Onion Breakfast For The 🐖 🐖 Pigs.

 I was weeding my raised beds the other morning and I decided to make room for the veg plants we bought the other day from a garden centre:

I also bought a day lily and a big pink Hydrangea which only cost me 7 Euros.  The veg trays were swedes, kale, cabbage and more Brussel sprouts   The bill was 35 Euros but we will have plenty of food from our winter veg. I haven't  built my greenhouse/shed yet and the veg trays were around 3 Euros.

I decided to empty one of the raised beds full of onions:

Beauties!

The nettles showed no mercy to my poor arms.  It was far too hot to wear long sleeves when weeding.

Instead of us eating the onions 🌰 I fed them to the pigs:

Pink pig.  You can see the bay in the distance. 

I think that's  Black Eye who won a rosette at Cork Show last year.

Adults and babies.

Mrs Saddleback crunching a full onion.

Bronte Shows Diesel The Kerry And Limerick Greenway.

 

Greenway sign going to Listowel in County Kerry. 

Another wild Irish rose.

Old water tower cover in Ivy where once the steam locomotives would fill up with water.

Wild Irish 🌹 🥀 roses. 

Diesel and Bronte going for "walkies".

"Isn't this great?"  "Do you think they will buy us an ice cream or some chicken nuggets at that Scottish sounding place: Maccy Donald's?"  " I'm loving it!"

We went for a saunter again on the wonderful Greenway or repurposed railway line.

This time we took Bronte our faithful Golden Retriever and Diesel the Bernese dog that lives with us.  Her temperament is amazing and she loves Yorkshire 🍮  and potatoes 🥔.   I jest not.

We went for a gentle 3 miles saunter and met several cyclists 🚴‍♂️,  runners 🏃‍♂️ and walkers and they asked about the 🐕 🐕 and said they were very well behaved and the usual: "Good morning ." greetings.

I get tired of living on the Sheep's Head Way where I can climb and walk the hills over the two bays and rarely or never see a soul.  

Yes it's  spectacularly beautiful on a nice day, but its  nice to see somewhere new.  I have been walking the same route for twenty four years after all!

We humans talk and hopefully communicate with other walkers.  That's why I like the greenways so much.  Plus you are walking on a flat and even tarmac surface.

Repurposing Old Polytunnel Plastic To Make A Sheet Mulch to Suppress Weeds An A Place For My Planting Nursery.

 I said on yesterday's post that the veg plot is very weedy and I have decided to put old  polytunnel plastic down to smother the weeds and grass and I will place my plants nursery on them in between the raised beds.

Part of the cover of my last polytunnel that was ripped and destroyed by the many Atlantic gales we get on our peninsula living in the countryside next to the sea.

Me being a tight wad organic vegetable gardener and smallholder.  Didn't rush to buy horticultural plastic.  I reused and repurposed my old polytunnel cover.

A newly plastic mulched area for my carboot perennials nursery.

Anyone else repurpose plastic in the veg plot?  I have bought Mypex landscape fabric in the past.  It's  porous but the weeds grow through it after a while.

Finding Big Vegetables And Weeding.

 My poor old beloved veg plot is looking rather unkempt, wind swept, bedraggled, weedy and unloved at the moment.

I have course offered it my humble apologies for being absent with out leave.

I have decided to literally grasp the nettles and manicure the plot back into some kind of horticultural order.

Being a organic gardener I know weeds and nettles especially are a sign of fertility and a lot of weeds are wild flowers in the wrong place.

Not forgetting all the recent sunshine and recent rain and being situated between fields next to the sea on a some times very windy peninsula.  Plus I do give my plot lashings and dollops of fym and poultry manure pellets:

A bucket of poultry manure is a lot easier to sprinkle a few hand fulls rather than  pike big piles of fym.  I have both and my Autumn jobs will be topping up the beds.  I might bag some fym up and see if I can sell or barter or some?🤔

So yesterday for a couple of hours.  Joan Jett on Spotify on my mobilise phone accompanied me weeding and harvesting some vegetables.  Oh what pleasant surprises I had:

Japanese onions 🌰 in my repurposed baths.  Full of home made compost, fym and top soil.  A friend saw them and said they could be show 🌰 🌰. 

Two beetroot for our tea.  Wonderful. 

A big red cabbage ready for pickling.  Tater hash here we come!

What a fantastic year for smashing weather, flowers and vegetables.

Here's Joan Jett singing Crimson and Clover;

I would love to see Joan play live.  

"When you coming to play West Cork Joan?"

I Was Moved Watching Glastonbury.

 I have blogged before on here about Glastonbury music festival.   Especially when I visited England's Woodstock, way back in 1989.  

200,000 punters camped in the four day canvas city with it's  biblical multitudes, scrumpy cider and a Rastafarian pot seller openly shouting: "Rocky, rocky" like some one selling apples or ladies knickers for 1.99.  I thought he was shouting for his missing four legged friend. 😀

Jarvis Cocker said last night;  

"You have to submit to Glastonbury". 

 Of course he's spot on and it is something that consumes your mind, ears, taste buds, senses and sleep.

One band who I never thought I would get into are the the Irish band:The Script.  Hailing from Dublin with a lead singer who to me is a cross between Donny Osmond and a young Bono.

Danny O" Donohue wrapped the two hundred plus crowd around his lyrical fingers 

He talks to his audience like any great orator   I have seen great Christian Evangelist and political orators live like: Malcolm Muggeridge, David Watson, Billy Graham and Barbara Castle.  Danny is up there with his lingual skills.

Danny like a lot of us wears his heart on his sleeve and he shares our personal parental and friends losses .  I can relate so much to what he says.  He's also a Manchester United fan like myself.

Well Danny you genuinely moved me last night.  Thanks for showing the world it's not just about being in the lime light and fame and fortune.

Here's the song that moved me emotionally last night:

Tesco Shopping For Bottled Beers And Tins of Ravioli.

 Tropical Shore Juicy IPA, a tin of Ravioli and a bottle of Czech beer:  IBU.

Yes it's by hissy fit blog. rant again.

Since Brexshit you can not or rarely  can purchase English beers here in Ireland.  You can buy beer from all over Europe but no English beer like my beloved Newky Brown Ale.

We had a run over to Killarney and carried out some retail therapy and I tried two bottle beers.  

The Irish IPA was not very nice at all even though it was 6 percent.  The Czech pils was 5 percent and much much.

We also bought two tins of Ravioli for our tea.  We can't buy this in West Cork.

I can't wait for my roughing it prog festival  trip in Cornwall in late summer.  

Oh what English beers will I drink and eat great regional food like Cornish pasties.

The First Daisy Of Summer.

 

Our first Shasta Daisy came in flower this week.

I propagate these every year by division.  I have also grown them from cuttings.

Apparently they are named after the snow capped mountains in California in north America.

I love them.  I have never known such a good year for flowers.  Its been glorious.

I have been working all week and been too busy to blog until now.  Will catch up with your blogs.