‘You’ll never plough a field by turning it over in your mind.’ #2

before
after

Planted:

Castanea sativa (Sweet chestnut)

Apple trees:

Egremont (M111) – Dessert
Greensleeves (M106) – Dessert
Martin’s Seedling (M111) – Culinary
Ecklinville (M106) – Culinary
Uncle John’s Cooker (M106) – Culinary

Soft Fruit:

x2 Gooseberries – Hinnonmaki Red
x1 Gooseberry – Invicta
x6 Raspberry (Rubus idaeus)
x4 Blackcurrant (Ben Sarek)
x2 Redcurrant (Ribes rubrum)

Constructed:

  1. Windbreak netting
  2. Composting bin

Turf cutting in Co Roscommon in 1881

Turf cutting in Co Roscommon in 1881, from the Illustrated London News, February 26th, 1881

Cut turf stacked for drying, Lissananny, Co. Roscommon, August 2019

To sit beside the board and drink good wine

And watch the turf smoke coiling from the fire

And feel content and wisdom in your heart,

This is the best of life;

William Butler Yates

Cutting turf to heat homes has been a tradition for millennia, but the EU has ruled that it must stop.

February 2020

1605 vs 2011

Gunpowder Plot 1605

Or
“A brief account of that bloudy & subtle Design laid against the King, his Lords and Commons in Parliament, and of a Happy Deliverance by Divine Power.”

Real IRA Plot 2011

The planting of bombs and buying guns is an example of plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, although the sentences for those arrested are now much less severe:

The plotters were hung, drawn and quartered and their heads displayed in Westminster

A Google news search for ‘terrorist plot’ gathered 2,110 results. In  2011 the alledged  perpetrators of terrorism are:

an ex-Soviet officer in Columbia, the ‘Real’ IRA, various Islamist conspiracies, two Swedes found to be innocent, Iran & the USA making accusations and counter-accusations … and the list goes on.

 

In the footsteps of Joseph Rock 重走洛克路

http://drjosephrock.blogspot.com/



In the footsteps of Joseph Rock is the journey of Sydney blogger Michael, following the footsteps of ‘bad-tempered and imperious’ Joseph Rock, who travelled through western Sichuan and the Tibet borderlands in the 1920s to reach Minya Konka, once thought to be the world’s highest mountain.

The writing is superb but the genius is in the photography, placing side-by-side Rock’s photos with Michael’s own equivalents taken 70 years later.”

TomPaine.com – The Topic Should Be China

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/the_topic_should_be_china.php

Wayback machine:

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/the_topic_should_be_china.php

The author,Robert B. Reich was the secretary of labor in the Clinton administration says…
‘As China’s influence grows, America’s wanes.’
‘With China holding more than a half a trillion dollars of United States debt, it also largely determines what happens to the dollar.’
‘In short, China is now a significant player in the American economy and in American politics–even though few American politicians actually dare admit it.’
Strange then, that China barely merited debate during the recent Presidential Elections.