Cliffs

Spring is here, last week we had a trip up to Donegal to buy another hen house . We made a detour on the way back to Mullaghmore in Co Sligo, the place is full of daffodils and we found celandine's as well. Whilst photographing the cliffs, a German lady started chatting to us, apparently the daffs there had started blooming in November!

Mullaghmore used to be one of our favourite places when we lived in Sligo, not least because it had a fantastic restaurant, this now however is sadly no more, no doubt a sign of the downturn of the economy and the fact that people now have to pay for the bankers bonuses and don't have to money to go for slap-up meals, after all, the bankers can't be allowed to go without, can they? I, in my ignorance thought that bonuses were paid for a job well done, this apparently does not apply to the bankers.

All the lanes around us now have primroses blossoming and the trees are showing real signs of awaking from their winter slumber. The peach tree that we had planted in the tunnel is also coming into bloom.

Although I was brought up on the coast I've never had a yearning to live with sea views, however, whenever an opportunity arises to make a trip to the coast I can never resist. I love to see the force of the waves crashing onto the rocks.
The coast line in the West of Ireland is very similar to Galicia even to the types of plants to be found, helped by the Gulf stream, but instead of the rias that are found in Galicia we have salt marshes, wonderful habitats for birds. This year there seems to be a huge number of swans, every lough or turlough [winter lakes] seem to have vast flocks of them, also lots of coots and morehens and even teal.

We now have more chicks, hatched yesterday, this hatch was not as good as the last one, we had set six Buff Orpington eggs that we had bought on line, and four ? the four ? came from the farm that we had bought our buff hens from all have hatched, it remains to be seen what breed they are, however only two of the six buffs hatched, they are all doing well, and all is not lost , we have six more buff eggs in the incubator, obtained locally. With all these chicks we hope to have nice size flock to breed from.

At last the company who was doing our insulation has finished, all the painting has been done and all that remains is for the guttering company to replace all our old guttering with seamless guttering.

Simon has been very busy making large wooden planters and heavy duty trellises so we can have climbing roses and honeysuckle climbing up the front of the cottage, it was not possible to make soil beds close to the house as there is a concrete walk way all round the cottage, it certainly cuts done on mud ect being brought into the house, but I do like my plants, so the planters seemed the best way to go.