Tuesday 26.8.08 Inside and Out, Rain and cloud

It's been mostly cloudy and drizzly today, but it did stop late this afternoon so I managed to get some more weeding done. Phew, not much more of the parking area to do. It's so wet where I'm currently weeding that at least they come up easily.

Jim has been up on the area above his veg plot. A large branch of ash tree fell some time ago and he's been sawing and chopping it down to provide Stanley with some food until we get the new boiler (if we ever do). Buster was incredibly lazy and spent most of the day in the conservatory asleep on the settee. Then when we came in he was full of energy and drove Jim nuts! He has now learnt to climb onto the kitchen table via the chairs! What a menace. I did let him into the snug this evening while I watched tv and he somehow ended up on my knee and slept until I came in here!

I watched Holby City as usual. Good episode. Then the new reality programme, Maestro. It's so good and you get to hear some lovely music. This week, our intrepid would be conductors had to conduct an orchestra with the addition of a chorus, so we had Zadok the Priest, Some Carmina Burana, (O Fortuna), some Mozart, all lovely stuff. There is a charismatic character, a DJ called Goldie. He can't read music but is really good. His teeth at the front are all gold!

I took a few photos today, not many though, as I stayed at home.

Our Kafir lily is just coming into flower. There's a story behind this lovely flower. I bought it for my son Jason many years back, when he had his first starter home in London. He gave me a piece back when it had multiplied and I planted it in my flat garden in Derbyshire. Then I took some of that to Worthing, where it again grew and thrived, then we brought some over to Ireland!BlackJack helped me to photograph it - the colour shows up well against his black fur.
Jim grew some lupins from seed this year. We didn't expect them to flower this summer as they usually flower in their 2nd year. This one had other ideas:
The yellow achillea are still looking bright and cheerful, plus the marigolds and scabious

The tall purple spikes are liatris and the single rose in the right hand picture is a new climbing rose. We hope it will climb up the electric pole.


We brought a cutting of our abutilon from Worthing and it's doing really well, in fact we brought several!I think the flowers are really pretty and unusual. The bees crawl right up inside the flower for the nectar.


I've just this bit of the parking area left to do:










You can just see 3 wheelbarrows in the above photo. The one down the bottom, by the water trough, is a new-ish one we bought because the old one that was here when we moved in is all rusty and has holes in it. Having said that, the new one is all wrongly balanced and I bang my legs on the back struts, so I still used the old one, which is perfect to push, but will no doubt collapse one day. That's the green bit you can see just below the centre left. The left hand bottom corner shows a bit of the motorised barrow we bought at the same time as the mower and is a real boon.
The fabulous motorised wheelbarrow. Look at that clear pebbled area, no weeds




The Old Rusty Wheelbarrow
























This is an old plough painted red that was here when we arrived. It's getting a bit overgrown with red dogwood. Must trim that back!

Tomorrow we're off to see the kennels where Buster is hopefully spending his time when we are in the UK for the wedding/birthday/holiday trip. Then I'll be able to pop into the shop in Gort to check out the clothes for wedding attire.

Only 2 more days and I'm off to see my daughter, partners and my grandchildren. woo hoo!!

Oh, dinner! An odd one tonight as we were sort of 'eating up' what was left in the fridge! Some of the left over potatoes from yesterday, 2 sausages, 2 beefburgers, left over baked beans (can't beat them) and French beans from the garden. Now I'm hungry again!!

This last picture was taken near Fanore when Jim's son Russell and his girlfriend Caz came to visit. They are the couple getting married on September 6th. The hairy monster on the right is me! It was rather windy.