Start of the havests.

A vase of perfume.

The last year seems to have flown by, it seems that it was only a few weeks ago that we were harvesting our fruits and veg for winter storage, but here we are again.

 We have had the first big pick  raspberries, just over three kg,

these have been turned into jam, fourteen pots in total.

The first big pick of strawberries gave us nine pots of strawberry jam.

The onions and garlic has also been harvested. This year we will try dehydrating them, we have invested in a dehydrator which hopefully will be here tomorrow, we decided to go for a dehydrator as it seems as though we will have a bumper crop of apples, some will be eaten fresh but the rest will need storage, we could freeze them,

Three of the chicks at three weeks old.

but we have twenty two table birds which will take up quite a lot of space, plus half a lamb which we bought today, buying this way works out at just four euros a kg. We are also hoping to have half a pig a bit later on from  a friend, although it's  not organic it is at least truly free range.

 

The flower gardens are still surprising us with new things coming into flower, often things that we have forgotten where we had planted them,

and the window boxes are looking lovely.
Wild orchids seemed to be late this year, maybe because it was such a dry spring but they are making up  for it now, this week we spotted

lesser butterfly orchids

and twayblades.

View from the lane.

One thing we have always been interested in is archaeological sights, Ireland abounds with them, especially in this area. We had been told about a large Ring Fort fairly close by, but despite several attempts to find it over the last two years we had failed. Earlier in the week we went for a drive around the local country lanes, and low and behold we found the elusive Ring Fort. Although I couldn't get to it, it was clearly visible from the lane way and Simon, armed  with the camera traipsed across the field  to get the photos.

It is certainly impressive, with nearly ten foot high walls

 you enter the ring via the tunnel entrance,

there are V steps which give access to the parapet.

There are two chambers which align to the sun at Imbolc and Samhain . The ringfort also has souterrains ,

and there are two piles of stones which are believed to be the remains of houses .

The outer walls are sixteen feet thick and the circle measures around ninety feet across It has been dated to possible three thousand B.C. No doubt we will discover more archaeological sights on our trips out.

Newly erected information board installed by the village pump for our little hamlet. Although it's not completely accurate. We don't have Corn Crakes but we do have Red Squirrel.
Thank you Jo, Coco , Lozabeth and Cherie K for your comments, for some reason Blogger is not allowing me to leave a reply. Yes, we do intend to try Bananas. Simon was in charge of widow boxes this year, I think he did a good job.