Organic Lettuces For My Rabbits And A Slug Pub.

 The raised bed is an old mini digger track that I repurposed.

I bought the organic lettuce plants specifically for my rabbits to eat.  They are organic like we are.

The slug pub is a Chinese takeaway plastic tray filled with some cheap cherry cider.  All we need now is for the slugs and snails to have a last drink on us:

Do you have slug pubs in your veg plot?

Weeding In A T Shirt And In The Wars.

Anyone for nettle rash?

 I cut my finger slicing onions on Monday.  On Tuesday I scratched all my arms removing brambles and on Wednesday when it was rainining I weeded part of the polytunnel and got stung by stinging nettles.  I am use to pulling nettles with my hands but I don't like my arms getting stung.

I think it's time to wear long sleeves, welding gauntlets and leave the onion chopping to a reaponsible grown up.😃

Plastic Bottle Cloche Cuttings Factory.

 Yep.  The diary of a plantaholic.

I was given a polythene bag full of plastic bottles by my brother to take to be recycled.  

Instead of getting 25 Cents a bottle from the Lidl recyling machine.  You put in your bottles and it prints out  yor bottles receipt and your refund is given at the checkout.

Me being a Womble I diverted them into my polytunnel friend: "Portugal" sometimes called "Algarve."

I have been digging out the compost and well rotted fym from my my heaps and filling builders cement buckets with the black and brown gold.  

Then I filled lots of plant pots and walked around Northsider Towers gardens taking shrubs and Cotoneaster cuttings.  

I dipped them in organic rooting powder, watered them and covered them with my plastic bottles cloches.  Which I had made by cutting the bottles in half.

I get about four cuttings to each plant pot.

I have up to thirty cloches at the moment.

Perhaps I am a plantaholic?  It's very contagious.  Any one else taking cuttings at the moment?

Heavy Rock Impression Of A Birmingham Megastar.

 I found this video on good old You Tube today.  I think it's very good.  Let me know if you like it please?

New Arrivals.

 Number one son came home with two sows one Saturday recently:

Last Monday morning we went to feed the other farrowing pigs and noticed these creatures:

Newly born piglets.

On Friday Star had a foal:

Who says nothing happens in the countryside?  

Freezer Bags Of Unyuns.

 I wanted some room to plant my new organic veg plants.  So we lifted a raised bed or two of onions and I topped and tailed them and the pigs got two buckets of onion stalks for their tea.

Then we peeled them and washed them and chopped them into four pieces and put them in the pull string vegetable dicer that we bought in you know where and ended up with twenty four bags of chopped onions.  That's 24 meal portions to be precise.

You just cook them from frozen.

Next harvest is the peas.  Do you freeze your onions?

Update.  Hand string pulled onion chopper:

You just peel them and chop them into 4 pieces and place them in the chopper, pull the string and it cuts your  full onions into centimetre sized pieces.  Just fill a freezer bag and you have enough for four people.

Shopping For Organic Vegetable Plants And Looking At Repurposed Pallets Furniture.

 J dropped me off near the square in Bantry on Friday and she carried on up the road to Lidl.

There is always a market every week and the big fair day is the first Friday of every month.

I had a saunter around the bric a brac and antiques and plant stalls and found a young lady selling organic veg plants. 

The flickers (slugs) in the polytunnel had ate my kale swedlings.  I bought four trays of kale, leeks, celery and lettuce.  She knocked off 2 Euros and gave me them for 18 Euros:

Box of veg plants.

I came home and began harvesting onions to make room for the new veg plants.

I also noticed someone selling repurposed pallet wood made into furniture.  What a great idea.  I love repurposing things on the veg plot don't I?

Don't they look good?

Whopper Unyuns.

 Unyun is an old Middle English word for onion apparently.

The photo is of my Snowball white onions.  They have grown really big in the polytunnel this year.

I think it is a combination of fym, heat and watering the polytunnel every morning:

 

I purchased this rotating sprinkler for four Euros from Dealz (Poundland) in Killarney.  It is one of the best and cheapest garden purchases I have ever made.

I only need to move the hose once to water all the polytunnel.  I just give it a tug and drag it towards me.

Not forgetting what good nutrients there must in our well water.  I hate to think what chemicals there are in mains water.  Rain water is certainly worth collecting and it's full of free nitrogen.

Digging In The Compost Pile.

 "Is it hot or is it me?"

It was blazing hot in my polytunnel today.  So I decided to take my trusty fork and dig in one of my compost piles. The one that I showed you the Nasturtiums camouflaging, remember?

One removed any fresh and decaying vegetation and forked it into the next bay and began digging up the brown gold.

I filled up one of my big black weeding containers.  It's a big planter that potted trees come in.

The brown gold had a few healthy brandling worms and no doubt lots of useful anearobic bacteria and plant food.

I broke it up and filtered it through my fingers:

Lovely stuff.  Tightwad compost made by Mother Nature and dug and treasured by yours truly.

Remember my Cotoneaster plant cloches?  Well I have 20 rooted plants now and I potted up the plants in my home made potting compost:

A new plant in my new homemade potting compost.

Do you make your own compost/ plant food?

Shasta Daisies. My Forever Plant Friend..

 If I had to choose a favourite flower it would have to be a member of the Daisy family.

Above are my Shasta Daisies just coming into flower.  They are named after the Californian snow covered mountains.

We have lots and lots of them in our gardens.

I adore them and every year I divide them and make more to sell at car boot sales.

I have grown them from cuttings in the polytunnel.  Hopefully this Autumn I will attempt to grow some from seed.

 

Granny Pop Out Of Bed.

 When I was in Kerry the other day.  I noticed a pink Convolvolus, Bindweed or Granny Pop Out Of Bed.  It was growing through a laurel hedge.

Normally the ones I see growing are white with their trumpet flowers.

Who would think a weed (wild flower) could look so beautiful?  Well it's related to the garden cultivar "Morning Glory or Ipoemia.

Have you see any interesting weeds/wild flowers lately?

Bronte Goes Walking Again On A Repurposed Railway And Did We See A Ghost? "Yoikes Scooby".

Please read my write up  below the photos  first.  Thank you.

Barnagh.  There's a cafe here and play area and you can hire bikes both pedestrian and electric.
 

Old metal signs.

Bronte ready for her walk.

Miles or Kilometres of tarmac.

Click on this photo please.  Can you see a stone shaped woman with a bob style hair cut, wearing a shawl and a long dress? I can.  Could it be the ghostly apparition of Moll O'Shaughnessy?

Bronte and me were amazed that the lights automatically came on.

Bronte cow watching.

We (me and Bronte) went for another saunter along the brilliant repurposing railway line or Limerick Greenway.  J dropped us off at Barnagh station carpark and she carried on to Tesco's in Newcastle West and arranged to pick us near Templeglantine village.  

It was only supposed to be 4.1 Kilometres but it felt a lot further than that.  Did you know that an Irish mile is longer than an Irish mile?  Google it if you don't believe me.  

I passed German and Dutch cyclists and met quite a few Irish cyclists and joggers and hikers along the Greenway.

When we approached the tunnel entrance  the electric lights came on.  There was metal mesh hanging from the tunnel ceiling.  

It felt eerie and I felt like someone or something was watching me.  Very strange.  

I wondered to myself if people had been killed during the tunnels construction or perhaps there had been a train crash there?  

Then I noticed a stone figure/apparition of a woman in one of the escape tunnels that working  railway men stood inside when a thundering train passed by.  

On leaving the tunnel and read a sign notice board mentioning a resident lady ghost: Moll O' Shaughnessy.  Apparently  she was good-natured but murdered her husband and child in a blood thirsty rage.  She was sentenced to her death and was rolled down the top of a hill in a barrel lined with rusty and sharp nails.  Her ghost is said to walk the townland.

Bronte was very tired and it began to rain.  A dog barked when we walked to the Templeglantine  carpark to meet J.  

I intend to walk another section another time.  I think I have walked over half of it now. 

Fair play to the Limerick and Kerry county councils and the Irish government spending millions of Euros in repurposing these old railway lines.

Leisure is very important.

Hope you liked my walk? We did.  

"Baskets Full Of Weeds".

 We rose at six and drove to a carboot sail arriving about an hour later.

My self propagated perennials.

I heard one browsing customer say to someone:

"Baskets full of weeds".

It wasn't the best of car boot selling days but we had a ride out and our sales paid for our diesel and our shopping.

Car boot sale punters.

I will post another of Bronte's walks in my next post.  

Hope England win tonight against the mighty Spain.

Last Of The Big Spenders.

 We went food shopping in Aldi this morning.

It was: Operation Onion Bhaji Mix and tins of Ravioli and Spaghetti with Sausage.

We bought ten Bhaji mixes and six tins of the other stuff.

Do you go on big food shopping trips like us?

It is like that old English music hall song by Marie Lloyd:

"A Little Bit Of What You Fancy Does You Good".

Two Charity Shop Vases Full Of Feverfew.

"The 18th Century Aspirin Plant."

I have this plant growing in my veg garden at the moment.  It is supposed to be brilliant for alleviating migraine and aches and pains.  

Living in a damp and cold climate like Ireland and Blighty.  It's probably the perfect plant for us all.

 You can eat the leaves raw or make a tea with it? I have made nettle tea in the past so I might make Feverfew tea.

There are some good Feverfew videos to watch on  good old You Tube.

Do you make herbal teas? What to you make?

I have bought Valerian tea bags from health shops and supermarkets.  Valerian is supposed to be good for calming the nerves and helping you sleep.

My brother is a bit of a collector like myself and he recently bought the two vases from a charity shop and gave them to us.  I don't think he paid much for them.  Aren't they pretty?

Another Good Year For The Roses.

 We have had the two wettest winters on record but the wild roses do not seem to mind:

It's a beauty.  

You can also see Montbretia which is considered a nuisance by many West Cork gardeners.  It originates in Africa.  

Perhaps it came here on the Gulf Stream along with the Gunnera and Fuchsia from Chile?  I don't think it is a garden escapee.  There's too much of it for that.  I have a Lucifer /Crocosmia flowering in my garden.  It's related to Montbretia.

I think this wild rose grew from one of my many cuttings.  Even wild roses are beautiful like their cultivar garden cousins.

Here's Elvis Costello singing about it being a good year for the roses.  I saw him at Glastonbury festival in 1989.  I was in my twenties and it seems a life time away.  Enjoy:

There are over 50 songs about Rose's.  Shall I do 50 blog posts about them? 

" I beg your pardon.  I didn't promise you a rose garden".. 

Well it's better than a certain T.rex  lyrics:

"I drive a Rolls Royce.  Cause it's good for my voice". 😀

Euros Championships Memorable Videos.

 

Taking a free cold shower during a storm.

Dutch fans dancing in unison.

It's been a brilliant tournament.  Much better than the World Cup.  Spain are fantastic.

Apart from South America. I think Europe have the best international teams.

Enjoy the videos.  If you can think of any others please post them on your blogs.

Heavy Rock Apple Pie.

 My old rocker mate Phil Mogg released a new record the other day.

He's 76 and still strutting his stuff.

Strangers In The Night by UFO is probably the greatest live album ever recorded.  Well apart from Live And Dangerous by Thin Lizzy of course.

I hope Phil and Neil and the lads come to West Cork or Kerry.  They will be very welcome.

My Own Eden Project Plastic Pop Bottles Cloches Worked.

 Remember about three weeks ago when I showed you how I made my cloches from plastic bottles? 

I took the cloches off the plant pots every few days and watered them and replaced the cloches.

Yesterday I took off the cloche and gently tugged on one of my plant pots full of Cotoneaster cuttings.  Guess what? They have all rooted in the three plant pots cloches I made.  That's twelve new Cotoneaster plants.

Deferred plant propagation gratification means in a few month twenty four Euros.  Not bad for  just a second hand filled plant pot of garden soil, rooting powder a plastic bottle cloche that was going to be recycled, some watering by me and a bit of TLC by Mother Nature.

Any one got any plastic bottles they don't want?

A Onion Bhaji Mix.

 

We found this onion bhaji mix in Aldi in Dunmanway the other day.

We have tried to make these onion starters many times but they have never turned out like the ones you get in the Indian restaurants.

I have lots and lots of onions growing in my veg plot.  So I lifted two of them and cut off their roots and stalks and through them on the compost pile.

J mixed the batter with the sliced onions and cooked them in hot oil.  Then the instructions on the packet said to place them in the oven for fifteen minutes.  This is how they turned out:

Our organic home grown onions and a bhaji mix for 99 Cents made a very nice meal and the best we have ever made.  Not bad if we say it ourselves.

The Pure Drop Inn.

 

Here is the Pure Drop Inn in Marnhull in Dorset that we visited in 2018.  It's mentioned in Thomas Hardy's classic Tess Of The Durbervilles:

I downloaded this 100 page version for free.  I have seen the film but never read the book.  I read it in three sessions.

Since reading it I have paid 59 Cents for the full version and I am reading it at the moment.

I have read a few Thomas Hardy books like Far From The Madding Crowd and Jude The Obscure.  Which I found very sad.  Didn't Shakespeare say that all life is tragedy?  

I visited Shaftesbury on my last Dorset visit and this was one of the towns in Jude The Obscure.

Tess is considered to be Hardy's Magnum opus or even his greatest work.  Anyone read it?

In the first chapter Tess's father sends a young lad in the pub for a drink and order a carriage to take him home.

Next door is the church where Tess had her new born son Sorrow buried.

My friend and I walked inside the pub for a refreshing pint to quench our thirst.  We sat down in a room near the bar and I heard the landlord  loud whisper to a barmaid:

"Have you seen the state of those two who have just come in?"

We may have looked a bit dishevelled after walking many miles and sleeping in tents.  But we were on one of our rock festivals and literary roughing it trips.  We meant no harm. 

A rather elegantly dressed old lady and a man came in and walked to the bar.  They must have been local gentry and the barman's voice suddenly turned posh and he said:

"Good afternoon.  Would you both like a gloss of woine".

I would have loved a chip butty and a bottle of Newky Brown.  The menu was out of my price range and quite exotic  and up market.  I would have liked the Ploughman's Lunch but I don't think the ploughman would have been very happy.😊

We finished our pints of bitter and walked down the road.  I told my friend what the man had said about us both.  He said: "Why didn't you tell me? " I replied.  "I didn't tell you because I knew you would have said something."

I love visiting Dorset.  It's like being in a modern day Hardy novel.

Time for a Kansas track.  One of my favourite Prog bands who I was lucky enough to see live in 2014:

Monday Tea From The Polytunnel.

 

Our chemical free homegrown vegetables keep on giving.

This was main ingredients of our Monday night tea.

Homeguard new potatoes and Snowball onions.  I prepared the ground with fym from our pigs, rabbits, hens and ducks and ponies, and we just water the vegetables with the well water that feeds the tap and hose pipe and sprinkler that I bought for four Euros from Dealz in Killarney.

Sometimes we go to the beach and collect seaweed but this year I have just used our fym.  I have lots of it.

Just muck and magic!

Our ancestors were organic farmers so why shouldn't we be?

"But The Gentry Must Come Down And The Poor Shall Wear The Crown."

 Today people in Blighty have the opportunity to make the Tories extinct.  

Here's a song written by a Wigan lad called George Winstanley who led the Diggers.  He believed in land for all and everyone could work the land:

I am still available Keir to work in your Allotments and Smallholdings department.  I can work online?

I have a great song for tomorrow when Keir becomes PM. My mum and dad would have been so happy that the party for the labourers are back in power.

"There's A Blarney Stone In Kerry.."

 The Mary Wallopers were excellent on Friday at Glastonbury on the BBC.  Talk about a breath of fresh air.  

Hopefully they will play down here in  West Cork and Kerry and I will get to see them play live some time soon?  

I had never heard of them before Friday and now I am listening and watching them on You Tube avidly.

Here's  their song about County Cork's famous Blarney stone.  But according to The Mary Wallopers there are many more Blarney stones in Ireland.  There is even one in Kerry.

Here is a video from the Late Late Show for you to tap your feet and enjoy:

It's been playing on my mental jukebox all week.  I have often been on the Bandon road to and from Cork but I have never met the fine Colleen with the stone beneath her belt.😊

Bargain Browsing Cows At The Carboot Sale.

 We packed the van the night before with my self propagated perennials and a few gardening books:

Osteospermums, Shasta Daisies, Loosestrife, Cranesbill Geraniums, Stonecrop Sedums..

We saw some Whitehead cows looking over a gate and looking at the pretty flowers and I heard two cows talking:

"I'll have some of dem flowers when I gets married."

"Are ye a virgin Irene?"

"Not yet Daisy".

Cows looking at the car boot wares

Plants and books all neatly arranged by J.

We  got our pitch fee back by seven.  Then we sold an odd few plants .  I always knock ten bob off if they buy a few.  

One man said he had just renovated a property to rent out and wanted my plants to make the garden look good for his tenants.  I did him a good deal for fifty Euros and I gave him a few extra plants for free.

We took turns to go walk abouts and have a look round.  J came back with two stainless steel dog bowls which cost her 2 Euros each.

We made eighty Euros and had lots of chats with very amiable people.  Its so much better than being at home and not seeing a soul.

I bought eight cans of Carlsberg and watched England do a Man United in 1999 and complete the Great Escape. The equalizer was amazing.  I can't see them beating Switzerland though.  I think it's France or Spain or Portugal or perhaps England to win the Euros? Don't be silly Dave.

Bronte and Me Go A Walk On Yet Another Greenway.

 On Saturday morning we drove to Fenit in county Kerry.  

Regular readers will remember we visited the brand new Greenway two years ago.  Ireland is spending millions  repurposing so many of it's old railway lines.  

Yes railway lines with spectacular sea views and paid for by  by the English and built by the Irish navvies and so many Irish caught the train to the ferry and on to Blighty. 

The tracks have been removed and tarmac has been laid instead.  

The routes are suitable for runners, cyclists, walkers, horse riders ( I suppose?) and dogs like Bronte.  

The Greenways are not  hilly and boggy like the Sheepshead  Way where I live.  There are toilets, shops, bicycle hire, accommodation and you even get to meet people.  

I can go walks where I live and I probably won't  see anyone most times.

The Limerick Greenway  which is not not far from Fenit. Even provides a regular  bus service for you and your bike, to get back to where you started if you want, or to your next destination.

J dropped Bronte and yours truly off at Causeway and we got on to the repurposed railway line and arranged to meet her in Fenit.  It was a typical Irish mizzle morning: "It's that rain that gets you wet" I thought to myself.

Bronte was delighted to going a stroll.  So was I a part from it raining.  A lady cyclist rode past and Bronte happily barked at all the excitement.  The cyclist smiled and said: "Your dog is happy and excited to be going a walk".  We both laughed.

I only saw two more walkers and half a dozen cyclists.  Here's some photos of our four mile walk in the rain:

Old branch station house.  It would make a good bunk house for walkers or maybe a snack shop?

Flat tarmac all the way.

Bronte's tail.   She set off in a gallop.

Cows in the distance lay down keeping the pasture beneath them dry.

Bronte next to the Rugosa rose.

Daisies.

Bronte next to the Valerian flowers.

Old railway arch.

Fenit Lighthouse.  St Brendan the Navigator lived near here.  He sailed from here in a cow hide boat and discovered America before Columbus did.

Beach. I found twenty Euros here last time I walked along the beach.

Fenit Harbour.  

The Jeanie Johnston use to sail from here with thousand of Irish emigrants escaping famine and unemployment and carrying cargo to America and Canada and England and  Australia and other over seas countries.  

Apparently the Irish diaspora in the world is said to be 90 million.  

In 2000 a replica was made of this boat.  This is in Dublin.  You can visit it and see how the emigrants lived.

Footbridge.

Bridge House.  It has been converted into five self catering cottages.

Fenit old railway station.

Old railway signal.

Sonebody owns a polytunnel just like someone who writes these posts. 

West End Bar.  It serves food, drink and does B and B.

Hope you enjoyed Bronte and my walk? We did.  My next post will be about us car booting again.