A beach - at last

 We took a few days break away from home last week, and camped in my brother's garden so it really felt like a holiday - especially combined with the amazing weather we've been having. 

Our first outing was to a nearby beach, and it was wonderful to walk on sand, paddle (and swim) after barely having seen the sea for over a year and a half.

It wasn't a large bay - but large enough when we walked to one end from the car park, and then to other end and back.

We saw plenty of gulls (mostly black-headed), some oyster-catchers, an unknown little brown bird, and at each end there were sand martins nesting in the "cliff" front. I could swear I heard a curlew too though I didn't see one. It's possible, I used to see them from the train when I was visiting my Dad in Midleton. 

Due to the blogger issues I'm not going to try to sort them all in order. 

Sand martins on fence

Oyster-catcher

Martin nests 

Black-headed gull

I'll be back with some photos over the next few days. We also visited Fota Gardens and Arboretum, and had two forest walks. 

Mostly birds

 I discovered, recently, that there was another pond in the Phoenix Park which I wasn't familiar with, so I took a detour and visited it last week. It's small, very much a pond, but set back a bit from the road and very peaceful. I watched squirrels chasing each other, a young moorhen (I think) feeding, and a thrush bathing. 

I tried to take photos of the thrush bathing, but because it was quite shady - the pond is surrounded by trees, a video was the better option. 

The other photos are just a sparrow feeding a young one, in the garden, and the Highland cattle in St Catherine's Park, which we visited for a walk one evening last week. Hard to get a photo with the lowe evening light and the long growth in the water meadow, but it was lovely. 

June favourites

 June was a very fruitful month on the card-making front, and, even allowing that I don't normally upload Christmas cards, I had trouble winnowing my favourites down to a reasonable number to share.

I also "upgraded" the summer insert for my 12" square frame - the one I made 5 years ago has always been my least favourite of the four seasons. The first card, I made for our anniversary. And then about four days later, when thinking about a Paris-themed stamp and wondering about using it to make my sister's anniversary card, I suddenly remembered that I had made a Paris card back in February intending it to be C's card. So, since it's not suitable for his birthday, he got an extra card a few days late. The glass seahorse is one he brought me back from a trip to Portugal a few years ago. 

(C didn't like the "keep swimming" on this next one, he didn't get it. I've used it in the past when send cards of encouragement to people going through a hard time, and I think it works well. But it was actually detachable, so it's currently detached). 

There is an independent book shop in town called "The Gutter Bookshop", which is what triggered the Oscar Wilde  quote when I wanted to use the rat and dustbin on a card and was trying to think what on earth I could add and still end up with a card I would be happy to send.

Since we managed a trip to Clare last July, this month's header is a photo taken from the shore of one of the Burren lakes. 

Tag, you're it...

 I went for a cycle and walks in the park this morning - yesterday was intermittent rain and positively cold. Today was mostly sunny and warm. I have no idea what order Blogger is going to put the photos in and I'm not going to spend a lot of time rearranging them, so I'll upload them and then add text to each one, in case they're not in chronological order. 

So, definitely nothing like chronological order. This was when I had had my walk in the People's Garden, and was cycling back up the hill towards the Ordnance Survey. I could see a group of people (a bit more than twice this number, maybe) walking through the long grass and weeds, all with big nets. There was another man walking along the footpath with a camera, so I asked him what they were doing. He said that they were trying to find the young fawns, to tag them. Sure enough, the signs asking people to be careful and not to let their dogs loose in the areas of long grass have been up for a while now. I can certainly think of worse ways to spend a morning. The photographer said he thought that there were a couple of park rangers but that some of them were students from college.

Before leaving the park, I detoured into the Quarry Pond. As soon as I opened the gate, the less somnolent ducks, along with jackdaws, came over hoping for food. It's mostly mallards there (gone are the glory days of the mandarins, alas), with some coots and moorhens. Last year there were a couple of Muscovy ducks and this looks similar, with the wonderful iridescent green plumage and red beak. He's much larger than the mallards, and was very persistent. As I pushed my bike along the path I could hear a pitter patter of feet in the leaves behind me, and when I looked, it was this one still following me until he realised I obviously didn't have anything. 

Next up, enjoying the sun just as much as the ducks at the entry gate, was this sun-bathing squirrel. I was reluctant to disturb him, but he was lying right across the path - and once he got going, it was obvious that there was nothing wrong with him at all, he was just enjoying the warmth of the morning. 

When I first entered the People's Gardens, I spotted this thrush collecting worms. Once she had a beak full, she took off over the road in the direction of the zoo. 

This was also in the People's Gardens. The coot chicks are growing fast, though I guess it's a couple of weeks since I went in to look. Their wings are no longer the little stumpy things that they were. This one was swimming around and happily diving for food, with a watchful adult escort. The other two (there is in fact another one behind the one you can see) were sitting on the nest enjoying the sunshine and occasionally grooming themselves - which is why I could see how much their wings had grown. No sign of the swans and cygnets. 

Hot Off the Needles

 as promised. I've been knitting this Aran sweater for a while - C picked out and determined on a v-neck cardigan pattern which he wanted converted into a crewneck sweater, so the sizing required adjusting and the whole front neck shapings had to be calculated. And there was a pause while I knit the baby blanket - but it's done.

 I also made him a shirt. I had ordered 1/4 metre of peacock feather fabric for masks, and when he saw it, he requested a shirt. So that was his anniversary present. For some reason it's very hard to get the colour of the fabric right. I sent my sister a photo of a spare mask to see if she would like it, and when she got it, she said the fabric was even nicer than the photo. It is - I've ordered more to make a summer dress for myself - and didn't think the photo I took of the shirt was worth uploading. There's more jade green colour in the fabric in real life. 

From Wednesday in the park, a coot chickling.

And on Thursday, as C had taken a couple of days off, we went for a drive and a change of scenery. This is Lough Tay, in the Wicklow mountains. Of recent years it's been used to film The Vikings, and the houses and piers visible in the second photo are part of the film set rather than authentic original scenery. From the amount of trucks and vans in the car park above it, I suspect that shooting was happening on the day. 

It was intermittently cloudy and quite windy, but after the prolonged lockdown that started at the end of December, it was lovely to see some totally different scenery. 

May Favourites

 I need more time! I have photos from two walks in the park waiting to be edited.

I shared a couple with a friend by email, so here are two from my outing this Wednesday - the cygnets had finally hatched.  While I was watching them waddling up the bank, one of the herons landed on the fence and was promptly shooed off by the parent swans. 

May was quite a good month on the card-making front, despite being pretty busy in work and not having much energy left over.

I tried uploading a recent video of coot chicks to YouTube, but it seemed to compress it so much that the quality was badly effected and I never even sent the link to my sister. I'm trying the Blogger option of inserting a video file from the computer here, and hoping that it will not be so badly affected. 

p.s - I think their fronts are dirty from the water!!

I hope to be along tomorrow with a couple of "hot off the needles" projects.  

This month's blog header is from Farmleigh last June.