March Favourites

 Later than normal - it was an exceptionally busy week in work.

Not a lot because of high stress levels, but still a few...

The lion card was for a challenge to use playing cards, and was a great chance to use (when I found it) a postcard with an image by Belinda Northcote which came slipped in with something I ordered at some stage. 

The Woodstock one was to mark the day the swallows return to San Juan Capistrano, and was inspired by the following Peanuts strips from March 1981

Life has been busy, I fitted in a trip to my sister mid-March to attend a talk by Sean Ronayne, an Irish wildlife sound-recordist. Apart from that the weather has still not been wonderful. A lot of rain and wind, although temperatures have pretty much remained above freezing. 

The photo header is from the Jardin des Plantes (botanic garden) in Paris last April. We had visited several times, possibly going back as far as our very first trip to Paris together back in the nineties, and while my sister and her husband were always full of enthusiasm for it, we never understood the attraction. Maybe we just hit the sweet spot last Spring, when we walked through it several times. 

February Favourites

 Thin on the ground  - it was a very tough and stressful month on a couple of fronts,  plus we had a houseguest for a week - no stress there.  During that week it rained and rained and rained - we were lucky to get one reasonably fine morning to go for a drive and a walk with him. Even he decided that walking along the canal towpath would be too hazardous and slippy on account of the mud and rain. 

This morning we snuck in a visit to the Botanic Gardens after doing a charity shop and Dog's Trust donation run - it was too beautiful a morning to pass up. A couple of photos attached, the album is HERE. 

This month's header, in a throwback to my first blog post ( April 22, 2009)  is magnolia - this one taken in Farmleigh last March. 

January Favourites

 not many - it's been a busy month!

The second picture was for a sgraffito challenge. I had painted some excess gold acrylic onto heavy card, so for the challenge I decided to overpaint it with a dark blue, and I swirled C's comb through it. 

A couple of nice walks - we went to Bull Island one Saturday morning because the new mudguards for my bicycle had arrived, and the shop was not far from one of the access roads to the island.  We were lucky because it was a sunny and dry day without too much wind, and with the tide on the turn coming in, we got to see a good few birds. I'll add a few photos here but there's an album which you can see by clicking HERE. The following weekend I was down with my sister for her birthday, and we went to a reserve near her. Not nearly as lucky with the weather, but I was glad I'd brought my long zoom lens because we still got to see plenty of birds - more curlew, shelduck, a few wigeon and a lot of teal. The first three photos are from Bull Island, the next ones are from Harper's Island. And the last one was taken on the way to work on Thursday - two days after the worst of the flooding. On Tuesday most of the cycle path was under water. 

This month's header is a photo from a walk along the Lee in Cork last February - a curlew and some oystercatchers in flight. 

December Favourites

 I think 2025 was a long hard year for many - so I hope 2026 brings at least some good things.

My header photo is our neighbour's lobster claw shrub which overhangs our side gate and sheds copiously into our back yard, but which is very pretty at certain times of year. The photo was on a very frosty day last January - and it looks as if we have plenty of cold weather on the way in the next couple of weeks. 

I don't actually have many December card favourites - one Christmas card, one Paul Klee-inspired card and a thank you card which will go to my sister-in-law who always hosts a family get-together a day or two after Christmas. I think this was a hard one for her, because their brother who died in September was the next in age to her, and in recent years he had always been with them on Christmas Day.

November Favourites

 Very few - even if I were to include Christmas cards and I can't say any of the few I've made this last month are favourites! On the plus side, my aunt's house sale finally, at long last, went through mid month so that is one less thing on my plate. One outstanding utility bill to pay and that's it. Phew...Apart from the stress leading up to that, I was sick for a week - nothing serious, just a bad cough and cold but that also sapped any energy. I did, after asking her how she felt her immunity was, visit my sister Saturday week ago. It was a complicated set-up - C was dropping me to a train station in Tipperary, picking up a friend and visiting mutual friends near Limerick, and then dropping his train friend home and picking me up from my sister's, so if I'd had to cancel he'd have had a lot of driving on his own, or else he would have had to disappoint several other people. My sister is still fine, and I was glad she was happy to have me, as one of our activities was visiting the exhibition and Christmas Print Fair of the Cork Printmakers. It was in their studio building over three floors, and there was a great variety of types of printmaking to be seen. 

Also very few photos from last December - I've settled for a close crop of one of my morning cycles into work through the park. 

October Favourites

 There are a few more of these, as work got a bit quieter. I hope to finally see the end of dealing with my aunt's affairs next week, and that will be a great relief. 

The not very good photo of the seagulls was one of several really nice utility boxes I saw today on my way to the solicitor, but the only one I stopped to take a photo of, as I didn't have my camera with me. 

The blog header was a beach in Cork that I visited with my sister two years ago, there was a major shortage of photos from November 2024. 

September Favourites

 Again, not many. Mostly accounted for by the fact that we were away the first two weeks in September; then we came back to a family funeral, a house guest for a week and 3 full work weeks for me. So in fact I only remembered that I hadn't made a blog post when I started thinking about a new utility box cover art I had seen yesterday. It's near the mainline train station, and has replaced the one with two Bernese Mountain Dogs. 

Two cards...

My header is some fallen acer leaves taken in the Shackleton Gardens last October - possibly the first time we visited. 

August Favourites

 ...slim pickings. AShackleton Gardens nd one was technically July, but I didn't share it here because I wanted it to be a surprise when I mailed it. 

 

I'll add a few photos from a rare evening walk in the park - a lovely sunny evening which we felt was too good not to take advantage of.

When we started, the area to the right of the gate we go in was all raked grass, and by the time we returned to the car they had almost finished baling it. 

I also persuaded C onto his bicycle for a quick trip to the Shackleton Gardens one Sunday when we were unexpectedly free. I'll add a link for anyone with the time and inclination to look at the photos - there are 72, so it's not for the faint-hearted: Shackleton Gardens Shackleton Gardens 

September 24 included our trip to Donegal, so no shortage of photos to choose from for a blog header,