Sock’s Adventures: Meet the Pack

When not on holidays, we go on walks with a loose group of neighbours. When we’re all together we’Re quite an impressive pack (which means that we must take good care lest we scare some other doggo), so let me introduce them.

Meet Mistral

Big red flatcoated retriever standing behind a tree stump. Behind him is the forest floor

Giliell: This calf sized flat coated retriever is Mistral. He’s very chill, but will steal treats from a baby. If he were a human, he’d be everybody’s favourity uncle who shows up to every family gathering, but nobody knows exactly how he’s related to anybody else. His human has to work very hard to maintain his weight, because he’s for sure not doing it.

Socks: My pal. Always up for chasing balls, but sometimes he’ll push me out of the way and steal my treats. Still love him.

Here’s Ylvie

A big flat coated retriever, a small withe mutt and a medium black mutt standing on a tree trunk

Giliell: Ylvie is a small mutt with a lot of mischief in her little head. She and Socks love each other and will play, but currently Socks is a bit dominant at times and she’s bad at telling him “nope”.

Socks: I love Ylvie. I could gobble her up! But somehow everybody objects to my attempts of doing so.

Her brother Paul

Giliell: Sweet Paul. If you think that’s a cute haircut: it covers the missing eye on his left side. Like many white dogs with blue eyes, he’s suffering from glaucoma and lost his left eye three years ago. If the happens, the prognosis is not good. The second eye will follow, usually within a year. Paul was lucky, he got three, but two weeks ago he went blind. It’s a big adjustment, especially for his humans. While his dad knew that this would happen, he’s still in shock. But Paul is doing quite well. He curled up for a day, but then started to explore again and now goes on walks again.

Socks: Paul is my buddy. When we first met, he did not like me. His humans said it was because I was running around so much. But now we’re buddies. He even gives me kisses!

Here’s Rougette

A black and white dog sitting, looking at the camera, licking its nose

Giliell: Rougette should be a mess. Can you even guess what went into her? She’s a Dalmatian, Husky, Rhodesian Ridgeback mix who spent her first 6 months locked up in a basement with her parents and litter mates. But still she became a very gently dog, who’s only second to Mistral when it comes to begging for treats. She gets scared of strange men, but when Mr once joined us for a walk, she was easily bribable with treats.

Socks: Rougette is ok, but sometimes she wants too much of mum’s attention or my treats. Then I’ll snap at her. But this morning she actually wanted to play with me. That’s nice

And her big sister Kira:

A German Shepherd standing in front of her toy, tongue hanging out

Giliell: Oh Jazzlet, you would love Kira. She’s a working line GSD, always in action. She’s full power and elegance and when you see her waiting for you to kick her ball or throw her toy, you can see the wolves in her ancestry. She’s usually not very interested in other dogs, but she’s fiercely protective of her pack. If any other dog is unkind to one of hers she’ll sure teach them the errors of their ways, which can get dangerous because, well, look at that dog.. Socks is absolutely smitten with her, I think she’s his big idol. There’s no toys like Kiras toys, even when we have the exact same toys. Running next to her is heaven, but usually she just ignores him. But then last weekend something happened that none of us expected: Kira initiated playing with Socks. Her human and I were both confused and for a moment we didn’t even realise what was happening. Socks hadn’t nicked her toy or was bothering her, but suddenly she turned around, the started play bows and initiated play. And off they went. The rest of the group was a bit further along the way and when they arrived they tried to stop them, because nobody realised they were playing.

Socks: Isn’t she amazing? When I grow up, I want to be like Kira. She’s the bestest! She also never steals treats. Perfectest dog!

Their little sister Luna:

A small black and white mutt with short hair.

Giliell: And finally Luna, a very small (just 4 kg) rescue mutt, probably with a lot of Jack Russell. She’s keen, she’s fierce, and she can be an absolute asshole. Remember when I told you that Kira is fiercely protective? So Luna will start shit with Rougette and the Kira will intervene and discipline poor Rougette. She’s also a black hole for treats. When going for walks together or playing at the waterhole, I’ll use the opportunity to train Socks’ recall. Seem’s like I’ve also trained Rougette and Luna.

Socks: Luna is ok, I guess. Bit small for playing but man that girl can eat!

And last but not least: Benny!

A brown mutt looking like a short legged GSD

Giliell: Benny is another rescue from Romania, I guess that’s why he and Socks get along like a house on fire. He looks like one of those infamous Corgie mixes that always look like the other breed but with a Corgie’s short legs. Benny looks like a GSD with short legs except that he has the most human eyes I’ve ever seen in a dog. His human is somewhat elderly, so he won’t walk the whole distance with us, but walk the opposite direction and meet us towards the end. When we meet, there’s no stopping the boys.

Socks: My BFF! Did you have to leave him for last? Benny’s the best. He smells nice (Giliell: he’s neutered, which seems to smell like a juicy lady) and he likes running and I like running and then we run.

Giliell: Yeah, first there were two dogs, then there are no dogs, but a lot of noise in the underbush. As long as you always come back…

Socks’ Adventures: Walking the Wadden

Giliell’s Notes: The Wadden is a national treasure and national park and an area with imense biodiversity, despite its occasionally bleak looks. It’s fascinating, it’s interesting, but also very dangerous. The difference between low and high tide can be several metres of water in hight and some kilometres in area. The dangerous parts are the tidal creeks. They are like rivers in the Wadden, up to several metres deep in some places, but deceptively shallow in others. At low tide, it’s no problem to cross them and walk up the the water’s edge. When the tide is turning, the edge doesn’t move much, so you might not even notice that it has changed. During the first two hours the water just fills the tidals creeks. Then they run over and the tide climbs in earnest, up to 2cm per minute. If you’re still behind the tidal creeks, you’re now trapped, as the water is now coming from both sides and the current in the creeks is strong and dangerous. That is the moment you call 110 and get to know a lot of people who will now think badly of you. If you want to experience the Wadden, go on a guided tour. If you don’t wnat to spend money, wait until the guided tours set out and stay behind them.

Socks:

They told me we were going on an adventure, but then they put me in the car. Why do all adventures have to start with the car? Anyway, we went to a different place and walked to the big water, only that the big water was gone, but instead there were people and they all went for a walk with me. That’s nice, I like going on walks. I also like the sand and the mud. You can dig in there or do wormies. I love doing wormies, but mum insists on giving me a shower afterwards. Spoilsport.

A small black and brown dog digging in the sand

A small black brown dog rolling over in the sand. You can see the pattern of last tide's waves in the sand

Things were fine for a while until we came to a creek and the nice lady who was walking with us said: “Hmpf, I thoight the water would be lower by now. There’s no help for it, we need to walk through.” And by walking, she meant swimming. Not for the twoleggers, but for poor small doggies. I can swim. I just don’t like it a lot.

On we went and I must say, there were a lot of interesting things, but mum, cruel as she is, didn’t let me have them. No live crabs, no crab shells, no crab shells with half rotten crab parts in them. That was mean! I also wasn’t allowed to chase all them birdies.

Seagulls flying over a tidal creek and exposed sand, with wind turbines in the back

At some point the twoleggers got very excited, claiming to have spotted some sea dogs (German for seals). Hearing that, I was very excited, too. Would they be nice? Did they want to play? I can tell you, it was very disappointing. The so called sea dogs turned out to be blobs on the far away shore. Not okay.

View across the water towards the opposite shore. On the beach you can see several brown blobs. They're real seals, promise

Another thing I don’t understand ist the twoleggers obsession with walking to things. The things are never intersting stuff like a nice lady’s pee puddle or a delicious dead animal or something. No, in this case it was a big metal thingy surrounded by water. You know, I wouldn’t have minede it the thing had been on the sand and not in the water, because at that point I really needed to pee, but there was nowhere to pee against.

Giliell’s notes: What you can see is the lower range light of a pair of guiding lights. While a lighthouse is typically telling ships where not to go, these tell ypu where to go: You line up the lower range light and the upper range light and keep them straight. Right next to it is the channel towards Bremerhaven, which is deep enough for some of the world’s biggest ships to pass through.

Anther fun thing was the water. Thankfully I didn’t need to swim again on the way back, but the ground was always wet. That’s OK, but can somebody please tell me how I got wet all over? I can’t remember having agreed to any of that!

A small black and brown dog is sitting on the sand. His wet fur is plastered against his body, except for a line of hair on his ridge, standing up like a mohawk

Finally we returned to the land and boy was I glad! I ran towards the first tufts of grass and peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed. 3.5 hours with no peeing is no fun, I can tell you. So if you ever go to the Wadden, remember to bring your own tree, because they’re really lacking in the tree department there. I wonder how those sea dogs are doing it.

The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 35 – Thistle Test

I love thistles from an aesthetic standpoint, but in the garden, they are admittedly a huge pain in the wherever.

One huge Carduus acanthoides emerged near the south wall of my house among the runner beans. That is a place where it actually does not disturb me in any way. It does not impede mowing the lawn, watering the beans, or moving around the garden in general, so I left it grow. It is beautiful, and pollinators love it.

I especially like the spiky flower buds just before they open. They can be dried and painted for nice decorations, but I am not going to invest the effort in that. I enjoy them outdoors when walking by.

Thistles are pioneer plants capable of driving their roots even through compacted loam very deep. And they are not perennial, so they are actually good for the soil because the roots decompose after two years, leaving channels in the clay through which water can seep into the soil. That way, they help to de-compact it over the years.

But what am I actually testing with this thistle right now, I don’t hear you ask? Well, nothing gardening-related, actually. After eight years, my phone was getting slow, and the battery was no longer holding charge for very long. And to top it off, I dropped it, and the loudspeaker started to sound crackly. So as much as I did not want to, I had to buy a new one. And after a whole day of setting it up with all the apps I use, the thistle provided a nice opportunity to test the camera.

I learned that it makes nice macro pictures, as long as I do NOT use the built-in macro mode. All pictures made in the macro mode were blurry and just 1600×1200 px. I got better results by taking the pictures in the default mode and cropping them afterwards, just like I did with my old phone. Funny how that works.

The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 29 – Pretty Polinators

I realized that I have a pretty expensive camera, but I haven’t been using it for a long time except for photographing my mother’s gingerbread creations. So this morning I took a break from heavy lifting, and I took the camera to take some pretty-ish pictures of the pollinators that like to visit my oregano patch. I did not manage to make very many because I did not have the battery fully charged prior to this spur-of-the-moment action, but I did get some. And I did not bother with the macro lens.

Butterflies do not have a long life, but some manage to have it pretty rough and survive even so, as this specimen proves. Faded colors, chewed-up wing edges, yet still it flies.

Peacock butterflies are probably the prettiest butterflies that live around here. They look drab, almost coal-black with their wings folded, but stunningly beautiful when they flash their eyes from time to time to scare off or confuse predators.

There were multiple bee species present, but they were turning their hairy butts towards me and generally being uncooperative and blurry.

And of course several bee-mimicking hoverfly species were also present, being just as uncooperative as bees.

Bees and butterflies get all the press when it comes to pollination, but some beetle species are important in this regard too. And they are often very tiny.

There were also smaller butterfly species there, and I did not manage to capture all those present by far.

The wee gardening of 2026

When we bought our house 10 years ago, we knew that the garage would need to be replaced. The house and garage are built against a hillside. What’s the groundfloor on the street side is the first floor on the garden side. The garage is 2 storeys, which is pretty handy as it gives you a room to store the garden stuff. The hill is rock, but at the lower end it’s just the ground. The pleople who built the garage were incompetent. One part is built on the solid rock, the other part was just 5cm of concrete on sand. Yeah. Of course the sand gave way, there were tears and gaps that got always bigger and last year the tension finally started to tear the roof apart. At that point we needed to act and had the old one torn down and a new one built. The people who tore down the old garage had it fall into the greenhouse. The people who built the garage had to trample a lot of our terracing.

©Giliell, all rights reserved
The now defunct greenhouse. After 9 months and several angry phone calls the dude finally called his insurance.

©Giliell, all rights reserved
The sad remains of the terraces.

There was absolutely no time to repair the damage this year. Maybe next year, if we get the fence put up this year. As a result, I didn’t even attempt to plant a lot. I grew some courgettes and Hokaido squash. The courgettes were interesting. They germinated quickly and grew into beautiful plants, so I repotted them when it was time. They all died. A few late seeds were still in the tray, so I let those grow and then planted them in the ground. They all but one died. The remaining one has grown past the size where the slugs will eat it and hopefully give more than enough courgettes.

©Giliell, all rights reserved
My courgette

The squash was more successful, I now have 4 nice plants.

I dind’t grow my own tomatoes but just bought some young plants. They’re in pots so they can be moved should it be a rainy summer.

Oh, and I planted some sunflowers. Let’s see how they grow.

Merry Gingermas 2025 – Part 2

I was fighting with upgrading my notebook for a few days, and I completely forgot to post the rest of the pictures. So here we go.

There will be part 3, someday.

Merry Gingermass 2025 – Part 1

I decided to stock up on honey this year, so I contacted my friend and former colleague, who is a beekeeper, to see if he could give me a bucket in exchange for some garden goods. We agreed on some marmalade, pumpkin mustard, walnuts, and one batch of baked gingerbread for Christmas. And after a long pause, this year I got a gingerbread idea of my own, and I made it. I made a beehive out of gingerbread, with bees and flowers from marzipan.

My mom added the green leaves around the flowers after I was done with it. They did improve it, although it is still not of the same quality as my mother’s creations. And in this first part of this year’s Christmas Gingerbread posts, I am showing some of the creations she made to pay for the honey they are made from.

My friend liked it, and I hope he and his family enjoy it and all the other accompanying goods. We are stocked up with honey for a year or more now, since my mother is the only person who actually uses honey for food – I can only eat it in gingerbread form.

My mother was able to enjoy her hobby a lot more this year, since the carpal tunnel surgeries were a success.

Have some Sheep

It’s been a week and a half since school started and I really could do with some holidays. It’s not the kids, it’s being new at with a new class. Having to do all the administration while significantly lacking in knowing how to is a drag. Each school has their perfect system and, well. It’s also funny what is pretty normal at one school but an absolute no go at another. Because I need a holiday, you get some holiday pictures.

A white sheep on green grass in front of the blue sea

Sheep are vital in maintaining the dikes. Their hooves put just enough pressure on the ground to make it hard enough, their grazing is just right to encourage the grass to grow deep and strong. Cows are too heavy, goats are too greedy. Sheep are also cute. While most will run away when humans approach, there’s always one or two that enjoy cuddles. Yes, I cuddled a sheep. It was very fluffy.

So enjoy your fluffy holiday break.

white sheep on a green dike. The sea is far in the back

Here Be Dragons

When I went on to water my greenhouses in the afternoon, this little fellow was on the wall just below the handrail.

I suspect she was just as surprised as I was and she did stay still while I was trying to snap a few pictures with my phone without spooking her. After I came back from watering the tomatoes, she was still there, just a few cm further.

She eyed me suspiciously and after I snapped a few more pictures in a better light, she finally got fed up with the strange giant who kept putting a big black rectangular thing near her and she jumped straight down (about 140 cm) and scuttled near the wall. She kept watching me warily from there and I did not snap more pictures because I did not want to stress her. When I went by again a few minutes later, she was away.

I have always liked lizards, I consider them to be beautiful. It lightens my mood to meet one in my garden, I like to know they are around.

When the moon hits your eye…

…like the blood red harbinger of the zombie apocalypse.

This pretty greeted us walking home on our holiday. Sadly I had left my tripod at home, but I think this is still a nice one.

Holidays with Hindrances 4: Muckross House, Farm and Abbey

Welcome back. I hope you’re having a nice weekend before we all go in for another round tomorrow.

While in Killarney we didn’t actually visit Killarney House, but went to Muckross House instead, since that was just 5km from our campsite, so we went there on foot, visiting Muckross Abbey on our way.

A beautiful hike past the lake.

Muckross Abbey is a very pretty ruin, but the graveyard has been in use since at least the 2000s.

Tree growing in a small courtyard in the ruin of the abbey

That one looked amazing. I’m sure there’s a message in the tree long surviving the religious building.

grey brown manor house. On the hedge in front there#s a plush opossum

Welcome to Muckross House. Our plush of the day is Opossible, who enjoyed his trip a lot.

Richly furnished room with a golden harp

“Ireland was a poor country” my ass…

According to legend, Lady Catherine died at 140 when she fell out of an apple tree. Life goals!

The gardens were truly beautiful.

Muckross Farm is an open air museum depicting rural life in Ireland in the 1950s. Yes, you read that right. Apart from trades like the blacksmith they have three farmhouses showing a poor family farm, a middle class family farm and a well off family farm. Remember that nice room in the picture above? In the 1950s people in rural Ireland lived like they hadn’t lived on the continent for at least 50 years. no running water, no electricity. Good old medieval “1 room for sleeping, 1 room for living and sleeping” conditions. But the animals were very cute.

This year I did something new: I shamelessly took selfies and asked people to take pics of me. Am I young and pretty? No. Am I alive? Yes. the person with the camera rarely ends up in pics themself, but I realised that if I died tomorrow, my family would probably forget what I look like in a week because there’s no pics. Here they are. That horse was amazing.

Holidays with Hindrances 3: The Ring of Kerry

The Ring of Kerry is one of the most famous scenic drives in Ireland, but you wouldn’t know it from the condition of the roads. We did it on a fairly bright day, but unfortunately, about halfway around, #1 discovered motion sickness. That meant that the poor kid had to endure the second half of the drive with a puking bag and there was no way for us to cut it short because the Ring of Kerry is still the best road when getting from Cahersiveen back to Killarney. Anyway, Here’s some picture, all scrubbed clean from whatever mishaps happened on the road.

Huge push hippo sitting in front of a scenic view of a green valley and a mountain

Since this excursion was by car, Knöpfchen, my beloved hippo could come along for the ride. I miss my Knöpfchen, who is still in the caravan, which is now hopefully on its way back to us.

I love the sea. Just to look at it. Put my feet in. Smell it. It#s the only disadvantage of living where I do.

A view into a valley with several small lakes.

The Ladies’ View has been popular since the visit of Queen Victoria, looking out over the lakes of Killarney.

An oak tree that grew sideways in the staedy wind.

“Is it often windy in Ireland?”

Holidays with Hindrances 2: Killarney, the Gap of Dunloe

The county Killarney, the town of the same name and its national park are probably one of the most prototypically Irish places. You got it all: The soft green hills, the mountains, the old abbeys, castles and churches, the lakes. It’s beautiful. It’s also one of the oldest tourist attractions in Ireland, going all back to Queen Victoria and the invention of “trips” as such. One thing to do is to explore the “Gap of Dunloe”, a pass between the Purple Mountain and the MacGillycuddy’s Reeks. There’s different options on how to do that, nd I#ll list them worst to best.

Worst: By car. The road is narrow, there’s tons of other people on it, it’s 15 km, so the whole thing will be over in 30 minutes max and most of what you saw is people being angry with you.

Second worst: By jaunting car. Yes, this is probably very traditional and tons of local folks earn their money that way, but having horses run on asphalt all day is just cruelty to animals. You can actually see a dent in the middle of the road, worn down by horseshoes and you can imagine what this will do to the poor animals’ feet. It’s probably amazing for the people in the car and I think few people know enough about horses to understand why it#s not ok.

Bad: motorcycle. Horses, pedestrians, sheep, narrow roads, curves where you don’t see shit. Do I have to elaborate?

Good: bike. Now, I wouldn’t recommend going by regular bike if you are not very fit and good at biking, though there was one guy who passed us uphill and still had the breath to wish us a good day. But nowadays you can rent ebikes everywhere and there were lots of groups with little physical fitness who managed. I’d say that if you don’t have a lot of stamina, that’s probably the best option.

Equally good: on foot. That’s what we did. I’ll admit that we didn’t walk the whole Gap. As you can see below, the traditional hike starts at Kate Kearney’s Cottage, leads through the Gap, down to Lord Brandon’s Cottage. You can book a boat back to Killarney from there, but that’s little use if your car is back at Kate Kearney’s Cottage. We made it to the top of the Gap and then some hundred metres downhill for a nice view before we returned. Now, Wikipedia claims that this walk was just 6km and can be done in about an hour, but the author is lying. We’re neither athletes nor comatose sloths and sure, we did take breaks, but getting up to the Gap is quite some hillclimbing. The way down to Lord Brandon’s cottage is shorter, but we decided that going down there meant having to go up again, so we turned back and enjoyed the walk instead of being completely done. The whole trip was 17 km and took a bit more than 4 hours, with the way back being much easier as it was mostly downhill. So, enjoy the views!

Map of the national park and hiking trails

More pics below the fold

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Sock’s Adventures: Meet the Pack

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Socks’ Adventures: Walking the Wadden

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The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 35 – Thistle Test

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The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 29 – Pretty Polinators

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The wee gardening of 2026

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Merry Gingermas 2025 – Part 2

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Merry Gingermass 2025 – Part 1

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Have some Sheep

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Here Be Dragons

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When the moon hits your eye…

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Holidays with Hindrances 4: Muckross House, Farm and Abbey

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Holidays with Hindrances 3: The Ring of Kerry

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Holidays with Hindrances 2: Killarney, the Gap of Dunloe

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