The Deposit Return Scheme Seems To Have Been A Success.

 

Earlier this year the Irish Deposit Return Scheme was introduced into supermarkets and shops in Ireland.

Here's a receipt from the machines on one of our latest shopping trips:

The paper receipts can not be recycled I think because of the ink?

There are 13 EU countries participating in the Deposit Return Scheme. It's a pity that the UK chose Brexit and they could have participated in the re cycling scheme.

I wish someone would invent a machine for pet food cans, cooking oil plastic bottles and glass bottles.

Do you think there should be a Deposit Return Scheme introduced in other countries like the UK and the USA?

Warsaw Zoo Revisited.

I spent an half an hour looking at old photos I have posted on blogger since I began writing on here in 2010.  If you want inspiration for new post ideas look at your old blog posts.

Here is a fantastic photograph J took of a Siberian tiger eating Elderberries at Warsaw Zoo in 2013.  I think this is the third time I have shown the photograph on here.  I think it is fantastic:

 I will post another favourite photo or two another time.

November Garden Flowers On The Irish Riviera.

 It's been very mild weather here the last few days and the plants in the gardens seem to think winter is not on its way yet:

Geranium.

Hebe.

Myrtle.

Fuchsia.

Hypericum.

Surfinia.

Soapwort.

Shasta Daisy.

Bergenia.

Nasturtium.

Cape Daisy or Osteospernum.

The days and nights are getting colder but the plants keep putting on a show.

Is your garden flowers still performing?

Time To Harvest One Of My Parsnips.

 Do you remember when I pre germinated my Parsnips seeds back in April by placing them in between a damp paper towel and placing them in a plastic Tupperware box and put the lid on?  They germinated in less than a week.  Normally they take up to 28 days to germinate.

The old gardeners books use to tell you to sow them outside in February.  I find the weather is too wet and cold so I waited until April.

Then I sowed them in a small plant pot with a cut off bottom and full  full of compost and placed it in a large plant pot filled with compost in the polytunnel.

I left them to grow vegetation for a few weeks then I planted them outside in the veg plot.  Today I decided to lift one of them:

Parsnip growing in large plant pot.

Me holding one of my Parsnips.  Not the best in show but definitely a success.

Parsnips are from Eurasia and the Romans and Red Indians are said to have grown them.

Anyone else grown Parsnips this year?

I will leave Jack Frost and his wife to paint the rest of the Parsnips and turn the starches into sugars.  

A Early Birthday Christmas Present For The Veg Plot And Me.

 It was raining on a Sunday morning but we still went to a car boot sale to have a look around.

I saw a brand new four prong (Darby Tools) digging fork for sale and I treated myself and paid 15 Euros for it.  They are usually 44 Euros.  So it was quite a bargain.

A new gardening help.

The car boot  seller gave me 5 Euros change from a 20 Euros note.  He said and smiled:

"I hope ye have lots of luck with it".  

I laughed and walked away with my new trusty long handled gardening and smallholding pal.

It will be used for digging over the potato beds and for filling wheelbarrows of well rotted fym to fill the repurposed oil tanker raised beds.  

What garden tool or equipment would you like for your birthday or Christmas present?

I want a petrol woodchipper to shred shrubs and use it for compost and shredded bark paths.  I have a small electric shredder but now I am ready for something more industrial and petrol driven.

Turf For The Stove.

 We went for a spin the other day and I bought 5 fertilizer bags of peat or "Turf" for the stove.

I paid 5 Euros a bag for the turf in bags.  We bought 5 bags in total.  The seller had only got five left.

In tourist shops in Killarney you can buy little thatched cottage incense burners that you light and they give off an aroma of turfy peat.

I put it in our lit stove and we smell it all night long.  Especially if you go outside and smell the smoke coming out of the chimney.

The smell reminds my wife of when she was a girl  going to her grandparents in Mayo and getting off the ferry in Dublin and the first smell that hit her nostrils was the smell of burning turf from the house chimneys.

My dad's first job when he left school at 14 was to cycle to a turf bog and didig turf all day and ride his bike home again.  He left Ireland for England during the "black fifties" and returned here before he died.

Bags of turf.

Turf in the Scuttle.

What a sight?

Enjoy the video.

I would love to go back to those times when everything was organic.  Man's been digging and burning turf for thousands of years.

Wild West Cork Buffalo Greek Style Cheese.

 I was in Aldi food and beer shopping and I noticed there was West Cork buffalo greek style cheese for sale.  I decided to risk it for a biscuit and put some in the supermarket trolley:

A new cheese for us to try.

We tried a piece each.  It tasted creamy and I thought a bit salty.

It was very reasonably priced I think it was 2 Euros fifty nine.  I recently paid nearly 5 Euros for some Lancashire Creamy cheese in M &S in Killarney.

English cheeses are something else I find to source along with English beer like Newcastle Brown Ale here in little ould Ireland.  I blame Brexit.

Any way or any road.  I looked up the buffalo cheese website.  There is a West Cork farmer in Macroom who owns an herd of buffalo.  "Oh give me an home where the buffalo roam.."  "You"ll get big piles on yer carpet!"😀

In the early seventies West Cork had it's own version of Woodstock in Macroom and the likes of Thin Lizzy and Rory Gallagher played a music festival at Macroom castle and put Macroom firmly on the map. 

 Now I think an herd of 500 +buffalo are doing the same! 

Check out their website and video.

Anyone tasted buffalo cheese?