Borage Flower Sandwich, Yum Yum!!!

One or two borage flowers on your sandwich?

 

Two Please, Thank you very much, one for each slice of cucumber!!

fearsome beauty

This spiky little divil is called borage.  It is a very useful flower to have in the garden if you want to attract bees.  They just love it.  You can actually eat the flowers and they look great in a salad adding lovely colour to it.  It is also a medicinal plant for ailments such as bronchitis, flu, acne and stress to name a few.  It is rather prickly to the touch as you can see in this photo

 

 

A view from the front.  I find it so amazing!!  And it tastes great, would you believe!!!

Mary Queen of Scots up in Charleville Castle

This plaque accompanied the Queen Pendulum Clock which was commissioned by Charleville Castle and was presented by them to Adelaide Kane who took up the lead role as Mary Queen of Scots in the TV Movie “Reign”

 

 

And here’s Adelaide herself, looking like a beautiful queen and the Other beautiful queen beside her!!!

in the here and now

I notice myself slipping off all the time into my own little world.  I can be having a chat with someone and suddenly I’ m thinking of something not at all related, gone like the wind into another realm.   For example, I might be chatting to my friend about her father and suddenly my thoughts race off and arrive at some flashback of what happened the other day.  At moments like this, I get a little embarassed because I will come back to the friend, who is still chatting about her father, and have to pretend that I didn’t miss out on half of what she already said and will have to read between the rather scant lines that I did hear and guess the rest.  And she will have noticed the slight vacant look on my face, the shame in my eyes, the uneasiness about me as I struggle to keep up with her story.  Now isn’t that shocking.

 

I remember once or twice when I was running in the woods and suddenly I fell, simply tripped and toppled over, and found myself sprawled on the muddy ground.  And I asked myself how the hell that happened and  the answer was simply that I got too  into my own little world and was very absent from the task at hand, running.   Whenever I fall or trip,  it usually implies that I have  become unconscious of the here and now.

 

And the moral of the story is  to always stay in the here and now and not to wander off in your head.  Easier said than done!!!  I’m off now to have a little daydream about candied borage flower and purple butterflies with pink spots and yellow and orange grass and balmy breezes and………….. there I go again!!

Down this country lane

“How are you, young yarrow?”

“Fine, thank you, Mr Sparrow.

And how are you today.

With that look of dismay?”

“I’m in need of a shower,

My beautiful Flower.

Waiting for the rain

Down this country lane”

 

“What I need is sunshine

for my complexion so divine.

To get wet does no good.

If it rains I’ll need a hood.

“Oh, just one little shower

My beautiful Flower.

My feathers need a wetting

in a puddle.  Don’t be fretting!”

 

“Well, hold off for a day

Or there’ll be hell to pay.

If the farmers cant get

the sunshine for their hay.

It’ll be raining soon enough

So don’t go off in a huff.

Wait for a while.

Give me a smile!

Down this country lane

You will have your rain”

 

 

 

 

 

a tap on the shoulder, a whisper in the ear

Did you ever feel that somebody or something was trying to whisper in your ear and was sort of tapping on your shoulders, standing immediate behind you?  Perhaps an angel, or a spirit?  And this thing that they are whispering is quite inaudible and leaves you guessing what was said?  And then  you try to put meaning on all this and start to work  out the intended message?  Then you come up with a whole new way of thinking like as if the message was telling you to shift your attitude ever so slightly, to make some little adjustment to your thought process, to see things in a different light, to understand the possitive side of the situation and not to dwell on the negative and then everything will be alright.  Well this is what’s happening to me recently.  There is a message coming through and I believe it is not an angel nor a spirit but rather my own consciousness helping me to become aware of some shift that needs to happen.  The good thing here is that this little shift won’t be too upsetting.  It’s only a minor adjustment.

 

So, little man, or  guardian angel, or ghost, or whoever or whatever you are, don’t you worry!!!  Point taken.  I have made the necessary steps.  You can now tap on someone else’s shoulder and whisper in their ear.  I’d say there are quite a few candidates out there that need adjusting and could do with an awareness boosting!!!

More than just slate trays

I like to think that they are not just ordinary trays. No these are fine, they are ornate, they are adornment; a beautiful centre piece for the dining room table; a serving tray for that special occasion when only the best sherry comes out from under lock and key and served as a pre-dinner drink; or some eatables perhaps, little tasty bites served in ever so delicate bowls; or simply used to place some tealights on. Whatever!!

Round trip to Pullough, the heart of Offaly

You would think, wouldn’t you, that when one goes on a bike ride for over four hours that one is going to come back somewhat lighter.  Well that was not the case with me on this trip when I came home, or rather dragged myself home, about 22llbs heavier.  Not that I had suddenly put on all that weight and became a ten ton Tessy but the extra weight was owing to the 20 odd sods of turf I picked up on the way.  They were hanging out of any nook and cranny that could be found in the panier bags of the bike, not an inch left in any of the pockets.  Well I just couldn’t pass them by, could I, and they in danger of being smashed to pieces by tractors and cars and whatnots.  No, I did my christian duty and picked them up whenever I came across them; lovely long dry sods they were too.  How could you leave them behind?  Mauricio was none too impressed when he was forced to keep on stopping and waiting ’til I had the beauts put safely away.  He’ll thank me one of these days when I have a rip roaring fire on in the stove and a nice dinner stewing away for him on top.

 

On this trip which took us into the back of beyonds of Offaly, we got slightly lost at one stage and went down a road that abruptly came to an end with a lovely cottage with a half door.  I fancied that in the kitchen of that cottage there would be an old man sitting by the fire watching the spuds cooking away on the stove and the Missus hobbling around the kitchen slicing up the bacon and buttering the cabbage.  I will never know if that was the case but I do know that there was an old woman there.  She came out to see if we needed any help and only two teeth in her head.  Had it not been rude to make her pose and take a photo I know that that was what Mauricio would have given his right arm to do.

 

The trip started off at the canal heading from Tullamore to Rahan, unreal the amount of flowers along its bank.  We were off the bikes looking at them more than on the bikes cycling.  There was one woman and her dog power walking and honest to God, she was  making more headway along the canal than we were at some stages.  But better on the canal than on the road I always say.   Well until the path becomes too grassy and bumpy for bikes which it did nearer to Pullough

 

We came back by the road (that’s when we started to get lost alot) and some of those roads were so still and quiet that all you could hear was the bicycle wheels busily turning around.  But not all the time were they quiet.  As soon as Mauricio would say something like “I feel like I’m in the middle o f nowhere” along would come a huge tractor, then another and following hot on their heals the back up of cars, disgruntled owners holding rigidly on to the steering wheel and mentally putting their feet to the floor in order to advance.   But they weren’t going anyway, at least not in a hurry, until these massive engines cleared off the narrow roads for them.  At times like those, we were forced into the ditches, bikes and all, in order not to become flattened like the sods of turf I had failed to pick up.

 

The rain seemed to be trying to avoid us all the while on this trip which we were not complaining about.  The sun was in and out of the clouds bringing cheer to our hearts and food to our souls and warmth to our bodies.  The only problem in the whole trip and being lost was not it, was the fact that I had gone off without breakfast and was starving for  the whole latter half of the trip.  I began to wilt when I realised that the last two miles were going to be on the main Birr/Tullamore Road, a road full of fast cars and wide open and boring to be on on a bike.  We had just passed a filed full of meadowsweet and  I kept the image close to me  and it helped to carry me forward.  That image lingered in my mind and brought me home.  The heart of Offaly is truly beautiful especially on a lovely summer day.  Paradise Personified!!!

 

 

Glad to see the back of her!!

When I was young I heard this expression many times “I’ll be glad to see the back of her”.  I’m not quite sure if it was my mother or my father or both or even the neighbour that used to say this from time to time and  I used to wonder what it meant.  The sentiment behind it was always unmistakably venomous so one knew that the “she” in question had better get lost real soon.  And it usually was a “her” for some reason;  ” She”, the one that the cat dragged in, the hussy who had better tow the line or else!!! “She” was a troublemaker and one to be wary of, one who it was better to see her back rather than her front.  Seeing her back meant she was going away and was no longer a threat to the general peace and quiet.  Now, seeing her “front” was cause to set off alarm bells; the offending and approaching hazard; double trouble getting nearer and nearer; panic setting in, danger looming larger and larger; Oh, What to do?.  “Can’t somebody turn her around so that we can see her back”!!!