Photo Prompts

Encouraged and inspired by Lorraine, I checked out her link to a photo challenge  - a month of prompts. The list is found HERE; Clare is a blogging friend (as I am) of Lorraine.
I copied the list into a file on my phone, and thought I would try to hit at least some of them.

...
4. New
5. In your bag
6. Broken
7. Upside down
8. Ordinary
9. Makes me smile

The 4th was my first day back at work, so that's when I started - and my photo is a new Christmas decoration this year, from my sister.

In my bag: it's slightly apocryphal, but it's alleged in work that if anybody needs something, it's in my bag. Sellotape, jumbo markers and the map of Dublin are all in my rucksack, but if it's a screwdriver, penknife or scissors, they are all in my handbag. Along with a French translator, my external back-up (spare camera battery and memory card in the case too), bandages, tape-measure and lavender oil for burns. The lavender oil is what kept C going during the more whiffy low-tide estuary parts of our day in the Le Teich bird reservation last summer. Other first-aid basics are there too; pain-killers and anti-histamine.  A sewing needle and some threads are in the same pack as the plasters.

Broken - and new, too. I have a pair of little baking mouse ornaments - one in a mixing bowl and one on a "gingerbread" star-shaped cookie. The one with the bowl fell off the tree and the bowl broke. Superglue didn't do much for it - so I bought a pack of Fimo and made a rough-and-ready new mixing bowl before packing all the decorations away again for next Christmas. It's definitely on the rough side, but at least I still have my pair of mice.

I passed on Upside-down, no inspiration on the day and no time on Friday to catch up.

Ordinary - my ordinary vinegars, flanking two more expensive and special ones. Friday was a busy, busy day so it's just a quick phone-photo.

Makes me smile: today dawned bright and sunny. So did yesterday, but it was, as mentioned, a busy, busy day. Today we visited Farmleigh, and also took a quick walk to the duck pond in the park. The mandarin ducks always make me smile! And...thank goodness for the spare battery in that case that holds my external back-up. Without that, I would have got the photos in Farmleigh but there wouldn't have been any of the ducks. There seemed to be a definite pair-bond between a particular drake and the little female, they were always together.

Sunday in the Park...

Sunday was a beautiful day - the downturn in temperature had just started, but it was a sunny morning with blue skies and we took a walk in the park in the morning.
The background of the picture with the female mallard ties in with the arty look of the gull in my header photo! The first photo is a jay - I was disappointed not to get a side view with the barred wings, but we really enjoyed watching him.

Autumn Evenings

The evenings are already noticeably shorter - but it was still bright enough for us to go for a walk in the park after a late dinner this evening, and make the most of a holiday Monday.

Most of the ducks were settling down for the evening, but this heron was fishing (we saw him catch something, too) and a coot and chick did come over to us for some of my bread crumbs. They've already harvested the grass in most of the park, but if the weather stays as it is (warm, sunny, some rain) I can see that they might even be able to cut a second crop of hay; the grass is already quite long in places.

(the bee on the allium is actually from August 2011, in Birr. I couldn't find any suitable header photos from August last year)

Recipe Time

The temperatures plummeted last night to just above freezing, and a clear sky brought an end to the dismal grey mornings we've been having recently.
So we went for a quick walk in the park. We were no sooner in the gate than we spotted a pair of jays, to C's delight. I've seen them before in Farmleigh, but it's only the second time he's ever seen any. Then his beloved wood duck was back on the lake, and we saw a pair of Little Grebe - a first for him. Plenty of birds in Farmleigh, too, and lots of glorious autumn colour.

 

We came home and I cooked this for our brunch : German Apple Pancake

Pancake:
3 large eggs
1/4 pt milk (5 fluid ounces; this is an imperial pint!)
3 oz white flour - between 1/2 and 3/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
3/4oz / 1 1/2 tblsp butter
1 apple thinly sliced (optional)

Filling:
1 lb tart apples thinly sliced - preferably ones which will hold their shape
2 oz / 1/2 stick melted butter
2 oz / 1/4 cup sugar
cinnamon and nutmeg to taste.

Prepare the pancake batter by beating together the eggs, milk flour and salt till smooth. If you wish to add some thinly sliced apples, do so.
Preheat the oven to 220C, 425F.
Heat a 12" heavy skillet, melt the butter in it and once it's sizzling, pour in the batter and put into the oven. Cook for 15 minutes, then lower the heat to 170C, 350F and cook for another 10 minutes; it should be brown and crisp.
Now, here's where I don't know if the issue is that my largest skillet which will fit in the oven is only 11", or if it is meant to rise up the sides of the pan! I've made it twice now (once with, once without the optional apple), and it's been the same both times.  The recipe is from "The Vegetarian Epicure", which was Anna Thomas' first cookery book. All I have for this recipe is a rapidly fading  photocopy on thermal fax paper - a situation soon to be rectified. She says that during the first 10 minutes or so of cooking it may puff up in large bubbles, in which case you should pierce them with a fork. Mine just rises up the sides...but at the end I am able to fold the sides to the centre which works OK.
The filling should only take about ten minutes to prepare; melt the remaining 2 ounces of butter, sauté the apples till just soft, then add the sugar and spices.
Slide the pancake out onto a large plate. Recipe says put the filling over one side and fold the other half over it. My way means I spread the filling over the whole centre and fold my very risen sides in over it.
You can drizzle with more melted butter  (I don't) and sprinkle with sugar..
We can finish this between us for breakfast or brunch, it could probably serve three. As a dessert with cream or icecream it would certainly serve up to 6.

Spring is Springing

I had some rather disheartening news in the post yesterday, so in the afternoon I went for a walk along the canal and had a wonderful time listening to all the birds singing their hearts out, and seeing the signs of Spring. And this morning I had time to go for a good walk in the park after doing the shopping.

I've been noticing the chestnuts greening up nicely as I walk to the local shops, but this is the finest I've seen yet.

Front of Farmleigh, with cherry trees.

Snowflakes

Good grief - a tree peony on its way already!!

Love the acid green with the tulip

As soon as I stepped through the gate into the walled garden I could smell the viburnums. It's a shame there's not yet a way of sharing scent - at least video allows for sound.

Farmleigh in the Frost - Flora

More photos from Thursday morning... An onion set in the walled garden, and the hedge in front of the vegetable area.

A big difference from back in July when the duckling were napping on this trunk!

Farmleigh in the Frost - Birds

I didn't bother getting up early to go shopping yesterday as I'd have had to de-ice the car in a major way. But mid morning it had cleared in the sunshine and I took a trip to the park after collection a parcel from Amazon at the sorting office.
It was funny, because while the ground around Quarry Lake was quite frosty (picture with the moorhen), the lake there wasn't frozen at all. On the other hand, the lake in Farmleigh was almost totally frozen over and the ducks were reduced to a very small amount of open space just in front of the café.
No photos of them, but I saw more chaffinches than I think I've ever seen together before.

Sunset in the Park

We had a fruitless walk through the park this afternoon in the vain hope that we might spot the pannier that C lost off his motorbike last week. He hasn't walked that far since he had to walk home from work in the snow this time last year, and is still suffering. I walked about the same distance on Friday on the same errand but a less scenic walk.
At least we were rewarded with a beautiful sunset as we trekked back to the car cross country...
At the start of the walk I spotted more unusual fungi.

As we started the cross-country bit of our walk back, we spotted lights in some trees. As we got closer we could also see white roses and lots of little tealights in glass jars. As we were taking a closer look, two guys arrived to disassemble it all. Apparently they had been setting the scene for a friend to propose (successfully) to his girlfriend, and now that the coast was clear they'd come to take it all down again. They'd even highlighted the couples initials carved in the tree a year or so previously with a heart-shaped garland of lights. Then they were looking forward to the cigars and beer that they'd been promised in return for their help.

Round and about

This morning I saw a blackbird on the ground picking at a fallen rowan berry. I wished I'd had time to stop and take the camera out - even in the miserable grey windy weather the contrast between the berry and the bright yellow beak was wonderful. But the train service here isn't frequent enough that I could afford to miss the train...
However, I did snap these last week - on another wet, though not so wild, day. The rose is in a garden just up the road. I'd seen the fungi a week previously when they were fresher, and they looked like lovely glossy wood, almost. But it was a day when I'd decided that a camera on top of six library books was just more than I wanted to carry, and by the time I passed that way again they had faded a little from their original beauty.

This is another one I saw on the way to the bus stop one morning  - it almost looked as if it were melting into the ground. I don't remember seeing such a wide variety of fungi in the local area as I have this year.

Did I say that last time we went to the park we saw more deer gathered together in one spot than I think I've ever seen there before?

And they weren't all at a distance either - a small part of the herd was quite close to us.