Kruger comes to us from Cape Clear Island, County Cork Ireland. The Weather Notebook is sponsored generously by Subaru of America and The National Science Foundation.
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