Pleasant sail

Had a wee sail today and came back through the  Cruinniú na mBád and instantly regretted not taking my decent camera with me but here are some shots of The Bád Mór (big boats) ranges in length from 10.5 to 13.5 metres (35 to 44 feet). The smaller Leathbhád (half boat) is about 10 metres (28 feet) in length. 
Both the Bád Mór and Leathbhád were decked forward of the mast. These boats were used to carry turf to be used as fuel across Galway Bay from Connemara and County Mayo to the Aran Islands and the Burren. The boats often brought limestone on the return journeys, to neutralise the acid soils of Connemara and Mayo. The Gleoiteog ranges in length from 7 to 9 metres (24 to 28 feet) and has the same sails and rigging as the larger boats. They were used for fishing and carrying cargo. Another boat, the Púcán, is similar in size to the Gleoiteog but has a lug mainsail and a foresail. 
Excuse the quality of the photos I only had my phone with me.

Lovely to see the resurgence of traditional boats in this region. I was going to go out and take photos of the regatta earlier in the month but it was cancelled for the fourth year out of five due to inclement weather so it was a surprise to see them today.

Taking my shore rod on holidays with me to see I I can catch my Mum a few cuddies of the rocks in Luing, I have my favourite spots from when I was a kid and used to fish a lot of the shore when there wasn't a boat to be out on. 

I'm driving up on Thursday and will leave here about 0630 and arrive sometime before 2200 with two ferry crossings its a bit of a hike but I am looking forward to getting away. Should get down to making myself a list of things I need, like chainsaws and wellies.

Sea Horse joins the carvings

The newest carving on the front lawn

Booked my ferry berth to drive up to Luing on Sept 1st am taking the Ford this time as it is a bit better on fuel and has four seats, the Subaru had to be converted to a 2 seater to be classified as a commercial and save €2000 a year in road tax.

We have had a nice couple of days since the Pikies abandoned summer early this year and all headed off. Lots of Rowan berries on the trees and I have my fingers crossed  for an Indian Summer since we missed the conventional one. Actually May was really nice.

This weeks creative side

Well the weather wasnt great this week but we got a few wee creative bits and bobs done, made a seagull for the wharf a Japanese style bird feeder type thingie and some bird boxes.

Not so much colour about the place just now a sort of lull in my planting plan anyway there are some French Marigolds and cornflowers about.

Louis bridge

Well this week has been spent constructing a sort of jetty onto my pond as another feature in the garden, it has turned out well. Louis is my French Helpx helper this couple of weeks he is cycling the Wild Atlantic Way the length of Ireland and this is a stop off for him

Lake Maquire is at an all time low as we have had very little rain but there is rain on the forecast for Sunday so that might fill her up again. I have to get round to clearing some lilly pads as they are covering the whole pond near enough.

We also got the yacht doors replaced with one we constructed from marine ply.

To Hell or Connaught

Oliver Cromwell spent nine months here in Ireland quelling the Irish resistance to English rule and I don't think they were really impressed with Connaught hence the phrase coined in those days "The Irish can go to Hell or Connaught" My dogs are quite happy.

Trying to upload a video I took earlier at the beach down the road. One guy in swimming who is hardier than me by about 5C I managed a paddle up to that tender spot just above the knee that communicates well with the brain "Are you mad"

Recent websites

Just finished a website for a local bus company its at foley bus hire they do executive chauffeured car and mini bus hire too. It is very difficult to get good search placement if the webpage is lacking content and my customer had heard somewhere you can pay Google €20 a month and get listed at the top of results, this of course is bull what he had been told about was PPC ( pay per click) advertising on Google. You could quite easily pay  €20 or €200 or €2000 a day PPC and if it is not geographically targeted properly or if the ad does not take the clicker to a page where they can buy or book your service or if you make the search terms to broad you may as well just burn your cash in a large barque pit. When I told him this he is away to look for more content so I can include that on the pages.

Another one finished recently is at www.kilronanhostel.com and this next week I have Aran Goats cheese and hopefully a website makeover for a local artist http://www.derrykyle.com/andrea/ 

I still haven't got business cards for clprint or my car sign written but hey this is Connemara and its only been 6 weeks or so. 

Got some Halibut for dinner so I have a recipe for pan frying it with a potato crust, with asparagus broad beans and a cider cream sauce. Should be tasty.

 

"A weed is a flower growing in the wrong place." George Washington Caver

I wondered who had coined the phrase "A weed is a flower growing in the wrong place"and it turns out to have been George Washington Carver who was  an American botanist and inventor. The exact day and year of his birth are unknown; he was born into slavery in Missouri, either in 1861, or January 1864. I was born in January 1962 so about one hundred years after him not into slavery but the rate my grass is growing it feels a wee bit like it.
Anyway here are some of my weeds and some of my cherished plants in bloom today.

 The Laburnum is in full bloom and it turns out I have two of these trees one had not been producing flowers up until this year maybe due to its position but with a lot of the tall softwoods removed it has sprung into life :)

 Wild Roses here are a bit of a weed but they have a nice wee rose.

 My favorite coloured Roddy

 Lupins are excelling this year maybe due to the mild winter some of them have in excess of 12 flower spikes this yellow and blue on is my favorite at the moment.

Pics from the garden

Top evening here calm and sun just setting at 2045 got a few snaps on my walk around the place this evening, nice to see bluebells and the grape hyacinth blooming.

Websites

Well I have a bit of work on and quite a lot of prospective customers, whether they all pan out or not is in the hands of him above but hey things are looking up. Two new ones I'm working on are on my server at www.derrykyle.com/kitts  and www.derrykyle.com/clprint 

The CLPrint website is also going to be in Irish I am just waiting for the translation to be done then I will make the site responsive so it shows good on all devices and publish it. CLPrint have asked me if I would be interested in working alongside them so that is exciting too as the have a big customer list having been around for over 30 years.

I also gave my own website a tweak the portfolio section of it anyway by including some effects like mouseover reveals text about the website and also reveal animation so the picture will reveal itself from the left or right margin. Not sure if I have overdone the animation but I wanted to practice the effect and why not on my own website ehh. You can check out the effects at www.galwaysitedesign.com

Today is a bit colder than it has been, typical as I put out some seedlings yesterday, but it is sunny between the showers. I also power washed the yacht yesterday its so handy having her in the Marina with power and water on tap, I'm spoilt.  Caught 40 pollack on Sunday when I went out with a pal fishing and we gave them away in the pub when we got back.  

Comedy

I stayed up most of last night to write some witty prose and to my shock this morning not one person had given me the Nobel Prize in scribbling or the Man Booker thing or anything then in a flash it came to me, I was sober when I was writing.

A while back now I lived in Belmont near Newcastle in NSW Australia and back then I thought about comedy as career but gave it up because I was turning into an alcoholic. The more I drunk the funnier I got I remember one memorable Sunday I was Hilarious, really really funny, you have heard of people doubled up with laughter well I was even funnier, I was so funny I couldn't walk.

It was about three kilometres from the club to the house quite a long crawl but I made it only my trouser knees suffering and it was soooooo funny I made myself sick, when I reached my sleeping spot, under the poison ivy outside our cute wee cottage it was heaven to just rest my head and listen to the cicadas, cars honking and people laughing at how funny I was.

I was reminded this morning with the sun shining through the bedroom window of how I used to wake for three months back then with the dappled sunlight glinting through the garage skylight onto my sort of futon type thing back there in Belmont.

Angie is better this morning her swelling is down to moderate chipmunk status and she shouts for "tea tea" just as loudly as normal so I am patting myself on the back for being such a clever little first aider :)

Ohh another reason I never took up comedic writing is who remembers that really really funny bloke who writes Johnathin Ross's material you know the guy? I can just see his face what's his name again? Ohh and I'm sober far too much.

The Ninja mozzie that turned Angie into a chipmunk

See when I was younger my body felt like a weapon, maybe an Excocet missile or summat just now it still feels like a weapon but more like a spent 303 cartridge, why? Well its because I cant sleep and the reason I cant sleep is Angela and the noise she is making. Now normally if Angela is sleeping rather noisy its because she has been dancing with Jack (Daniels) or Jim (Beam) and I put up with it for a while then resign myself to the spare room, but tonight she has an excuse.

So its 0330 and I'm typing quietly on the Ipad so as not to disturb her and keep a wary eye on the swelling with the light from the display, ohh btw before you all panic and call me and wake me up, the swelling has gone down substantially and she will be fine.

Where was I? Ohh yeah last week I was gardening, as I do, and I got bitten by an insect, now this wasn't a cleg or horse fly cos they are big, and being a hairy sod I feel them land and squash them quick and it wasn't a midgie as they are small and quite nice really, this was the size and shape of a mosquito but it wasn't like one of those friendly Ozzie ones that buzz you and have you slap your own head repeatedly, and has the nice wee lump forming saliva or whatever. Na this one is a Ninja Mozzie its deadly quiet you don't feel him land and well when I got bitten on the forearm and the leg, my leg swelled up so much I had to elevated it to ease the swelling as I lay on the couch, which I sometimes do.

This elevation was great ( I included a new paragraph here as I thought you might be falling asleep btw) where was I? Ohh yeah it was great until I lowered the leg to try and walk and all the blood rushed back in and it was like the GOUT, well no not quite as bad just more like a lorry had reversed over the leg or summat.

So anyway I was working away designing a website this afternoon, as I do very occasionally  and Angie popped her head round the door to tell me the inside of her mouth was swollen so I checked her out and came to the conclusion that she may have been bitten by something and seeing last week my reaction had been so bad I told her we should call the DR for advice, to which she poopooed me and looked like she might hit me so I gave her some antihistamine and patted myself on the back because I'm a good First Aider.

So Anyway, about half an hour later she popped back into the office where I was still designing a website and her face was visibly swollen like the sketch in Fawlty Towers where Polly has the cotton wool in her cheeks you know? so I risked getting hit against her demands and rang the DR. Being an Easter Saturday evening he hit me, no he didn't, that was a joke, there was an answer machine which directed me to another number for West Link Care ( they do out of hours emergencies) the girl there asked me what was wrong and she called a nurse who in turn called me back and told me to jump in the car and drive to Carna straight away.

Carna is about as far from here as Dubbo was from Kurnell so I asked her if there was anywhere closer like maybe Carraroe surgery or Spiddal or Galway so she then directed me to Rosmuc which is about 25 mins drive and gave me an appointment for half an hours time. I jumped in the car and looked down "ohh no" I said to myself "there might not be enough petrol to reach Rosmuc and back" Robert Behave m8 this isn't a novel. Sorry where was I?

Ohh yeah I had to go 50 meters out of my way and put €24.65 worth of petrol in the car, very quickly and there was a que at the counter so I said "Medical Emergency" and pushed my way to the front as I do, ahaha Mum I don't actually I have never done that before. Anyway dashed back out to the car and sped off, I just mentioned to Angie what I had done and she "^%&£"$%(", a few times and told me I was "making too much fuss and I should slow down".

 I was driving about 5 mph above the speed limit, as now I was going to keep the DR waiting, she then said something I had never heard before but is brilliant advice for someone speeding that doesn't have a potential airway constricted death patient with a head now resembling a semi deflated basketball sitting beside them and that is "YOUR BETTER OFF 5 MINS LATE IN THIS LIFE THAN MINS EARLY IN THE NEXT"

So we got to the DR's and she praised my First Aid in her way, so I patted my back gently again and went to tell everyone in the waiting room about the Ninja Mozzie incase they thought I had punched Angela or summat. She got a huge vial of antihistamine injected and a super "sore" syringe of steroid to lose the inflammation. I say Super sore there because of all the moaning I had to put up with, and was told to wait 20 mins in the waiting room to make sure the swelling had not got worse.

The 20 mins flew past as I spent the time trying to get a good photo of her head for medical science or posterity or as I told everyone in the room Facebook as I like to have a wee joke when someone is in extreme pain to lighten the mood you know. Anyway all is well and she is sleeping like a baby, a very very very loud baby.

So I'm going to try and sleep again now as its after four and I feel like bacon and eggs, so if you all would like me to stop my attempts at humorous prose and go for a badly required road workers job or summat maybe you will all send money?

Slán

10th of February and the first dry calm day of the year

Well its a bonny day here, the first calm sunny one of the year. So I wandered round with the camera and captured the first colour of the year.

I'm off to take advantage of the nice day toodle pip.