Happy Easter

Despite the tub they are in having been frozen totally solid back in January, the first of my daffodil buds broke into bloom yesterday, just in time for Easter.
Just as well they are in a tub - it's so windy today that the only way to get a macro shot was to bring the whole tub inside.
Papa Robin is getting better at gathering more worms to fly back to the nest with, he can manage 5 (I think) now, with a bit of pecking around to get them all. He's still nowhere near the puffin - online research tells me they can carry up to 12 sand eels in their beak, but I am sure I read more than that in my bird book, or a photography magazine.

Hot Cross Buns

Most years I don't actually remember to make Hot Cross Buns on Good Friday, although we happy eat them any time of the year.  For quite a few years I used to be cooking for Easter camps, and although I did often make fresh bread-rolls for 80, I never did buns. As you can see, I don't put a cross in mine. These were the last two left from the dozen I made in time for a late breakfast yesterday, and we finished them off with afternoon coffee today. I have to admit that when it came to dinner last night, we decided we didn't really need a big meal, so we passed.

According to my book of festive baking, the association of Hot Cross Buns with Good Friday began only after the Reformation in the 16th century. Before that almost all dough was marked with a cross before it went in the oven, to ward off evil spirits that might stop it rising. After the Reformation this practice was discarded as being "Popish", and was just kept for the day in the Church year when the cross was most significant.
Check out this photo of a little Greek wood-fired oven that we saw in the folk museum in Corfu - it has a cross on it.

Hot Cross Buns makes 12
1/2 pt (1 1/4 cups) milk and water mixed, lukewarm
3/4 oz fresh yeast, one sachet instant yeast
1 lb strong flour
1/2 tsp each salt, mixed spice, cinnamon, grated nutmeg (I like more mixed spice)
2 oz castor sugar (1/4 cup)
2 oz butter (1/2 stick)
2 beaten eggs
6 oz currants or raisins
1 oz finely chopped candied peel
shortcrust pastry if you want to make crosses

Using instant yeast I just knead everything together, adding the raisins near the end. Again with instant yeast I skip on the initial rising in a greased bowl, and just shape them into 12 buns, arrange in a greased roasting tin and leave to rise. The original recipe, calling for fresh yeast has two risings before the shaping. If you want to make crosses, roll the shortcrust pastry out, cut into thin strips and stick on with cold water.
Bake in a pre-heated oven, 400CF, 200C, Gas Mark 7 for about twenty minutes, till browned on top. If you can put a tin of boiling water in the bottom of the oven to make a steamy atmosphere, all the better.
If you like a glaze on the buns - I do, C doesn't - boil  2 oz (1/4 cup) sugar with 2 tblsp water until it's formed a syrup, and brush over the top of the warm buns.

A Walk in the Park

It was so nice and sunny yesterday evening that we went out for a quick walk after dinner. C hadn't gone for his usual lunch-time walk, as he was recovering from a painful visit to the dentist...It was cold, but well worth going out - especially when it's been raining all day so far.

Sunset in a Puddle

Signs of Spring - a sticky chestnut bud ...

... and even a leaf breaking out

Stepping Out Together

C reckons - purely because there were three of them, that these might have been the ducks he's been seeing swimming around in a big puddle beside the road this week.

R U Ready

The photo challenge on SCS this week was R.
R for robin, of course. And wouldn't you know it, from yesterday the robins stopped appearing together on the patio. The presumed male comes on his own, eats his worms and then flies off into the trees with a beak full. And you're really meant to upload photos taken after the challenge is set, so I had to make do with this...

R is also for ribbons. I am not good on ribbon storage. Spools are fine, they stack on the supporting girder in the attic. But loose ribbon just goes in bags if it's a good length - one for organza, one for grosgrain and one for miscellaneous. And then there's a big box full of shorter scraps. And a very select few wide ones that manage to stay tidily rolled up.

R is also for ruffled - these little mushrooms were growing in the (wet) grass yesterday. It was so soggy that I couldn't kneel down to get a proper photo - I was on my way home from work at the time.

I hung up a sunflower seed feeder to try this week. Either I will have to take it down or just put very few seeds in it, because yesterday there was enormous wastage. I swept a lot up and picked out the good seeds yesterday, but then the wind got up and blew the next spillage all over everywhere. It has attracted this greenfinch on a more regular basis, though, so I'd like to keep it. He's always come now and again, but we've both seen much more of him this week.

April already - where does the time go! Time to make sure all my March photos are copied to the PC, and delete all the junk ones. That's going to be some task, with all the bird ones from my Dad's, and the visit to Clare.

Have a worm, sweetheart

Alas, we are not in Paris. But I've been going through photos and trying to reorganise albums, and this photo of the Pyramid at the Louvre pretty much sums up what it feels like here. It rained almost all day yesterday, with a brief dry period in the late afternoon. When I got into work, before I even opened my mouth Michael said to me "Don't say good, it's morning, but there's nothing good about it". As it happened, I'd started the day with a laugh, so the rain didn't bother me. C had decided to go into work a bit later than usual to help him cope with the trauma of the clock having gone forward. So when he was putting his gear on to leave, he was in a flap trying to find his trousers. Not in the bedroom, not in the porch, not in the spare room - had I done anything with them? After thinking, I burst out laughing because I knew he'd left them in the bike on Thursday, and had never got round to bringing them in - not even when I asked for his lunch bag. Plan B - he recently bought an all-in one rainproof coverall. But that meant changing his heavy jumper and jacket for a sweatshirt and a lighter jacket. And then he ended up with one leg in a leg of the coverall, and the other in an arm, so I went into work still smiling over it all. And goodness, it was wet. I went in to town after work (last tub of meal-worms in the garden shop, lucky robins), and got wetter again sitting in my damp coat on the bus.
While I was washing the floors later on in the afternoon I heard the robins chirping, so I grabbed my camera - no time to change lens - and a few worms,  and was rewarded by getting these pictures.

And in case one isn't enough...

The next picture was this morning - you can see they are ankle deep in puddles!!

It's so funny to watch, because one will cheep away and stand there with an open beak, but if nothing happens it (she?) will grab a couple from the ground, but then is ready for me as soon as (he?) arrives with his offering. I'll have to sit out in the back for a while with the camera and some worms - but not till it's a bit dryer. Today the direction of the rain/snow was into the back porch, so I couldn't keep the door open for long.

As if all the rain yesterday wasn't enough, there was so much snow this morning that I had to scrape the car off before I could go out. It snowed all day, although it never really lay on the ground. There's been so much damage in the gardens already from the cold in January - our neighbour's Lobster Claw tree looks pretty dead. I think it might revive though, when you bend a twig it's still live inside.

Time to Play

The photo challenge on SCS this week was Toys, with extra brownie points for colour.
We don't have kids, but since we also don't have TV, I think it's important to have books,toys and art/craft supplies available for when friends with kids visit. I still remember C's brother being totally amazed when his two lasted a whole afternoon without TV and without being bored.
The first picture is a Spelling House that my dad made when we were small. There were some interchangeable discs with different pictures and words on them. It was so cleverly designed, because you had to use memory to remember which knob would put which picture inside the closed door, and then you'd match the spelling to the picture by turning the knob in the centre of the flower. There was manual dexterity too, and coordination, because to get the little door open to see the mouse (he squeaks when you pull the little cord), you had to lower and raise one hand of the little boy on the side, and press the chimney down. His other hand has a bell, and when you raise that hand, a little bell rings inside the house.  This has had a lot of love over the years, and is showing it's age slightly, but is still in perfect mechanical order.

My other picture is a pre-school toy made by Bluebird toys (Big Yellow Teapot, Big Red Fun Bus, Big Jumbo Fun Plane, Polly Pocket) in the late eighties/early nineties. Despite being an award-winning toy it didn't sell as well as some of their other toys - I never could understand that. Both of us used to work for the company which had the agency for Bluebird, and when the Tool Street Gang was retired, I was lucky enough to get the sample from the showroom - along with a Big Red Fun Bus too. Kids of all ages have had fun with this. When we visited my brother recently, my 12-year old nephew was trying to remember the names of all the tools, so I guess I should send him this photo. It required a bit of a hunt to find Mr Squirt, so now I need to go and get all the Lego and Duplo back where it belongs. We're going to need to cut the grass soon, although there is snow forecast for this week - in which case it will be all wet and soaked again.

Loving behaviour? This morning when I threw some worms out for the robins, I saw one of them fly down to the patio, pick up a worm, fly back to the wall and feed it to the other. Then I saw the same again this afternoon when I was out taking my toy pictures. This time they were both on the ground, but one of them chirped, and then the other one fed it. Now that I know to watch out for this I hope to get a photo.

Coole Revisited

I was making a little mini-album of photos today to send to someone in America who is never going to make the trip over here that she had hoped for. While going through old albums to pick out photos from as many counties as possible, I came across photos of Coole from other visits over the years, and as I had the scanner set up beside my desk, I've scanned a couple just so you can see how it really does change dramatically, and truly never is the same.
This is the photo I posted from our visit last week -

From My Miscellany

I can't quite date the next one, I'd have to get out my negative files which are better classified than my photos. It's probably about ten years ago, because there was quite a break when we didn't have a car and couldn't go. In any case it was either late spring or autumn, and you can see how full it is - we didn't get our lakeside walk that time.

This one was when we were there over New Year's 1994/95. I mentioned before that there was heavy flooding that time. Even with our wellingtons we didn't get a lakeside walk on this occasion either. You couldn't walk any of the complete trails, and where the water was shallower, it was frozen over the paths. Great fun crunching over it and seeing the patterns as the ice broke up. You can just about make out in the photo where the reflection of the signposts end and the sign sticks up over the water....it's not far from the top of the page, so you can see that the water was nearly up as far as the pointers.

And I did say that sometimes it's a luxuriant green sward filled with wildflowers, and nothing but the moss on the rocks to indicate that they are ever submerged...

 Apologies for the quality of the photos - I am not good enough at editing to try to tidy them up much.

Lough Bunny

Lough Bunny is in Galway, rather than Clare, just about five minutes from Kilmacduagh. On my 20th birthday I found some early gentians there, but March is definitely too early, even if Spring wasn't so late this year. But we had a lovely walk along the shore, which is just bare limestone. When the sun shone, the water was green - almost with a Mediterranean feel to it.

I made a sort of collage from a few pictures of two black-headed gulls we saw. We were both amazed to see how far they sank under water when they land; in that bottom left picture it wasn't actually diving, it had just landed.

"What big eyes you have, Grandma"!!

And that's it from Clare, until I get round to editing some of the lakeside photos we took.

Kilmacduagh

At last - nearly at the end of holiday pictures. On Sunday we went first to this old monastic settlement, and then to a lake (pictures tomorrow, I expect). Kilmacduagh (Co. Galway)  was founded in the 7th century by St. Colman. The round tower is 30 metres high (almost 100 ft), with the only door being 7 metres up (23ft), and it leans over half a metre (1.5 ft) off the vertical.( Round towers were built in a lot of monastic settlements in Ireland, as a refuge from raiding Vikings.) On thinking about it, to say it leans off the vertical by a length is not a sensible measurement, it should be an angle to really mean anything. But while I can remember that the square on the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares on the other two sides, I can't for the life of me remember what I need to work out the two angles other than the right angle. Sine? Cosine?  I think I know where my Log Tables are, but it doesn't seem worth the trouble right now!

  
Most of the buildings are more recent - 12th and 13th c. I really should have written down what they were called. The tiny little arched ruin is all that's left of St. John's Church

This carved head was on the main Kilmacduagh Cathedral if I remember correctly - that's the big building near the tower.

O'Heyne's Abbey, across a field from the main settlement.

  

The carved stone capitals were both in O'Heyne's Abbey. 

There is also a partially restored building called The Bishop's House, but we didn't get the key to go in. C is not really into "history", and I am surprised that he agreed to visit here given that we've already been once before.

A Miscellany

Red sky at night certainly wasn't a shepherd's delight this morning, which was grey, cold and damp. But oh my, the sky was beautiful last night. It really did look just like this - those are magpies in the tree.

This is what we had for dinner last night - C had neglected to find out what his niece and nephew-sitting duties over Friday and Saturday involve, and I wasn't prepared to do a supermarket shop when I didn't know what meals he'd be around for, so it was a store-cupboard meal apart from buying the baby corn. Really it's pasta and stir-frried vegetables in a Chinese-style sauce. An odd combination, but a good compromise for one pasta-lover and one who just about tolerates it...
Vegetable and Pasta Stir-Fry - serves 4
400g / 14 oz pasta shells or similar (I find this too much, and drop the amount a bit)
1 tblsp olive oil
2 carrots, thinly sliced
120g / 4 oz baby sweetcorn
3 tblsp oil
1" fresh root ginger, thinly sliced
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1 clove garlic, thinly sliced,
3 celery sticks, thinly sliced
1 each small green and red bell peppers, cut into thin strips
Sauce:
1 tsp cornflour
2 tbslp water
3 tblsp each soy sauce and sherry (I use light soy, so as not to overwhelm the taste)
1 tsp honey
optional hot pepper / chilli sauce to taste
Bring a large pot of water to the boil,  add the olive oil and cook the pasta till tender. Drain and keep warm.
Bring a pan of water to the boil, add the carrots and corn and cook for 2 minutes. Drain and rinse well under cold water.
Heat the oil in a wok or large frying pan. Stir-fry the ginger slices for a minute to flavour the oil, and then remove. Add the onion, garlic, celery and peppers and stir-fry for two minutes. Add the carrots and baby corn and stir-fry for another two minutes. Stir in the pasta.
Mix remaining ingredients for the sauce, pour over and cook over a low heat for two minutes.

A note on sloes:
My mother taught me to tell the blackthorn and whitethorn (Hawthorn, May) apart because on the blackthorn the flowers come out before the leaves, while on the whitethorn the leaves come out first. It's lovely in May when the hedgerows turn into a foam of green and white with a pink blush here and there. Personally I think you can tell them apart even when there are no leaves, flowers or fruit because the blackthorn is much spikier and thornier. Traditionally you were meant to use one of the thorns to pierce the fruit when making sloe gin! I must admit I settle for something more comfortable to hold, like a skewer, or a needle in a cork . Usually sloes are highly astringent and impossible to eat raw - I still remember the first one I tried as a child, on a dog walk at the beach in Killoughter - but the ones we picked in the Burren a couple of years back were positively sweet and juicy.