I have been tagged by Frances!

So, I have been tagged by Frances, and here goes!
Current Obsession? Getting my new dishwasher plumbed in

Whats for dinner? Pork Chops, Mushy Peas and creamed potato

Last thing I bought? Don't get me started! A dishwasher, five weeks ago and have spent last five weeks washing delph and mentally beheading the item who said he would come and plumb it in. Allegedly he is due tomorrow!

Listening to Back Street Boy's "I like it that way" [dishwashing that is!]

Favourite holiday spots, Tralee, Tralee, Tralee, oh and Tralee, also Galway, anywhere in Ireland, all of England, Hawaii, San Fransisco, Italy [have to be dragged out of Rome and Siena] and did I mention Tralee, Co Kerry? Land of Tir n'Óg [see J Exmoor's list]

Reading E F Benson's Mapp & Lucia at present, YD gave me dvd set of the series - and as Maxwell Smart used to say to 99 "...and loving it!"

Portly [!] Idiocyncratic [OH said leave out the cyncratic and finish with t, HUH! Honest, Piscean [to the bone]

Do I talk to myself? ----arrah! sure who else would listen to me if I didn't!

Guilty pleasure...hmmm, have to think about that one...garlic chips [french fries]

Who makes me laugh til I weep? OH, some of the comments he comes out with are so 'dry' but apt that I have to sit down in weakness when he starts me laughing.

First Spring thing? The clock going back and the first daffodils, buds appearing...

Planning to travel to...Tralee, Co Kerry...I need a spiritual break this year.

Best thing ate/drank? Glass of merlot last night while indulging a good long gossip with a pal

Flower of the moment; The purple tulips I planted last autumn have come up and they are fabulous!

Favourite film? With Frances on this one, Thin Man, Marx Bros, Bas Rathbone, any of the old Black & Whites, ultimate favourite? Casablanca...play it again Sam!

Care to share some wisdom?
There are no problems only answers, you just have to take time out for a few minutes and look for the solution. [Terry Reilly R.I.P 2.4.1986 friend of mine]

Would you rather walk, run or ride?
Walk, anytime, but since I got my new car...hmmm!

So that's that - I am now tagging Snailbeachshepardess, Blossom Cottage, Cait, Lampworkbeader, Celtic Heart, Fennie, Elizabethm, Pipany, Un Peu Loufoque and @themill...if I have double tagged anybody, my apologies.

Sunshine in my Garden makes me happy

I am probably going to be accused of being fox-obsessed, but these mornings it is very hard not to be. Since my last blog, there has been an increase in Vulpes vulpes' activity in the garden. On Saturday night, the outside light came on around midnight, just as I was trailing off to bed, exhausted from a day preparing for the morrow's lunch for twelve family members. It was the Silver Vixen, plump and well cared for, and why wouldn't she be. The word recycling in this household includes fox; well, leftovers are thrown out, and chicken bones are always very welcome. It has a knock on effect, according to my neighbour. Apparently since OH and I moved back here, his Buff Orpingtons, Silky Bantam [the one that thinks it is a cat] and two Rhode Island's are nowhere near as traumatised by the sight of a Silver Fox slavering over their shed, drooling as she mentally concocts such delicacies as Poulet avec Feathers, or whatever.

Sunday morning I opened the dining room curtains to watch her wend her way to her den, which I have my eye on, with a large rat gripped firmly in her jaws. She's earning her living then! Yesterday afternoon, the inlaws, outlaws and attendant offspring sat 'round the dining room table. Suddenly little Odhrán gave a shout - Mam, look, it's a, it's a...fox, he squeaked. Instant rush of city dwelling members of the family to the window, instant disappearance of fox who had been sunning herself on the rocks, in this instance it was the Bracken fox. By dusk, those who had lingered on, otherwise known as those without offspring, or whose offspring have fled the nest, were enjoying a glass of Chardonnay, watching the sun set over Dublin Bay when the neighbourhood Barn Owl swooped up and over the dining room roof.

"My God" cried Trish, "what the hell was that?",
"Oh!, just the garden Barn Owl" said YD casually.
"You have a Barn Owl in the Garden? For real?" squawked Mags, always one to squawk in amazement according to Therese her sibling - these two do NOT get on, and, as I nodded my head in assent, it suddenly hit me that this was "AN EPISODE" in Mags' life as a former neighbour liked to term such moments.

I have never taken the wildlife in the garden for granted; be it the Badger, Barn Owl, Fox, or on occasion when the grass tussocks have been trimmed and there is something resembling a lawn, the rabbits. The cry of the curlew over the hill, the swoop of swallow like a squadron of Spitfire pilots, chasing the tasty morsel of fly and gnat - the lower they fly the worse the weather next day will be. That was a belief firmly held by my Mother, and she was seldom proved wrong.

When we were children, in the summer, we were always fascinated how she, and next doors Mum always knew that we wouldn't be disporting ourselves on the local beach the following day; we were sure they knew magic, was it the seaweed they both had hanging outside from the gutter? Damp and rain would follow the next day, crispy dry and sunny days ahead? No, years later when I had ED and YD Mum let me into her secret, it was the flight of the swallows. High for good weather, soaring on thermals because that's where the fly was, low to the ground for wet, and it never failed.

Back to work today after two weeks hols for Easter; this was the break I had been waiting for - and, needless to remark, the best laid plans of mice, men and IE went seriously astray. This morning I lugged myself out of the bed at seven, staggered into the kitchen, now resplendent with new linoleum on the floor, cream painted units, and a new fridge instead of dark brown wooden cabinetry, and dark brown wood effect linoleum on the floor of last year, and pulled up the blind. There, calmly walking across the lawn were seven magpies. Sauntering casually, pecking holes in OH's beautifully mown velvety lawn, I envied them, oh not the lawn pecking, but being able to stay in the fresh air, and not be stuck in an office. Still and all, we are lucky, the Boss gave us an early evening off as things were still quiet after the recess, and I headed home thanking God for the longer days. After a quick bite to eat [we'll be on leftovers for the next three days with all the dieting fads of yesterday] it was out to the garden in wellies, and some rockery restoration for me.

I have an ambition. It is to restore the rockery my Dad created six months before he died. Nasturtiums were his favourite and I have planted the seeds for their homecoming. Thanks to wonderful pictures of Auricula's at a certain venue lately, I have become attracted to these pretty and long lasting lovelies. Pink and Orange grace the place - they are a joy to behold and brighten up otherwise dull areas.

And so to bed; to be awakened in the morning by the Great Tit's call of "didja, didja" and the Bullfinches as they work their way around the apple blossom; the tree is old and this year I think the harvest will be poor, the blossoms are disappearing at a great rate. I am so up to date with my housework, I am ahead of the posse on the laundry and I am reeling in shock at the thought that, tomorrow I shall be a lady of leisure. Now, let me think...relax in garden and weed a bit? Shopping trip for a few little bits and bobs for the house? Lie in? Read a book? Oh God! the possibilities are endless and it seems like months since I have had time to do such things. Blog? Definitely!

Rainy days and lazy thoughts

It is April, and it is the month when life is beginning to unfurl. Last week there were hardly any leaves on the Elderberry and on the Cherry Blossom trees, this week the Cock and Hen Bullfinches are taking it in turn to - as I like to put it - prune the buds off the trees. Despite their depradations it would appear that this will be a fecund year for elderberries, [lovely Autumn jellies to come], and masses of confetti like blooms spread over the lawn. I can hear OH now, already bemoaning the "mess" on his velvet lawns, newly mown with pride. Amazing what a new lawn mower can achieve.



E.D and I were having a cuppa in the dining room last week on Good Friday when across the garden flew what, at first, I took to be a Sparrowhawk, but under closer inspection before she turned to land, turned out to be a Cuckoo. The first sighting in years, in my childhood they were prolific, April airs abounded with their gleeful call, boasting how they had ousted chicks from nests and installed their own eggs. Many's the Dunnock Mother that had to have psychiatric attention when the eggs hatched and to her horror the never closed beak of her newborn demanded more and more food, and grew to three times her size. She, naturally, in line with the Motherhood rules, blamed it on His side...she always knew her Mother-in-Law was a cuckoo! Mme Cuckoo this time was off to evict nests in next door's gorse.



March has been a busy month, cutting fire breaks, carefully checking each 12' high gorse bush [it has been a long time since the last fire] to ensure that there were no residents of this gorse tenement. Unfortunately, the local council have not been so diligent, and have used a JCB to cut a swathe across some local heathland. As a result we are overrun with residents seeking housing. The population of the three neighbouring gardens has grown tenfold, recession hits more than one walk of life it seems.



Jenny Wren was disgruntled at first when we started on the tussocks of grass wherein she used to drop down, seeking whatever grubs that lurked among them, but with the cleared ground has come an easier harvest and she has stopped her "tsk-tsk-tsking". Portly woodpigeons, like wealthy bankers, ponderously plod across the velvet lawn, and the Magpies have been nipping dead pieces of ivy twig to build their nests, planning permission granted or not, building in the bird world is not at a standstill. Last years outcast has survived the winter, albeit with pinky hued feathers rather than his siblings pristine white; they appear to have either accepted him or are too busy nest building to bother with him.



Maybe they admire his tenacity. There is something sad though in the way he has built a haphazard nest in the blue cedar, twigs awry, and no female will entertain his amorous advances. He sits in the evenings at the peak of the tree muttering to himself, and answers me when I say "what's afoot Mag?". I get "no, no, upty, der, der, der" in return...as soon as the Oxford Dictionary of Magpie monotone conversation comes out I shall buy a copy and we shall have heavy discourse on life, and the pursuit of a mate.



The Silver and her daughter The Bracken foxes are busy. Silver has cubs I think. There is heavy duty work going on bringing home leftover chicken carcases, I have long ago abandoned putting such into dustbins, it is annoying to have bin lids clanging in the wee hours, so I leave them out at the end of the garden. Afterall, it is recycling after a fashion. They keep the vermin down. A morsel of mouse makes an appetiser for a chicken meal.



The old mangy dog fox is back. He is not the fine fellow who courted the Silver in the Autumn but rather a sickly specimen with ragged coat, dull and unkempt, his brush is gone - in place of a fine outstanding brush his resembles a blade of grass with the seed removed. He sits high on the hill amongst the uncut gorse and watches for whatever it is he watches. I have called the relevant people to come and try to capture him; he is a health hazard to his clan and to all domestic dogs and cats. I am informed that if I could tell them what time he will be around they will send someone up, have you met a fox lately who sticks rigidly to a timetable? No, nor me either.



All I can hope for is that he will go away again, he arrives for a couple of weeks every year and then disappears. I suspect TB, he crosses the garden in broad daylight and stands looking at the house. It is as if thinking is too much of a burden for his brain to bear. Half of me is hugely sympathetic, the other half is afraid of what damage he might do and how his illness might impinge on my beautiful Silver and Bracken vixens. Those ladies of lush coats [cubs have not taken their toll on a harassed Mum yet]. Mme Pounce visited for Easter week end and to her disgust was quarantined for her own good. I didn't need any dictionary to understand that language!



The Siskins have arrived, as have the Swallows. Easter weather was crisp but sunny and wonderful in sheltered spots. Beneath the blue Cedar violets and anenomies and grape hyacinths abound. Red tulips grace the lawn amidst the daffodils who are fast coming to the end of their reign for this Spring.



Work continues apace on my Father's rockery which we re-discovered after cutting down Lawsonii which had grown right up to the kitchen window. The kitchen is now a haven of bright sunrays, a makeover with paint which we had to hand from the old house, and new lino on the floor. If kitchen's could preen, this poor, sad and neglected lady would positively dance like a peacock.



I stood looking down the garden on Easter Monday and wondered what Mum would have made of all the changes, hoping she would be proud and pleased. The biggest is yet to come, an extension to house a family sized kitchen and an extra bedroom. I may have inherited over a year ago, but she still reigns and for that I am thankful.

(c)Copyright belongs to Irish Eyes

A childhood Christmas memory

I remember very well Christmas when I was 8 years old, it was bitterly cold and for weeks there had been heavy frost lying on the ground, it just seemed to build up in layers. Naturally, as children, we were delighted as a nearby pond was frozen solid and we - had we known about them - imagined ourselves to be the Torville & Dean of the early 60's.

At the school Christmas concert I got roped into playing the part of a Policeman, a desperate teacher, anxious to ensure that the whole class got a part, decided that I should arrest one of the three Wise men. There were 33 in our class that year, the stage was a good size but holding 33 all staring reverently [Mother Superior's beady eye being upon us] at the Baby in the Manger was not what the stage was built for.

When it came time to arrest the Wise Man, [probably for the illegal importation of Gold or Frankinsense] I rose nervously, teetered along the edge of the stage, put my hand on his shoulder, overbalanced reaching across the classmate playing the donkey and cartwheeled off the stage, bringing two wise men, [neither the guilty party] and a stuffed sheep [don't ask!].

Therein ended my acting career. By mid-March Miss Byrne had forgiven me, by June Mother Superior could greet me in the corridor with my given name and not a disdainful "Oh yes, you're the one that disturbed Baby Jesus by falling off the stage, aren't you?].

Good comes out of bad somehow, and Mum [bright red in face] won a Turkey, probably a consolation prize for her turkey of an actress daughter. Two days before Christmas Eve we went to our local town to pick up the bird. There he was. A large, irate, bronze Turkey, fully feathered and gobbingly - well - gobby! That bird could gobble for Ireland. Mum's face was a picture, this was obviously a conspiracy on someones part, revenge for daughter's fall from the stage!

So, what did we do? Well, we walked Henry [he had a Henry face] up the main street to where the car was parked, eventually managed to get him in the boot of the car, brought him home, and upon arrival cautiously opened the boot of the car. I think he may have overheard Dad comment on his fate if he had misbehaved in an anti-social manner in the boot, because as soon as the lid opened even a little bit, fourteen pounds of bronze turkey flew from the boot, up the garden in a charge that would have done the Light Brigade proud, straight up the hill, and for the next fortnight we could hear his gobbling call, taunting us.

That was a really tasty chicken we had for Christmas dinner that year. Henry? Well, he gobbled until February and then went silent. Around St Valentine's Day there was a well fed looking fox in the garden. Of course, he could have fattened himself on the rabbits that graze on the hill, couldn't he?

Happy Christmas to you all!


(c) copyright belongs to IE

The Monk's Tale

As a child, coming up the lane to our house was always a spooky experience; not the sort of Spooks you see on BBC on a Monday night, but the spine shivering type. There were chestnut trees [over eighty years old] meeting overhead. In daylight hours this gave the lane the appearance of a grand cathedral when the trees were in full bloom.

Come the autumn and the branches reaching to heaven like arthritic fingers, all the conkers long gone - smashed in the many enjoyable childhood competitions of conker bashing - and the place took on a different feel altogether. Coming up to Hallow’een and should you be the proud possessor of long straight hair, you were guaranteed to come up the lane with new found curls.

The house behind the big stone wall was built on the site of a Monastery which was razed to the ground by King Henry’s forces at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries - or so local legend has it. This may be true, certainly there was some edifice there, long gone in memory.

As we walked up the lane home, we happy band of five, tired and muddy after a day spent roaming across hills and through local forestry, we always raced up the last part of the lane. Two of us never felt anything, except to complain that one part of the lane was icy cold and to laugh at the other three members of our merry gang. We on the other hand were sure that there was some evil menace lurking just behind our left shoulders always urging us to run as fast as we could and to get out of the lane and up into our respective front gardens.

As I grew older I retained this sensation, most of the others either forgot or grew out of it, except for one of the lads. One evening, when we were suffering a power-out, Mum and I started chatting about local history.

I told her about the sensation in the lane, fully expecting to either be laughed at or told “Don’t be silly, there is no such thing as…” but no. Unexpectedly she looked at me intently and told me that my Grandfather, her father, had always said the exact same thing. I scoffed and told her not to be trying to make me nervy coming up the lane. No, she was in earnest. One of twelve, he and another brother had always had this sensation and Peter had gone to some lengths to find out why this feeling would come over certain people in this part of the lane.

Rolling on to a night in my mid twenties, my cousin and I were coming home one July evening from a dance. Strictly sober, it having been one of those dances where minerals only were served, Lee asked me if I would hurry up. I asked her why and she replied she thought we were being followed. I asked her how she felt and she described, exactly, the same sensations that my Grandfather and I [her Great Grand Uncle] had felt.

When we got into the house, I told her the story, backed up by Mum. After a while she stopped shivering and said that her own Mother, [Grand niece to both Peter and my Grandfather] had always said that she felt queasy going up the lane of a dark night.

The Chestnut trees have been cut, and are long gone, the lane is a much brighter place today, you can actually see the stars above on a clear night, but the Monk is still there urging us to hurry. All the old villagers are agreed that he is not intent on harming anyone on the lane, but is trying to get them out of the way of King Henry’s men to safety. Maybe he lost his own life trying to save someone, or maybe he failed in the attempt and is still trying. Whatever his story is, may he rest in peace.
copyright belongs to irish eyes

NIGHT OF THE DANCING FOXES

On a warm moon lit night recently I couldn’t sleep; at three in the morning I was sitting at the kitchen worktop, with the light of the moon streaming in through the window sipping a cup of tea.

I was debating whether I would indulge myself with some toast, knowing that sleep would not be easy coming. It was one of the nights we all get, where the brain is overactive and the neatly made bed on my side had become a tossed morass - himself slumbering the sleep of the just, a gentle snore intruding on the stillness of the night every now and again.

As I moved to open the bread bin a movement in the moonlit garden caught my eye. I stood still, not sure if we had an intruder lurking behind the bush, and ready to grab the cordless phone; a cloud passed over and the garden darkened.

As it cleared, I saw that the Vixen who inhabits the end of the garden was slowly making her way down towards the house. Sinuously moving from side to side, her nose investigating all the interesting possibilities that make life worthwhile to a fox. Suddenly she stopped, raised her head and turned towards what was formerly my Mother’s hen run, now a long deserted support for a clematis of gargantuan proportions.

Delicately lifting one front paw, she slowly retreated up the incline and as she did so I watched as the Dog fox came into view from behind the Chrysanthemums in one of the flowerbeds. Just as slowly as the lady he place one paw deliberately in front of the other. She stopped all movement and he advanced towards her cautiously.

Suddenly she leapt into the air, half twisting as she returned to the mossy grass, he pounced towards her and they began to dance sideways around each other. For what seemed like hours, but in reality were merely minutes they danced a minuet around each other. I stood entranced, at the back of my mind was the thought that surely this should be a foxtrot!

As swiftly and as lightly as a butterfly, she suddenly raced up the garden towards the big granite rock at the top of it. Leaping on it she started to preen herself, snapping at the dog fox; if the lady was going to succumb, she was not going to do it easily. Faint heart never won fair fox was obviously her motto.

I contemplated trying gently to open a window to listen to her calls, but the moment I put hand to window catch she suddenly decided it was time to dance again and she whirled down off the rock, raced right through the garden and into the flowerbed leaving a bewildered male looking after her in the moonlight. If I had been closer to him I am sure that his face would have registered total resignation and the thought obviously in his head was “Women!” However, nothing loathe, he followed her to the flowerbed and soon they were tumbling head over paw between the dahlia’s and the fuchsia.

A long twenty minutes later during which I had begun to think about returning to bed, he slowly appeared from behind the fuchsias and trotted off nonchalantly heading down by the side the house. As he passed, the outside light came on. He froze momentarily, well used to it yet, despite his recent night of passion, still alert.

At a more leisurely pace, Madam Fox moved out to sit beside the hen run and groom herself meticulously. She was serenely beautiful, and sated looking. She groomed from tip of brush to nose and when satisfied that she was the Coco Chanel of the Vulpes world, she trotted off up the garden, behind the Lilac bushes, over the big rock. There she paused, highlighted by the moon, looked back over her shoulder straight towards me, and I would swear she grinned a foxy grin at me.
copyright belongs to Irish Eyes.

Autumn - in Ireland

There is a bleak icy wind blowing from the north, the sun shines palely in an arctic sky. On the lawn five magpies dance on the freshly cut grass seeking whatever lurks below the soil that might provide them with a tasty tidbit. They turn their head sideways, listen intently and then pounce.

Two Robins, one pair of the six that live locally, have an argument on the lawn in front of the dining room window. Territorial as ever, with the cutback of grisellinia hedge and a couple of bushes territorial nesting sites are at a premium and those fancy new nest box things, one from Arklow and one from Somerset have to be examined and decided upon yet. Upwardly mobile has a different meaning in Robin-speak.

Two coal tits have decided that their favourite film is The Blue Max; they perform aerial battle around the cherry tree to decide which one of them will land and feast on the peanuts in the holder. As battle continues, one of the Magpies dangles precariously from a branch and plucks peanuts out. Velociraptors of old would admire their cunning. They look like something out of a Dinosaur film as they calculate their mode of acquisition. Funny how it looks like they calculate while other birds consider.

Last night as I closed the curtains a fox jumped up on the garden wall, totally at ease in her surroundings. She paused a moment and caught sight of me in the moonlight that was shining through the window. Her head lifted, her nose sought my scent, but behind the glass window, I was no worry to her.

The Badger snuffled his way through a flowerbed outside the study window on Friday night. He is attracted by the intermittent treats of left over chicken carcases that I leave out for him, and it is a bad night for him when the fox gets there first. He must content himself with a trawl through the flowers for morsels of slug, and whatever has fallen from the bird table.

Winter has shown her nose this morning; the icy wind felt as if it were cutting me in half as I stood at the clothesline. On the bramble bushes black berries have hardened, no longer the sweet and juicy attractive berry plucked in September to add to a dish of ice cream, make up into jam or add to apples for a tasty fruit pie. The mix of unripened fruit in greens and reds on the bush with the hardened black berries makes an attractive picture in the autumnal sunshine.

Overhead the Merlin hovers, her eyes firmly fixed upon a prey that may, or may not be aware of the danger above. She halts her hover and moves away over the fields to once again hover and swoop, this time successfully - something small like a vole has run out of luck.

In the wintry sunshine fuchsias, remind me of summer. Not that we had much of a summer this year. Like the global recession, global weather was on a major downturn. Yesterday, Saturday was a golden autumn day, today is more like that which we see in January. The forecast for the weekend is promising; hopefully it will be a golden week. We could do with the balm which such days bring to our spirits.
copyright belongs to Irih Eyes.