Very early on in the history of these pages I made mention of 'the umbrella tree' up 'Cayley's avenue' and it's importance to our family - See: Snow at Ballyduff 10 January 2010.

I note that I said I would show pictures of it and that I haven't done so yet.

Well, Coolmore House, to which Cayley's avenue leads, has been on the market for the fourth time since we have lived in the mill.

And we have heard that it is now sold - to Canadians.

If that proves to be the case, we await sight of our new neighbours with anticipation and, on foot of recent experience, some trepidation. There are reasonable - if not good - reasons for this perspective, mostly centred on the behaviour of the most recent owner, Niall Mellon, who proved himself to be incapable of being neighbourly.

So, yesterday afternoon Susan, Alice, Fergal and I decided that - in the interregnum so to speak - we would revisit old haunts and walk the avenue and the banks of the Nore, as we did regularly for thirty and more years before the 'philanthropist' became its owner.
And Coolmore - except for the hideous and inappropriate 'yellow-brick-roads' that Mellon installed throughout the property - looked as wonderful as ever on a glorious, hot June morning.

But back to The Umbrella Tree.

We had heard that the said tree was dead and I had assumed that - as with so many plants and shrubs, some of them mentioned here - it had succumbed to the rigours of the last two severe winters.

So it was a huge relief and delight to discover that it is alive and looking reasonably well - if a little scruffy.

And so now - depending, of course, on the attitude of the new, Canadian owners - we can recommence the sequence of photos of family and friends 'beneath the umbrella tree' that we have been taking for the last thirty five years and more.

And, one day I really will dig out the earlier pictures of us all 'beneath the Umbrella Tree'...............I promise.