Irish Garden Poetry

I had heard sometime back that the Irish are fond of poetry, and many great poets are Irish. A few months back, I ordered a copy of The Book of Irish Verse - Irish poetry from the sixth century to the present, edited by John Montague so that I could do a little background reading on Ireland through poems. I even quoted a few lines from a 9th Century series of triads when thanking my host for his hospitality in arranging a dinner for me to meet some biomass industry leaders: Three things that are always ready in a decent man's house: beer, a bath, a good fire.

View of the valley from above Carlow

I was taken by how green Ireland is, even in the middle of April when I was told that it is still a little early for the season. The landscape is similar to green western Oregon, but still much different, and the old places are preserved in rock. Unlike Oregon where the old is still relatively new compared to

A 300 year old wall

this part of Europe, and made of wood that doesn't last. Everywhere in Ireland what is old is made of rock - ancient fences and walls and ruins of church towers, old houses in the country, and building in the towns, along side the old are newer ones, no more than 200 years young - scattered also around the countryside. Information signs in Gaelic and English - historic sites and signs, for renamed streets that are remembrances of an occupation not from across the Channel, but by a country in the east not more than 13 miles away at the nearest point - maybe more on that later. This is a country that is mostly farms and fields green with grasses and spring-planted wheat, with bright yellow rapeseed fields mixed in, along with cattle and sheep thrown in for good measure. And everyone is named John, except for those with names like Declan, Hazel, Ewen, and Padraig. These are a few fresh memories of Ireland.

An Irish garden in Adare

I spend all but one night in Carlow, with the exception a hotel in Adare on the way to Limerick. Across the street from my lodging were thatch-roofed cottages and shops - obviously for the pleasure of tourists. But the front yard garden of one was worth a quick picture - an Irish garden. Over a cup of tea with milk on Friday, one of my hosts commented that Irish gardens are, "Where you stuff the beds full of plants." It didn't matter to me, this picture fits my mind's eye vision of the way a garden should look. I found an Irish garden designer's Website, and she had good article posted that described what are actually Irish gardens.

Research plot of "salley" - willow

Maybe since there is not really an actual Irish garden style, there is not an abundance of Irish poems about them. One garden poem is by William Butler Yates, but it doesn't describe the kind of garden seen in the photograph above, or the formal English garden as found in estate as in the earlier post about Duckett's Grove Castle. The Yates poem depicting a "salley" garden, is describing a utilitarian garden of willows (1) - but regardless, it is a scene in a Irish garden none-the-less.

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;

She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.

She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;

But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree.

In a field by the river my love and I did stand,

And on my leaning shoulder she placed her snow-white hand.

She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;

But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

Edenderry Power facility

An Irish salley garden today is not a place where young lovers would likely meet, unless the two were farmers kindling their love while growing willow to be harvested as biomass for fuel in pellet stoves for heat, or blended with peat and burned at a power station to generate electricity. But this may not be so strange, that willow once grown in gardens for its fiber to support a basket making industry, is now an industrial feedstock for bioenergy. My hosts are doing research on willow - finding ways to better grow the trees year after year, so more of Ireland's energy can come from indigenous sources, rather than oil - a further greening of the Emerald Isle.
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(1) A salley is a willow tree. It was once common to have gardens of willows for osiers (willow rods). These gardens were kept to have material for basket-making and for thatch roofing of cottages. The Gaelic for willow is saileach, which comes from the Latin, salix for willow tree. Definition is from the link here.

Words Into Action - Lesson in Government

A speech was given at Georgetown University back on March 30, 2011. In the remarks, a Presidential Directive was given that was translated into an executive order - follow up meetings were scheduled, and new tasks added to a job list. It is pretty cool to see how words in a speech can put actions into play - to personally be able to see government in action. I first became aware of government in a seventh grade class

F/A 18 fueled with 50/50 biofuel blend

that had a big standardized Constitution Test attached to it. As I remember it, was that the year the North Koreans captured the USS Pueblo⁽¹⁾ and Hale Boggs was the House Majority Leader. Lots of facts to have to remember about how our government worked. Jump forward a lot of years - At 25 minutes and 25 seconds into the speech: And I’m directing the Navy and the Department of Energy and Agriculture to work with the private sector to create advanced biofuels that can power not just fighter jets, but also trucks and commercial airliners. Also, at 26 minutes and 28 seconds: Over the next two years, we’ll help entrepreneurs break ground for four next-generation biorefineries -– each with a capacity of more than 20 million gallons per year. There was word that something was leaked to the press (see the Wall Street Journal article below) - I had no idea what that was about the other day. But when Web-surfing this evening, the article below popped up in response to some of the key words I used. It is not the kind of stuff that Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein⁽²⁾ would write about, but it caught my attention - a month after the speech, when it involved me.⁽³⁾
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WALL STREET JOURNAL

Led By DoD, Federal Government Hoping To Fund Biorefineries  

  

Yuliya Chemova, 30 June 2011

The Department of Defense, an emerging market force in biofuels, is working on a new program to finance non-petroleum fuel production, in collaboration with the departments of energy and agriculture, according to people familiar with the situation.

The Defense Department is considering invoking the Defense Production Act--a 1950 law created to enable the military to source essential materials in a timely matter--to gain flexibility in how it buys biofuels and invests in biorefineries, according to these people.

Three departments--Defense, Energy and Agriculture--are close to signing a memorandum of understanding for a joint venture that would invest directly in new U.S.-based production facilities for advanced biofuels, these people said.

Program organizers are hoping to fund it with $300 million to $500 million from all three departments, and that money would be leveraged by private investments in each project, according to these people. There are roughly 500 venture capital-backed start-ups in the biofuels space, and many are undercapitalized.

The focus is on biofuels that are replicas of petroleum-based jet fuel and diesel, and less on ethanol.

In March, President Obama tasked these three department to work with the private industry to boost the production of biofuels.

"The Departments are exploring a variety of options to work with the private sector to provide alternate fuels to meet military and commercial needs," wrote Lt. Col. Melinda F. Morgan, spokeswoman for the Defense Department, in an email. She declined to comment further. Representatives of the departments of Agriculture and Energy declined to comment.

The Defense Department has recently stressed in hearings on Capitol Hill that advanced biofuels are of strategic importance to the U.S. "Diversification to advanced biofuels is essential to sustain the U.S. military's mission capabilities," said Tom Hicks, deputy assistant secretary of Navy for Energy, before the House Subcommittee on energy and power on June 3. The Navy has a goal of replacing half of petroleum-fuel with domestically sourced biofuels by 2020.

But the current biofuels industry is young and does not have enough production capacity to meet such demand. That is why, these people said, the Defense Department is stepping in to help.

Federal money would help resolve the predicament of many start-up biofuel producers that cannot find standard project financing, even as they see growing interest from the airline and other industries to purchase such fuels.

"Traditional project finance [for biorefineries] is still challenged," said Jonathan Wolfson, chief executive of Solazyme Inc., a venture-capital backed company that recently held an initial public offering. Solazyme's algae-based oils are currently being tested by the Navy.

However, the capital goal for the new program of up to $500 million may be more aspirational than realistic, as the federal government grapples with a huge deficit and Congress has marked down numerous existing programs at the Energy and Agriculture Departments that currently support clean technologies.

As the new program is being contemplated, other methods of support are weakening. Loan guarantees from the Agriculture Department, for example, have no new appropriations for either fiscal 2011 or 2012. That program, titled 9003, has supported projects from venture-capital backed companies such as Coskata Inc. and Enerkem Inc. And the Energy Department's Biomass and Biorefinery research and development programs, which helped such companies as Solazyme, Elevance Renewable Sciences Inc. and Sapphire Energy Inc., are scheduled to receive about half of what the President asked for in his budget request, per the latest appropriations from the House.

Invoking the Defense Production Act would make it easier to circumvent certain appropriations requirements in Congress. The Act may also give flexibility to the military in how it funds biorefineries -- for example, by either investing equity in such facilities or providing loan guarantees, as it sees fit, said two people.

Several bills pending in Congress may also extend the Defense Department's ability to lengthen contract terms for fuels.

"What you want to see are longer-term commitments for purchasing," Wolfson said. Banks are reluctant to fund biorefineries because these are large capital investments that have pay back times of 10 to 15 years, and yet, there is no guarantee the fuel they produce would be bought, and at the right price. Traditionally, fuels are bought on the spot market.

Three departments--Defense, Energy and Agriculture--are close to signing an agreement for a joint venture that would invest directly in new U.S.-based production facilities, VentureWire has learned. The program could fund start-ups through a pool of as much as $500 million from the agencies.

(c) 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

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(1) Actually, the capture of the Pueblo happened in my eighth grade year - I had to look it up. 

(2) The Woodward and Bernstein papers associated with the Watergate scandal. 
(3) This effort is an expansion of earlier partnerships in this arena. For a perspective about one of the kinds of feedstocks to be used to produce jet biofuels, see the earlier blog by clicking here, and agriculture working with aviation by clicking here.