Gallowglass

One aspect of Irish life which regularly impresses us is the quality of their road-side art and sculpture. The nearby town of Ballaghaderreen is ringed by lovely wicker-work cattle, milk churns, men, huge urns, a big fish as well as various arches and arbours or shapes made out of woven willow. It is all very dramatic and interesting to see as you drive about, but they have now exceeded even all this by commissioning an impressive, 16 feet tall sword-wielding warrior in a bright (chrome?) stainless steel to stand by the west-bound side of the new bypass.

Locals will know that this guy has actually been there a while and is not, technically, still 'news'. He arrived in May this year; it is just that I have never yet got around to nipping over to take his picture. It is not a piece of road we would drive; we come and go from Balla-D rather than whizzing by from west to east.

As seen from the East-bound carriageway. 

He is, in fact, a "Gallowglass" warrior. Says everybody's tame expert, "Wikipedia", "The gallowglasses (also spelt galloglass, gallowglas or galloglas; from Irish: gall óglaigh meaning foreign warriors) were a class of elite mercenary warriors who were principally members of the Norse-Gaelic clans of Scotland between the mid 13th century and late 16th century." If you were an Irish regional king or warlord and you really wanted to win that fight with your neighbour, you would hire these guys to strike fear into your rival's army (and presumably duff them up a bit).

This clematis has decided not to climb my convenient ash
 poles this year, but to scramble instead, through the Lady's Mantle.

I love this piece of sculpture which I imagine cost the town a fair amount. He is on a nice rise in the ground and I keep meaning to pick a nice sunset evening and go get him silhouetted against the colours of the sunset. If you want to see him, next time you are coming in through Frenchpark and you join the by-pass, don't come off at the first exit to Cooney's, Tibohine and Ballaghaderreen, but carry on to the next exit. He is just after that first exit on your left.

This one is going to be for me! Liz completes
this lovely cabling pattern on the front panel
of the latest jumper.

Out on the Sligo house project we progress. Having pretty much finished the house, so we have moved outside back onto the 'hard landscaping'. This is all about making a garden and yard around the dwelling instead of it sitting in the middle of a building site (usual stuff - piles of rubble, stone, scrap wood, old, dead wheel barrows, a big yellow digger, dead cement bags and so on). Some of it is the stone wall building, so K-Dub and I are back remembering the old skills of stone laying, cement mixing and lugging stuff about. This rather handily uses up the piles of stone and avoids us having to double handle it. It's come from the demolished walls of the house and been stacked around the house while the house got itself built. Some of it went back into the house on the new walls and bigger gables but the rest is now being scavenged up for these garden walls. Very efficient.

Branching out from the straight knitting, Liz has now enrolled
onto some crochet lessons. This is the first, ever, test square. 

We both love this stone - Sligo stone is some manner of stratified sandstone which comes out of the ground already in flat slabs and pieces. Most of it is between about 1 and 4 inches thick, so it is like long or broad bricks which means you can lay it in a bond like brickwork. Our stone here in Roscommon is in rounded boulders about the size of your head, so impossible to lay into walls - walls here were always poured between a sandwich of timber shutters as a mix of boulders and concrete or cement. They are thick and strong but nobody would ever call them elegant, neat or beautiful.

Our friends came a-visiting with their huge St Bernard who
rides in state in the back of their capacious 4 x 4. 

Just down the hill from where we are working a proper professional stone mason is doing a gorgeous job with his stones all chipped away to size and perfect fit. His wall will be smooth like the pyramids with tiny thin joints. We are in awe of that skill but we are, even so, well pleased and delighted with our efforts. Neither of us claim to be stone masons and we know we can do this well only as a result of the lovely "pre-prepared" (by nature and by previous wall -builders!) stone we are lucky enough to have lying about the place.

Prada. Beautiful dog. 

There, by happy chance, a whole post about crafts, skills and working with your hands.

Lights in the Sky.......

The bees are still nice and active on 1st Dec - it is very warm at 13ºC

At 20 past 8 on Sunday evening, a clear night with a near-full moon, I saw something I have never seen before, a streak of colour-changing flame shoot across the sky. It went west to east and from my perspective seemed to travel from roughly over Knock Airport, to over Frenchpark. It was faster than any aircraft and completely noiseless. It was flaming green to start with but the flames changed to bright red briefly before it winked out and was gone. It was over so fast that I realised that I had no reference point to help me know its height, distance or size. My most likely options were a meteor track (but I have only known meteors to be one colour (bright white/yellow) and always they are a sharply 'drawn' single streak; I have never known them with raggedy 'flame' shaped tails) and a firework, but you generally get a 'whoosh' noise with fireworks.

I had only seen it because I happened to be outside at that time 'patrolling' the dogs for a wee and a poo and had emerged from round the polytunnel looking that way. I was sure no-one else in the area would have been similarly placed and that my meteor would go unrecorded or doubted. It is perfectly possible that I have gone ga-ga out here with these crazy turkeys and bizarre Guinea Fowl and am now inventing alien abduction stories. Meep meep. Nanu nanu. Ah well, in for a penny, I posted about it on FaceBook and got the expected run of comments around whether I was "on the homebrew again" but then was delighted to hear that our friend Rob (he of the piglet catching adventures) had also seen it. He'd been looking out through a French door waiting for their St Bernard, 'Prada' to come back in from her pee/poo stroll in the garden. Then more and more people were commenting and it soon caught the attention of an Irish Astronomy group.

Others of my Facebook friends commented that they were sure meteors could 'do' colours and one (Thanks Pete P) found this spectrum of possible colours. My green may have come from magnesium and the reds from Nitrogen, Oxygen and Neon 'plasma' emissions. It seems that the colours depend on size, height and velocity of the burning object in the heat of atmospheric entry and can also go in phases with different components burning off as the temperature changes. Replies to the Astronomy group had it visible from Killiney, Dublin, Donegal, Mayo and Sligo so I suspect that our thinking it was a Knock/Frenchpark thing was just our low perspective. It was high enough to be seen by anyone across the Irish Midlands. It may also have been a chunk of space-debris returning to earth.

Ah well. They don't last for ever and this washing machine
was so old it didn't owe us anything. We bought it in Kent
we think at least ten, maybe 15 years ago. 

Amusingly, I had just finished posting my witty comments about alien invasions and how the cats are outside so they would deal with it, shut down the computer and gone to bed when all hell broke loose - dogs running around barking, cats yowling. Aliens? Well, one alien anyway, after a fashion. Local wandering stray dog, Bobby had chosen this evening to pay us one of his visits and our dogs had detected him wandering in circles round the house and yard. Regular readers will know that this collie (see 24th Feb 2015 post) is a sweet, painless lad with not an ounce of malice in him who will stroll happily between the chickens and past the sheep with no intent to kill or chase.

Goldie still has plenty of grass. 

Our problem is that the sheep do not know this and to them he is a strange dog, so he can set them panicking and running about which is not ideal if they are pregnant. Not ideal anyway - they can still hurt themselves running at fences or trying to jump over the barbed wire. So we were back on the phone - we have the guy's number by now and we are on first name terms. He apologises profusely and zooms round in his 4x4 to collect the dog who by then I have 'at heel' down at the front gate. I am in my dressing gown and fleece jacket with a head-torch on. The dog's brother apparently has no such wanderlust and stays at home. It is only Bobby who strolls off across the bog-land and pops up either here or at another house just along the ridge top.

Looking promising for Christmas. Polytunnel spuds.

Meanwhile I have almost finished harvesting outdoor spuds and decided to go into the polytunnel and try an exploratory dig. I was delighted to find that the Sarpo Mira planted in there in August are now 'done' - lovely big, mainly clean tubers devoid of any slug or other damage. I do love a baking potato so tonight I tried them as jacket-spuds with beans and a bit of left over belly pork. Lovely and very promising for Christmas. My pic shows 1.9 kg hauled from the first plant (plus a little white 'British Queen' volunteer). Plenty more in the ground. Superb.

Good night then - watch out for UFOs. You never know.......

A Suitable Suitor

Rambo goes nose to nose with Myfanwy.

Today was definitely all about the sheep. First job was to load the twin lambs Thelma and Louise and deliver them to the butcher-men and the 2nd was to collect our borrowed tup, 'Rambo' while we still had the trailer hitched on, bring him back here and introduce him to our girls ready for his romantic month's holiday in sunny Roscommon. The short version says that it all went OK and the twin lambs are no more while Rambo is relaxing with his new entourage. Would that it was that simple.

Rambo beats the bounds of his new patch. 

If you have read the previous post, you will know that our practise loading runs on the twins had not been going as well as hoped, so we were not entirely sure we'd get the twin lambs loaded and delivered for the booking. They are strong and energetic young things and Liz is a wee bit small to stop one at the charge (even I struggle) so we'd have had to catch one each, hang on tight and then manhandle them up the trailer ramp and hope they stayed in there for the few seconds it takes for us to step off the ramp and lift it shut. Thankfully and very generously and much appreciated by us, Sue (of the piglet wrangling) offered her services as third hand. We accepted, naturally and on the morning decided to wait Sue's arrival rather than try on our own. We didn't want to stir up the sheep in advance.

The tup moves in on the 'talent'.

In the event, Sue arrived with grown-up Grandson Lewis as well (dressed a bit smart as he was really off to college but Sue had made him bring wellies and spare trousers in case!) so we'd be mob handed and also arrived late due to some unforeseen problem with a toppled electric fence. These things happen with livestock but the butchers know this and the booking times are not rigid. It was the work of just 3 minutes or so to grab a twin each and persuade them into the trailer, with the third hand ready to shut the ramp-door and the 4th hand just blocking an exit in case anyone got any ideas. 15 minutes later they were delivered to Ignatius G and the paperwork all done, and we guess Lewis already delivered to college on time. The plan was then for both vehicles to run independently to Sue's for our rendezvous with the tup.

Rambo with (l to r) Dylan, Myfanwy, Polly and Lily

If it is possible, loading Rambo was even easier. He is a big solid lad but soft as butter, is trained to a head collar and will follow a bucket of food anywhere so between three of us, with Prada the St Bernard looking on as back-up we quickly extracted him from his field (where-in his other girlfriend and one son) and walked him to the trailer. Lob the bucket in and give the lad a nudge, and he was in there, happy as Larry. He didn't stay that way (happy) mind and objected quite hard to being caged and then moved behind the car - he was playing up a bit bouncing around, turning about and, if the car stopped, stamping his forefeet in rage enough that we could feel the dip transmitted through the tow hitch to the car. We could also hear him roaring but there was nothing for it but to carry on driving gently home. We hope he is not too traumatised by the journey that he will remember trailers and not want to play on the return journey.

Doing a 'bare necessities' scratch on the big tree.

The ewes (and lamb) were waiting for him on the front lawn so we had decided to unload him through the 2nd 'driveway' entrance (which now gives onto the lawn field). We can plug the trailer in there nice and tight so nobody can escape round the sides while you have the gate open. The change in Rambo's demeanor when he spotted the ewes was highly amusing. He had come down the ramp all "Harrumph! Bloody Trailers! The INDIGNITY of it!" but then his whole face and body language changed as he spotted the girls and his little face said, "Babes!" His head came up and he positively strutted out into the open posing like a pro.

A quick game of hide and seek, or possibly "hard to get"

As you'd expect the girls were a bit worried by this bulky new arrival and grouped together, then ran in circles trying to avoid him as he lumbered over. The run-around only lasted about half an hour (he'll be nice and fit, anyway) before they all seemed to relax and although none of the females are truly ready for him yet, they are allowing him close and to do a few exploratory sniffs of lady-bits. The young ram-lamb seems to be coping too. He just moves away when Rambo comes to chat up his mum. So now we have two new noises around the 'farm', the bassy grunts, 'barks' and low baa-ing of the ram and the jaunty tinkling of his sheep-bell. Sue has a tinkling bell on him as he can sometimes try a playful charge at anybody in his field, specialising in attack from the rear. He can 'have you over', warns Sue. The bell gives you a bit of warning to turn round and face him where-upon he deflates and strolls over to ask for food. Me? I wasn't going to charge you! Thought never crossed my mind, guv!

So, here he is anyway, our tup, with us for a month or so hoping to get all three girls into lamb. Thank you very very much, Sue for the loan there-of and for your help loading today. We all hope for a happy ending come February.