A Walk in the Park (no computer games allowed)

With so much for kids to do these days its hard to find the time to fit in a nice walk isnt it?

Their days are full; school, homework, soccer and swimming (and thats just the 'must do' stuff).

Nearly every other waking thought is something to do with their computer games or stuff associated with them.

Nintendo is trying to take over their brains! If its not the DS its the Wii !

In this house we have to control the 'takeover' by restricting the use of such games, much to their dismay I can tell you! Given the choice they would pick the games over anything else, its scary sometimes. The youngest fella this morning tried to argue with me about certain restrictions on school days! (chancer)

So when I get the time I drag them kicking & screaming (not really) to a park.

We are so lucky to have 2 wonderful parks within 20 mins drive from our home; Dun a Ri forest park in Kingscourt, the other Castle Lake park in Bailieborough. Both completely different parks too which is great.

Early last week we visited Dun A Ri, with the Cabra river at its lowest level so far this year (that has changed a tad over the passed couple of days).

The boys thought it was great to be able to cross this weir without getting wet (Rabbit bridge in the background). Its just such a magical park, my 2 love it and they forget all about their games at home too!

The other park in Bailieborough has a lake instead of a river, and although the 'adventures' are different the boys love it as much as Dun a Ri.

Needless to say we all enjoyed our walk/adventure, not a DS or Wii in sight!
Our only problem now is making the time to go more often..............

Baby 'things'

I dont think I will ever tire of seeing baby 'things' and Spring is just a wonderful time of year for new baby stuff isnt it? And I dont mean human babies, even though I never tire of seeing newborns either.

Just when the lambing season comes to an end it seems our neighbouring farmer still has babies to deal with and this year he has a different mare with a foal in the field behind our house. A lovely treat every morning when I open back the curtains on our bedroom window.

But not all babies are so easily accessible for photographing as I found out yesterday morning when out for a photo drive.

I found this mammy duck with her 11 ducklings enjoying a summer morning swim, but as soon as she spotted me she was off into the side of the pond with her brood in tow.

I told her I'd be back some day and will get better pics (I hope).

These tiny Pansys self seeded from hanging baskets we had over this spot last year, miniture bundles of gorgeousness.

But best of all this week was a Greenfinch chick being fed.............I love Mother Nature.

Mammy bird ate from our peanut feeder then passed it onto her chick...lovely.

Hedgerow Wonders

I grew up in the countryside, 2 miles (3 & a bit km) from the nearest town.
Our nearest neighbour, a bachelor, lived just far enough away that he might be able to make out when my mother was shouting for one of us to come in from the yard/garden, so not that far away but far enough.

I loved living in the solitude of the countryside, I loved wandering up the fields and up the small river that runs at the back of my families dairy farm. Being the eldest of 7 children I kept my sanity by going for these solitary walks.

It gave me time to think, breath and escape the madness of a busy household and most of the time stressed-out mother. It also gave me the time to appreciate the wonderfulness of Mother Nature.

In those days cameras were a luxury, and sure the mobile phone was something we only saw Americans having on the telly! (they had EVERYthing) So the only records are in my memories.

Nowadays we never leave home without the auld mobile, and they all have cameras on them so when we see something that Mother Nature has to offer we can snap it up and like me now, share it with the world.

Myself and my offspring went for a walk down our neighbouring lane (which we have found out is nicknamed the Bog Road) yesterday; I am trying to share my love of the solitude of the countryside with them, and point out all of Mother natures wonders too..

Late Spring Lambs

While the sun was beating down on us all last week our neighbouring farmer was delivering the last of his spring lambs.
The bulk of his lambing season started back at Christmas!

Februarys lambs having fun

Usually when the Ewes spot me peering over the ditch they do a runner, disappearing up the field out of view. But not this particular day, think she was a tad occupied to be bothered by me!

One very contented baby...

This guy was catching a few rays..

Our love of the humble Potato

If I was to name one vegetable that I remember being planted every year as a child growing up in rural Ireland it would have to be the Potato.

Every farmer I knew had a field of spuds growing;  no such thing as first or second earlies or main crop in our house, it was one type of potato and that was it. No such thing as chitting either! the seed potatos that were planted were kept from the previous years crop to use.

It wasnt some small raised bed for the crop either but a half an acre, at least!
My father would have the field ploughed and the drills made using his tractor and plough. Then my mother would have the boxes of seed potatos placed at intervals along the drills.

With a bit of instruction myself and my siblings would follow our parents lead to plant our main veg. Its wasnt easy, I have memories of my back being very sore by the time those boxes were emptied and the day was over.
Its a bit different for our kids......(a few less spuds to plant too!)

 We (sorry the boys) planted our First Earlies the other day, Home Guards.
Now that they are down it is time to make another raised bed, for our main crop, which are still chitting on the bedroom windowsill!

Oh and heres a picture of a very welcome friend in our garden, hopefully one of many.

The hard slog before the nice stuff

If there was one thing I dislike about gardening its weeding ( I have mental scars about weeding as a child that will take years to erase! lol).

I can tell you that digging and making raised beds is much easier than digging out stubborn weeds, whose roots run alot deeper in the soil than the stems above the ground! (Or maybe I have conveniently forgotten how hard it was to do the beds last year!)

If the weather had been kinder to us over the past few months I might have gotten to the weeds earlier but alas Mother Nature had other ideas and left us with a waterlogged garden.

Now the grass has turned to meadow and I have very little motivation to go back out tommorow and do more. I suppose its not that bad, I did get a bit done today so I will have less to do....
This was once the Carrot bed ......

I turned the compost heaps today, some nice compost but still plenty of rotting to do before I can use it in the garden. I even found some Rocket growing in it!

While weeding the beds I found loads of these, great to get rid of some before they hatch or whatever its called with slugs...

But I did come across this wee guy in our polytunnel so maybe slug control wont be soo hard this year.. (they were regular visitors in the tunnel last year)

Have left some polythene in the corner under the potting table in the polytunnel esp for him to hide under so he might stay around for the growing season..

One dog, two boys & alot of Frogspawn

One thing about living in the countryside is the abundance of lanes/sideroads around to go for walks on. We're very lucky to have one such lane within a stones throw of our house, just a pity we have to walk along a main road for a few metres before we get to it. Not exactly child friendly, but at least the lane is fairly car free.

Where I grew up as a child, with the Atlantic ocean on one side and the Ox mountains on the other, we had loads of choice of routes to venture on safely.We even had a small river (to big to call a stream) running at the back of my parents farm. A childs paradise, and I have loads of great memories of myself and my siblings conquering the world and its mother while on these adventures too.

Its a part of my childhood I wish for our boys, and bringing them on walks is my way of giving them some memories of adventure and family fun, albeit with a tag along mother and a Jack Russell.....

It was a lovely spring day yesterday and because it was World Book Day the boys didnt get any homework except to read a book (which they do anyway every night before bed). So by 3.30 we were  'venturing' down the lane.

And this is what we found ...

What I hear you say, (as you strain to see whats in the picture), well heres another one....

Any ideas yet? frogspawn................hundreds if not thousands of the wee dots. I'm afraid I only had my iphone on this walk, was sorry I didnt have my camera for better shots, ah well, next time..

Our lane (as I'm going to call it from now on) has a few streams flowing along it, and theres water, water everywhere. A frogs dream home.

And a swamp...