Marty

Not at all, Albert. I'm a zoombie!

I think you said she's coming on the 29? While that means she can no longer be considered a young horse, she's certainly not super old either, and hopefully could still have a good number of years left.

Fingers crossed it's nothing serious. ❤️ Have you spoken with your veterinarian?

Today was an unusually mild and sunny day here. I didn't get as much work done in the garden as I might have, though. I found out that an organic garden centre not too far away from me is still open, so broke my self-imposed quarantine and drove up to see what they had. I came home with two one-year old apple trees, one cooker and one eater, plus a one-year old plum tree. All three are grafted onto semi-vigorous rootstocks, which means they should grow to about 4 metres (13 feet) high; although they could be kept pruned below that if I want to. Apparently the advantage of a semi-vigorous, rather than a dwarfing or semi-dwarfing rootstock is that the trees will finish up with more vigorous root systems, and so be less liable to wind damage. I also got eight bare-rooted raspberry canes. Yay, me! What a good Friday it turned out to be!

Zoom....? Nope. Although I've two sessions tomorrow. Bake a cake...? No again. That's one of Sunday's jobs. A friend's birthday on Monday. Coddamnit! What's special about today?

A proper series of unfortunate events.... But they do say that accidents tend to come in threes. Let's see... Sump pump - that's number one... Cauli rice and sausage - and there's number two... Egg on floor - and now you're at number three! Looks to me like you're safe for the rest of the day, Val.

I know. Albert and Gary have already mentioned the fact. Sheesh. What's all this fuss about a mere day of the week?

Or even rainbow. Wait! What??

Sounds good, Albert. With freshly ground black pepper?

Happy Friday to you as well, Gary! Friday... is there something I need to remember about Fridays...

Great news, clo! When's the party?

After seven years of retirement, very often I find it difficult to tell the days apart... Wait! What!! It's Friday again??? Oh My Cod! I'm sure there's something I'm supposed to do....

And that makes me think of the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression.

Immediately makes me think of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath.

Michael Marshall Smith is one of my favourite authors. He's written under a number of pseudonyms, including Michael Marshall, M.M. Smith, and Michael Rutger. His horror/science fiction novels, written as Michael Marshall Smith, are my favourites. I particularly liked Spares, One Of Us, and his debut novel Only Forward. There's also a collection of short stories, What You Make It, which had some very interesting, and sometimes quite disturbing, chapters. I believe that was only published in the UK, but the chapters were included later in a much larger collection of short stories (More Tomorrow & Other Stories) which was sold outside of the UK. I also enjoy the more "modern day" novels that he writes as Michael Marshall (The Straw Men and Blood Of Angels spring to mind. But I have to say that his horror/sci-fi novels are my favourites. Thanks for reminding me of him, Val! I must dig his books out and give them another read.

Thank Cod for that!

Well, it's after 1:00 am here. Good night, all! Gonna leave you with some Iron Maiden.

The number of the beast...

And I'll be interested to see if you still think the same when I have opened the view up even more...

Later this afternoon I moved inside the garden to remove the ivy from that side of the wall, and also to make a start on cutting back the boundary hedge. I took this photo showing that corner of the garden when it was almost totally dark, so apologies for the not great quality: There's still a bit of ivy to clear off the inside of the wall, but I'm not going to remove any more from the far end of it until I have got advice as to how to best stabilise the stones. I've made a very small start on tidying the hedge itself. It looks as though down through the years several attempts have been made to block the hedge with chicken wire, plastic screen-like wire, and even (now completely rusted) chain link fence. None of these seem to have been erected on fence posts; more just pushed against the hedge and tied back with bits of wire. I hope to remove them all, as they otherwise will prevent me from cutting the hedge as low as I'd like to. But I can see them being difficult to remove, as brambles, ivy, and the hedge itself, have grown through them in lots of places - and the bottom few inches of them are buried under the accumulation of years and years of rotting leaves...

I will, Albert. I promise. And thanks for your concern.

Here's part of a screenshot from Google Maps Street "Street View" that was taken in August 2009 of the back of my property: You can see the ivy at the far end of the wall. It was already overtopping the wall at that time, so it's had more than another eleven years to wreak its havoc. You may remember me sharing a photo last April or thereabouts showing ivy overtopping the wall to the left of the gate. Thankfully that hadn't had as many years to damage the wall. You'll maybe also notice that the public road hadn't been lowered at that stage, and so there is no ramp up to the gate...

It was a dry, mild day here, as well. Although the sun hid for the whole day long. The Met Office is currently warning of a possibility that we could be in for another cold snap starting from Sunday, with the possibility of heavy snowfalls next week. They can't be sure though. We're too close to the Atlantic, so Irish weather (particularly on the western side) can be notoriously changeable and hence unpredictable...

Thanks for the kind words, Parker. I'm hoping to get source some bare rooted fruit trees and bushes in the next couple of days. I must get those into the ground before spring arrives, to give them a chance to settle in before the main growth starts. So if I can't source any (a possibility, due to many garden centres and nurseries being closed due to Covid-19 restrictions) I'll either have to spend a lot more on container grown ones, or just wait another year.

True... I'd be more inclined to listen to the predictions from the Met Office, though... Thanks for commenting, Gary.