What? That Makes No Sense.
IF THERE IS ONE THING I CAN SAY ABOUT IRELAND IT IS: “WHAT? THAT MAKES NO SENSE.”
I don’t mean that as any kind of insult or disrespect. I would never do that because I am a quarter Irish myself and if I did say something insulting I know too many Irish folks who would bury me in the peat bog.
No; when I say, “What? That makes no sense,” I am reacting to something looks out of place. Incongruity is something I find very entertaining. It is the bedrock of Comedy in my not so humble opinion.
The “What? That makes no sense,” in this particular Irish case is strictly horticultural.
Not twenty feet outside the back door of this house in Mountshannon, County Clare, Ireland is a substantial (grove?) of Bamboo. And not much farther away in the front yard is more Bamboo and a couple of Palm Trees.
“What? That makes no sense.”
I noticed the Bamboo when we first arrived. That was the first time I’d ever seen it growing in Ireland. I’ve always thought of Bamboo as a semi-tropical plant growing in China or in someplace where they use it to whip your butt for chewing gum and make uncomfortable furniture. Ireland, however, doesn’t seem to be prime territory for planting Bamboo in one’s backyard lawn.
Evidently I am wrong.
We asked the owner of the property about the Bamboo. He is Irish and his wife is Swiss, neither coming from a Bamboo planting culture, although one can never be too sure about the Swiss. He responded by saying that he planted the Bamboo and it “…just took off.”
“Just took off?”
His backyard is starting to resemble a location set from “Apocalypse Now.” Give it a couple more years and he can start to import Pandas and open a petting zoo. The Bamboo is standing at least 10 – 12 feet tall right now and it won’t be long before he’ll have a big enough crop to keep half a dozen “Ling-Lings” and “Wing- Dings” fat and sassy.
With regard to the Palm Trees on the property I have to admit that I have seen such trees before on this island, but always right along the coast. Portshannon is quite a distance inland.
“What? That makes no sense,”
Millions of years of hurricanes, strong ocean currents, and Princess Line Cruise Ships and it isn’t surprising that a cocoanut or two got washed ashore along the Irish coast. Once on land it soon follows that you will have either a Palm Tree of an Irish Luau.
The owner said that the Palm Trees were already there when he bought the place. He saw Palm Trees and knew that the perfect compliment would be Bamboo. If we ever come back here again I wouldn’t be surprised to find Banana Trees and Pineapples growing everywhere.
I can hear the Swiss wife calling out to her Hubby – “Paddy, Paddy, De plane! De plane!
Down the Hall on Your Left 
Ha-ha, John! As the late Fats Waller might say, “One never knows, do one?” Your suggestion about the Swiss is not at all out of place. We found on our guided tour of Zurich that there are neighborhoods where gardeners grow a good range of subtropical plants, because they are in some microclimate zone where those plants do well. Also, when we traveled to Locarno–in the Italian part of Switzerland, on the northern tip of Lake Maggiore–they had a lot of palm trees along the shore. https://www.ticinotopten.ch/en/trekking/lakeside-locarno-muralto-minusio
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