Farmleigh

 I paid a visit to Farmleigh on Thursday morning, which turned out to be a good choice as Friday and Saturday were both very showery. As I was stowing the saddlebags in my backpack and switching sunglasses for regular, I had a curious visitor who first perched on the pedal and then flew up to the handlebar of my bicycle.

I don't recall ever noticing so many wisteria before - a whole row of them growing up frames  - and yet I must have been there around this time of year. With peonies also out and some oriental poppies, it slightly made me regret that I hadn't had the energy to go as far as the Botanic Gardens.

I did cycle the longer (and flatter - usually I go for the shorter and more hilly = exercise) route so that I could take a picture of the deer sculpture now that the alliums are starting to come out.  I did grab one at the tulip stage, but missed the stage after that when there is some tall stem with either blue or white flowers, and which I haven't yet taken the time to identify. 

 

Autumn fades

 I took a trip to Farmleigh one morning last week when it was bright and sunny - and on the chillier side. Most of the colour from my previous visit had gone, and the herbaceous borders had pretty much been cleared out. 

I really liked the decaying hosta leaf, and in the walled garden, a rose petal had fallen onto a leaf. 

Hot off the Needles - May Flowers

 I knit this for a friend. I left it a bit late to start something, because we heard so early that she was expecting - probably the best bit of news I got all last year. If I'd had more time I'd have thought about knitting a large cot blanket with jungle animals which was a great hit with both recipients who have got one in the past. I was showing C a couple of possibilities on Ravelry, and instead of any of them, he picked this one out. By the end there were 750 stitches on the needle - I had to order a 60" one, I didn't even know they came that long - and one ball of wool knit about 7 rows. (Editing to clarify that it was knit on circular needles in the round. I hadn't known they came in that length - I couldn't source one in Ireland at all.) It was hard to get a good photo. It's approximately 36" diameter. The pattern was called May Flowers

We had atrocious weather yesterday, heavy downpours - C's motorcycle ride-out was cancelled. I'd warned him that if the weather was half decent this morning, I was hoping for a quick trip to the Botanic Gardens to smell the lilacs and see the peonies. It was very overcast and grey looking, but we headed out anyway. I'll have to swing back with another post for the peonies, whenever I get time for a bit of editing later in the week. But here are some of the other treats we found...the hawthorn in full bloom, a little moorhen chick, rhododendrons. beautifully backlit gunnera. The robin was perched on the border hedging in the peony walk, and so close I could have touched him. 

The herbaceous and annual borders were both pretty bare, with just sand marking where the different seeds had been sown in the annual bed. But it was a worthwhile trip - and it started pouring on our way back, so the timing was good. 

Farmleigh

My sister says we are lucky to have Farmleigh within our 5km limit, and she's right, we are. But with the walled garden normally closed, I'm not sure that she didn't find more colour in her local 5km walk in Cork which she shared with me recently. However, I took a trip to Farmleigh on Thursday, and for the first time the walled garden was open. It wasn't an ideal morning for a visit, but I needed to get out of the house and finding the garden open made it worth it. The hyacinths smelled gorgeous, and in fact on the sunnier mornings I can smell the flowering trees on the way to work. I've had a bit of grief with the bicycle but hopefully everything is running smoothly again. That was another reason for taking a leisure outing on Thursday, to make sure that all the gears were changing smoothly again and the chain no longer coming off.

This one was so strange, because the branch stuck out at right angles from the main trunk and was just covered in blossom for the entire length - like a floral cotton candy!

There are some more photos in a March album HERE. They are from two visits, and were too many to overload a blog post with. 

It's that time of year again...

There are chirps and cheeps coming from all over as the young fledglings are hatched.
C called me last night and said there was a robin feeding a young one on the back wall. I was in the middle of making cheese soufflé for dinner so I only had  few minutes and just grabbed two shots.

But this morning, with half an hour to sit in the sun before heading out for the day, I took my camera and got a couple more. One shows the adult robin taking a well-deserved pause from feeding two greedy beaks; he sat there for a few moments ignoring the insistent chirps. And apparently one is never too young to enjoy a good sunbath.

Birds of a feather...

A few bird photos... a rare sighting of a bullfinch making the most of the rowan berries - on a rare sunny morning. And since the buses are all arriving early these days with school still off, I'd missed one bus and knew I had plenty of time to get the camera out.

Just the day before we had seen such a fat and red-breasted chaffinch on the niger seed feeder ( a first to see one there, they're normally ground-feeders) that we spent a long time looking at him to make sure he was a chaffinch.

We went for a walk in St. Catherine's Park on Friday afternoon for some time out, and spotted these little ducklings still growing into their adult plumage. I thought their tails looked so funny too, all fanned out. They swam over to us obviously hoping for some treats, but we had nothing to give them.

And lastly a very scruffy moulting robin I spotted this evening; he looked a little piratical with that black patch under his eye.

Recipe Time

...and a card.
Last week's mixed media challenge on Splitcoast required us to choose three different types of tutorial from the resources section, bingo-style. I was short on time so selected scraps from my scrap box which covered various tutorials and put them together to create a little scene - and searching for a sentiment to finish it off with, this one from Art Neko seemed to work well.

The embossing-folder-stamped background was originally intended for a sea scene, that's one of the folders you gave me, Lorraine!

Blue birds on my card, and here a couple of photos not of the baby bluetits still very much in evidence in the garden but of a young robin, moulting into his adult plumage. I always feel they almost look as if they had some sort of disease at this stage!

And I promised a recipe. I had some sweet potatoes sitting in the cupboard since before we went away, and it was high time to use them. I often make soup, but wanted some different today, so I looked online for some recipes and found several which I bookmarked into my Recipes folder.

The one I tried came from the BBC Good Food website, Moroccan chicken with sweet potato mash.

I chose this recipe because I always have ras-el-hanout in my cupboard, and was able to take chicken out of the freezer so it was a meal I didn't need to go shopping for. I have been buying my ras-el-hanout from Seasoned Pioneers for about twenty years now, going back to the days of dial-up internet and long before it was trendy. In fact, I first read of it back in the days when I used to buy the BBC Good Food magazine.

Moroccan chicken with sweet potato mash: serves 4

1kg sweet potatoes, cubed
2 tsp ras-el-hanout, or a mix of ground cinnamon and cumin
4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 fat garlic clove, crushed
200ml chicken stock
2 tsp clear honey
juice ½ lemon
handful green olives, pitted or whole
20g pack coriander (cilantro) leaves chopped.

Cook the potatoes for about fifteen minutes, till tender.
Meanwhile rub the seasoning into the chicken breast fillets and fry them for about 3 minutes a side, till browned, in 1 tblsp of the olive oil. Remove the chicken, lower the heat and cook the onions and garlic till soft.
Add the stock, honey, lemon juice and olives, return the chicken to the pan and cook till the sauce is reduced and thick, and the chicken done. Stir in the coriander.

Mash the potatoes, season, add a spoonful of olive oil or butter. Slice the chicken breasts into thick slices, and serve on top of a bed of sweet potato mash with the sauce poured over.

I left out the olives, as C is not a fan of them and they are not something I tend to keep in the house. I did mean to substitute dates, but forgot - I've made a note on the recipe to include them next time. Because we both enjoyed it, there will definitely be a next time - perhaps with couscous rather than the mash.