Of Eclipses, Equinoxes and Frog Spawn

Partial solar eclipse, Friday 20th March 2015, Co Roscommon.

Friday saw us up early and trying to see the Solar Eclipse. We gather that most of the British Isles missed this entirely due to heavy cloud cover and it was looking dodgy here too from the forecasts. We were ready with our chunk of smoked glass (borrowed from the frame of a family photo and smoked by holding it in a candle flame). You also know, these days, exactly what to expect and where, as the astronomers have long since done the number crunching.

This one, for example was going to track through as a full eclipse out in the North Atlantic, sliding through SW to NE between Scotland and Iceland. You'd need to be out at sea to get the fully dark effect. Out on the margins, we'd get 95% cover and, my brother in Swindon, for example, a bit further out, was due 88%. We'd see the moon slip in from top right of the sun making a 'smiley face' canted to the right, then slowly slide past (right to left) leaving only the 'bottom 5%' of the sun visible, and finally moving off to the left giving us back the crescent sun and finally all of it. Even 5% of the sun is enough to give you gloomy daylight and would still be too bright to look at with the naked eye. We knew too that the eclipse would start at about 08:24, be darkest at 09:24, and then be all over by 10:36.

We were disappointed to wake up to the cloud cover but quickly realised that the cloud was moving fast west to east and actually had plenty of breaks where bright sky (even pocket handkerchiefs of blue sky!) could be briefly glimpsed. If we could persuade one of these thin bits to pass in front of the sun we'd see our eclipse. Even better, we realised, the hazy cloud would do the job of our smoked glass and we'd be able to see and photograph the event without that complication. We did OK and snatched some passable pics. The morning went very gloomy as we got towards the 95%, but no worse than a black rain cloud gathering. All the chickens went quiet and birds stopped singing. We just about saw the peak before the clouds ran out of gaps and thin bits, so we retreated indoors and watched the sky brighten back up from indoors over breakfast. The astronomers tell us that the next one for Ireland is not till 2026.

Frog Spawn at last - overnight 19th/20th March.

Not satisfied with one solar phenomenon, of course, we are also 'doing' the Spring Equinox this weekend, the official first day of Spring (well, if you've not already done that with your Imbolc and St Bridgit's crosses (1st Feb)). This one has the added tweak in that the Jacobin (French Revolutionary) calendar changed from the "Windy" month (Ventôse) to the Germination or 'seed' month (Germinal) so I don't feel too upset about missing the standard Irish 'Paddy's Day' date for the planting of early spuds. Mine went in yesterday.

Paddy's Night feast.

The local frogs may know all about this 'seeding' thing, mind. Our females finally gave in to the instinct to dive in with the boys (who had been in the pond for ten days already, patiently waiting and dodging the frost and ice) and get physical. We have frog spawn at last, laid in sizeable clumps near the lower edge of the stone beach. We also have our newts back. Newts tend to only live in ponds in the mating season and summer. They leave the water to find a cool, safe, damp place in which to live for the non-breeding season and to hibernate, compost heaps, the bottom of a hedge, patches of long damp grass (not difficult in Roscommon!). The adults are one of the main predators of young baby tadpoles, so we hope we have enough spawn to sate all their appetites and still have enough babies coming through as froglets in the autumn. This is our pond's first true generation.

First primrose of 2015 also opens on Eclipse Day.

We also finally have, what feels like a fortnight or two behind most of our friends, some first 'wild' primroses in our Primrose Path. We have had a few cultivar primulas and the like doing their thing in flower beds, but these are the fully naturalised population which I am sure is just wild and spontaneous; I can't see TK Min out there planting them or gathering them in from the laneway, though I may have the lad wrong.

The daffs out front, planted last year, are starting to put on a good show

Also doing well are the trench full of daffs we planted as bulbs last year; a 25 kg net of bulbs and several follow-on 5 kg bags. They make a nice landmark now as you approach the house - we will be able to tell guests "it's the one with all the daffodils". We also planted a few up the drive and these are doing well also. Of couse, we are looking at them and thinking we might extend the rows along 'that bit of frontage' or fill in the gaps 'there'. We will have to see.

The bees are out and about.

The bees are now wide awake in the spring-like warmth. Certainly on Weds (18th) and Thurs (19th) when the early bright sunshine quickly burned off the light frost and mist, the workers were out in their dozens and there was quite a 'roar' from the hive when you were up close. Temperatures got up to 13ºC on those afternoons and the bees gave every impression of being happy to finally be allowed to break up the winter cluster.

Raking out the spent winter coat. Pirate loves it.

Also shaking off his winter blues is the rather plump cat, Pirate,  formerly known as skinny, emaciated, half blind, death's door stray cat. When the sun shines we hook open the door to his private domain, the cosy, quiet utility room. He knows when he is onto a good thing, and spent most of the last few months in there, asleep, putting on weight, recovering from his traumatic first year of life.

You WILL be a slim cat, Pirate. I remove another cat's worth of
dead coat.

We may have over-done the starving feeds. One of the Westie breeders I love and respect saw a picture of him and described him, subtly as "a bit well covered" (sorry JF!). We have since cut down his food a bit (only one tin a day now) but thought that part of his bulk was the visible effect of very thick fur, some of which had to be winter coat. This proved to be the case and when I put the 'rake' style brush to him it was coming away in great mats and tufts on the tines of the brush. Pirate loves all this fuss and attention and purrs loudly in his own snuffly way, bending his body and lifting legs the better to let you get at his waist, belly and armpits. I took enough off him almost to create another cat. He will be a lot cooler now, I should think.

Carrick Millennium Choir - a picture from last year.

Finally in our list of spring celebrations, our annual indulgence in a bit of culture, the Carrick on Shannon Millennium Choir's Gala Spring Concert. This is the particular 'baby' of our good friend Vendor Anna who, she tells us, practices and rehearses the singing all year long ready for these events. They are an impressive choir and put on an excellent show. Anna will surely not mind me saying that they look and sound superb. They look the part, the ladies in irridescent purple/blue outfits and the gents in the tux and bow-tie. They are staged beautifully and lit well, the conductor/coach definitely knows her stuff and the small orchestra (piano, drums, fiddle, Irish bagpipes, accordion and woodwind) do them great service. They lay on a rich mixture of  religious music (we had Ave Maria, Exsultate Justi and Cantique de Jean Racine), Irish (e.g. 'There is an Isle', 'The Isle of Inishfree', Danny Boy and 'Mary from Dungloe'), film and 'musicals' songs (Razzle Dazzle and a medley from My Fair Lady), the odd 'Negro' spiritual style song (in this case actually written by white American Stephen Foster, "Hard Times Come Again No More") and the choir's own romping, purpose-written anthem "And Sleep is Sweet in Carrick Town" (Ailie Blunnie). The show lasts about 2 hours with an interval. It is a cracking good evening and we love it. Well done Anna and thank you so much for the pure pleasure.

Pig Ark

A very welcome rain-less week is currently drying out our ground beautifully, so that our thoughts and plans can turn to gardening and getting on the ground without damaging the soil. Our crocus bulbs, planted last autumn have finally felt the sun on their petals and opened properly - they'd been sulking in that nearly-open state that crocus do when the rain is falling. Our tête-à-tête daffodils in the tub outside the front door are also cracking on now. But we are being patient and letting the soil dry nicely before we rush in and we have plenty of 'hard standing' tasks we can do, not least building the pig ark.

This we have un-ashamedly 'lifted' from the Haynes Pig Manual written by Liz Shankland (but actually designed and built by her husband, she says). It is based around 8 by 4 sheets of plywood and corrugated iron rolled to fit round these as a roof. We have had some fun putting this together, one of those nice projects where we can work together. It is quite a substantial construction incorporating tanalised '4 by 2' and '3 by 2', with a floor of 7 by 1 inch planks. It is in two sections, the floor and the roof.

The floor frame on its own was too heavy for one person to lift. The roof is a bit lighter but whether we can realistically flip it up off to clean out the ark remains to be seen. I suspect I will be crawling in there on hands and knees and shoveling out straw. I am told that pigs are clean animals and will not dung in their bedroom, so it would only be their mud I am crawling about in!

The ark will sit in the new pig-pen down in the 'Secret Garden', well out of range of any extension leads that I can deploy to drive power tools, so the roof section has had to be pre-drilled in bits up by the Tígín and then carried down to be assembled with my cordless, re-charge-able screw driver. We have also given the semi circular boards a coat of varnish / wood preserver, 'Sadolin's "Antique Pine" colour. So it might look like Class 3 Floor-grade 18 mm plywood to you, but I assure you it is now the finest word in sophisticated piggy accommodation. In this post are various pics taken 'en route' I will put up a pic of the finished article in its woodland setting when it is complete.

We have been out shopping over the last couple of days and have scored some notable successes. In general, the Irish do not 'do' gardens, with most houses having a broad expanse of grass with a few spot plants and trees. Garden centres as we Brits know them are few and far between and do not stock much in the way of unusual plants. We have yet to find what we'd call a 'specialist nursery', though they may exist. Our biggest local garden centre is probably Ardcarne which has a branch in Boyle, but also one in Roscommon Town. The Boyle branch seems to disappoint more often than satisfy us, but in Roscommon on Wednesday we managed to find several things we'd been hunting down; bare root summer-fruiting raspberries and bare root Ribes, first early seed potatoes (Rocket and Foremost) and red cabbage seed. We also picked up some heritage variety blue potato 'seed' for a bit of fun.

Then today we dropped in on one of our favourite shops, Flynn's 'Alladin's cave' of a hardware shop in Castlerea, the like of which has long since died out in the UK; seeds and hats are jumbled in alongside porcelain hen and chicks statues, bacon, glass 'chimneys' for oil lamps, playing cards, willow pattern china. devotional pictures, camping 'gaz' cylinders, local gaelic games sweaters, white spirits and meths and so on. Our mission, though, was bee related. We had heard that Mr Flynn was a bee keeper and might be selling bee equipment. He was indeed, and quickly furnished us with a price list for hive parts, bee smokers, beeswax 'foundation' and frames. We'd also heard that he might have seed for fodder beet, something we might be able to grow to supplement the food of our pigs. Again, he was there, quickly finding a commercial sized box of the stuff, from which he measured us out a 'handful' into an envelope for our €2 worth of seed. How much seed did we need? An area, we said, about the size of (glancing around) your chill cabinet! Ooops, though - the seed is agricultural 'pelleted' seed. The seeds come coated in a tiny bright red sphere of insecticide and fungicide to help them go through the seed drill and give them a good start in life. There goes our claim to be 'organic' this year, then!

Spring in Rocommon

Dad has his first go at shuttering up and mixing concrete. This was the run of cables and pipes from kitchen to utility room (the former "office"). The walls of the house here are 50 cm thick and it wasn't realistic to drill through from utility room into the dining room, so the run of 2 cables, 4 water pipes (hot tap, cold taps, hot feed to radiator, cold return from radiator) and the waste pipe from the utility room sink were run outside the house at the base of the wall, then in through the kitchen wall which is a sensible thickness. The waste actually then falls down below the new concrete floor and unites with the kitchen waste to go out to our sewer/drain on the west end of the house. These pipes and cables were fixed to the wall at heights to give the waste a fall (slope). Dad then erected shuttering made of wood and old slate and poured concrete in to enclose the whole and protect it from the weather. The cable is of a special grade (NYM-J) which can handle being buried in concrete.

The other pics here show general spring-ness. Haggis is at the back door gazing out, we think wondering when the job will all be finished and he can finally lie down and sleep in front of a warm stove. There is a picture of the front door with its tete-a-tete daffodils in their pig-mash boiling cauldrons. The other picture is of the Tígín looking in the outer door and through to the yard through the other door. In our dreams the yard is a lovely sunny place, especially in the morning. Finally free from mud it is flattish and covered with pea-gravel, populated with nice terracotta pots of flowers and herbs, plus maybe a decorative piles or groups of the big boulders we have dug out of the house floor and apron. A white painted metal café table and chairs provide the breakfast coffee support. The resident coal tits, wrens and chaffinches nip about and the dogs laze in the morning sunshine.

Ahhh... soon.
Deefs

More Signs of Spring

Now that the local Daffodil Show is well and truly over, the daffs all decide it's now OK to flower. These rather nice collection of Tete-a-Tete are in one of the big pots which were originally a birthday present from Mum to Dad. They are too big for Mum to lift but she used her womenly wiles and the 2CV (and a handy bloke with strong arms) to bring them home from the garden centre when Dad was out of the way.

Since then they have contained a variety of ill-fated plants, a Japanese maple which died, and a philadelphus which fared little better. Now they are full of daffs while they decide what to do with them. The other pics (if we can get them to show - this website seems tyo be having a hissy-fit and will not show them, so we have no idea whther they uploaded successfully or not.

Dad has survived another weekend on call and we've had plenty of good walks. Mr H, says Dad, is definitely starting to slow down now, the old fella, and an hour and a half of fairly gentle is enough for him. I am, of course, fit as a flea at 3 years old, so there is talk of maybe replacing Meggie with a fit, young third dog to give me a run for my money and let Haggis have a gentle retirement, like they did for Meggie. Maybe not a pup. Maybe not even (gasp) a Westie.

We'll see. Now we want to try publishing this and see what the website makes of it.

Deefski

Not quite finished

Winter, it seems, has not quite done with us yet, here in Kent, and tonight we are back with the bitterly cold NE winds and the flurries of snow. Some of them are pretty genuine, and in the cold evening air they lay and stay. It's just a dusting for now, but it gives a nice background to some snowdrops, daffs (tete-a-tete) and the Scots pine which had been racing into action thinking Spring had arrived. It also sends Mum and Dad scurrying off back to the farm shop for more coal. They'd been wondering whether coal-buying was done with for this winter.

It's also got me back into the blogging seat after a bit of a break. Haven't been in the mood, and with Dad suffering from man-flu (and we all know how deadly that can be!), he's been unable to chase me to post stuff. Well, here we are back.

Diamond is, meanwhile, now in the ultra-specialist Hospital in London for a bit of a make or break serious one, so our thoughts are with you Diamond. Mum will be up to visit, but Dad, in his current red-nosed, hawking, pathetic state would not even get through the portals before some big ex-Army physio nurse rugby-tackled him to the ground in the name of Infection Control.

So, we have a NE wind, falling snow, a coal fire and Mum creating something delicious in the kitchen. What more could we all want?

Deefski

Another Cracker

Yay! We already know one "Cracker", little Yorkie belonging to Steak-Lady in Portmarnock, Co Dublin, but now we've found another - 3 year old Border terrier cross, shaggy and red-brown. Great for an extended race about with in the Rec this morning.

And some photo's. Dad's solution on how to get some 10 foot chestnut poles up to the allotment, some signs we are well into spring - the tiny tete-a-tete daffs - plus still hanging in there from Christmas, the helebores.

Also (says Dad, rather embarrassingly) a good haul of salad potatoes which should probably have been lifted at least 8 months ago. No matter, they are in good nick and the humans assure me they are delicious. Like having a very early 2009 crop, while most people's (including Dad's real ones) are still chitting in trays in the shed!

We're off to do Question Master on a Friends of Kings Wood quiz night. Have a good saturday night

Deefski