Sunsets and rainbows.

The end of last week was a mixture of rain and sunshine, some of the rainbows were spectacular, unfortunately I can never quite capture the true beauty of them on camera, I love to imagine the little people burying a crock of gold at the end of the rainbow, they must have been busy little people here in Ireland.

The first few days of this week have been warm but with a silver frost most nights, the sunset last night was beautiful and true to the prediction we had yet another lovely day today. I love this time of year, it is so colourful with the autumn colour now coming into it's own of the trees. This week is  Irish National Tree Week, it would be nice if the new trees that we have ordered turn up this week but I don't think they will so today we bought a Virginia Creeper and a Rhus Tifina, I have always called this a tree of heaven although I am probably misnaming it, this time of year it has the most amazing colour, but we will have to wait a year or so for it to really come into it's own.


The last lot of tomatoes we picked are now bottled. I changed the method I normally use, this time I cooked the fruits for a few minutes until they had released their juice, the tomatoes were then placed into the jars, I then reduced remaining the juice, topped up the jars, capped them and then sterilised them in the hot water bath for ten minutes. I will be able to make a direct comparison between the two methods later on when we start using them. Four pounds yielded  three large and one small jar.

This time last year we planted three crowns of Rhubarb,Timperley Early, they established so quickly and although you should not pull the stems on the first year I must admit we have, several times, this has seemly had no ill effects on the plants. The plants have grown very big and look as though they will need splitting next year, but we will see. I think the secret with rhubarb is to keep it well feed with compost, it likes moisture, but not too wet and by keeping it well mulched seems to have paid off.
The grass is still continuing to grow and still requires cutting, the rabbits do their part, but
                    even they cant keep up with it. Talking of rabbits, Peter rabbit is once again a father, in the year we have had him  he has sired over fifty kittens, only twelve for us, but over  thirty for a friend of ours, although we feel that her doe should be given a rest and two days ago another friends doe produced kittens, she made her nest in a compost heap which seems a very good place, a centrally heated nest! clever rabbit.

The rhubarb is looking good.