Farmleigh Again

 I took a quick trip to Farmleigh one morning a couple of weeks ago, hoping to inspire C to take a trip to see the magnolias the following weekend. He settled for just looking at my photos. This weekend we were finally able to travel further, so we went to the Botanic Gardens - but alas, I forgot to check that there was a memory card in my camera. So he did get to see some magnolias in real life.

Here are a few photos from the Farmleigh trip. I'm also keeping an eye out for ducklings everywhere I go, because I can see that this time last year we were seeing them on the canal. No sign of them there, no sign in Farmleigh, no sign in the Botanics.

There is what may be a tufted duck's nest in the lake. I don't know, it looks more like what moorhens make to me, but whatever it is I'm sure it's bird-made and not man-made.

I did take a few photos in the Botanic Gardens with my phone - I shall have to see what they look like on a larger screen and whether they are worth sharing. In any case, even without photos it was well worth the trip - sunshine, blue skies and birdsong. 

Botanic Sunshine

 We woke in good time on Saturday morning and enjoyed a breakfast of cinnamon buns. I need to translate and write out the recipe because I have lost my original translated version; though it's tagged as "American", it's from a long-ago French magazine, let's hazard a guess at 40 years or so. I still have the original file card from the magazine. Plenty of maple syrup along with the butter, sugar and cinnamon. We'll be finishing them off for breakfast or morning coffee tomorrow. 

And since it was a beautiful clear blue sky with sunshine, and we were still early enough to get to the Botanic Gardens before the car park was full, we made the effort and were glad we did. The greenhouses are still all closed, but there was plenty to see and enjoy. 

Loved seeing all the little treasures some boy had found it worthwhile collection in the back of his bicycle.

One particularly fearless squirrel scrambled up C's legs in the hope of finding some food, but unfortunately he considers them to be rodents and shook it off before I could take a photo. 

Fota Arboretum

C was away for some days - he left on a Friday morning, so that afternoon after work I got the bus down to Cork and spent the night with my sister - we had planned an outing to Fota Arboretum. We did have a couple of showers, but nothing that we couldn't shelter from under the trees. It was a lovely day out.

Here's a link to the album with most of the photos I took, I'm just uploading a select few here. We visited the formal gardens first. Not so formal now as they would have been in their heyday, there were four patches of wildflower meadow set into the lawns.
I was totally fascinated by the way the fronds of the cryptomeria seemed to start out almost fused, looking like a sponge or a coral, and then opened up.