Office, Logging and Garden

We finally getting round to nailing another long standing job, having got a chance to buy wood at Woodie's DIY in Carrick on Shannon on the day of the NCT re-test. That's the gnarly bit under the stairs where the broad band arrives and a phone point but where the work station was still the old green fold-away caravan table. This has now been treated to a nice work top and a shelf for the screen, 2 box-shelf units from IKEA (originally intended for the kitchen but Mum found they didn't 'go' and that was that.) and a new book case unit from Mulligan's in 'Balla' ( we have discovered that all the locals call Ballaghaderreen by this name, which makes life much easier and we can't really go round calling it "Bally-Lala" which was becoming its nickname!)

In the kitchen garden, with the last of the most recent 10 tonne of 804 gravel now shoveled away to become floor of caravan bay in the former hay barn, there is space for Mum and Dad to build the third (of four) raised beds out of our inherited railway sleepers. The first one, completed a while ago is now producing some nice looking crops, particularly shallots, onions, garlic and radish. We are rubbish at labeling things when they get sown, but Dad is "fairly confident" that the radish row was double-planted with parsnip seed as per the advice in the "Vegetable Growing in Ireland" book. Radish takes 3 weeks to crop. Parsnips take 3 weeks to germinate, so you can use radish to mark your parsnip row.

While the chainsaw was out for cutting the railway sleepers in half to make 'ends' for the beds, Dad decided to try his hand at felling his first tree. In the woods to the left of our drive which are, we think, black spruce there are a few dead weedy ones long since over shadowed and killed by big beefy neighbours. They are about 45 feet tall (compared to 60-70 or more for the big, healthy trees) and less than 12 inches diameter at the bottom. Dad selected one which stood a chance of falling into a gap between others, neatly across the drive and onto the lawn. It all "sort of" worked except that the tree kind of bounced off a neighbour and hovered briefly in the clasp of its branches but it came down soon enough when Dad made an extra cut in the trunk. Dad cleaned off the side branches (some of which Mum stole for pea sticks) and then logged it up into 40 odd logs. Nice clean job.

Deefs

Inside Out

As we get more and more sorted inside the new place, we also start to broaden our horizons. We meet some neighbours. All through the project we have had regular visits from a local old boy who we only ever see driving his John Deere tractor. John Deere Bob, we've Christened him. He was very curious about us and our moves to do up the old house which he's known from his youth. He knew the previous owners, TK-Min and TK Max plus the three sisters. He seems delighted with what we've done and very impressed by what we've achieved and he loves the warmth, brightness and dryness of the finished place. Our other neighbour, Una, says "there was never any warmth in that house..." There is now! Mike the Cows finally gets round to letting his animals into the surrounding fields and also does a deal with Dad whereby we get our fields 'topped' (mowed down to 3-4" including the rushes) and Dad gets his allotment bit ploughed if Mike is allowed to electric fence off our 1.5 acre field to the east of us, and graze that. The cows are a purebred Charolais bull called Felix, complete with ring through his nose, about a dozen Charolais girls, some with young calves at foot, plus a few random hangers on including a dark bullock and a couple of darker heifers. These boys and girls amble around in the neighbouring fields and when we can get away with it we (Coco comes too, but the H can't be bothered) like to go shout at them. We never get too close because they are very big. usually they ignore us and just keep chewing the cud or lying down looking at us vacantly, but sometimes they all get up and start walking or half-trotting towards us, which sends us scurrying to and through the gate. I'm brave, but not that brave! Work moves from the indoors to the 'grounds. Dad finally un-boxes his chainsaw, assembles it on the dining room table and then takes it out for a try. It's a good weapon and we now have a source of logs for the stove. Dad hires a couple of skips and we can throw the pile of builders rubbish and left over thermal panel offcuts into it. We finally have a clear view of the front of the house, and from the terrace out across the lawn. The grass is damaged in places where the rubble was stored, so Dad rotovates up these patches, rakes it smooth and re-seeds with grass. Mum, who has always wanted a box hedge but never really got one going in Faversham, finally gets her chance at the kerb edge between front lawn and terrace. While he's got the rotovator out Dad tills a nice bed along this edge for Mum to plant in the rooted cuttings. That should get away nicely. A new face appears, another neighbour, Eileen C, welcoming us to the village and bearing gifts of a little auricula cutting and a photo (above) of the house taken in 2000 when the white outside paint was obviously still quite new and fresh, and the drive not yet overgrown with grass. Deefs