Ground Rush

Director Tom C and Lizzie fine-tune the set furniture prior to
a rehearsal. 

With the big Dress Rehearsal only a week away now, the village play team are starting to experience that parachutist's scary moment when you seem to have been drifting down to land very slowly but suddenly, in the last few feet, the landing moment starts to rush at you with terrifying acceleration. The actors and supporters have had this play (Cupid Wore Skirts) in the cross wires since the end of last year but suddenly there are only 7 nights till Dress Rehearsal and just over the week to First Night.

The action takes place in the home of an
antique dealer. All manner of weird 'pieces'
owned locally have been volunteered as
stage furniture. 

The tension is mounting, the set has now been beautifully constructed by the 'lads' who work at Liz's place, props and furniture are accumulating and the Players are racing to finish learning lines and stage directions. Director Tom C is hanging in there, convinced that the show will go on - they will be ready on the opening night. He has, though slotted some extra rehearsals into what was once a Tuesday and Thursdays schedule; there is one tonight for example. I went yesterday to see one such, and I am very excited about the real thing - they have a lovely piece there and I am sure they will deliver it really well.

Damson blossom

If you saw last year's "A Wake in the West" you will not be disappointed. This is slightly different - in the 'Wake' humour came in great, hilarious bursts, with more serious sections in between, 'Cupid' is funny in a lighter way but throughout. I am really looking forward to it. I got involved today helping shift the set and all the furniture and props from the back-hall of the centre (where the pictures above were taken) into the main hall and onto the newly built proper stage, where it could now be rebuilt once the Montessori pre-school had broken up for Easter.

Tulips in hotter colours. 

Also accelerating (more comfortably!) is Spring, which seems to have leapt forward in the warm weather while I was in UK for just 4 nights. Quite by accident, we have selected daffs and tulips so that all the early risers are in quite bland colours - yellow daffs, maybe, but also pale yellow and white daffs and tulips. Just as I was beginning to get frustrated by the lack of 'fire' in the spring garden, 2 huge tubs of tulips by the front door prove to be yellow streaked with bright red. When I went away, only one plum was in blossom in the orchard - I have come back to damson, pear (both white) and the start of pink apple buds showing colour.

A nice enough hellebore but I yearn for darker reds and purples

Elsewhere we have anenomes, hellebores and pulmonaria in flower as well as bud break in most shrubs and trees promising more to come. I love the horse chestnut buds which we used to call "sticky buds" as kids - they have gone from just starting to elongate last Friday, to 3 inch shoots with visible leaves and stems now.

With the snowdrops finished (foreground)
a pass of the mower tidies up our front bank

The grass is starting to 'motor' and I have been out with the mower, picking my way between the leafy left-overs of snow drop and crocus - gardeners know that you need to leave the leaves for at least 6 weeks to produce food for next year's bulbs. On the local farms this translates into it being time to scatter fertilizer on the grass prior to letting the cattle out.

Anenome

This is normally an NPK formulation in tiny round pellets - a friend down the road chooses, for some reason, to have his delivered in 50 kg sacks which he can't lift and his contractor/tractor driver struggles with due to a bad back. I get called in each time to help him '2-hand' the sacks up into the hopper on the back of the tractor - it is quite high so if we are lucky, the delivery pallet is set down on a stack of 5-6 empty pallets so that we can pass at least the first few bags DOWN into the spreader.

No ground rush for the wooly lawn mowers. They are taking
their own sweet time about giving us a clue to their in-lamb,
or not, status.

I will leave it at that for this post - a nice gentle one after the rather hectic pace of recent epistles. I have a rather nice whiskey here, bought in case of the visitors last week needing a dram but not actually touched at the time. It is sliding down rather well.

Pear blossom.

Sticky buds (Horse Chestnut) explode
into action.

Sláinte !

Anyone for Yoga?

Morning sky on the 11th

Readers who know my brothers and I will know that we went through our first 50 or so years without a sporty bit in our DNA. We know nothing of soccer and at school would swerve outdoor team stuff as often as possible when options like cross country running or canoeing were available. We have precious little interest in any other sports (except maybe rallying, off roading or possibly Formula 1). Gyms were BAD places and, as far as I know, none of us did that 'subscription' thing when gyms became fashionable.

Yellow hot poker?

Lately, youngest bro, Mark, has been getting into the weight loss and fitness thing, and his blog posts and Facebook have been well laced with various exercise classes and words like 'biceps curl' and 'abs'. Most recently he has been doing "Total Body Conditioning" and "Balance Classes". I have no idea what these involve so, Mark, you'll have to forgive me if I have an image in my head of you balancing along one of those 3" wide beams like a latter-day Nadia Comaneci.

Blue the cat (top centre) looking a bit beleaguered when his
day time hidey hole is invaded by all the birds taking shelter
from the rain. Blue hates chickens and always gives them a
wide berth.

I am not sure I have been inspired by all this but when Liz organised some Yoga classes at work and included, for the first time, a men's beginners class, I found myself agreeing to support this worthy clause. I was, of course, scared stiff as it would be a first time doing anything formally 'fitness' and I was also worried that I might be the only bloke who turned up. I felt a bit like a school kid being dropped off at school by her Mum as Liz drove me down there and waved me off. Her 'Mixed Ability (Ladies) class had their session after ours. I am also, I think, the only bloke in Roscommon who doesn't own jogging 'pants' so I was attired in a pair of rarely used long pyjama bottoms which were dark-ish and could pass muster in a dim light. (Yoga instructors seem to like dim light and tinkly piano music for atmosphere).

Nice low angle shot of one of the hens with all 5 babies.

Well, it went OK in the end. There were 4 other lads there, mostly as old and creaky as me. I have to admit to spending the first 15 minutes (warming up time?) feeling a bit rebellious, hurting at the unprecedented pain being done to hip joints and convinced that I had done what I agreed to - go along and try it the once - so I could bow out after this session. Yoga? Tried it once but it wasn't for me. But then, as I warmed up, I began to enjoy the stretches, the heat and the pain in under-used muscles and joints. It helped that I didn't feel completely useless as the lads around me were groaning and gasping just as loud as me and the man to my left at one stage grunted a very audible 'Aaahh Jeeeeezus!' which had us falling about laughing.

Hops

30 minutes in I had changed my mind completely and was determined to come back for the remaining (5?) sessions of the course and I have to also admit to a lot of respect and admiration for our teacher, easily the bendiest woman I have ever seen in action (maybe with the exception of Nadia C?). She apparently races around Roscommon doing these classes in all manner of villages and towns, most evenings. She is in huge demand and Liz was (she says) so lucky to get her for Lisacul. Yep, I was actually quite proud of myself that evening and the next day, wearing my whole-body aches and pains with pride. I knew I had had a good work out and hope that those joints and muscles will all be a little better for it, all be it I will never be as flexible as 'Teach'.

Who knew that the membranes inside your 'dippy egg' could
have this honeycomb structure?

If I am getting healthier, though, the Health-bogeyman must have spotted me and decided to whack me on Sunday-Monday with a horrible stomach bug. I 'never' get these (We can remember just one from our marriage which hit me on a Christmas in Hastings) so the pain and seriously 'ill' feelings come as much a shock as debilitating. I got first signs on the Sunday night, spending all that night very uncomfortable and not sleeping very well. I woke up at normal time and forced myself to do livestock rounds (waves of hot-flush and sweaty nausea), and then engaged in a 3 hour drive/hang around getting the right people to the butchers to see the lamb cut up and re-homed. At that point I was packed off to bed by Nurse Lizzie.

The ivy starting to flower. Bee keepers need to be getting their
honey off the hives - ivy nectar sets like rock once the bees
have processed it into honey.

I spent most of that day in the sickbay. Meanwhile, Liz (snr) was due up for a visit, mainly to go blackberrying with us. Not that day though - every time they fired up the car it lashed down with rain! I woke up at lunchtime feeling a little better and tried some flat 7-Up (a family cure for dodgy tummies) and some sieved (bitless) borscht. I sat and chatted for a while but was quickly needing to get rid of lunch. Back to bed for me, then and Liz beating me into submission - SHE would do the livestock rounds and no arguing. The good news is that I woke up this morning with all pain gone and happily tried some toast to no ill effect. I have eaten normally today and drunk normal amounts of coffee and tea - no dizziness, no nausea, no sweaty hot flushes and no excuse to not go to Yoga on Wednesday. I guess a winter-vomiting bug picked up from somewhere, or maybe Liz is sneaking the strychnine into the BBQ chicken.

Liz and Liz at the blackberrying

Today also dawned beautifully sunny and warm, so we grabbed our tubs and buckets and headed off for the brambly hedges of the fields of a very good farming friend. The fruit grows lush and bold in those fields and, them being a silage fields, I know they never get sprayed with anything except slurry and fertilized with anything but inorganic NPK to help the grass after each silage cut. In an hour and a half we had quickly accumulated 4 kgs+ of lovely ripe fruit. The sun was starting to get to me (maybe not as fully recovered as I thought?) by then and Mum was feeling tired, so we stopped at the one big bucket. We have an option to go back for more. There are plenty there. We didn't even get all the way round the first (of two) field(s).

I think that'll do for this one. Here, though, is some lovely, mad, china Mum brought up as a gift. Thank you so much, Liz (snr)