With Dr Catherine Keena, Teagasc Countryside Management Specialist
Look out for sedges, which look like grasses but the stems are three-sided, as opposed to being circular. Sedges have edges. Their blueish-green leaves spread outwards in three directions.
Carex sedge plants bear both male and female flowers with the male spikelet on top, fluffy with anthers, while lower female spikelets get fuller as seeds develop.
The 50 carex sedge species grow in wet peatlands and grasslands including species rich Shannon callows. They are a pioneer species, colonising bare peatland. Sedges are positive indicator species in ACRES, increasing scores and payments for farmers with Low Input Grassland and in CP areas and are part of our native Irish biodiversity.
In this week’s Meet the Maker, Grace Hanna chats to Limerick artist Orla Hickey about how a pottery class in Skibbereen reopened her eyes to her creative abilities. “My creative process is centred around sketching, which I think is complemented by my background in architecture.”
Tackle your ticket troubles: Summer festival and concert season is upon us and although this is an exciting time, ticketing issues sometimes arise. If a concert you attend is cancelled, you are protected by consumer law for a full refund if you buy your ticket from a business. However, buying from a private seller does not give you the same protection – for example, the refund may go into the original buyer’s account.
Fraudsters often take advantage of sold-out concerts so you should only buy tickets from an official ticket promoter, a reputable ticket exchange website or from the venue itself. A good tip is to pay for your ticket with a credit or debit card as you have the option to request chargeback if a fraud or failure occurs.
When buying online, you usually have a cooling off period of 14 days, meaning you can cancel during this time without a reason. However, this does not apply to tickets for concerts, festivals or sporting events unless you re-sell the ticket back to the original provider.
• For more, see ccpc.ie
In this week’s Meet the Maker, Grace Hanna chats to Limerick artist Orla Hickey about how a pottery class in Skibbereen reopened her eyes to her creative abilities. “My creative process is centred around sketching, which I think is complemented by my background in architecture.”
Census data from 2022 showed 265,098 people had moved residence within Ireland, 29% of whom relocated to a different county. In the 12 months between April 2021 and April 2022, one in 20 of those recorded in the Census moved to a different county, with Dublin accounting for 35% of all movers.
'It’s a tough time for craft beer. The period of inflation that we all suffered through has hit breweries hard. But we believe that craft beer will always be relevant. We felt like we had unfinished business when we sold the brewery; we had built the brewery of our dreams that we didn’t really get to use'
Scott Baigent, Eight Degrees Brewing.