Not much time today...

There was housework to catch up on, shopping to do, two weeks worth of post to sort through, the camera to clean well after all the dust off the last two weeks (thank goodness for the built-in dust and shower-proof cover for my camera bag. Especially when we got caught out in a thunderstorm. My little camera is meant to be pretty weatherproof, but I kept the big one tucked away for the duration. If there had been some way of keeping both the camera bag and our clothes dry, I'd have loved to go for a swim during the storm, but they wouldn't both fit in my back pack. As it was, during the first downpour we had to shelter under a tree, and saw several carloads of people leaving the beach and heading for their villas.
Our little friendly robin is still as curious as ever. I had only filled one side of the feeder and gone back into the porch to get nuts for the other side when he came to see what was up. I have some different seed at the moment which includes dried fruit and dried insects, which he seems to love. So my ambition is to have him feed from my hand...I'll just have to see!!
I can't understand why the same picture looks so different depending on which package I open it in, there's even a difference between the RAW editor and the regular editor in my Olympus software. I think some day I'll just have to bite the bullet and buy calibration software...
We were back to grey weather again today - perfect for ripening tomatoes - NOT.
Hope to size and edit some Greek photos tomorrow - some of today was spent in culling them for the second time.

Back from sunshine to sunshine

We got back last night from two weeks in hot and sunny Greece - Zakynthos, to be more exact. Wonder of wonders, we've come back to a heatwave, and are still in the same t-shirts and shorts we were wearing while away - already cleaned and dried. It's going to take some severe culling and editing before I have some Greek photos to share, so here are a couple from the mixed wildflower seeds that came into bloom while we were away. Alas, I have to say that the tomatoes are scarcely any redder than in the photo in my previous post, but I believe it's been fairly wet and grey while we were away.



There's a gorgeous red poppy too, but it's past its best - luckily there still seem to be some more buds on the same stem. I love blue cornflowers and red poppies - they remind me of wheat fields in France. I think we must use more weedkiller here, I've never seen them the same way in Irish wheat fields.
I guess I'll add one photo from Zakynthos town. We went into a little haberdashery shop and bought some bright sunflower oilcloth to brighten up the kitchen table. It was an old little shop. Well, as old as anything in the town is. After the 1953 earthquake when between 60 and 70% of the building on the island were destroyed, only four buildings were left standing in Zakynthos town. So this little shop had only been there since 1953, but it can't have looked a whole lot different back then. I am sure the metre stick we used to measure the oilcloth was that old!
I could have taken a dozen pictures of all those little boxes of buttons. The owner insisted that I get behind the counter so that C could take a picture of the two of us, and then I got a kiss on each cheek. We don't have a lot of Greek, and he didn't have a lot of English, but as always C singing to himself got a response, and he told us that he used to sing too. Up in the mountains in a little taverna we met another guy with little English, but again we communicated a bit; after I pointed out his bouzouki case to C, he came over and got it out, and played a bit for us. He just plays for pleasure with the family - his wife plays piano and one of his kids plays alto sax. The Greeks obviously use the same solfege system for their music as the French do, because that was how he explained the tuning to us. It's certainly much more universal than C, D, E, F, and so much more useful, I can't understand why we don't use it much here.

Flowers - again

...and green tomatoes. I hope we have enough sunshine to ripen them. These aren't even the ones I planted - these are ones that grew from seeds in the compost. Plum tomatoes, evidently. And the Cosmos has finally decided to flower - I hope it lasts till after we get back from holidays. Maybe I just didn't feed things enough.
Been watching To Kill a Mocking Bird today. I started re-reading the book for the umpteenth time, and then it mysteriously ended up on C's side of the bed. I got it back again, but decided to watch the film too - no hardship watching Gregory Peck. I'd forgotten how many of the little details the film leaves out, though.

More flowers - and a recipe

Hmm, didn't realise I'd copied the Chicken Kebabs with Satay Sauce from the laptop and already posted it...so what else?
This is my regular Swiss Roll recipe, which we often have at the weekends. I am afraid to say that the two of us can finish it off between us, with morning and afternoon coffee, breakfast on Sunday and maybe Sunday tea.
My recipe come from Alison Uttley's Recipes from an Old Farmhouse. My copy is an old hardback one (1966) which came from my grandmother's house. It was still in print as a paperback fairly recently, because not long after my mother gave me that copy, someone gave her a brand new paperback one. Mine is illustrated by Pauline Baynes, who did the illustrations for the Narnia books.
I loved the Little Grey Rabbit books by the same author (illustrated by Margaret Tempest) when I was little. I still have a little wooden Fuzzypeg hedgehog in a pram made out of three quarters of a coconut, which my dad made for my fifth birthday. I was in hospital having my tonsils out on the day, but when I came home, the cord for pulling the pram along was peeking out from behind the sofa, so that I would find it. Little Grey Rabbit was what I got on my star chart when I was being good and not too sulky - on those days I got a crab. They are one of the books I can remember going to the bookshops in Bray and Stillorgan to buy when I had money after my birthday and Christmas, and I still have them all. Some are more battered than others! She also wrote a very good book for older children about a traveller in time, who went back to the time of Elizabeth and Mary, and a plot by a landed Catholic family to get Mary back on the throne.
The cookery book harks back to her own childhood on a big farm, and is interesting to read, as well as having several recipes I often use.
So - for the Swiss Roll, at last. It's 4 eggs and six ounces (3/4 cup) castor sugar beaten till very thick. Then gently fold in 4 ounces sifted flour with 1 tsp baking powder (about 1/2 cup flour after sifting), and vanilla essence. Also lemon zest, if you like. Bake in a large swiss-roll tin lined with baking parchment in a hot oven. It takes about 8 minutes. Allow to cool for a minute after removing from the oven, then turn onto a clean damp tea towel sprinkled with castor sugar. Cover with the rest of the towel, and when cool spread with jam and whipped cream.
When she made it, they had to beat it over hot water, by hand, and it must have taken forever. I am very glad to have a mixer that only takes about five minutes! Especially when I remember Laura Ingalls Wilder's accounts of beating the eggs for her wedding cake, and how long that took.
More flowers from yesterday...pretty sure the third one is some species of Echinacea, just not the one I have in the garden.

Botanic Gardens

There was such lovely light last night that we were expecting good weather this morning, and planned to go to the Botanic Gardens if we were right. The weather forecast I had looked at said sunny spells, the one C looked at said heavy rain. I think my forecast is more reliable!
We saw very few squirrels today, but were lucky to see a moorhen and some little chicks out on the lily pads. Just look at the size of the chick's feet in the first picture - they are ginormous. The picture of the mallard is older - I was checking out some older moorchick photos from a couple of years back when I was temping in the Cancer Society and used to walk along the canal at lunch time.






A couple of flower pictures - I'll probably post more tomorrow, as I re-sized several. The first one is a reflection in one of the glasshouses, it was fascinating to look at.

Quick shot

My new computer arrived on Wednesday. It's like greased lightning compared to my old one - 2 GB of photos transfer in 2 minutes. And we can watch DVDs again easily. We have no television, so the advent of DVDs for computers was wonderful.
We are currently watching The Beiderbecke Trilogy. I saw it a long time ago with my mother, but somehow C has only ever seen the second and third series, and is now laughing his way through the first one. He chuckles his way through the book too, every time he re-reads it. If you like good writing and dry humour, either the DVDs or book are worth looking into. The book, alas, is long out of print. When a friend thought she had lost ours, I was more than a little upset. After discovering that a secondhand copy would cost over sixty euro, she redoubled her efforts to find it, and succeeded. It will never be loaned out again without a written undertaking to return or replace it.
This is just a quick shot of a little lupin that is flowering in a pot by the back gate. It was perfectly backlit when I went out to open the gate this afternoon before C got home. But a lupin in August - I am sure I have often had them in May. After it's flowered, I'll take it out of the pot and plant it in the border - it should come up again next year.




Also a couple of shots of the little robin. I was just looking at the first ones I took of him, he's grown so much. Being ruthless I deleted 200 photos from my July folder.

Mission Accomplished

Yesterday morning, before I started the housework I stood in the back porch for half an hour, after hanging up a bag of peanuts. My feeder has a side for nuts, a side for seeds, and fresh water in the centre. It's a great idea because the light doesn't get at the water, so it doesn't go all green and slimy like my last water feeder. But some big bird or other managed to damage the mesh on the nut side, so until I could patch it up a bit, I didn't like to put too many in. Then the birds could just grab whole ones out, and that's not so good for them. So I thought if I hung the net up, the tits might perch on it for longer. And they did.
Great tit and blue tit together.

Then talk about pecking order - do you see that big bully of a great tit chasing the poor little blue tit away.

Great tit back, ruling the roost.

Chastened little blue tit in the tree.

Little blue tit allowed back after the great tit finished.


Even after drastic culling there are still some more pictures from yesterday to share, but I'll save them for later on in the week. I am hoping, hoping, hoping that the new computer will arrive tomorrow, and then I won't have stuff spread across my limping PC, my external drive and the laptop. I had to restore all my archived emails to find our travel insurance certificate to print off, as we have a holiday coming up soon.
I am also hoping that my Olympus software will install AND work on the new computer. For pig iron I tried it on this one today to see if it would install after the total format; for the first time in months it did actually reinstall and register all the picture files on my PC, and worked for all of five or ten minutes - and then it crashed, yet again.

A walk in the park

It was mostly lovely weather today - sunny, only a couple of rain showers. Mind you, it was so dark at one stage in the morning that when I was taking bird photos I had to up my ISO to be able to keep on hand-holding the camera. Those photos are for tomorrow - these are from a walk in Phoenix Park this evening that ended up longer than we had planned because it was so lovely. When we saw the heron, there were loud lamentations from C because I didn't have my super-zoom with me. He would have carried it, and never said a word. Probably true, unless he'd carried it and I'd never used it.






It's raining now - and thanks to the walk C never cut the grass. Hope it's dry again tomorrow.

Flurry of sparrows, fleeting sighting of Great Tit

I had my macro lens on to take a detail shot of a shaker card I made for the Cardvaarks Winter Wonderland challenge.
Just in case, I put the zoom back on when I was finished - and was rewarded with the young Great Tit hanging around for longer than he ever has before. Not long enough to do anything other than point and shoot, so I was pleased with how well the pictures came out.







Even the sparrows are getting more timid than they used to be. When I went out at some stage, they all flew off to a tree beyond the end of next door's garden. I like this shot, even though only two or three sparrows are actually perched and in focus. C always complains about the sparrows eating us out of house and home. When I counted over twenty (in the picture after this, when they had all settled), I was just surprised that the feeder stays full for more than five minutes - especially as in this weather I only fill it about a quarter full or less. And surprised that the other birds get a look in - I saw the chaffinch again today. C is sure he saw a little wren hopping around on the grass the other day, I'll have to keep an eye out for that.

Swans

I'm still betwixt and between computers. All my stuff is on my external drive, and because of the problems I was having with messages warning about drive integrity, I am a bit unsure about plugging it in. The PC has been stable since Monday, and as my new one hasn't dispatched yet, I would rather let sleeping dogs lie. So the walk (from my archives) down the Promenade Plantée in Paris is going to have to wait for another day.
Today I just had time to snap a couple of shots of some swans on the Liffey. I liked how they were swimming just where the reflections of the houses and tree started. If we finish work at a time when the bus leaves the city centre, then I know I can get that bus if I jog most of the way to my stop - which doesn't leave time for any pictures. But if we finish five or ten minutes before the bus leaves the terminus, then I can afford to walk and take time to look at things more.