Bath Time

It was a mild day today, dull when I went shopping early in the morning but getting sunny and bright as the day wore on. In fact, we went out blackberry picking in the afternoon and came home with 2 3/4 lb blackberries and another handful of sloes to toss into my current batch of sloe gin.
Before lunch C was power-hosing our organic waste bin. It usually ends up being me who cleans it, because it's collected on Tuesdays and I can rarely wait till the weekend before using it again - it was a treat not to do it this time round. Anyway, while he was out in the back yard working away getting ready to clean it,  I went out to fill the bird feeders, and out of the corner of my eye, saw a robin fly into a pot tray that only has a couple of pots in it. He had a lovely bath - and I spent about 5 minutes watching him before I decided to risk coming in for the camera and hoping he would still be there. He was nearly finished - but here's a quick video of the end of his ablutions.

Hot off the needles

It's taken a while, because I didn't do much over the summer.
But the leftovers from Lorraine's lighthouse afghan have now become a sweater for C just in time for the colder winter weather.
There are still more leftovers, since I supplemented the original ones with a couple more colours, but I'm not sure I feel like making another complex sweater with them, and think I'll pass them on to the wife of one of my work colleague's, because I know she crochets.

And now it's time to get on with some Christmas gift knits!!

Starlings

I was coming home from work yesterday, and stopped to watch a large flock of starlings. I'm not sure what was attracting them to land, but there were so many, and so noisy! It was quite windy, so there's a lot of wind noise too - but in real life, the starlings were louder. Several times they all flew up and landed again nearby - I'm not sure what startled them. Once it was me, but I think perhaps it was also the seagulls and magpies.

Botanic Gardens ~ Sculpture (2)

There were several of these vivid red lily pads floating at one end of the lily ponds, each with its little nymph.

Also floating on the pond (and some had tipped over and weren't floating at all) were some cute little ducklings - just the sort you'd have in a bath!

This was one of my favourite exhibits - the title was something like "Live Streaming Nature". There were two comfortable leather chairs set under a tree, with the lily pond framed by an empty television set. The "room" was furnished with a carpet and accessories, and even some "home decor" attached to a couple of the trees.

The sunlight made it almost impossible to get a good picture of this lovely bird and his collection of junk - I took several and these are the best.

Another indoor exhibit - this was a fun one because the fish is articulated; at one end of the base there was a wheel which you could turn, and as you did, the fish and the ribs in the frame moved, as if the fish was wriggling.

Botanic Gardens ~ Sculpture

I'm so glad we went to the Botanic Gardens last week and didn't leave it till this weekend. After a week of beautiful sunshine we woke to a dull grey morning - and this time it wasn't just a mist which burnt off as the sun rose. Revisiting the sculptures as I edited some photos was good enough for today.

Some here, more to follow tomorrow.

This was C's favourite of the indoor exhibits; pyrography and colouring.

These flowers were in the main entrance to the Curvilinear greenhouse; made from recycled metal, beautifully textured as if they had been corrugated.

This might be the first year that we didn't buy a catalogue, so I can only remember a few exhibit titles. This one was easy to remember - Flotsam and Jetsam.

In the grass garden, a flock of birds...

From the back, I had thought that these were cracked eggshells, because we could see the birds in the background beyond them. But once we walked into the grasses, we could see that they were flowers.

September Favourites...

Favourite cards from September. A couple might look rather Christmassy but they're not particularly intended as Christmas cards - in fact, one has already been sent.

I had very few suitable photos from last October for a blog header. I was going to use one from the Mourne Mountains, but it wasn't suitable for cropping to a landscape format. So instead I went looking through photos from October '13 and found this wagtail, taken along the seafront in Greystones.

Liffey Birds

A sunny morning, a misty morning...

Botanic Gardens - Flora

I meant to post this last night...
Not only is it the time of year for the Sculpture in Context exhibition in the Botanic Gardens, it also feels as if we have been having more sunshine than we had all summer, almost. It's just a shame that it's so late in September that there isn't a lot of warmth left in it, but it's beautiful to wake up to blue skies and sunshine for several mornings in a row. Saturday was one such morning, so we headed over to the Botanic Gardens for what is, I think, our first visit this year because of the weather having largely been so uninspiring.

Still life in the peony border...

The kitchen garden was mostly faded, but the chard was a glorious riot of colour

From a distance, this looked like a little cameo, and at first we both thought it was part of the sculpture exhibition!

Colchicum - they looked as if a shower of little darts had landed in the ground

Bokeh effect - lily leaves, sunshine, and water

France - le fin

A dragonfly photo I missed out on earlier because it was the only photo from a walk in woodlands near Le Teich.

Le Teich reserve was our last day. We shopped for dinner on our way home, and after dinner, took down the big tent, set up the small one ready for a quick getaway the following morning, and packed up the car.
And then we decided to go and find the port that we were within metres of finding on our first night, le Port Des Tuiles. It was much less "developed" than Biganos, port, and the little cabins weren't as spruced up. But it was a lovely way to spend the last evening. The name comes from the fact that it was the port where tiles manufactured in Biganos were put on boats and distributed to all the ports around the bay, where the oyster growers used them as a substrate for growing the baby oysters.

We had a long drive ahead of us the next day - nearly 700 kilometres. We left in good time to fit in a supermarket shop in the town before Roscoff, and still had time for a short walk round the town of St. Pol-de-Léon to give our legs a good stretch after a day in the car.

One last bird...