Home Sweet Home

been putting together pictures for the website, which I am determined to keep more 'alive' these days, and thought that they'd look good here too:

the turnip house and outbuildings, taken from the fruit garden - now more or less clear of nettles

 a long shot across the picnic lawn to the south west end of the gallery - with terrace seating, the greenhouse an ancient wheelbarrow full of sunflowers - and our satellite dish!

 the turnip house from the flowerbed, lovely colours really set this off

 Charlie on the lawn 

daisies and hollyhocks

just another gentle summer's evening

It's raining cats and dogs, the sun is shining, and we're having a barbecue... It's OK though, there is also a rainbow!


The scene tonight about an hour ago: after a great day in the gallery; new and old friends in happy conversation, we decided that rain or not, we would have barbecued lamb koftahs, salad and pitta bread, WHATEVER the weather.


these are the resultant images!

It's OK, the sun is shining!

still, its lovely and green isn't it?

smoke - or steam?

lamb koftahs - they were magnificent (eaten inside though!)

heavy with rain

a stunning rainbow

the view form the barbecue - so what's really to complain about?

A Happy Anniversary

It's our 3st Wedding Anniversary today, and as ever, we count our lucky stars!


We celebrated last night, in Newcastle having a great Indian meal with Helen (it was her birthday, so much cheer).


Today, at home, we continued the festivities by:


1. Having bacon butties and fried potato bread for brunch - yum!


2. Mowing the lawn:

the picnic lawn, looking great

3. Digging up an enormous stone that had grown overnight in the vegetable plot:

really no idea how that got there, but it wasn't for moving!

4. Laying another ton of stones and 7 more paving slabs to complete the wheelchair- friendly entrance to the gallery:

a smooth slope

Here's more pictures taken this evening - it has been a great day

the 'Bingham Arch' - a work in progress

Ron's (Elaine's Dad) Sculpture takes pride of place at the entrance

the railway sleeper bench, now in place

Great cloud formations this evening

We are now self sufficient in flowers for the tea room tables - these are sweet peas growing along the Green Lane

candidate for most-taken-picture: today's setting sun illuminating the Mourne wall at the Hare's gap

Just a regular day at the Turnip house really!

Turnip House website

Our new website is up, please take a look:

As ever, it's a work in progress, so all comments welcome!


Celtic Knitwear from Ireland:


'via Blog this'

A Tantalising Clue

Whilst building walls (yes, yet more) we were looking for gate brackets to hold the little iron gates beside the composting toilet. We're moving them so that visitors don't have to open and close gates to get to the toilet, and so that there is a clearer delineation of public and private space in that area.


So, we needed two heavy duty pieces of metal with holes in them to hold the gates, and found this in the salvage yard: Not sure what function it had, or where it was found, but it looked a likely candidate. 

 On closer inspection, the two bars hanging down looked familiar:

They were two pieces of the same item - a 'crane' from traditional fireplace:

Here are a couple in situ, in our old fireplace at Trassey:

It's possible that this piece of ironwork came from another place, but more likely that this is part of an original fireplace on the site.


Could it be possible that underneath the closed in fire in the kitchen:

 there is a fireplace like this? Time will tell!

Weeding On the 12th

It's a bank holiday here today - and the sun is shining! What better way to enjoy the sun that doing some weeding.


Time in the garden is a delight at the moment, both because there's been so little chance of it due to the rain, and as the plants are looking great


The old water tank was a foot high in weeds when we got back from Scotland, and we've only just managed to rescue the sunflowers. Still, it's most satisfying to look at now.

the red lilies are stunning - and even more than last year

the water tank yesterday - half weeded

these are black hollyhocks that we grew from seed - looking forward to them flowering

the old water tank today - much happier!

a new flowerbed, with newly planted red sage bought by our friends Mary & Daniel
You can see the water tank's old home from here!

the hollyhocks from the other side

lilies and reflections - the workshop

enjoying the sun!

wild, but a vision of purple - the front garden

last year we found one branch, with a couple of flowers, and trained this little rose along the fence, with delightful results

A Summer's Evening!

After area wide poor weather this last few weeks, we had a glimpse of Summer today - amongst the thunder and downpours, there were rays of sunshine!


This evening, a welcome stroll around the garden brought some spectacular views of the still stormy clouds:

Bernagh emerges from the angry clouds

Donard & Commedagh wreathed

It's sunny at the far seat!

deep in the grasslands

angry?

setting sunlight hits the anvil cloud over the Mournes 

sunset behind the Gallery

portents of doom?

the Raspberry Pi - beginnings

The Raspberry Pi computer arrived today!

What’s a Raspberry Pi? go to raspberrypi.org The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming.
The idea behind a tiny and cheap computer for kids came in 2006, when Eben Upton and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory, including Rob Mullins, Jack Lang and Alan Mycroft, became concerned about the year-on-year decline in the numbers and skills levels of the A Level students applying to read Computer Science in each academic year. From a situation in the 1990s where most of the kids applying were coming to interview as experienced hobbyist programmers, the landscape in the 2000s was very different; a typical applicant might only have done a little web design.
Something had changed the way kids were interacting with computers. A number of problems were identified: the colonisation of the ICT curriculum with lessons on using Word and Excel, or writing webpages; the end of the dot-com boom; and the rise of the home PC and games console to replace the Amigas, BBC Micros, Spectrum ZX and Commodore 64 machines that people of an earlier generation learned to program on.

This little thing, the size of a credit card, costs under £50 produces full HD output, and is a powerful as an Intel dual core computer.

After the launch, hundreds of thousands were ordered, and after a couple of months wait; mine is here.

Here's the first steps:

the size of a credit card - but with full HD graphics, and equivalent to an intel dual core processor. That's an HDMI cable at the back to give an idea of the scale

the underside. The SD card holds the operating system (Linux Debian Squeeze)  downloaded free

all the connections made: clockwise from top; HDMI; USB power: USB mouse and keyboard; network

power up - successful boot first time!

it's plugged into the TV via HDMI, but could use a monitor just as well

Login:

all lights blazing!

the user interface

right out of the box - internet access

some of the pre installed programs - many more to download from the Linux community

simple word processing

in full swing!

This is mental training, a chance to learn computing, logic, robotics, hardware and software, all as part of the wider Linux and raspberry pi community. 


A way to ward off mental senility, and have a bit of fun!


Check out the community site for some real positive thinking!


More to follow (when I get the time!)