60 in Kerry Part 2

The morning of my birthday, Thursday was a day drenched in sunshine, albeit there was a tax of a thin bitter wind coming in from the east.  I was up bright and early sitting in the kitchen with a large cup of tea.  I love on Spring mornings to get up earlier than the family and relax with a cuppa and look out over the garden at home.  Here I watched the cows from the farm next door meander out from the milking parlour and wend their leisurely way down the lane to the fields.

I'm a dairy farmer's grand-daughter, and the bovine lure is strong.  I have little tolerance for sheep, especially the dimwitted one's who live on the Connor Pass on the road to Dingle.  As a child YD termed them "Woolly Jumpers" and not without some accuracy.  They, full fleeced and grazing the long acre, jump out from behind rocks onto the road in front of oncoming motorists.  In my childhood the Connor Pass was treacherously narrow and the low walls in permanent state of decline.  As OH complained on this trip, Kerry County Council has had a burst of health and safety concerns, and the road is now wider.  All the thrill of imagining oneself as James Bond on high mountain curves has gone.  Reginald Molehusband lives!

One by one the family emerged from their warm cocoons under duvets in Egyptian cotton covers; presents were given with hugs.  I am spoiled.  That's the long and the short of it.  They know me so well.  I love vintage and was not disappointed. 

 OH cooked the full Irish, and it was hilarious to hear him fuss around a strange kitchen.

After a leisurely breakfast, and a lot of laughter we prepared to head out to Slea Head.  I had promised myself a very long time ago that no matter what my station in life on my 60th birthday, I would be at Slea Head on my 60th.  Just as we were about to depart, Myra [Myra Daly] the owner of Courtyard Cottages, arrived down with a birthday present for me.  A lovely candle to light my celebration.  Myra and her husband Derry are a lovely couple who make you feel very welcome and at home.

Never mind 40 shades of green, Kerry shows us 40 shades of weather

Bob the Ruffled Herring Gull

We arrived, via the Connor Pass and a "woolly jumper" who narrowly missed us just below the waterfall.  Not only did we arrive, but a strong wind and heavy shower chased us too.  Still, it couldn't dampen my spirits and it was wonderful to watch the dramatic changes in the weather as the rain came in from the Atlantic, passed over and left everything looking wonderfully well washed.  Bob the seagull's feathers were a bit ruffled by it all, but a handful of crumbs soon soothed his ire.  It takes a seagull to perch on a low wall, three stories above the water, in a rain lashed gale and still look implacable.

We sat in the car overlooking Slea Head and Dún Chaoín as it was too windy to get out.  We had brought a light picnic with us.

The headland where the set for "Ryan's Daughter" was filmed.  It still annoys me that the set was not kept by the local people.  David Lean had offered it to them and it would have been a very valuable asset from a tourism perspective.  There is little, today, to mark where this beautiful film was shot, but Robert Mitchum is still remembered with affection by elderly local people.  

After our picnic we drove on towards The Marioch, Ventry and Feohannagh.  We stopped off in Ballyferriter to pay a quick  facility visit.  In Murphy's pub we were treated graciously although we were not stopping for a pint or a sandwich.  We shall be visiting Murphys in Ballyferriter when we return in September, and for lunch this time. Because I thought there mightn't be many places open in this area, as the season didn't open for another week, I had suggested a picnic. The smell of the food in Murphy's was tantalising and the huge blazing fire tempting but we had miles to go yet. 

We snuggled up in front of a roaring fire

and chatted over a glass or ? of Merlot

We returned home to Blennerville and The Courtyard to find it a hive of activity.  The gentleman who lived in the bungalow across from the CC had passed away suddenly.  Originally from the North of Ireland, he had settled in Tralee.  Myra had offered the use of the parking area to his family.  There was a huge funeral on Saturday as we were leaving, he was a popular man in the town and involved in many local sports activities.  

[the friendliest collie in Kerry]

Dinner in The Earl of Desmond Hotel, Ballyseedy that night was wonderful and I voted this the best birthday in a long time.

We left on Saturday morning for Cork to visit my last remaining aunt.  Even then Kerry threw more weather into the pot.  High on the mountains there was snow.  We had visited Brandon Point on Friday and had watched the squalls ride in from the west, across the mountains, drifting snow like icing sugar across their tops.  Baurt Regaum, Guivnageela, and the rest of the Slieve Mish were stunning in their beauty.  By Saturday morning as we headed up through the Killarney mountains on route to Cork the snow had fallen more heavily and was further down the slopes.  As YD remarked "It's like Switzerland at home".

We stayed in: 
The Courtyard Cottages, Greenway, Blennerville, Tralee, Co. Kerry 
Telephone: 353 667 124494
[prop. Derry & Myra Daly]
email:
welcome@countykerryholidays.com

We shopped in: 
Loramar Gift Shop, Lower Rock Street, Tralee 
Kelliher's Hardware, Lower Rock Street, Tralee               
Dan Fitzgerald's, 4/6 The Mall, Tralee.

The 60 in Kerry Project or Four seasons, Oilcloth and a Wonderful time!

PART 1

“Mother of divine…, wudja  looka dat, oh Blessed Mother…!” The nasal inner Dublin accent rose in horror and heads turned in MacDonald’s as the seventy something grandmother and what was obviously her seed, breed and creed of a family sat looking around them.

 OH, YD and I were in Tralee at last.  I had always promised myself from an early age that I would celebrate my 60^th birthday in my Father’s home town; and here we were, late in arriving but there and grabbing a Makky D because, this being Ireland, and St. Patrick’s week end, the restaurants in the town had seen fit to close at 7.30 or earlier on Saturday night  Anywhere else would have the place hopping with places to eat, but no, my beloved Tralee was seeing to it that OH and I celebrated our 34^th wedding anniversary with…burger and chips.  Well, mostly chips for me, because of the gluten free aspect of my life.

We had just sat down in MacD’s – the old reliable and only open eatery that night, when our peace was shattered by the sudden discovery by Ma Potts that people in Kerry do not wear the Dublin football colours as a matter of course, they tend to favour green and gold if wearing sporting apparel.  The heart of the rowl, no doubt in her own inner city area of Dublin, this lady was obviously in for a shock.  It says a lot for the Kerry tolerance that she didn’t raise a row with her comments.  I think they took pity on her poor son who was valiantly trying to shut her up with “shur-up Ma, yer not in Dubblin now, Ma, will yiz fekin give over”.

“Are yew fekin speekin to me yer mudder?” the matriarch querously asked in stentorian tones.  “Yer poo-er mudder who raised yiz wivouh a fekin penny to her na-um, and she widowed dese forty yeerz!” she continued.  “Yeh fekin ungrateful whelp ya, yiz were glad o me penshun when yiz cudden afford yer fancy forrun holidee.”  She puffed herself up portraying a study in aggrieved, hard done by, widowhood.  It wasn’t getting her very far with the family bcause “our Arlene”, all six years of her and Holy Communion dress with tomato ketchup stains down it, was not behind the door in passing comment. “Didden I tell ye Da she’d make a holy show uv uz?”   Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and then down her dress, Arlene was as aggrieved with her Granny as her Granny was with Darren the couch potato son. 

Eventually Ma was brought under control by Darren and Wendy his wife.  In the course of twenty minutes we got the whole family history, financial status, and the fact that Darren and Wendy were used to travelling to Spain for “conkinental” holidays but Darren being unemployed – as indeed was Wendy – apparently Ma’s offer to fund St Patrick’s week end in Tralee had been eagerly grabbed.  Ma, however, was not one to hide her opinions behind her hand, and the “fekin mountains” which were too high, the “weird accent” of the locals and the fact that she had decided that the receptionist in the hotel was looking down on her because she had called her Madam had led to Ma taking full verbal flight.  Verbally.  With verbosity and neither Darren nor the entire Cup winning Kerry team would, she asserted, make her shut up any time soon.

We left them to their own devices and headed on for The Courtyard Cottages in Blennerville where we had booked our cottage for the week.  We had stayed in Derry and Myra Daly’s lovely holiday homes before and it was like a home coming.

Up bright and early on Sunday morning, OH and I headed in to Tralee to Mass at The Dominican priory.  While OH, I have no doubt, said his prayers, my mind wandered back to the days when, as a child, my Father’s mother would lead us all up the main aisle, nodding a greeting here and there, as, with tremendous piety, she genuflected and took her seat in the pew.  Many a puck she gave me between the shoulder blades for not genuflecting properly and when my first cousins would be staying with her at the same time, the giggling was, as they would say in Kerry, mighty!

Time and tide may have brought Tralee into the twenty first century with it’s out of town shopping malls, T K Maxx, Home Focus, Tesco, Woodies, and all the other “anchor tenants” of these places notwithstanding, there are some things that never change.  Maybe it is part of the national character that, regardless of whether a person is dressed in a genuine 60’s suit that he bought circa 1960, or a 2014 version of a 1960’s vintage suit, people who didn’t grow up with Home and Away and Friends, have their own ethnic authenticity.

There, at Mass, were people who were instantly recognisable because their forebears attended the same mass in the same priory in my childhood.  The local solicitor, probably a bachelor living at home with the mammy.  The modern version of him didn’t use brasso to dye his hair, but dye he did. A dark burnt orange horseshoe ring around his head.  Dandruff a thing of the past now that Head and Shoulders had found its way into Irish bathrooms.  Shoes gleaming and a crease in his trousers that only a loving mammy could achieve.  The seventy year old lady, aubergine chenille scarf, purple wool coat, lilac trousers and black gloves, elegant as her own mother probably was, but the 21^st century addition was a pair of white Adidas runners.  Her silver hair beautifully cut and peeking out from under a lavender felt cloche hat.  The day was bitterly cold, but she was snugly caressed by warm clothes and sturdy footwear against all elements.

The one thing I was determined upon for this break was relaxation.  No running around to visit the cast of thousands of relatives [or so it seems when you want to head for Dingle].  No up at ungodly hours in the morning to get to here there and everywhere.  I had a specific agenda.  Whatever the weather I would be out at Slea Head on my birthday.

 I was not going near Killarney, I can’t stand the place.  I wanted to sit and watch the clouds play over the Slieve Mish Mountains from Brandon Point, and OH and YD were willing participants in my Grande Plan.  ED would be joining us later in the week, and as she would live out at Slea Head, given half a chance, no issues there either.

By way of relaxation on Sunday we headed for Ballyseedy and the garden centre there.  The fact that it has a large Meadows and Byrne shop too was possibly an attraction.  It is twice the size of my local Meadows and Byrne, so the possibilities were interesting.  In the event, we were waiting for parking for half an hour, OH’s not endless patience was beginning to fizzle out when we finally got a spot to abandon the car.  An hour later and a lovely pale grey with cherry blossom patterned oilcloth wended its way back to the car.  We rounded off the evening with some lemon and garlic chicken, a glass or two of a very nice white wine and a blazing fire.  Sitting and chatting while a gale howled around the mountain tops.

On Monday we decided to forgo the St Patrick’s Day parade.  I’m not hugely impressed with him anyhow.  St Declan and St Otteran to mention but two had already brought Christianity to Ireland before Patrick came to herd sheep.  It was well established here before him, but he had the better PR firm looking out for him.  We sauntered up to Ballyheigue and watched the surfers making the best of high rolling waves.  After lunch, the lure of Slea Head was too strong, and we headed out via Annascaul to Dingle.  We didn’t stop in the South Pole Inn, it was raining and cold out so we stayed snug in the car.  Tom Crean who accompanied Shakelton to the South Pole is well remembered here.

On Tuesday YD had to travel to Dublin overnight on business, but we were looking forward to her return the following night with ED in tow.  OH and I meandered around the town doing a little shopping and after a very filling steak for me and bacon and cabbage lunch for him in Gally’s Restaurant, we drove out to Castlegregory and sat and watched with wonder the splendour of the Atlantic rollers coming in towards us.  Teal and white, with wine coloured sand from the local sandstone, and a grey sky.  If we had demanded dramatic effects, we couldn’t have been better served.  It was awesome.  That evening we treated ourselves to a meal in Keane’s pub in Curraheen.

I broke my own rule on Wednesday and we called in for a chat and a cup of strong tea to an elderly relation of my Fathers.  The craic, as the saying goes, was mighty.  Maura in her 90^th year, was amazed to discover that “the little one”, as she used to call me when she visited my Grandmother, was now 60.  I hope I look as good as her if I see 90.  She’s sharp as a pin and if arthritis has taken its toll, she wears it with dignity.  OH loves these sort of visits.  Although he is a country man himself by birth, he hails from a different part of the country.  Kerry is not called the Kingdom for nothing.  The people are different, the land is magnificent, home to the highest mountains in Ireland. Carraunthouill is the highest mountain in Ireland.  Even 800 years of occupation could not dim the Kerry spirit.  I am immensely proud of my Kerry ancestry.  It is this ancestry which moves me to write my short stories.  As my Grandfather used to tell his children Glor na Gael [the glory of the Irish] is strong in the people of the Kingdom of Kerry.  I am a mixed bag on my maternal side with Dublin, Sligo and Wicklow blood in my veins, but it is Kerry that stirs my soul.

Springtime Inspiration and a new study

Back again blogging.  I seem to have been away for a long, long time.  Having spent the last few years doing a major maintenance makeover and building on an extension, life got in the way of my blogging.  Now I have a lovely study in which to sit and ponder and write.

My study was my Grandmother's kitchen, my Mother's Living/Family room.  When she passed away six years ago it became rather neglected.  It lost a lot of its furniture to woodworm when we moved in.  It was used as a storage room during the building work.   It became cold and damp and lonely.  Indeed OH used it on occasion to store his cans of Guinness...in a July heatwave.  The stout remained ice cold.

Today it is bright, warm with a new retro traditional style radiator that emits something called heat.  A new laminate vintage oak floor.  I have polished up my pine desk, added pictures and prints and photographs of family - generations of family. It is the room where every nook and cranny is proudly showing off my treasures.  Ornaments, mementos, my Father's books, my books and two very precious books belonging to my paternal Grandfather.  There is a smell of beeswax and roses permeating the room.  In the fireplace a cosy log fire is burning and the old smell of peat is gone.  Occasionally I get a whiff of it.  It is a smell I hate.  Mum had 3 litres of liquid removed from her lungs before she died and the smell of peat was strong.  Nowadays cherry wood, ash and oak blaze prettily.

Her terracotta carpet has been consigned to a skip.  In the three years that this room served as a storage place for furniture, Guinness cans, carpets and rugs, and oddly shaped boxes, the mice did a fandango on the carpet and started a chewing pool in the centre of it.  I'm sure I heard them singing at midnight!  Fortunately the cowhide rug I gave Mum for Christmas in 1989 remains intact.   It now graces the floor in front of the hearth.  A cosy Queen Anne chair takes its place with pride beside the window and it is here I now grab an hour or two to sit and read, crochet, jot down ideas for stories, and birdwatch.  When life gets too busy I put the Winnie the Pooh sign up on a pin beside the study door - it politely says "Do NOT disturb".

That, of course, is asking for too much.  OH barges in just as the Muse strokes the ideas pad in my brain.  "Have you seen my glasses", "Where's the manual for that bark shredder", "Did you feed the cat".  I smile sweetly and plot my revenge.  I shall await the next Hurling match when his favourite counties are playing; as he sits shouting at the tv, bouncing up and down on the settee, I shall sweetly ask him to come and change a light bulb for me.  Won't work though.  He knows I am quite capable of doing it myself.  ED will tap on the door and without waiting for a "come in" will bounce in to tell me of the days events.  Yes, I am always interested, but where did my "ME" time go?  Did anybody see it slip out the door and run down the hall?  Do tell it to come back if you see it.  YD will tap gently, await the "come in" x 5 and then beg pardon for disturbing me.  At least her visits here are rare.  She has set herself up very nicely in the new extension and knows the value of a little "me" time.  We shall meet up in the kitchen over a cuppa in the not too distant future.

Mme Pounce will sit sunning herself on the window after her breakfast.  She will thump the window just to remind me that she reigns supreme and can mess up any newly cleaned window at any time she wants.  She will be twelve in May.  I am considering taking a contract out on the nasty, bad tempered, foul mouthed beast.  She called me a waaaaaaiow yesterday.  With the look it accompanied, I don't think it boded well for me and she's probably already got a contract out on me.

We have a river of daffodils wending their way down the paddock; there are thousands of crocuses out, or should that be crocusii? and the garden is text book pretty.  It has taken six years to bring it back to life after Mum passed on.  Snow, frost and gales have taken their toll.  It is not the garden she left but I know she would love it.  We're off to Kerry on Saturday and I can't wait.  We, OH and I, celebrate 37 years together on Saturday and I'll hit the 60 mark during the week.  Growing older somewhat gracefully in spite of the arthritis, certainly growing older positively positive.  

Here's a hope that time will permit a return to my beloved blogging, and time to catch up on all those blogs I love but haven't had time to always add a comment to.

Spring!
Inspiring!

This fine chap arrived on one of our bird feeders during the summer and was captured on camera by YD.  Where he came from or where he went to, we never knew nor found out, but he stayed around for about two hours and then vanished as suddenly as he came.

A picture of our late lamented Check taken early in the summer.  She had been a big feature in the garden and of this blog for the past five years; always somewhere in the garden, sitting looking in, waiting patiently for her evening meal, as the summer wore on it became apparent she had cataracts and couldn't see much further than the end of her nose.  She became increasingly more tame and would wait at the foot of the steps for YD to throw out chicken carcases, leftover stale bread and her supreme favourite Mme Pounce's chewy sticks!  Check was addicted to Whiskas.

Dash, The Pretender, who succeeded to the position of Fox Favourite after poor Check was killed by a car, blinded by her cataracts, she never stood a chance.  Dash was "in moult" here, now he is a very fine fellow indeed.  The ladies are wowed by him, the neighbours love him for his agility as he hops on and consumes all manner of slugs etc., in the wet grass of a night.  The slug population has diminished, flowers and veg are safer and the  handsome chappie claims his reward of...Whiskas chewy bits and leftover food. Well, one good turn deserves another.

It was a bumper year for apples this year, even Mum's old apple tree which was put on the condemned list last year.  It lives to provide another crop again next year.  I made pots of apple and cinnamon, and a certain OH is still licking his lips.

Linnets were plentiful this summer and they made the lovely long summer evenings, during the heatwave, even more pleasureable.

Coming into land!

And so, as we look forward to Christmas in a few weeks, it's nice to look back on summer days and visitors to the garden.

All photographs in this blog are exclusively owned and declared to be the copyright property of KMSED 2013. (c)

Opening a new blog site

I have opened a new blog.  It's called

The Chat From Winnie's Corner

and I hope that you will come and join me there.  The View is reverting to what it originally was, a blog on wild life and country living.  Indeed that is where I first started off blogging on the old Country Living site.  The history of the move to the Purple Coo is well known and it gave me the courage to start blogging.

I remember very well, that first blog in December 2006...ok., maybe it was 2005, and I have made some lovely friends down through the years.  I wrote about what I knew best, what was going on outside my kitchen window.  Birds, more birds and animal life.  

Today, a different house, different birds and a different lifestyle.  My daughters have flown the nest...and thanks to the Recession...have returned.  OH has retired and I am semi retired.  The big 60 looms on the horizon come March.  That said, I am embracing the fact with relish.  A new decade, a new venture to follow.

So, I will still turn up here on The View...with tales of old and life as it was in Ireland, birds and squirrels that frequent my garden and the adventures of Mme Pounce.  The Chat from Winnie's corner will take in everyday life, a pinch of politics, a dash of comment on what the papers say; what's going on in Downton...and whatever takes your fancy as we say here.

thechatfromwinniescorner.blogspot.ie
thechatfromwinniescorner.blogspot.ie

Third generation Blue Tits

Third Generation Blue Tits

There is a new generation of birds flitting around the garden, and it proves a point I once read in a magazine on birds.  When winters are inclement, birds tend to produce more than one brood.  Usually two but a friend in Sligo who has a keen eye for bird life tells me sometimes a third brood is not unusual.  Well, we have had two generations of Robin this summer and three of blue tits; the last crew are still in moult and are tiny. 

By comparison to the spring brood, the Early Autumn gang are just that, gangsterish.  One little chap has earned the name Al Capbeak for the attacks he makes on any other visitor to his particular peanut feeder.  Fat balls are a big issue with him.   These days his stressed and worn out parents put beak under wing and you can almost hear an avian “Oh dear, why did I lay that third clutch of eggs?

Today the temperature is allegedly warmer than it is in France; balmy with a marvellous breeze fluttering the leaves of the sycamore tree. Wasps gather on the sycamore leaves to indulge in a sugar binge; they then fly tipsily across the garden and [gleeful smirk here] some become ensnared in the huge webs along the dry stone walls.

I hate wasps.  Hate with a capital H.  Their sting knocks me out cold.  I carry the needful with me everywhere to cope with their viciousness.  I read, recently, in Michael Viney’s column in the Saturday Irish Times that wasps are in short supply this year.  Oh dear! Yipee! Hooray!, Yahoo! Yippee Kiyay! Aw gee shucks!  I am soooooo worried, not! Not really.  As John Wayne might have said, “The only good wasp is a dead wasp”.  It’s the bees that worry me.

I have been busy putting out bee nests for them; Ladybirds are plentiful this year and they are being accommodated as well.  I was a wonderful summer with the garden filled with lacewings, dragonflies, of every hue, demoiselles, and grass hoppers chirping of an evening.  Warm summer evenings spent sitting out until dark watching the Pipistrelle bats fly and on one memorable Saturday night in early August, at Midnight, the lonely cry of the Curlew broke the night’s stillness. 

What my parents termed “Hunter’s Moon” is lighting up the garden these nights; its light makes a stroll in the garden before bed enchanting.  Foxes dance in its light in the garden by the Spirea, and our hedgehog trundles out across the lawn, intent upon his own business.

OH and I spent Thursday dismantling an old shed which was leaning at an angle of 85 degrees.  A former calving shed built by my Grandfather, it was my Uncles pigeon shed in his teen years, and my Father re-vamped it into a luxury dog house, complete with a mattress off an old divan bed, old blankets and insulated it with layers of cardboard.  There were winter nights in my childhood when Jeff the collies bed was warmer than mine.  Jeff passed away to the great bone pile in the sky in ’72 and the shed became a junk hold.  Ivy covered it until everyone forgot there was a shed there, except me, and on Thursday it gave up its treasures.

            One well rusted BSA bike circa 1960 which still had fully functioning brakes,

            the owner passed away two years ago having forgotten about it.

            8 boxes of jam jars

            A box of brown and cream cups

            Fourteen million spiders webs, two robins nests and four doors housing

            an entire continent of woodworm.

Also, in the midst all of this, we found my old cot.  Already twenty years old when I was born, it still retained its blue paint and a painted pig with Victorian jacket and hat and handkerchief tied to a stick over his shoulder.  Sound as could be and not more than forty wood worm holes.  OH treated them and my old play pen with something to deal with the wood worm and they now have a new home up on the walls of the old cow house.

Come the spring and a new glass house will stand there.  Beside it, hopefully, will be a new flower bed with Foxgloves, Monkshood, Poppies, Lupins, Michaelmas daisies, Crocosmia and Dahlias.  On the bank above it I hope to have masses of assorted daffodils, waving in the breeze that permanently enfolds our garden.

Have to say, it’s nice to be back!

It has been, to my amazement, nearly two years since I last blogged; well, in truth I did blog earlier this year, but my old computer, being of a fractious nature, refused to load the blogs.

For the first time in a very long time, this has been a summer of content.  All building work is finished, the garden looks like a garden. We even have a couple of ponds around the place.  To my husband’s delight the wan looking pond lily he received as a present two years ago has flourished.  We produced a family of frogs.  Not actually in the ponds, but in an old trough that had been cast aside and had filled with rain water and algae all on its own.  There is no accounting for frog tastes!

The heat wave brought mixed blessings, needless to remark.  On the one hand, flower seeds that had lain dormant because of the cold summers and bitter winters, suddenly discovered life.  It was interesting to discover plants that had shrivelled into themselves suddenly bursting with vibrant life.  The latest find is the Michaelmas daisy I planted that first summer of ’08.  A friend recently told me that I sound like something from the early part of the 20^th century with my “…back in ’08, and then again in ‘11”. Apparently, all I have to do is start with “I remember” and I have gained my free pass to Downton days.  Well, with 60 on next year’s horizon, I’ll allow myself that trip. The downside was the fear of gorse fires.  One raged on a nearby hill for nearly a month.  Reigniting itself because the grass underneath was tinder dry and winds whipped up a flame.

In five years we have lost our Greenfinches to that virus; gained a semi-tame fox who sits waiting patiently on the rocks above the ponds, secure in the knowledge that, despite his cataract, he will smell his way down to the food YD leaves out for him.  My neighbour, who keeps six hens, has lost four of them recently.  I was subjected to an angry tirade on the malpractice [sic] of feeding “…those dam vermin…” until he realised that the culprit was a very sleek and crafty eyed chap living under a thicket of gorse on his own land!

While out in the garden I have learned to tell the time by the arrival of the Long Tailed Tits at one of YD’s numerous feeding stations.  Seven a.m., eleven a.m., four p.m., and seven p.m., each day.  As the summer progresses the times change and by October four o’clock in the afternoon heralds the last arrival.

Mme. Pounce is now nine; geriatric? Don’t believe it.  She hobbles around the house mewing piteously to be let in.  Upon spotting a potential bird kill she sprints across the lawn with a speed that would allow her membership of the cheetah family. This year’s collection of baby rats down behind the cow house were exterminated with calm, lethal efficiency.  Mrs Rat did her best to replenish the stock, but fell victim to our Pounce.  She’s working on field mice and voles at the moment.  I hear a certain well-known brand of cat food is suffering from financial loss due to Madam’s self-harvested diet.

The battle for Fort Squirrel, The Pines, has been lost by our reds.  The grey has taken over.  A cute little chap has discovered a peanut holder on the cherry tree that he can raid with ease.  I miss the dainty red who used to call each September to November on a daily basis.  Mr Flashtail, although a handsome member of the grey breed, has the manners of a slob when grabbing peanuts from the holder.  Dainty is not a word in his vocabulary.

The autumn colours are early this year.  The garden is looking splendid, and as I look out the window in the room I earmarked as a study five years ago, there is a mellow harmony among the colours.  The study is almost there, a new floor will be laid in spring, and a log burning stove will be installed to keep the perma frost out of this room.  Beyond that, it is cosy, inviting with a healthy fire crackling in the fireplace and that’s in a July heat wave.

Gee! But it’s great to be back blogging!