After much planning (the plumbing Statement of Works, for example, covers four pages), and our fair share of trials and tribulations, the builders broke ground two weeks ago. Now, after days of digging and rock-breaking, the foundations trenches are all dug out and the concrete will be poured tomorrow morning. Finally, we’ll be “out of the ground”.

Naturally I want to be around to handle issues as they arise, so this year I won’t be going to OSCON or YAPC::EU. If all goes well we should be completed in time for me to attend the London Perl Workshop in November.

Meanwhile I hope to find a little time for catching up on outstanding issues with DBI and NYTProf and perhaps a little more blogging.

I am a sailor, you’re my first mate
We signed on together, we coupled our fate
Hauled up our anchor, determined not to fail
For the hearts treasure, together we set sail

With no maps to guide us we steered our own course
Rode out the storms when the winds were gale force
Sat out the doldrums in patience and hope
Working together we learned how to cope

Chorus:
Life is an ocean and love is a boat
In troubled water that keeps us afloat
When we started the voyage, there was just me and you
Now gathered round us, we have our own crew

Together we’re in this relationship
We built it with care to last the whole trip
Our true destination’s not marked on any charts
We’re navigating to the shores of the heart

Chorus 2x

– Johnny Duhan

Here’s a video of Christy Moore and Johnny Duhan talking about the song and singing it together.

An ordinary domestic weekend kind of a day, but blessed with great weather and no engagements for any of us.

A chance for me to catch up on many of the long neglected house and garden chores, and for our family to enjoy some chilled-out time around the house.

We’ve been burning more wood on the fire recently and the chimney was overdue a sweep. So I blocked up the fireplace with a bin bag and some foam, then climbed on the roof and swept down from the chimney pot. It was my first time sweeping a chimney and this method made it very simple. I just left the fireplace sealed up for a few hours for the dust to settle before opening it up and shovelling out the shoot along with the old ash.

 

My wife had seen a recipe for “Hedgerow Jelly” by Elisabeth Luard in a magazine, so she, and our two daughters, walked out down the local lanes to find the ingredients: 1kg crab apples or Bramleys; 250g blackberries, 250g sloes or bullaces or damsons, 250g rowan berries or elderberries, 125g hawthorn berries (haws), 125g rosehips (wild or cultivated), plus about 2 litres of water and about 2kg of granulated sugar.

(Our eldest daughter decided to take photographs of the process, which ultimately led to this blog post — I normally rarely post about home life.)

Meanwhile, after clearing gutters and sweeping the drive, I was working down by the lake front thinning out some trees. A few months ago we had a group of big old trees one corner of our garden cut down. Mostly pine with some silver birch and hazel. (You can see in the photo the large pile of wood I still need to chop, chop, chop.) That gave us a view of the lake again. Something we’d lost over the years since we moved in as the trees have grown up and bushed out.

Having got that narrow view of the lake I wanted to extend it through the trees to the right by thinning out their lower branches.

The summer weather in Ireland has been pretty poor the last few years. We seem to get a few lovely weeks in spring, then summer is a mostly washout with grey skies and regular showers. Then, just after the kids go back to school, we get a few bright weeks again—the Irish “Indian Summer”—around September/October. Fabulous days like today.

There’s a reason Ireland is so green. It rains. A lot. Especially in the west were we are. Despite the bright sunshine today the grass was squelching under my feet. The logs need to be stored or they’ll rot over the winter. I shifted a few wheelbarrow loads today and started clearing a space off the grass to store them.

A friend and I wielded axes a few weeks ago so we’ve a reasonable stockpile of split logs now, which I finished stacking today. I’ve been told the wood gets harder to split the longer its left, and I don’t fancy trying to split logs on dark wet winter nights, so I guess I need to keep at it.

Back indoors the domesticity continued with our eldest daughter making the topping for an Apple Crumble.

Our eating apple tree is still recovering from the pruning I gave it last winter (it’s first for many years) but our cooking apple tree seems very happy this year.

Yum!

That was the glossy edited version of the day. The uncut version includes me falling off the ladder into the lake, our youngest daughter having a tantrum and throwing handfuls of apple crumble onto the floor, and me pouring scalding hot Hedgerow Jelly over my hand. Ahh, domestic bliss!

It really started with BarCamp Galway then OpenCoffee Limerick and Blogger Coffee Limerick. Along the way I came across meetup.com and created The Limerick Open Source Meetup. That’s not really taken off yet, but I remain hopeful.

In fact our first meetup is tonight, prompted by Anton Manering joining recently.