Challenge Check #5

First- yesterday our Rector began his sermon by reading out this...you've just gotta read it!!

Dottie Angel Challenge- two items:
A Barter/Swap Scheme- for the idea see here, and for the follow up see here.
You people are so encouraging that I’m going to run with it on Wednesday this week and see what happens! Keep me posted please?!

For the Fertilizer Factory now set up in my back kitchen see here!

Creative Every Day Challenge

After some thought about February’s topic ‘Home’ this is where I’m beginning:

For me the idea of home doesn’t revolve around a house but the places where I feel at home. Until I was five we lived in the States, in Virginia, then California, returning to Ireland in 1969. Then in 1977 when I was 13 years old, my family left Ireland due to Dad’s work, and I didn’t live here again until July of the year 2000. I lived in London, Malvern, Bath, Nairobi, the Rift Valley and Thika, worked or spent time in Paris, the Pyrenees, Donegal, and other places I’ve since forgotten. I was privileged to come into contact with people of many nationalities and faiths, to become relatively fluent in French and Kiswahili, to mix with cultures I hadn’t previously encountered, and to travel all over East Africa.

But, and to me as the years progressed it became an increasingly huge ‘but’, in all those years I felt displaced, disconnected, a free radical ?! I gave the problem a lot of thought and it seemed to me that perhaps at heart I was actually Irish, and I needed to try living there to see.

As you can imagine, uprooting an African husband and three bush babies was no joke, but we did it and not one of us regrets the change. The Hub is still an African, but since the Irish in general are utter eccentrics he fits right in, and two of the bush babies turned out to be more Irish than African. The eldest bush baby revels in her dual personality and knows she can return to East Africa whenever she likes.

So to me, ‘home’ is an ordinary seaport town in the west of Ireland with river, mountains, lakes and ocean all around me:

Hazelwood.
Benbulben.
On Keelogyboy looking towards Lough Gill and the Ox Mountains.
Streedagh beach, this morning.
Streedagh beach looking towards Gleniff.

A lonely beech tree in Grange Village, this morning.

Rosses Point Village.

Hyde Bridge, Sligo town facing down stream to the sea.
Yes, here, I’m home.

Thankful Thursday!

Thou hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more- a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose pulse may be
Thy praise.

George Herbert.

Herewith this week's 'Thankfuls'!

1. The ubiquitous 'they' resurfaced our lane yesterday- hurrah! hurrah! No more rappelling down gorges, leaping crevasses, tumbling into pits, paragliding across trackless wastes, swimming through rushing torrents, or stalling in mudslides just to get the half-mile to the main road! 2. Today at 3.oo I am going into town to a coffee shop to meet a friend for tea, and if you think that's mundane you don't read my posts very often! Its REALLY exciting! Both of us have organised to be childless and we are so looking forward to a conversation in which we can each FINISH our SENTENCES! We chose a coffee shop with good cakes and fruit eats too so I'm telling you that this is one MEGA-event!

3.Look what I found along the lane this morning:

I thought the diggers and machines laying the water pipes over the last six months had destroyed all the blackberry bushes as they've bashed the hedges round pretty badly, but I'm delighted to report that there's enough blackberries for at least one crumble and possibly a pan of blackberry sauce to go with Sunday lunch's ice-cream!

4. You can laugh at this 'thankful' if you want, but this morning I thought I'd go to the Farmers' depot and get bedding plants for the window boxes to beautify the outside window sills before my mother-in-law arrives on Saturday. I LOVE the Farmers' depot/warehouse place down on the Quays! Its got hardware, paints, fencing, pet food, plants, hedging, farm implements, gardening tools, thick socks and gloves, turf bales, gumboots, buckets, horse food, fertilizer, coal scuttles, compost, bins, lambing supplements, fence wire, oh you name it all mixed up in the most unruly manner. The girls love it too as you just never know what you'll find next. Two months ago they moved into a huge new purpose-built warehouse and extended their yard, but all they've done really is to give themselves more space and appear to be more organised! It smells of earth and plants and hardware, there's generally dirt on the floor and the farmers all go in in their wellies and dirt and you can wait ages to be served if the guy in front is taking forever to explain just what he needs. The people who work there are all country folks and there's never a hurry nor a bother on them, and there's generally one or two tractors and trailers in the carpark. It drives some people mad I know but I really love it; for all its new appearance it is still stuck in the 19C and with the values to boot!
Anyhow, apart from the treat of spending a while there this morning I got several plants- 6 pansies, 6 cyclamen (Mum calls them 'sickly men'!),4 cultivated primroses, 6 button daisies, and a lovely pyracantha. The man in the nursery section picked out a pyracantha with lots of berries ready to ripen. I've got several little plants of variegated ivy so I think they'll make a nice group of window boxes. Well, not the pyracantha, I'll put that in a big pot by the door for now, and then see if it would prefer the ground next summer perhaps.

5. When I was coming out of the Bookshop this morning (and f.y.i. -Diana Gabaldon's new book 'An Echo in the Bone' hasn't yet been released here) the river was looking lovely and there was a beautiful rowan near the bridge. Luckily I had my camera so here you are:

...looking upstream...

...looking downstream... ...and the rowan.
The Garavogue River goes right through the middle of town, and the estuary and quays begin the other side of this bridge. There is one more bridge, beyond which the ocean going yachts and ships moor, but basically Sligo squeezes itself into a space between the sea and Lough Gill, which is why hockey-, tennis-,rugby and foot-balls, can sometimes be seen floating through town along with ducks and swans, the school Canoe Club and fishermen on every bridge. Just your average Irish town really but I love living back here. The Autumn colours are becoming more pronounced now but as I'm always driving its difficult to catch them on camera for you. Still, they are lovely and I'm thankful for the beauty of it all!

And there they are, this week's 'thankfuls'!