Woke to glorious sunshine on Saturday - you could be in Greece! Had lunch out the back:

Then off to pick some blackberries - sméara dubha.

Made some home-made granola based on my good friend Suzanne Bloom's recipe and some blackberry compote as developed in this very kitchen by Marijn Woudstra - ready for the morning!

tBut the weather is always changing in Kerry, especially here in Glenmore - close to sea and mountains... we often get this eerie mix of brigh sunshine and ominous clouds. It was enough to make me turn for home...

though not before I'd got my perfect photo of a Fuscia - a native of South American but growing wild here since it was introduced (due to the Gulf Stream). Think I'll use it as my Twitter avatar for a bit...

)After a long two days travelling, it was nice to get out for a walk (in fact I HAVE to get out for a walk if I want to call anyone as there's no phone or mobile connection at our house). It was a 'grand soft day' with the lightest of mist. The fuscia are still in bloom after a sunny summer...
and the furze are holding out.

You can easily forget about the abundance of autum in the city - but here, even in the drizzle, the berries are ripening... honeysuckle is scenting the air, rose hips are almost ready (I can't remember what my mother used to make from them - I'll have to research) the berries on the Mountain Ash are like corn-on-the-cob and even the briars are wonderful.

I remember why Gerard Manley Hopkins was a favourite poet...

               Glory be to God for dappled things –
                  For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
                      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
               Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
                  Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
                     And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

                All things counter, original, spare, strange;
                  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
                     With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
                 He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                                       Praise him.

So on moving day we were shocked to discover that the developers across the street had decided to do even more digging. We had permission to park outside our house - but now that the developers had created a one way, that wouldn't be possible...

But the amazing young men who arrived to do the move parked in the space outside the house, leaving the road clear and even a smige of foothpath - a sneeze would have brought the whole adventure to a premature end!

Our kind neighbours cooked us lunch and we said a sad goodbye. Then we packed the car - with kitty-crate and computer (that's all that would fit) and headed for Wales.

Poor Kitty is generally an outdoor cat, roaming the nearby gardens and only staying in when the temperature drops below freezing. Eighteen hours in the car was just too much! By the time we stopped to pick up a few groceries, she was gone into a daze... finally, in a traditionally misty afternoon, we arrived.