views of land and sky, Ireland

There are millions of flies aloft all at once. They create a fragment of symphony, a sustained combination of harmonies, the small having a higher frequency than the large and different again from the baritone bees. The sound is quiet but persistent and all around. In the evening the swallows swoop in fast arcs, sounding their bright call and, presumably catching a few insects in the act.

some of the flies hover at eye-level and in thick clouds. I had to pull long strands of seeded grass to use as a rhythmic flail while walking along the road. 

It could be the cows, the farming, the silage that draws them in such numbers.

Rounding the tight and steep bend on the road from Peters house down to Barlogue, the sea comes suddenly into view. This was taken at about 9pm in the evening.

 Not a breath of wind shifted tethered boats nor roused the waters.

No wind blew my shadow around either. It is wildly distorted, seeming tiny in a big landscape, whereas in reality I could have reached forward and touched the stones.

Along with wondering how light could bend in such a manner, I wondered also about the procedure involved in building this wall. Which stone was laid first and did the builder proceed from left to right or right to left....

The neighbors cat is contemplating the same question but from another perspective involving the placement of flagstones.

all the while knowing you would never ask the same question of the arrangement of ripples in water.

...here is a better puzzle...

...left to right? or right to left?

the constant fracturing and shedding of the underlying rock is perhaps closer to the movement of water. This was a fresh spill. Ancient and of the moment all at once.

more shadows.....

figure on ground....

............

Castlehaven estuary

A drive down to Castlehaven Sat evening to kayak about in the sheltered waters of the estuary there. 

a view of the estuary from the top of a hill with hairpin turns on one of which we passed a VW bus circa 1970 painted black with a camo roof. It made us nervous.

just before the sun dropped behind a distant hill.

after it did the water became glassy.

peter taking footage with his iphone....

...long shot....

....

the tide was low and the banks were exposed showing gnarled roots of trees and mountains of kelp.

which draped this dead tree completely

geology upheaved and fractured

Bombarded with Spanish canon balls in 16 something and clobbered by a ferocious storm in 1911.

Ivy, meanwhile, has been quietly climbing the walls and forcing its way in between the stones, undermining the whole structure which almost certainly contributed to its partial collapse following the storm.

Moonful

....

.

Pete's place

Sunset reflected in windows

Aunt Bernies garden set deployed at Ballinard 

sun                                                                   set

.......earlier that day............

.........another day entirely..............

..........that night.....................

Cranberry juice,  O'Mahoney pottery and flowers.....

Pantry door

Peter texting ........

gooseberries.....

Kitchen floor terracotta tiles

I planted these vegetables.

A little residual heat to warm the tea after the Aga crapped out.

This rather homogenous looking grass is called Monbretia and looks a bit like it was extruded from a polyester machine. It flows out of the hedges on the roadside. I wondered why war had not been declared on it until I saw the flowers. They just came out over the last week or so.

Film Processing With Coffee..........'sip'......

 I have been exposing b&w 16mm 7302 printing stock as camera film in the Bolex while here and have processed a few feet of it with coffee.
The processing requires patient agitation and timing. I used Peters old photo developing tank so I could carry out the procedure under normal light.
There was a fly in the bathroom buzzing around the window as I prepared the coffee developer.
There was also a spider with very long legs and an elaborate web attached to the same window. Each time the fly brushed against a strand of the web the spider flew in that direction, but the fly, ever erratic and indecisive moved on too soon, hitting another strand and sending the spider racing to the other side of the web. Eventually, though, the fly struck too many web strands and was momentarily entangled giving the spider just enough time to move in.
Straightaway it began wrapping thread around the fly, which kept up a continuous buzzing that gradually diminished as it became more constrained. The moment the spider had nabbed the fly, a smaller spider of the same species came running over and hung out a few inches from the action as the wrapping took place. Worried my coffee mixture would go off while I was watching all this I left the scene and, in a room I had made dark with tarps, sheets and cloth, began wrestling 25 feet of film I had unspooled in the dark into the tank, spaghetti-style. I was aware my actions rhymed that of the spider and how it had wound the fly. When I returned to the bathroom, film in the can, the fly had been all wrapped up and put away somewhere. The large spider was nowhere to be seen but the smaller one was there still.
I processed the film, washed and fixed it and draped it on the old polished wood towel rail to air dry.