And so here we are. It’s May. (“Tra la! It’s May!” sang Guinivere in the musical Camelot. The lusty month of May!) In the over thirty years that I’ve lived in West Cork, the month of May has always been pretty good. Sometimes it’s been spectacular. This time of the […]
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Spring has well and truly arrived. Four seasons in one day make a regular appearance and the garden is thriving. Everything in the garden is very green and there are plenty of things sprouting at both ends of the vegetable growing spectrum. The new seeds are slowly uncurling, whilst last […]
Standing at the epicentre of where the world’s first atomic bomb was detonated by the USA on August 6, 1945, is a surreal experience. Hiroshima, a modern and somewhat serene city, is less hectic and less claustrophobic than other Japanese cities, but that is to be expected given that the […]
The Irish have always been notable travellers. A continental scholar, Walafrid Strabo, who lived over a thousand years ago, remarked that the Irish of his time were so given to wandering abroad that it was second nature to them. He had seen them coming by the shipload, monks and craftsmen […]
I’ll admit it – I got a Covid puppy! Like so many others, the lifestyle changes of those months meant our family was suddenly in a position to welcome a pet we might have otherwise thought we were too busy for. Enter Milo, our lively Irish Water Spaniel, who bounded […]
Sunshine and rain just about guarantees everything’s going to be green. The garden is lush with kale, spinach and rocket, admittedly the best is in the tunnel but it’s all zooming ahead. The outside crops are taking off again after sitting there patiently all winter. We’ll get quite some picking […]