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.

A Visit From Anna

On Wednesday we receive a visit from Anna the Vendor, one of the "Three Sisters" who sold us the house and the one who generously provided us with the picture of the house circa 1900. Sparks and Dad are first alerted when they spot a lady walking across the neighbouring field. There are various holes in fences created by JCBs moving about to dig drains etc. and Dad was concerned that Mike the Cows might release his grazing-rent cows into the bits of land we didn't buy without checking that they couldn't get onto our bit or onto the public highway outside. We no longer have a front gate.

Thinking the lady might be to do with Mike, he nipped round there and hailed the lady stranger but was greeted with a cheerful "Ah, You must be my buyer!" Introductions were made. The lady was Anna the Vendor armed with a bag of fencing bits striding off to find husband who was down the field somewhere making good the very gaps we'd been concerned about. Tiny-petite but capable and determined looking in red wellies and a "Life is Crap" baseball hat, Dad was immediately taken with her. She seemed pleased that Dad wasn't some ogre, too. They compared notes and decided to meet up as soon as she and husband Paul had done fencing and Dad had done his shopping nip into Castlerea.

By the time she re-appeared Dad was back from Castlerea and in the yard shovelling, so Anna had come through the two doors of the Tígín to find him. The three had a good walk round together, with Dad showing Anna and Paul all the progress and explaining why things were happening, and talking of plans, and Anna, in turn explaining why and how things were as they are, what happened in various bits and her memories of growing up there from about 58 years ago onwards (she's 61 and moved there when she was 3).

It seems for example, that the Utility room was originally a water storage tank with concrete walls. Behind it, and between it an the house front-wall where we have done one of our drainage gullies is the little nook where she'd hide as a little girl if she was sulking or upset. Where Dad has started his veg patch is exactly where the old Dad, Garda Sargeant, TK Max grew his veg and it was he who planted the (now big) fir trees which surround it as an overkill wind break. Apparently neither TK Max, the old Dad, nor TK Min, brother to the three sisters, was particularly practical. It is Anna who has ended up being the capable one, hence the wellies, fencing materials and tramping across the fields.

Anna was delighted by everything we'd done and relieved that she could enjoy 'her house' now it was in different hands. She'd been a bit worried it might be traumatic seeing it again but she liked us and we liked her and this could be the start of a wonderful friendship. She was all enthusiastic about bring the 2nd Sister to see the place (Sis 2 lives in Dublin; Sis 3 is a bit more difficult as she's in Bexleyheath in Kent!). We got the feeling that she'd take us up on the open invitation to drop by regularly with proper chances to meet we dogs and Mum.

Excellent
Deefs