Rainy all day.  Only had a few minutes of no rain at a time.  Didn't stop us. 

In the morning we went to the Sheep and Wool Center.  Of course, I had to buy wool for weaving projects and a sheep skin.  Now to figure out how to get them home.  Guess I will have to leave some clothes behind.

Next we drove to the Ashford Castle.  It is 5 star hotel now.  The doorman was really nice and gave us a peek inside.  One of lights was made out of Waterford crystals. There was no comparison to the other lights.  It was just beautiful.

After a light lunch at the tea room, we headed to Galway to the rail station. After a 3 hour ride we arrived in Dublin. Dinner and bed.

LOTS HAS HAPPENED

Life has moved on since the last time I posted.

I will cover the sad news first.  Crystal, the baby goat, has died.  She got polio. Big Boy, the rooster that was attacked by the dog, has left us also.  Snowy, my cat, got hit by a car. The good news is that Snowy survived. 

I am out wandering the world.  Spend a week in Michigan taking care of some business. Currently I am in Ireland.  The history and landscape here are breath taking.  We visited an abbey yesterday that was built is the 2nd century. Most of the walls are still standing and some of the stone carvings are still visible. Unfortunately in the past it was common practice to remove the roof of buildings that would not be used so a lot of weather damage happens to the buildings. 

The food here is worth writing home about.  Currently I have been trying their soups.  So far, I have tried Potato and Leek soup, Zucchini and Eggplant soup, and Shamrock soup.  They were all very, very good.  I am going to have to try to make some.  The first night we were here we had Pork and Leek Bangers, they were very good also.

Have a good day.

Baby arriving

Silver's baby ducks are starting to hatch.  At the last check there were three of them. Two yellow and one silver/black.  Think there were seven eggs. 


Spring time means flowers also.  Got the prettiest roses from my daughter for Mother's day.  They look so pretty on the table on the front porch.  I bought some geraniums for another planter that I put on the porch also.  Makes it homey out there.  Added some flowers at the entrance to the basement also.  

While I was out there I noticed the everbearing strawberries in the barrel are doing exceptionally good this year.  The ones that I planted earlier were June bearing strawberries.  These are some that I planted a couple of years ago.  They bear fruit all summer.  

Just had trouble in paradise.  My cat, Snowy, doesn't like other animals.  Someone left the door to the bedroom where my daughter's cat is temporally residing open.  Snowy must have got in there as her cat, Tiger, bled all over the room.  Seems to be just a scratch on his foot but sure is a lot of blood.  He seems okay now.  Just a mess to clean up.  He is about 17 years old and looks very fragile.  He normally lives with Josh, my son-in-law, in Radford.  Josh is on temporary assignment in New Hampshire so the cat came to live with us.  



Latest news about the bottle fed baby goat in Michigan.  She has learned to climb. 









Hope you had a good day.

Did you know?  In a 2008 survey, 58% of British teens thought Sherlock Holmes was a real guy, while 20% thought Winston Churchill was not.

More and More ducks

I thought rabbits were bad.  Think ducks are worst.  Now we have 3 nests with at least 5 to 7 eggs in each nest.  As soon as any of these hatch they are going on craigslist, yard sale site or some where.  Which should be any day for the first nest.  There are about 3 weeks for the second nest and about 5 weeks on the other one.  My grandson seems to think we should keep all the babies. 

The garden harvest has begun.  Yesterday we harvested the first 2 radishes.  One was the size of my thumb and the other one was smaller.  Checked the carrots.  They are about half the size of a pencil.  Tasted good though.  The green beans, dill, and sunflower are all up. The peas have flowers on them. Planted tomatoes.  If this is a good year for tomatoes, I will have to put baskets out by the road with a free sign.  I have paste tomatoes, small tomatoes, 2 types of slicing tomatoes.  As I said if it is a good year, I will have tomatoes for the whole neighborhood.   

Then there are the peppers.  I have very hot peppers, green peppers and lots of banana peppers.  Both my son and daughter brought banana peppers.  Oh well, they make a real good mustard.  Sold real good at the farmer's market two years ago.  I will have to make some of that.  Still want to get some regular red hot peppers and some sweet red peppers.

Can you tell I like my garden?

Hope you had a good day.

Did you know?  One medium sized tomato (123 grams) contains only 22 calories

Rained out again

Tried to mow the lawn this afternoon.  Got about 1/2 of it done before the rain started.  I don't mind the rain it is the thunder and lightening that concerned me.

 Did get the new trees watered.  Although with the rain storm we are getting tonight, we probably didn't need to.  My son had an old rain barrel he loaned us.  It had a spicket on it so we loaded into the trailer that we pull behind the lawn mower and hooked a hose to it.  It worked really good.  The new trees are spread over several acres.  It is a  lot easier than carrying buckets of water.

A while back someone asked me why I have belonged to the Eastern Stars, which is part of the Masonic family, for so long (over 50 years).  Though the years I have tried to explain what the Masonic family does.  Today on facebook there was an explanation of the  that I would like to share:

Masonry teaches that each person has a responsibility to make things better in the world. Most individuals won't be the ones to find a cure for cancer, or eliminate poverty, or help create world peace, but every man and woman and child can do something to help others and to make things a little better. Masonry is deeply involved with helping people-it spends more than $1.4 million dollars every day in the United States, just to make life a little easier. And the great majority of that help goes to people who are not Masons.
Some of these charities are vast projects, like the Shriners Hospitals for Children and Burns Institutes. Also, Scottish Rite Masons maintain a nationwide network of over 100 Childhood Language Disorders Clinics, Centers and Programs. Each helps children afflicted by such conditions as aphasia, dyslexia, stuttering and related learning or speech disorders. The Grand Lodge of Florida supports the The Masonic Medical Research Laboratory an internationally recognized biomedical research institute.

Some services are less noticeable, like helping a widow pay her electric bill or buying coats and shoes for disadvantaged children. And there's just about anything you can think of in-between. But with projects large or small, the Masons of a lodge try to help make the world a better place. The lodge gives them a way to combine with others to do even more good.

The Eastern Star portion of Masonic Family allows women to assist the the men.  Both men and women belong to the Eastern Star.  Only men belong to the Masons, Scottich Rites, and other mason divisions.  

My son was born with birth defects of the back.  The Shriners hospital in Chicago and in South Carolina repaired his back the best they could and he is mobile and holds a full-time job as a teacher in a local school.  If it was not for the wonderful care he received though the Shriners Hospital he would be in a wheel chair today.  They flew 8 doctors in from various places in the United States to operate on him. We could never have afforded the care he received for free.  

Hope you had a good day.

Did you know? Scientists can turn peanut butter into diamonds. 

Look Mom

My grandson came to the door and said, "Look Mom.  Look at all the onions that I found."  They are my daffodils.  Guess we have to replant them.  My grandson is grounded so he is pulling weeds to get ungrounded. Didn't work out very good for me.  

Daughter just came in and told me that this is the year for cicade hatching in Virginia.  They like to lay eggs and kill young trees. Yikees.  Just planted 20 young trees and have 6 young fruit trees.  That is a lot of trees to protect.  The Internet says you wrap them with cheese cloth.  It didn't say anything about blueberry and blackberry bushes.  I have several of them. 

Hope you had a good day.

Did you know? Cicadas think the sounds made by power tools and lawn maintenance equipment are made by cicadas. They get confused and will land on the people using the equipment!