Environs

Readers will have seen plenty of photo's taken from our new place looking outwards but with the pups now big enough to take it, and the Charolais cattle (and Felix the bull) now moved off the land surrounding ours, Dad decided we could all go for a nice walk around Vendor Anna's parcel of land. Anna's bit surrounds ours to the south, west and north, running down to the stream (amusingly named the River Suck, this is the Suck's upper reaches where it is just a 6 foot wide, peaty coloured drainage stream). We bought the 2 and a half acres to the centre and east boundary, giving us a good shaped square with the house at the centre. Anna has given us permission to stroll at will as long as we don't upset the cattle of her tenant (and our chum) Mike the Cows.

 Anna also owns the tract of turf-cutting bog, now abandoned and overgrown with rushes to the north of the River Suck, reached by crossing one of the concrete or railway-sleeper "kesh" bridges. My first picture shows the view out NW over the main 'kesh' out past Ballaghaderreen and on towards western Sligo, eastern Mayo, Castlebar etc. The sandy coloured vegetation is the thigh-high rushes in the abandoned bog. Dad was thinking of going to dig a bit of turf for a laugh here but John Deere Bob tells us you'd really need a huge excavator to chop off a yard or so of rushes, roots and top rubbish before you got to any meaningful cut-able turf.

My 2nd picture is again looking out across the bog but more to the NE, so into Balla-D and on to Lietrim and (eventually) Donegal. This is all Anna's land (Well, actually, land owned by the Three Sisters, but it is Anna we deal with, so we tend to think of it as hers, as opposed to "Ours"). 3rd pic is one of the keshes, this one with a small weir under it and a very beautiful westie on top......(coughs modestly).

It's nice too to be way out there and to look back at how our house and its surrounding trees, which are  mainly the tall Black Spruce trees they call 'Dale Trees' round these parts, how it all sits in the landscape.

My 4th picture shows the view from the kesh back up (southward) the slope to our house. On the skyline central are the trees which were planted around the 'Secret Garden' with our house behind them from here and the trees to the left are those along our SE boundary with the lane, the 'headland' of our east field. This is one of 'Anna's' fields, our land starts at hawthorn hedge at the top of this slope and goes on climbing for another 15 or so feet.

My last picture is from the 5 acre field out west of us (the Charolais' favourite) looking eastward back along our ridge to the house which is among those trees. Just left of centre on this pic is the gate through by our hay barn. To the right on skyline are the spruce trees of our 'wood' in the Front garden, and the spruce trees of the Secret Garden to left of centre.

So now you've had the tour. You must be exhausted from all that ridge-climbing. Come in. sit down and have a cup of 'tay' and a scone.

Deefs.