My Dad really liked trees. He planted many trees including an orchard on the farm. He preserved the woods on our land in Sallowglen. One day he ran in to the kitchen and said "come and see I have found a pearl of great price". He was as excited as a child or like a person who won the lotto. I went out with him and he showed me a small copper beech, which he found when cutting the nettles. I went to Lenamore to see our cattle six weeks before he died. He was looking across the road as he was coming out the gate of our field and he said "look Tom that's a very strange tree over there. It is shedding its bark. I never saw one like it before". I went over and looked at it and found it was a Eucalyptus tree.

Dad was always very proud of the view of the Shannon and Tarbert Bay from our front door. He showed it to every visitor with great admiration. When my brother in law, Brendan Flynn, came to visit for the first time he took him for a walk and said "I have worked here all my life and isn't it a beautiful place to work". We often went for a drive out in the afternoon during the last few years of his life - to Beale strand, Sallowglen or to walk the bog. He loved to stand and just look at nature. He'd look at the Shannon or the sand in Beale and just say "Isn't it wonderful" as he allowed its beau- ty and mystery to fill his being. We'd be walking though the bog and he'd see a small flower "look at this Tom isn't it wonderful". He'd stop in front of the copper beech near our house and say aloud "isn't it wonderful, isn't it wonderful".

Dad loved animals especially cattle, dogs and horses. I was with him one day at the Limerick Show and an old friend came up to him and said "I thought you'd be tired of looking at all this by now". My Dad respond- ed "I never get tired of looking at three things, class horses, pedigree cattle and good looking women". Greyhounds were a very important interest in his life when we were young. We got two pence to walk the dogs back to Micky Kissanes shop on the Bally road. Dad often set out for Sallowglen with a load of hay for the cattle with two or three dogs walking after the car. The Patrick O'Hanlon and Bernie Lynch combination was known all over Kerry and Limerick for dogs like Hopeful Patriot, Humble Lad, Professor Henry and Humble Beginning. I can still smell the embrocation and winter green as my Dad 'did up' the dogs for the semi-finals and finals of coursing stakes. I can see Bernie with the baby power bottle "leave the rest to me Laneen" as he signalled to my father. I heard so many stories about dogs and coursing...... Bernie would say to my Dad over a pint at Mina Coolahan's "Do you remember the day we went to Duagh coursing and we had no room for young Timmy Mangan who was so anxious to go with us. You took pity on him and we put him in the boot of the car and left the door a little bit open. We got stuck going in to the field in Duagh and a policeman came over and pushed the car. You were so afraid that young Mangan would shout as the guard pushed the car". My Dad loved to tell the story about the evening Bernie and himself went to the track in Tralee with a dog in the pony and trap. "I had a great pony at the time" he would say. "We set out from Tarbert at around 3.00pm with five shillings in my pocket. We arrived in Tralee around 5.30pm. I spent half a crown to enter the dog. We won the race that evening. When we were approaching the Half- Way Bar on our way home Bemie said we cannot cross the Half-Way House without wetting our lips".

Horses really activated my Dad. He was really alive in their presence. What rapport between them? He spoke to and patted them as if they were his closest friend. I told him Ned's half-bred mare was in the field behind the house a few months before he died. "Where are my boots" he said "we must go out to see her". I could see the joy and happiness in his face as he moved forward to talk to her. My Dad had a wonderful eye for a horse. I was at a Show with him in Dublin once and he said "look Tom, No. 5 will be a great horse three years from now if he is well fed, groomed and brought out".

My father had many horses but two really took his fancy. He was very proud of Woodpecker who loved to jump. I will always remember the day we arrived in Ballsbridge with Woodpecker ridden by my brother Ned. We had jumped horses and ponies all over Kerry, Limerick, Clare and Tipperary but my Dad's ambition was to breed a horse for Ballsbridge. Ned Cash R.I.P. saw this mare jumping at Limerick Show and he want- ed to buy her. My Dad said "if Ned Cash wants to buy your horse, you have a good one". Woodpecker later jumped for Ireland with Paul Darragh and then for the Arab Country of Libya.