Long Way Round...

One of C's Christmas present was the DVD of Ewan McGregor's and Charlie Boorman's Long Way Round. This package didn't go right round the world, but I've never seen an Amazon package with so many different postal stickers on it. I ordered it just before the first volcanic ash episode, and it must have been rerouted. The first sticker is Nevada, the second is Kentucky, the third is France and the fourth is UK. Its safe, if delayed, arrival sees me halfway through the Complete Peanuts collection - only another six years to go to complete the whole set!

The leaf made me think of a cello or violin - all the other ones were a more normal leaf shape. I'll have to pay more attention to what tree it came from, somehow you don't expect red at this time of year.


Two photos from today - it had rained heavily overnight and was still raining when I went to work this morning.

It was dry by the time I came home, and I spotted these tiny little mushrooms growing in some old woodchip mulch along the edge of a field. The biggest one is about the size of my thumbnail.

And a card I made with a photo of the lovely bunch of tulips and daffodils my mother-in-law sent me for my birthday when C visited his parents the day before.

Holiday Weekend

Being the start of a new month, I was putting all my April photos into one folder and trying to delete a fair amount of them. I came across this one which I liked - the pottery duck on the wall belongs to our neighbours.

We had Ken Hom's Spiced Deep-Fried Chicken tonight. I was being lazy - we had jam doughnuts for afternoon tea/our evening meal on Saturday (and for breakfast on Sunday), and fries with our Sunday lunch, so I was getting one more use out of the fryer before straining the oil and cleaning it - we'd orginally been going to have pizza tonight.

Spiced Deep-Fried Chicken
12 oz boneless chicken
3 oz flour (between a third and half a cup)
Marinade:
1 tsp chilli sauce or chilli (cayenne) powder
2 tsp dry sherry or rice wine
1 tsp each light and dark soy sauce
2 tsp minced fresh ginger
1 tblsp finely chopped spring onions/green onions
1 tsp sugar.

Cut the chicken into strips approximately 2" by 1/2", and put into a bowl with all the marinade ingredients. Mixx well, cover and leave at room temperature for up to an hour.
Heat oil in a deep-fat fryer till quite hot. Sprinkle the flour over the chicken and mix. Fry for about 8 minutes and serve straight away.

I also tried out these lovely Peanutty Energy Bars from Charlene's blog. Salted peanuts aren't something I keep in the cupboard, but at last I remembered to buy them when I was shopping. They are just as yummy as Charlene says. I covered the top of mine with chocolate. Well - high energy doesn't necessarily mean healthy. By it's very nature it means either high fat or high carb or both. C says I can make them again any time, but only with chocolate. He went as far as to say that maybe they were even nicer than Mars Bar Squares, and for sure they must be healthier, even with chocolate! We don't get corn syrup over here, and I'd just finished off the last of some C brought me last time I made candied popcorn , so I just used regular Golden Syrup.

Planning for Summer Sun

There certainly hasn't been much sun this weekend, mostly grey skies and some showers. We had heavy rain and hail and wonderful skies when we drove up to Dromore in the North on Friday.

More Mami-Doodles

The first card is another one I made with Elisa's Midori set of images. We have so much gorgeous washi and chiyogami paper that we've bought here and there over the years, but I always find it hard to use any up. And if I am bad, C is ten times worse!  I did use some on this card. She is printed on white card and coloured with H2Os, with Liquid Pearls in her hair.

The second card was made with the Escargot and Champignon set. I like snails on cards, and use them often. I do not like them in the garden - they do so much damage so quickly. And slug pellets are unsightly. We have an engineering friend who put copper strips round all his tender vegetables, and then connected them all up to a battery on a pole, so that a mild current ran through them. It seemed to be sufficient to deter the snails and slugs without killing them, but was quite odd to see.
For my snail-shell and pebbles I used Glossy Accents, and Liquid Pearls on the mushroom. This time I printed the image on watercolour paper, with watercolour pencils and chalk pastels for colouring.

Thank you, Elisa. for inviting me to be your first Guest Designer. I had fun working with these images.

Duck-billed...ducklings

The last mallard chicks were on the canal. As these ones were mostly swimming round the café in Farmleigh, it was much easier to get a couple of decent pictures. I am amazed how big their beaks are. I wonder are they like puppies growing into their big paws.

I always love the strong, vibrant colour of spurge. This one was growing beside a viburnum with an almost intoxicating smell.

I've just finished reading Zane Grey's  The Great Trek, set in Australia. I was interested to read it as in the past we've read a whole series of detective books set in Australia, with a half-caste detective (the Bony/Boney books by Arthur Upfield). Grey's book would have been set in an earlier period, and his descriptions of the Australian wildlife were so lovely to read. I'd love to see things like koalas, lyre birds, and the duck-billed platypus, in real life.

Postscript...

I went out after dinner to take a photo of a card, and C was inside doing the dishes. So when I heard the cheeping robin, I called to him to come and pick up the camera. I'd better make sure the settings are more suitable next time, or else let him feed the bird and take photos myself, but he did a pretty good job.
This one cheeps more and more - it's only a guess, but my theory is that it's the female, and she is making verbal contact with the chicks in the nest, because I don't think it's far off, just in the hedgerow beyond the end of the wall. Certainly when they were feeding each other, I am sure it was the female who did the cheeping back then. But it's a safe bet that the cheeping one will come to our hands straight away, while the other is more hesitant and may not come at all, but make a foray into the porch instead.

The European robin is much smaller than the North American robin, only about 5" long, and weighing about half to three-quarters of an ounce, and both sexes are the same. The American robin is part of the thrush family. I can see why Colin Tudge, in his Secret Life of Birds says that there is a lot of confusion in the current taxonomy of birds.

Flowers, with a hint of the East

A welcome day off, and as it was warm and sunny, if somewhat windy, I took my new tripod on a trip to Farmleigh. The walled garden was full of all sorts of tulips. One of the gardeners I was talking to was saying how strange it was that some orange (think Montbretia colour) tulips went so well with the pink ones that they were planted with. She said more pink ones were due out at the back of the bed, and the alliums were in bud which will be purple, and something blue was just budding. But she was right - the orange looked great in there.

 

One not-so-hidden red tulip in a sea of daffodils, narcissi and anemones.

Here's my hint of the East - all these photos make me think of Japan.

Lots of little ducklings, too. I was regretting not having the video option on my point and shoot, but thinking that C would be able to use it. Which he would - if he hadn't forgotten it. He said he saw one little duckling chick raiding stuff from the swan's nest to nibble on.

Cowslips

This photo of some cowslips slipped through the net yesterday when I was uploading. I think of them as a wildflower, and always love seeing them growing in grass verges . When I was little I loved Alison Uttley's Little Grey Rabbit books, and she wrote about making cowslip balls. I've never seen enough in one place for that! I know they make good wine too, but again I've never seen enough for that. In Grey Rabbit's May Day, Fuzzypeg the little hedgehog makes cowslip balls for their May Day celebration, which was an English tradition.

My little Fuzzypeg here is in need of some serious refurbishment. I was in hospital for my 5th birthday, having my tonsils out. While in hospital I got a lovely present from my dad of a "Rainbow Box", which was a clear perspex cube maybe about 5 or 6 inches along each side. Inside it were three sheets of coloured perspex, cyan, magenta and yellow, which were interlocked and overlapped. So depending on which angle you looked at it from, you got different colours. I kept that till it was too scratched to be worth keeping. When I got home from hospital, Fuzzypeg in his little pull-along carriage made from three-quarters of a coconut shell was behind the sofa, with the cord stretched out so that I could see it. I bought a lot of books myself with Christmas money and so on, but the one in the picture must have come from my Dad's family, because it's dated 1932, and he had to make a new cover for it for me as the old one was falling to bits.

Canal Walk

Had yesterday been lovely and sunny as the whole week had been, we were going to go to the Botanic Gardens. The weather didn't seem good enough to warrant the trip, so we settled for a walk along the canal, and Cranberry, Orange and Walnut muffins for lunch when we got back. We were entertained for a good length of the walk by six little mallard chicks (four brave ones venturing ahead, one mother, two laggards pottering along and investigating things along the bank). When he saw the speed the moved at, C realised it wasn't that surprising he hadn't found the ones in town on his lunchtime walk on Friday. And I think he also realised why I had told him where the video setting was on my point and shoot - I got very few shots worth keeping. They just scoot along so fast, and never stop moving. We finally got to a stretch where I could climb down to the canal edge - and the whole family turned back just before they reached it.

We had a lovely light, spicy Hyderabadi curry for lunch today:
Lamb with Onions and Mint  serves about 6
2 lb diced lamb pieces
1 lb onions, peeled, cut in half and sliced thinly
2 tsp salt
1 tsp cayenne (hot chilli powder). I buy mine from Seasoned Pioneers and it is HOT, so I reduced this by half
2 tsp freshly grated ginger
1/2 clove crushed garlic
1 tsp turmeric
3 tblsp vegetable oil
1/2 cup / 4 fluid ounces firmly packed fresh coriander (cilantro) and the same again of mint
4-6 fresh green chillies, coarsely chopped
3 tbslp lemon juice.

Put all the ingredients down as far as and including the oil in a large pan, and add 3/4 pt / 2 cups water. Bring to the boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for an hour. Remove lid, turn up the heat and reduce the liquid. C likes runny curries, so I skipped this step.
Blend the mint, coriander, lemon juice, fresh chillies and 2 tblsp water to a fine purée. Add to the meat and simmer for about 5 minutes.

This recipe comes from Madhur Jaffrey's A Taste of India.

Acclimatising one of the robins to feeding from my hand proceeds apace. Soon I think I can get C to try taking a photo, as one of them will now perch for over a minute on my hand, nibbling away, before flying off. It's so light that if you didn't feel the claws on your palm, you'd barely know it was there. They're only about 20 grammes according to one source I looked up. That's around three quarters of an ounce! Poor things, one of them looked very bedraggled after a heavy shower today, it made its breast look much more speckled.

Out and About in Town

I spotted this bright reflection in the Liffey this morning. I couldn't think what it was - but after I got beyond the bridge and could see, it was just a truck cab pulled in for a rest.

It was a rather pale, watery sunshine, but enough for a bus to reflect in the Guinness sign.

 

A weed growing on the wall along the river.

And this week I even have a contribution from C. He took my little camera this morning because he'd seen mallard chicks on the canal yesterday. They were gone today, but there is also a nesting swan. With the good weather a lot of people are out along the canal at lunch time, and the swans are quite threatening to anyone who gets too close.

Lorraine, thank you so much for everything. Including the feather :D  I am sorry I don't know how to rotate a brush in GIMP to make a better frame.