An Organic Lifestyle (Organic Growing Pains)

I found this video on Youtube, it gives a countrywide view of the floods.There are lots of other ones of the floods in Cork and Bandon.

A Sink full of hot soapy water...Luxury! How our priorities have changed in the last few days.This morning I was able to fill my sink with hot water from the taps, we have water to wash and for domestic use only, it will be another few days before it is cleared for drinking.Water was returned to the north side of the city on a phased basis over the last couple of days, ours returned at 9.00pm last night.The weather is dry and very cold and a lot of the roads were still wet when we had a hard frost last night so there is a lot of black ice about,the radio has been giving reports of car pile ups all morning. Some of our country towns like Bandon,Skibereen and Clonakilty are still mopping up the water damage to their homes and businesses.The west of Ireland still has thousands of acres under water and winter crops have been destroyed with another flood warning as high tides throughout the Shannon region are imminent today. Water tankers were placed around the north side and smaller tanks ...

Here in the south of Ireland and all up the west coast have suffered flooding since last Thursday.Our water supply has been cut off due to damage to the water treatment works and we have to get bottled water for drinking and washing. In the midst of all this doom and gloom the bright spot was Jack Brandon was Christened on Saturday, there was enough water to pour on his head at least!Jack with his Mom Aisling and Dad Nigel. The Western Rd, the main thoroughfare into the city from the west at the height of the flooding.We had 60 mls of rainfall in 36 hours which is about 270% of our total yearly rainfall. High winds, high tide and a lot water had to be left go from the Hydro electric dam to the western outskirts of the city, all added up to devastating floods in towns and villages and most of the city was under water on Thurs and Friday.The river Lee runs through the city and is tidal right up to the city so if high tides and heavy rainfall coincide some of the city center would flood.A...

I spent a couple of hours on the plot on Tuesday in watery Winter sunshine. I dug out the row of parsnips and got the surprise of my life to see we had some fine specimens!I pulled the remaining few white turnips, a solitary leek and a good bucketful of sprouts. I also dug up the last of the Kerr's pinks potatoes and some of the Golden Wonders. It was when I loaded the photos to the computer I realised I had not taken a pic of the pops. After the spell of heavy rain they were covered in muck so were not very photogenic anyway.There is now a lot of slug damage to all of the potatoes so next year we will take my brother in laws advice and only grow first and second earlies.Potatoes are very cheap in the shops now and if the cost of blight spray etc is taken into account then these are very expensive spuds for very little return. The full parsnip harvest, all shapes and sizes but a wonderful smell and taste.The largest weighed in at 600grms! We only grew one row of them, some of the f...

Back to the rain this morning so I still have not been out to the plot.Yesterday was dry and cold but being Sunday I had lots on so could not go out.The leaves are falling from the shrubs in the front and in amongst them I saw these small white spots. On investigation I discovered I have mushrooms growing! What type they are I don't know but I am sure are not edible! The mushrooms are small and white and growing up through the carpet of leaves which will have to be cleared off of the ground.I have never seen anything like this growing in the bed before, maybe it has something to do with the very wet summer we had. As I had the camera I went and investigated the other few blooms which still survive in the garden.This is the Bacoba, still flowering, it was sharing with a Sinetti which died off and I replaced it with some Begonia which are still putting up some colour around the garden. The Tumbling pots began life with Pansies and I replaced them with Cyclamen before the wedding in A...

"> Most people who know me know I love music and dancing.I had lots of photos taken at various venues languishing on my computer so I had a brainwave,I would try to put music to them for Facebook.The first attempts were hard going, Picasa skipped on some of the music tracks when uploading but now I have discovered Windows live media! I put photos to this track about Cork City, where I live. Cork has just been named one of the top ten cities to visit in the Lonely Planet Guide .The music is provided by a friend of mine, Finbar Dennehy who is a musician, for anyone who is interested the red accordion he is playing was once owned and played by the grand old man of Scottish music Sir Jimmy Shand. All of them are on Youtube and can be viewed by typing in Finbar Dennehy music.More from peg1949 is on the sidebar on youtube and the other videos can be viewed there.Something to do in the long winter nights!

Again it has been over a week since I posted! I honestly do not know where the time goes to.We have had a deluge of rain over the past few days, some areas of the county are flooded and at the height of the rainfall a lot of roads were flooded to the extent of being impassible.Today we have cold wintry sunshine but a gale force North Easterly wind to keep temperatures down.I spent absolutely no time out on the allotment so some of the winter digging is getting behind schedule.We have a huge pile of horse manure on the plots but I have bought some Green manure seed to try an alternative. We already put in Phacalia earlier which has now been cut back to cover the soil, this is one I saw on the Seedaholic website and decided to try it as it is a Winter growing one and can be sown from August through to November.I liked this one as it has 3 types of seed in the mix and some winter colour will be welcome.The red flower is Crimson Clover ,it is a good nitrogen fixer,quick and easy to grow,...