Mary, Mary, (2)

This post continues on from "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary" and is my Garden report. Mary Mary (1) saw us in the west field enjoying the vegetable crops.

Moving on round we come to the 'secret garden', the first bit Dad tried to start gardening in while we were all still living in the caravan, snatching the odd hour of gardening opportunity by getting up early and getting done before the house build work started at 0800. This has turned out to be way too much of a leafy shaded glade to do any vegetable gardening in now that the leaves have come on the beech to the west and the ash to the east. Pretty much everything went all spindly and etiolated although the spuds did, amazingly crop. This was even though they were hit badly by blight all of a sudden - one day perfect healthy green leaves and when we looked again about 3 days later, no living tops at all. Luckily, by then, the spuds must have formed underground because we were able to dig a few meals worth of nice, if rather small, new potatoes with very few blighted tubers.

The main problem with the secret garden bit is the HUGE black-spruce trees which we know from Vendor Anna L were planted by TK Max in the late 50's or early 60's as saplings for a windbreak. Muppet! Apparently according to our man "Oliver Splits" local tree surgeon / tree feller / log splitting contractor these were planted all over County Roscommon and many many houses now have these huge tress all roughly the same age and size. Keeps him in work, he says. The are called "Dale trees" locally but Oliver agrees with me they are probably black spruce (Picea Mariana) as identifiable from the long cones, the flattened leaf shoots, the blue cast to the new foliage and the white bands under the individual needles. These trees are now a good 60' tall and would need some kit more serious than Dad's little chainsaw to get them down. Oliver reckoned 2 days work for him and a mate (€300 a day, ker-ching!!!!!) plus hire of a cherry-picker machine at €140 and that would be without him splitting them up for logs, or tidying away the trashy small branches. Big shredders are also €140 a day to hire. €1000 or so to make a veg garden tidy and use-able? We think not. Dad will just abandon that space as a veg plot and 'do it all' in the raised beds. The chickens can have it as their run.

 In other news, the keyhole bed we described in an earlier post is now complete and filled and just needs something growing in it. Look carefully though and you can see the small green splash of a thyme plant which came from Steak Lady along with all the other cuttings and which got built into one of the cracks as the outer ring wall was being assembled. And finally, just for fun, the 'cauldron' of snap dragons now doing very well outside the front door. These plants were from a worn out, bedraggled old tray of exhausted, dried out, pot bound specimens which someone cast off to us. They did OK didn't they! I think you could say they are fully recovered and we hope they will self-seed around the place. The other matching cauldron has bright yellow winter pansies in it. We look very colourful out front at the moment.

And that concludes the garden update.
Deefs

Castlerea Agricultural Show

With our own livestock sorted on Monday 6^th (A Bank Holiday here in Ireland), Mum and Dad are off to local town Castlerea's Agricultural Trades and Craft Show. This is promised to be like a mini County Show and the biggest event in Castlerea's year. We have been advised to eschew the 'Family Fun Day' at local GAA ground, Éire Óg, (You Brits, pronounce it 'Airer' and then with a long 'O' as in The Pogues) in favour of it, and it does not disappoint. The Show has taken over the whole grounds of the cattle market and overflowed into a couple of grassy fields alongside. There are 4x4's pulling livestock trailers everywhere, people thronging and the air is full of the echo-ey calls of cattle and sheep in the covered market-pens. Impressively clean and primped cattle and horses are being led hither and yon by the halter, and some big bulls being led around by the nose, each with a small entourage of white coated handlers moving the public out of the way. Areas of the fields have been given over to marquees and awnings for holding the animals, and a number of show rings. The organisers were obviously expecting rain and many tracks have been laid with straw and chipped wood, but they needn't have worried as the sun shone, no rain fell and the grounds did not turn into the Somme.

Dad has been to many Agricultural Shows in Kent and Sussex and in Nene Valley (The East of England Show) and his ex wife’s family used to show Suffolk sheep but Mum, although she'd attended Kent Show for work reasons had never been able to find anyone to take her across to the livestock areas, so she was keen to see some sheep and cattle judging. Dad was keen to find the goats and poultry sections and they both wanted to look round the "Flower Show" bits, trade stands and townie/public bits.

They loved it and had a great time as well as finding and getting talking to a) mythical near-neighbour artists who do framing and are good painters and b) 'Oliver Splits', local tree feller, logger and log-splitter man with chain saw about 3 times as long as Dad’s. Chainsaw envy? They bought the obligatory burger (Dad) and hot dog (Mum). They went in to see some lamb classes through the judging, with Mum proving to be remarkably good at picking winners. They moved outdoors to the cattle ring areas to see some very nice glossy/velvetty black Angus cattle get judged. Mum was not quite so good at those, but they both think that an Angus is a good honest very attractive beast. They are proper cow-shaped, not like these ridiculously double-muscled Belgian Blue freaks with their arses looking like they are wearing distended jodhpurs. They are big too, the Angus cows. Mum and Dad watched a cow-with-calf-at-foot class and those ladies are enormous. Never mind getting charged by the bull if you got too close to the calf, 'Mrs Angus' would be quite capable of doing you some damage.

And so home to a mad house blitz and garden tidy prior to The 6 Silverwoods arriving with “John the Bass Player” (teenage friend of Em-J; John is not her real name!) for a holiday here till at least the next weekend. As we predicted, we “may disappear off line and not post for a couple of days”, buried under the demands for breakfasts, child-wrangling, dog management and the occasional glass of wine. Bear with us. We will return.