Farmleigh in the fall...

 Today was a beautiful sunny day with blue skies and a distinctly crisp feel in the air. Since tomorrow's forecast isn't great, I decided to push myself out of the house after returning from leaving my sewing machine in for a service, and I went for a walk in Farmleigh.

There was a small clutch of relatively young moorhen chicks - they must have been the last batch of the season, because while they were no longer little scruffy balls of fluff, they weren't that big and they were cheeping madly. I also some some young tufted ducks, which were probably the ones I shared a video of a couple of months ago. 

Here are the moorhen chicks.

Also some of the general flora. I was surprised to see so much blue (not in the photos, but the herbaceous border had a lot, more monkshood than I've ever seen in one place before, but a couple of other things too. I always think of blue as a Spring flower colour...

I'm not personally a huge fan of hydrangeas, but I always think the dead heads look so pretty

The waterlilies on the lake are dying. I thought this one looked like a perching bird - in fact I did think it was a bird on first glance

And one utility box art which I snapped with my phone near work a few weeks ago. Our president has two Bernese Mountain dogs, and Aras is simply the Irish for "building" - so the president's residence is Aras an Uachtaráin.  I think there is also something written on the other end of it, but I haven't paid enough attention to it as I'm usually focussed more on traffic.