Recycled Eco Buildings and Wildlife Friendly Food Forest Garden. Mosaics and Glass Bottle Walls.
You might be a bit like us. We like to have fun and go to the odd festival or gathering. When attending such an event it is nice to get in the spirit of things. Maybe wear something that you would not normally wear. Put on some special makeup or face paint.
It is less than a week now to our Open Garden day for Amnesty. Although we have lots to do still, today we decided to help the little people in the garden, by building them a summer house and putting up some bunting. We know they are shy creatures and that they may be a bit startled by all the visitors to the garden on Saturday, but we still think they want their place to look the best.
Our willow dome is coming on very well this year. On a hot day it is a lovely cool place full of dappled sunlight. We wanted a table inside it, and some friends gave us a cable drum last year, so we had the perfect candidate for the job.
So what do you do when you have planned a couple of work days in the garden but the rain keeps pouring down and all you want to do is stay warm by the fire? Spring rain is a wonderful thing, soaking all the roots of our newly planted specimens and setting everything in the garden up for a season of immense growth. It is not always wonderful to spend long periods of time in it though.
Work continues in our community for welcoming the Syrian refugees who are to arrive shortly. A pilot project, run by community volunteers has been set up called “Friends of the Centre”, Ballaghaderreen. The volunteers will work in collaboration with the Department of Justice and the Irish Red Cross to support the wellbeing and integration of the refugees into the Irish community.
Young swallows hatched in our garden last year.
We have written about willow before. It is truly an incredible inhabitant of the land. We have friends with a river on their land and they have a lot of willow planted along the river banks. They were kind enough to let us coppice some of it for our new willow fence and plant supports. We also coppiced our dogwoods growing close to our cottage and ended up with a selection of beautiful young stems for weaving.
Last week we were honoured to be asked by the “Welcome to Roscommon” Movement to create the artwork for the welcome wall project. As some of you know already, Ballaghaderreen has been selected to host a number of Syrian Refugees in a transition centre, where they can rest, recuperate and get to know their new country a little bit before being moved to permanent housing across the country. You can read about the many wonderful projects the Welcome to Roscommon movement are initiating to make this transition as positive and easy as possible on their Facebook page.
We are happy to be at a stage when it is time to furnish our conservatory. We acquired an old wooden trunk from a friend, and decided it would make a perfect table. It had been spending many years in a shed and unfortunately some wood worm had got into parts of it. The first step in our saving operation was to treat it with wood preserver. We did that outside in the summer and left the trunk in our shed for a few months to make sure there was no live woodworm left.The long pieces on the bottom needed replacing.
It is almost time to close the door on another year in our little cottage. We are so happy to be able to live a simple life in the countryside, grow more and more of our own food and spend time in close connection with the soil. It is very gratifying to see the soil slowly improving as we add more organic matter to it. Our trees create their own mulch now and the land is changing into a very exciting place. Where there was only a field of creeping buttercups, we now have a multitude of useful plants and a wildlife haven.
After some debate we have decided to include this post in the food production category of the blog. The subject matter might not be very nutritious but it does feed the soul and creates many happy memories.
thegreenerdream 