Ireland day 0701. Wednesday 30 August 2023- Life Admin 2 *

Ireland day 0701. Wednesday 30 August 2023- Life Admin 2

Today’s summary	A bit more life admin in the morning, then a gym session and finally a short walk in the evening
Today’s weather	Bright and sunny in the morning, overcast but still dry in the afternoon. Moderate westerly wind. Appx 17C

Today’s overview location (The grey mark shows the location of my route)		Close-up location (The orange line shows where I walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Evening walk up the hill before it got dark

Commentary

(Summary blog only. Last full blog was Day 0368).

I quite like days like today, actually, when I don’t have a lot of activities planned. So apart from a bit of necessary life-admin first thing, I had the day to myself. So I went off to the gym for a few hours as soon as could, then after lunch I thought I better do a bit of cleaning and tidying before Val gets back tomorrow. So I dashed round with the hoover, cleaned the windowsills, and bleached the bathrooms (lovely). So everything looks half decent and not like a decaying bachelor pad.

Eventually, the various chores were despatched, so I headed out into the early evening to slot in a short walk. I just went through the eastern side of the castle demesne, then up to the top of Church Road, and back down through the town and out to the marina (which was looking peaceful in the evening). It was still reasonably light when I got back at about 8:30, but the evenings are definitely drawing in now. I don’t really relish the passing of summer, but there’s plenty to look forward to this Autumn, and I’m keen to get going!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


The grass on the practice cricket pitch up in the demesne is incredible. Not a weed in sight and it feels like carpet	*Hop hornbeam (Ostrya carpinifolia) growing up in the demesne. The fruits do look remarkably like hops*

“Paupers Hill” behind the caste. You can get a free, if long distance, view of the Malahide summer concerts from up here	It’s turned out to be a good year for blackberries – unsurprisingly, given all the rain

*The unattractively named, but attractively flowered, mealy sage (Salvia farinacea) growing in a front garden in the Bawn*	A new home still hasn’t been found for the fairies

Earlier in the year I was getting worried that my favourite Giant Redwood might be succumbing to a fatal fungal infection. But the affected leaves seem to have more or less recovered, so perhaps it was just suffering from drought. The heavy watering over the summer seems to have resolved the problem, for the time being at least