Looking Back At My 2024.

This be blog 320.  I have never wrote so many posts in a year.  I must get back to writing my gardening book in 2025.

Any road.  Here's some photos of 2024.  Nothing is in chronicle order. 46ish photos for your perusal dear blog readers.

June 18th.  Black eye our piglet was a champion at Cork show. Our other piglets won rosettes too.

I still enjoy my saunters when the weather allows.

 

We have seven months of lit fires and dark nights to endure.  Oh to have street lights like the villages and towns and cities.  I could go far a walk.

We sampled West Cork Buffalo cheese.

I took lots of cuttings.  Like this Hydrangea.  

I repurposed lots of plastic bottles and made plant cuttings cloches.

Lots of piglets were born.

Our tables runneth over with tomatoes 🍅 that I grew from seed.

We made lots of soup.

Wetherspoons beer prices when I went to Blighty in August.

J knitted herself a lovely jumper from a massive ball of wool she bought for 3 Euros at a carboot sale.

Diesel was pleased to see me on my return.

Inspector Morse visited this Oxford pub and Thomas Hardy wrote Jude The Obscure here.

The Inklings "Bird and Baby".  Where the Inklings met.

The 'Martyr's Memorial.  Near here Thomas Cranmer and others were burned for their Protestant beliefs.

Sir Roger Bannister.

JRR Tolkein. 

CS Lewis.  He died on the same day Aldous Huxley died and JFK was assassinated and less than two weeks before I was born.

I finally visited The Kilns and the nature reserve.  I recognised scenes from Shadowlands.  I have seen it 24 times.  The Kilns was once a place for making bricks.  

Bronte and me walking a repurposed railway line in Limerick here in Ireland.  This is Barnagh tunnel.  The light automatic comes on when you venture inside.  This startled  Bronte.  It had a very eerie feeling and we looked out for ghosts.

A new pony foal.

Canal boat Banbury.

Pork pie.  Something  you don't see a lot over here.

A real pint of ale.

Rick Wakeman.

Rosie and Jim Cropredy  village.

 

Big Big Train.

Lawrence of Arabia grave.

My not very well pitched tent.

Ancient tomb in Christchurch.  Waiting since 1461 for Judgment Day.

Chris Isaak Bournemouth.  They wanted forty pounds for a tour t shirt.  A man and woman bought two.  I never bothered to purchase one.

Corfe Castle.  'Bedknobs and Broomsticks ' was filmed there.

A tourist sign in Wool.

Ancient Dorset sign.  I featured this when I last visited in 2017.

Train station cat brass plate memorials at.

Homeless in Canterbury.  I saw lots of homeless  on my Blighty visit.  Hopefully Labour will build some council houses for them.

Tangerine Dream. Electronic Prog Rock at its finest.

Curved Air.

A New Day Festival banner.  My third visit.  Great bands, two stages and set in a beautiful Kent countryside.

My repurposed second hand oil tanks now raised beds.  They cost nothing just hard labour and lots of well rotted fym. 

One of our leeks sunbathing.

These are Purple Rain 🥔.   We grew lots of Homeguard too.

The author of this blog with one of his swedes.  "It's a beauty!"

Newcy Brown in England.

Quite an eventful year.  Especially in summer. 

Happy New Year and much success with your veg and garden plants growing in 2025.

Too Much Food Packaging Or Maybe Not?

 I was having an hissy fit rant yesterday about too much food packaging.  Plastic in particular.

There's the cardboard sleeve wrapping that tells the customer that the contents is a beef roasting joint.

Then you take the beef out of the wrapping tray and you notice the beef is inside a plastic bag.

You question the logic of this and some one in the kitchen reads the cardboard sleeve and tells you that you cook the roasting joint in the plastic bag!

"What?"

People will be buying water in plastic bottles next.  Yes I know they do.  Could you imagine saying to your grandparents that you buy bottled water?  " What's wrong with tap water?"  They would say.

At least I use my empties for plant cuttings cloches and we get their deposit back if we put them in the "Return" machines in the Irish supermarkets.

My next post will be a look back at 2024.  See you soon.

Sus Sus Scrofa Domesticus Piglets.

 Or Berkshire to be precise.  

The Berkshire sow decided to give birth a few days before Christmas.

I took these photos of them on Saturday for your perusal dear readers:

Mummy and babies are doing fine.  

They are all inside in their pens with straw beds for the winter.  Eventually they will be free range again and eat grass in the fields and sleep in pig arcs during the spring, summer and autumn.

Conditions are very wet underfoot and there is a storm on New Years night.  Forecasters are predicting fourteen days of snow for here and Blighty.  I must bring the rabbits indoors this week.  They all appreciate a warm straw bed.

The livestock provide lots of fym for next years veg plot.  I have some very well rotted stuff if you want to bring a trailer over or I can fill some pig ration bags for you?

Anyone thinking of getting pigs next year?