Planting The Winter Onions At Last!

An old washing machine drum I repurposed and filled with well rotted fym and soil and planted my newly bought Japanese winter onion sets.  I normally plant them in September but I am a bit late this year.

 One of my repurposed plastic heating oil tanks newly weeded and planted up with onions.

My veg plot looks very neglected and overgrown at the moment. My late dad once said it only takes 3 months for a veg plot to become overgrown.  My three months of grieving are proof to that.  Hopefully we'll get some dry weeks over winter and my plot will look loved and the pigs will get plenty of buckets of grass and weeds to devour along with their ration

 I thought I had lost my mojo to grow anything again.  J was the seed sower and carrot weeder and cook and I was Boxer the cart horse to barrow the muck and weed and dig and harvest.

I dunno if I will grow so much again and I will not be going carbooting again with my shrubs and perennials.  

I have been thinking of starting selling plants from home but I might just plant up the plot and make a veg and flower garden in remembrance of Jean? She would have liked that.  

Have you planted any vegetables this Autumn/Winter?

A Pilgrimage Along The Goats Path Road.

 I walked fifty one miles last week.  I just have to get out of the house and pound the tarmac at the moment.  It's far too wet the walk the Sheep's Head Way and hills above where I live at the moment.  Not that you see a soul at this time of year.

Last Monday I decided to walk  to the pieta on top of the Goats Path.  It's somewhere I would sometimes walk to and J would collect me when I had walked enough.  

My pilgrimage this day was not for a religious purpose.  It was for exercise and to go to a place of sheer beauty where my wife would meet me after a long walk and drive me home. You can see the three peninsulas of Mizen, Beara and Sheepshead where I live and my dad's ancestors came from.  The peninsulas remind me of 3 bony fingers pointing like finger posts to Boston and the world beyond.

Mike Harding the great hiker and Lancashire comedian featured the pieta statue in his book: Footloose In The West Of Ireland.   I have a copy of it somewhere in a box? Jean would know where it was like everything else resides.

 Yorkshire Pudding once met  Mike Harding I do believe.  Mike once said that God gave us belly buttons so we can peel potatoes when we are in bed.😊

After a couple of miles the road gets quieter and I might not see a passing car or lorry for at least ten minutes may be more.

A farmer on a old  red Massey Ferguson tractor drove passed and waved and probably thinking: "It's strange to see tourists at this time of year?"

West Cork and Kerry people after hearing my broad Northwest English accent often ask me how long am I on holiday and I reply:

" Nearly twenty five years".

The walk on the north side (Northsider Dave) looks over Bantry Bay and over to the Beara peninsula and Hungry Hill and Sugarloaf mountains.  Regular blog readers know I can see them from our back garden and kitchen windows.

I decided to walk all along the road and I took in the view, talked to two walkers and I thought about Jean collecting me and all our memories living here for the last almost quarter of a century.  I shed a few tears and I even talked to my wife.  I know she's not with me physically but I still believe she's with me in spirit and I still feel the love we had ("have!") for each other.  

I still haven't dreamed about her yet.  Which is odd.  Perhaps my head is making me sleep? Her death and the funeral keep playing in a mental video and jukebox in my head.

Here's some photos of my walk for your perusal:

Snow covered Hungry Hill.  A talcum powder like covering.  I took this from my back garden.

There's never enough of these signs.

A wind swept tree.

The holy well.  I have read that girls from the former national school use to visit the well in May and look in the waters to hopefully see the reflection of their future husbands faces.

No dogs allowed.

Sign for an holy well.

Donkeys watching me.

All the way to Bantry looking East.

Seefin.

Take your litter home and a sign for Seefin.

Mary carry Christ in her arms.  J use to meet me here and drive me home east along the helter skelter that is the Goats Path road.

I even managed to capture my shadow.

A guide to Seefin.

Deserted ruins empty since the Great Famine.  Some people died or emigrated and even today there are buildings that nobody  knows who owns some of the  ruined buildings in Ireland.

Walkers sign.

Which road to choose?

It's like that Hovis advert walking up the steep and deserted road. This ain't Gold Hill in Dorset.  It's  the Sheepshead Peninsula in West Cork.  I could feel the warmth of the Gulf Stream hitting the land while I walked.

Sign posts for the Goats Path.

Map of the Sheeps Head Way and suggested walks.

Churn stands revamped all along our road.

Cows tucking into a round bale of silage: " How's tings boy? Anything strange?"

Walking West and a glimpse of the bay and Hungry Hill.  This was near  the beginning of my pilgrimage. 

The health app on my mobile phone told me I had walked 18 miles or between 30,000 to 40, 000 feet.  There is life in the old dog yet!  My feet really ached after my route march, saunter, pilgrimage. 

I sometimes think why do I need to travel when I have got all the walks and scenery where I live?

Hope you enjoyed my hike?

Newly Built West Cork Stone Walls.

Guess it's time I put in a blog appearance? The last eleven weeks have been heart breaking and I have never experienced such profound sadness.  

Now my chauffeur and pal is no longer here to ferry me around.  I have been doing lots of walking.  Last week according to the health app on my mobile phone I walked 51 miles or 102000 steps to the average person.  Last Monday I walked 18 miles.  Yes I'm fit again.  I will be 62 in a couple of weeks.

I have took some photos on my travels and my next blog will about my 18 miles walk along the boreens of our peninsula here in the SouthWest of Ireland.

Any road or anyway.  A few of my blog friends like Yorkshire Pudding appreciate dry stone walls and stone walls even made with sand and cement.

 I have noticed two newly constructed stone walls on my walks recently:

A new stone wall next to a brook.  Notice the hole in the wall with a pipe draining any surface water off the country lane/boreen.

A newly constructed garden wall.  It reminded me of the herring bone basket weave style of dry stone walls you see on our peninsula.  A legacy of when the Cornish miners mined metals like copper, lead and tin here in the nineteenth century.

It's  good to see natural materials like stone being used to construct walls.

Hope you're all ok and I will try to catch up with your posts and write some more blog posts.

A Month's Recycling.

 A car full of dog food cans, packaging and glass bottles.

Number 2 son visited down here in his new to him 7 seater car and suggested I might want to take the recycling I stored in the back of J's Berlingo.  It had given up the ghost a week or two before her passing.

Like most household routines like paying bills and housework and cooking and cleaning and washing .  J took on a multi task of roles.  It's been an awful difficult few weeks trying to know where anything is or where to pay the electricity.? I spent four hours  looking for birth and marriage certificates.  I wish someone would write a booklet for grieving widowers on how to manage house affairs.  Do you know where your marriage certificate is Mr?

I was mainly in charge of the outside of the smallholding, gardening, mucking out the ponies and pigs, chopping wood and carrying anything heavy.  Oh and burying dead rats, removing spiders and catching a bat that had flown down the chimney.  " Just get it outside"  J once screamed at me😊.

I couldn't believe how many bags of recycling I had crammed into the little van in the last month.

We took it to the waste recycling centre in Bantry and paid 3 Euros.  I wonder how much we pay individually for our packing and dog food cans and glass bottles?

We came home and filled up the car with the " Return" beer cans and plastic bottles and took them to Lidl and it was closed.  They had no electricity.  So we drove to Super Valu and started to put each individual can and plastic bottle in the return deposit machine.  We took the paper receipt to the check out and got back 22.50 Euros in cash.  

It's a pity they don't have a return machine for pet food and tinned food and glass bottles.  Are the supermarkets only interested in metal and plastic that makes money like Aluminium beer cans?

Sheep Near The Sheepshead Way.

 It's been a beautiful day today on our peninsula down here in West Cork.  

Thank you all so much for your heartfelt comments at the parting of my  children's motherand my beloved wife.

The funeral service was so beautiful and the Canon conducted it with such skill and kindness and he read our Eulogies.  One wrote by myself and one by our youngest son.

We had traditional hymns like All Things Beautiful and The Day Though Gavest Has Ended and I chose some popular music favourites by Paloma Faith, Chris De Burgh, Heart, The Beautiful South and Whitney Houston.  There was a lot of tears shed that service, mine included.

I not only lost my wife I lost my friend and chauffeur and fellow carboot sale Womble.  It's  difficult getting to town with a very limited Local Link bus service on a Tuesday and Thursday which went last Thursday through the flooded boreens and twenty odd miles picking up four of us.  It cost me 6 Euros including the return fare.   Thankfully the return journey is less than six miles home.

I have got back into walking again.  The Saturday after the funeral I visited J's grave and walked thirteen miles via Durrus and back home.  

I am also reading a book by CS Lewis called A Grief Observed.  It's brilliant and only cost me 74 Cents to download on Kindle.

The last month is probably the hardest month of my life and I like all of us have been through some very difficult times.  I don't know why God took my wife.  I know she wouldn't want to be separated from us.  I had nearly thirty one years of happily married life and she gave me two wonderful sons.

Thanks again.

Dedication.

 I lost the love of my life and sweetheart and pal J last Tuesday.  We buried her on Saturday in a graveyard overlooking the bay.

The people of Bantry and beyond showed J  and my family and myself so much love.

I don't know when or if I will post again for a while.  But I will publish any comments on here.

God bless you all.👍

Sedum Autumn Joy And Bergenias. Winter's On It's Way.

 The pinky red flower is Sedum Autumn Joy.  The cabbage like leafed plants are Bergenia.

Sedums like Buddleia attract butterflies 🦋 to the garden.

They are also a sign to me that Winter is on it's way.

Sedums are one of these easiest perennials there are to propagate from cuttings.  Just cut off a little branch and stick in a pot of sand or compost and I guarantee it will root within 3 to 4 weeks.  It really is that easy.

The Bergenias also nicknamed Elephants Ears and Pig Squeak change their leaf colour through Autumn, Winter and Spring.  The go pink to reddy purple.  They also bring some out of season cheer with a pink flower.

That great English plants woman Gertrude Jekyll  used to make Bergenia like borders in her planting layouts. Going slightly off topic.  Her brother was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson and he borrowed their family name for one of his most famous literary characters.

They are both old garden favourites of mine and prolong our summer that little bit longer.   I think they grow and look better in big clumps or drifts rather than just individual plants.

I like to see the Butterflies hovering and feeding on the Sedum at this time of year.  The Sedums seem to melt through Winter and eventually appear and grow next Spring