With Dr Catherine Keena, Teagasc Countryside Management Specialist
Spindle Fruit
Look out for spindle fruit with its conspicuous colour combination of shocking pink four-lobed fruit, now mostly open and revealing bright orange seeds among vivid crimson and yellow leaves.
The fruits are eaten by birds including thrushes, finches and tits while the green four-sided stems provide host sites for the eggs of black bean aphids to overwinter until hatching next spring.
Larvae of butterflies and moths use spindle leaves, including holly blue butterfly and spindle ermine moth. It hosts a gall produced by a gall mite and a multi-layered brown bracket formed by a bracket fungus. Spindle is also known as pegwood and is part of our native Irish biodiversity.
Written by Marian Dalton, Co Carlow
You are a girl of the city
You like the bright lights
You like to go dancing two or three nights.
Then you go down the country
For a weekend
And you fall for a farmer
Well of all things!
You change your high heels
For red wellie boots
And your long flowing skirt
For a working jumpsuit
You tie up your hair
Neath a red woollen hat
And you go out the yard
To give it a lash
The farmer is working
Like there is no tomorrow
And he sends you to feed lambs
With a giant sized wheel barrow
Its wet and its cold
And you think of the past
And sitting so snug
In your nice little flat
And so you come to the end of the day
With lots of mishaps as you laboured away.
“Well what do you think,”
he says with a smile
And you say, “Ah sure, I’ll give it a go for a while”
Twenty years later
You are still going strong
Though many have said you wouldn’t last long
And you’re not going to tell them because they don’t need to know
That for twenty more years
You will give it a go.
In this week’s Meet the Maker, Maria Moynihan speaks with Irish children’s clothing designer and owner of Banana Berry Design, Sarah Lynskey.
I’d close my eyes and then all of a sudden, this vision would come into my head of models walking up and down the catwalk and I’d zoom in and I’d see details of top stitching and different constructive details, box pleats and it was just really incredible’
Luxury leather designer Úna Burke
The current shortfall of permanent, fixed-term and long-term substitute teachers. This information was outlined in an extensive survey published last week by the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO), in collaboration with the Irish Primary Principals’ Network (IPPN) and the Catholic Primary Schools Management Association (CPSMA).
Consumer news
It’s that time of year and consumer research is finding that Christmas planning is already well underway for 2023.
Irish marketing and communications agency, Core, reported in its latest Consumer Mindset report (October, 2023) that by the first week of November, two out of five Irish consumers will have put their Christmas plans in motion – whether by stocking up on goodies, booking in plans with friends and family or purchasing gifts.
This is age-sensitive, though, as their report shows that younger cohorts are more likely to plan, shop and book in early compared to consumers in their 50s or older.
Of those surveyed for the report, most plan on spending less than €500 on their inner circle this Christmas season.