A Flying Orb Ghost Story For Halloween.

Click on the sign to read please.

The small building on the left is the Hell Fire Club.

Cloisters windows where the orbs flew through.

 Regular readers will know we like visiting ancient sites in Ireland.  

I know there a lot of people on the Internet  who do not believe in God or the devil or even the living dead.  But this is what happened one late summer day to us:

The above photos were taken in 2017.  Google photos reminded me of the date the other day.

There was my youngest son, my wife and me.  We had seen the tourist signs for an old Franciscan Priory, a castle and an Hell Fire Club.

We were the only visitors walking through the grounds.  The three of us immediately very uncomfortable and that someone was watching us.

I walked along into the ruins and a white round orb or like circle of mist passed over my shoulder and out  the cloister windows.  Then several more flew passed me.  

It felt like we were in a room full of people. Yet only 3 of were present in broad day light.

We all felt really scared and couldn't leave the building quick enough.

I have seen ghosts before and wrote about them on here.  I have watched many ghost programmes and read about white orbs and also pyschometry when things or events get stuck in water like rivers etc.

The Hell Fire Club was built the same year the Franciscans left the Priory.  Hell Fire Clubs were mainly drinking clubs for rich aristocrat types.  But there are tails of them trying to rise the devil.

I have also read that Cromwellian soldiers or Roundheads ransacked the Priory and people were murdered there.  

We definitely felt uneasy and picked up on the tragedy of the place and that spirits were not at rest. None of us ever wish to visit the place again.

Have you had similar ghostly experiences or do you know of a haunted building near you?

Here's a song that we should have been singing:

Winter Onions And Our Summer Onions Sprouting In The Chitting Room And A Dylan Thomas Poem.

Our Japanese Winter onions are loving it growing in a raised bed in the polytunnel.  

I have grown these winter onions for over thirty years and they don't mind snow or wind or rain or anything  the Autumn, Winter and Spring throws at them.

 Regular readers will remember that we froze a lot of our Winter onions.  The ones in the cardboard box  we put them on a shelf in the dwelling where we live and the room that I chit my seed potatoes.

It must be the heat of the room that seems to have made the onions come to life and decided to sprout and grow stems and stalks?

The onions made me think of a Dylan Thomas poem.  He writes about an invisible green force.  

What is that makes a seed germinate or a bulb or flower to sprout?  Mother Nature's magic touch perhaps?

A Parkside Tools Advert Perhaps?

 If you are a tight wad like me you might purchase your gardening tools from one of the German discount stores middle aisles "Special Buys" section.  I am always buying secateurs made by Parkside.  They are cheap, painted green and easy to lose.  Read the book, got the T shirt.  I haven't got the Lidl trainers or T shirt though!

I saw this advert on good old YouTube.  I don't think it is a Parkside advert but you never know.

Anyway or any road.  Here's the perfect Christmas present for the gardener in your life:

Autumn Evenings.

"Home sweet home."
 

I paid ten Euros for the blue coffee table at a carboot sale.  A bargain.

Stove lit and stocked up with wooden off cuts.  Please note the Pig Finisher bag is full of wood off cuts and not my supper.

It's going to be a long winter.  

Oh to live where there are street lights in a village.  Instead we have six or seven months of pitch black darkness from now until the clocks go back in Spring.

Why do towns and villages get the services like public transport, free mains water and sewerage (in Ireland it is!), mobile libraries, bottle and can banks, post boxes, shops and pubs and...?  Should I go on?

Why do the clocks go back?  We are not WW1 ammunition workers.  Why don't they just leave the clocks alone?

At least my mobile phone automatically changes the time for me.  I still haven't changed our front room clock.

Allium Porrums Growing In A Repurposed Oil Tank.

 My Leeks are growing in my plastic raised beds that I repurposed from old central heating tanks.

We cut each one in half to make two raised beds and I drilled drainage holes for them.

Then I half filled them with branches, weeds, fairly fresh fym, well rotted compost and fym and old cardboard.  My own version of Hugelkultur gardening and all for free.

I mulched the leeks with the leaves from the Hydrangeas cuttings I made on my last post.

Leeks originate from Central  Asia and they are members of the Allium family.  They are said to be great for reducing our blood pressure and they have anti cancer properties.

You can see the Leeks are loving it and have no problems about growing in an old plastic heating oil tank full of organic materials.

Like I often write on here you do not need to have a garden or allotment to grow your ow organic vegetables.  All you need is something to grow them in.  I have 24 raised beds full of fym and leeks and winter onions, lettuces, carrots, swedes and kale.  

Friday was a wash out and I think the seasons around now are getting historically wetter and raised beds are the way to go.  It's preferable to be gardening at waist height rather down at your toes.

A Carrier Bag Full Of Hydrangeas.

 Not quite the elegaic prose title: A Bouquet Of Barbed Wire but not a bad title for a blog post is it?

Hydrangea cuttings waiting for new plant pot homes.  

On Sunday morning I went down the garden with a carrier bag and my "trusty" secateurs "Parkside" from Lidl and took 35 cuttings.  

Bronte the Golden Retriever was walking in amongst the shrubs and perennials and Storm Ashley was trying to blow my hat off

I lost a pair of secateurs a couple of weeks ago in the polytunnel or veg plot.  

Why do horticultural equipment manufacturers paint everything bright orange or pink or put "made to be lost" stickers on the green ones?

I will probably find them some time in the compost pile or in a raised bed or in the polytunnel?

Any one else plant cuttings mad?  I have took and made over 50 new shrubs this Autumn already.  They all look like they have rooted and I am an happy bunny with my plastic bottle cloche propagating nursery experiment or PBCPNE for short.

"I'm From The Gas Board!"

I found this very funny video on You Tube and it made me laugh.

Come on Keir have a laugh at this and reverse the pensioners heating cuts and reward them and every one else in the forthcoming budget.  Tax the rich not the poor.

 Did you know that Rising Damp was supposed to be set in Yorkshire?  I didn't until recently.

It's another  horrible and wet evening going into the Irish Bank Holiday weekend.  I am glad I made my plastic raised beds for my veggies this year.

The last two years Autumn and Winter and Spring have been the wettest on record.  This year looks to be the same.

I have lit the stove and burning some wood off cuts to keep us warm.

I wouldn't like a gas bill!

Some Prog On A Wednesday.

 Regular readers will know I love Progressive Rock music or even it's other name: Cerebral Rock.

Songs and music with themes and guitar solos that can be over seven minutes or longer.

One English band who I have seen twice at Cropredy Brasenose Fringe Festival  and A New Day Festival in 2022 are Kaprekars Concept.  

I have also seen their saxophonist and flautist David Jackson play in the David Cross Band at The Night Of The Prog Festival in Loreley in Germany in 2017. He was a member of Van Der Graaf Generator and they were formed at Manchester University.  Not many people know that.  

Any way or any road.  Dorie Jackson (David's Daughter) who is Kaprekar's Constant lead singer just released another song and I saw it on You Tube the other day.  I really like it and I hope the band tour or play some Prog Festivals in Blighty next year.  Enjoy:

"It Is Easier To Train A Chimp!"

 We went in Aldi the other day.  I like perusing the Special Buys in the middle aisle.  

You find your self picking up 4 tins of El Cheapo baked beans for 27 Cents and pick up a flat screen 32 inch television for 500 Euros. I have said it a million times I exaggerate.

Any way or any road. We had completed our shopping and I had my usual hissy fit rant speech of there being no English beers to purchase  

A nice looking and helpful Irish lady shop assistant offered to help us negotiate with the "Self Service" machines.

We were very reluctant but we sheepishly walked to the slaughter, I mean checkout.

One by one we gingerly took each item out of the trolley and scanned it and of course it didn't work.

The lady pressed a button and she smiled and we tried again.  Of course it would not allow our  shopping to scan nor to put the items in the bag.

The lady asked us if we had any identification? I said: " No" and J said: " Yes!"

The shop assistant said: "I am only joking."

We managed to stop the machine six times.  Other people paying with cards sailed by with their shopping using the machines beside us.

We managed to get the machine camera/scanner to be unable to process our shopping six times.

Eventually we paid.

The lady said: " I think I best follow you home to see you're ok?"

So much for technology and machines that don't  like cash or daft folk in their sixties.

I think a  human cashier could of served six people in the time the unmanned machine took to serve us.  Progress I guess or not?

Stop the world I want to get off.

Anyone else had similar problems with these self service machines in your local supermarket?

Mulching With Leek And Dock Leaves.

Japanese Onions mulched with Docks and Leek leaves today.

I have been thinking.  "Oh no!"

I will have to have a lie down.

One likes to experiment with different mulches in the veg garden.  Previously I have used, grass, hay and straw and fym to mulch the beds.

Today I experimented by using dock leaves and leek leaves.

Rather like how trees in forests shed their leaves and blacket the ground and keep it warm and provide plant and tree food.

I thinks it is Mother Nature composting.

Hopefully the worms and anaerobic bacteria will take the mulches into the garden soil and 
 provide plant food for the vegetables?  The leaves should also suppress any weed growth.

There are not many falling leaves near me.  I might go bagging leaves in a woods this Bank Holiday weekend?  Only Ireland could have a Bank Holiday werkend in October?

Anyone else use weeds or leaves for mulching?

Anyone got any leaves they don't want?  I will give them a good home and compost and mulch my veggies with them.

Don't take your leaves to the tip use them for a mulch or compost them.

 

Our Plastic Raised Beds Planter Vegetables Progress.

Organic veg growing in repurposed plastic raised beds.  The leeks don't mind living in an old heating oil tank.  They taste delicious in our home grown and home made leek and potato soup.

Leeks doing well.  

Japanese or Winter onions growing in old baths.  They need weeding.  That's fym top dressing for you.  I don't mind the weeds.  It shows your ground is fertile.

Swedes.  I pick the leaves for the rabbits.

More swedes growing in cut down IBC tanks.  I of course drilled holes in them all.

The fish box container allotment in the polytunnel.

Celery for the rabbits and yours truly.

Brussel sprouts.

Japanese onions growing in a wooden decking planks raised bed in the polytunnel.

I gave the rabbits an hearty Celery breakfast.  There is only them and me that likes it.

The old oil heating tanks, IBC tanks and plastic baths and wood raised beds have been a great success for growing my veggies this year.

They drain well and the growing ground is nearer to you.

Once again my plastic raised beds demonstrate to me that you don't need to have a garden or allotment to grow organic vegetables.  All you need is something to grow them in.

Another thing is you spend your time weeding just the growing areas.

Anyone else growing their bed in raised beds instead of on the flat soil?  

They are easier on the back and they drain quicker than the ground and it some times very full water table.

I am getting older and I am trying to make my vegetable gardening easier.  I never want to stop growing my own and it's the only way of getting "fresh" vegetables and organic ones at that!

Lucozade Mini Greenhouses.

 I have been taking lots more cuttings over the last few days: Cotoneaster, Hypericum and Rugosa rose and Photinia or Red Robin cuttings to be precise.

If I took the fully intact Lucozade plastic bottles to the "Return" machines in all the Irish supermarkets.  I would get a receipt for 25 Cents per bottle.

Incidentally I was reading online the other day and it said none of the "Return" paper receipts can be recycled.  I suppose it's the ink?  🤔

There are also no machines petfood tins or one for bottles.

Instead of taking the bottles back I have cut the bottles in half and made cuttings cloches or mini greenhouses out of them.  

They retain the moisture after watering them and protect tender plants from slugs and snails damage.

My plastic plant propagation method is a good way of making new plants for free.

Anyone take cuttings?  I seem to make them most days at the moment.  Perhaps I am a plant propagator addict?  

A Cheap Ceramic Plug Heater.

A ceramic plug heater that only cost 10 Euros.

Number one son and his girlfriend came back the other night  with some electric heaters and shopping for the cats and dogs and us from a certain discount supermarket near us.

The small ceramic plug heater is only small and costs 22 Cents or 14 Pence an hour in England to run.  It's not that big going off the size of the plug socket, but it does  gives off tremendous heat.

It reminded me of that joke about a poor family who used a donkey jacket (poor donkey"!) for a blanket.  The mother says to her kids: "Don't call it a jacket call it an Eiderdown".  A while later. Mother is entertaining  posh guests downstairs and her son shouts down the stairs: "Mum the sleeves fallen off the Eiderdown".

It will be great turning on the plug in the morning and getting warm whilst we eat some biscuits and have a brew.  Real ground black coffee of course!  I can't stand the instant stuff. 

I will post  another keeping us warm post another day.

Here's an old rock song favourite of mine:

 

The Price Of Coal, Logs And Kindling.

 Taken from the outskirts of  a Cork city garage forecourt on Monday afternoon.

I read online that the Irish government puts 5.85 Euros carbon tax on a bag of coal or solid fuel.

They are putting another 80 Cents on a bag next Spring and 17 Euros on a tank of heating oil.

We are burning wood offcuts from a boat thats just had a revamp.

I hope it's not a cold winter like 2010.  How much do we spend heating our homes from September to March?

I haven't ordered any oil yet.  We light the stove in the front room and have put more blankets on the bed. 

I read also a certain supermarket is selling a really cheap electric heater that only costs 22 Cents an hour to run.  I am thinking of getting one.  Anyone know if they any good?

If you fancy an hot Toddy nightcap remember you pay 11 Euros in VAT on a bottle of whiskey or whisky if it is Scottish!

Annoying Weeds.

My weeding bucket containing Couch grass or "Twitch".

I inherited this weed when I turned a cow pasture into my vegetable plot over twenty years ago and made it into my allotment in the countryside next to the sea.  

Couch grass or "Twitch" is a nuisance and pernicious weed and a lot of new allotment holders soon learn they have inherited a lot of such weeds.

Rotovators break up the grass and make lots of little plants.

I have seen it survive being smothered by black plastic sheeting for months.

Some people would use glyphosate weed killers to destroy it.  I am an organic gardener and for me this is not an option. Plus I believe glyphosates cause Cancer.

I live with the weed and compost the roots.  If I had a bonfire I could burn it.  Onions love the potash from wood ashes.  Some weeds you just put up with and pull them out and throw them away or compost them

Another option would be to plastic sheet the area and make raised like mine in another days post.  You could import topsoil and well rotted fym and fill the containers.  Hopefully not importing any annoying and pernicious weeds.

What annoying weeds are the bane of your garden?  How do you control them?   I very rarely see Rosebay Willow Herb growing in Ireland.  I wonder why not?

 

Digging Up The Well Rotted FYM From Scruffy Allotment Corner.

 

Scruffy Corner.  Here lives a big pile of fym.  It was recently covered in weeds and nettles in particular.  

"Where nettles grow.  Anything will grow".

That is an old country saying.  I suppose I could have covered the pile with a sheet of black plastic to make it sweat and kill any weed seeds?

Garden videos and books will tell you should turn your compost heap and not let it get too wet.  I just left it for twelve months to decompose and the worms and the beneficial anaerobic bacteria did the rest.

See all the lovely wriggly brandling worms.  It takes me back to my Coarse fishing days.

Black and brown gold.  Lovely friable compost and all for free.

Do you have a scruffy corner in your allotment or garden where you store your fym, weeds and grass clippings and weeds?  Plants love Mother Nature made compost.

I spent four hours potting up and making cuttings today.  Gardening need not cost you any money if you use organic methods of feeding the soil and propagating plants.

Nasturtiums Grazing Piglets.

 It seems I am not the ones who likes growing and eating organic vegetables.

They are grazing the Nasturtiums that have self seeded under and along the green windbreak netting that is supposed to protect my polytunnel from Westerly gales from the Atlantic.  That's the windbreak netting mesh I mentioned about on your blog the other day JayCee. 

I noticed something had walked over my wooden decking plank Japanese onions raised bed and grazed my Brassicas yesterday .  I thought to myself:

"The slugs and snails have been busy".

Now I see who are the real culprits.

Our free range pigs like to pick their own whether the crops are ready or not.  

"Don't Be Late".

 It's that time of year when "Me, myself and I"  ( Joan Armatrading song) and my  old friend email each other about ideas for festivals and line ups next year.  He lives in Poland and I live in Eire.

I am sure the organisers of Cropredy and A New Day Festival could do with a few suggestions?

My first suggestion would be Canadian Prog band Saga.  They must be one of the best and most underrated bands in the world.

Great rock fans like the Germans appreciate so many rock bands that seem to go unnoticed in Britain and Ireland.  

So many rock bands tour Germany and not here or England and the other home countries.  Imagine being big in Germany or Japan and not in Britain? If I had been in a band I would be big in Iceland or Lidl😊.

One band who I would truly like to see tread the stage boards of the above mentioned festivals would be Saga.  Their lead singer comes from Wales and perhaps they will play Killarney or Cork?🎸🎶🎤?  

Is there a rock band you would love to see play live at a music festival?

I will offer more festival headliners suggestions on some other posts.  I don't want to be called a "one trick"pony blog writer.

A smallholding post tomorrow.

The Plastic Bottle Cloche Plant Factory.

 

Plastic bottles cut in half and turned into plant cloches.  They act like mini greenhouses.  Retaining moisture and protecting cuttings from predators like slugs and snails.

I have made lots of shrub cuttings using the plant cloches.  

The ones above have all rooted. I have taken the plastic bottles off them and I will use them to propagate more cuttings.

There are Cotoneasters, Hydrangeas, Hypericum, Hebes, Rugosa roses and are rooted cuttings propagated from our gardens.

You don't need money to make plants.  Anyone else making shrub or hedge cuttings?

More Hedging Cuttings.

 I gave a Laurel hedge a good cutting back last week.

Of course I saved some of the trimmings to make hedge cuttings.  There are over twenty of them.

Laurel hedge cuttings planted in sand.

Normally I place my cuttings in my homemade compost/well rotted fym. 

I thought I would use sand this time for a rooting medium.  I don't use sea sand because this contains salt and the plants will not like it.

Apparently Laurel is poisonous to animals and us human folk.  It gives off a Cyanide gas if you chip it in a wood chipper.  

I know if you don't cut it back it can grow up to forty feet high.  It also is not very fond of living next to the sea.  Oh well!

It will be good to compare rooting with compost and with sand.

This time of year is a good time to take cuttings.  Just dip them in organic hormone rooting powder and plant them in a pot and overwinter them in a greenhouse or polytunnel.  All they need is a drink now and again.

It's a good and cheap way of making hedging for nothing.

Anyone else making hedge or shrub cuttings at the moment?

Medieval Buttevant And Napoleons and Wellington's Horses Marengo and Copenhagen.

 We stopped at Buttevant a couple of weeks ago.  It's a very old town that goes back to Norman times.

It's half way between Cork city and Limerick.  If I see an old castle or Abbey or church or fortified house.  I just have to go and have a look.

Cahirmee horse fair is held here every year.  This fair goes back to ancient times.  Both Wellington's and Napoleon's horses were purchased at Cahirmee.

Here's some photos of the town:

Quintessentially quaint rural Irish pub.

Modern art.

Ancient Norman named who ruled around here.  There's Barry's Tea company in Cork.  My grandparents favourite tea. I wonder if the Barry clan founded Barry's Tea?

A kind man was just about to park his car in front of the mural and he saw me taking a picture and he stopped and waited while I took it. I put up hand to wave and thank him and he did the same.

Ancient dove cote.

Ireland is so full of ancient history.  All you have to do is explore.  I liked Buttevant.  Hope you did?