Bloom in the Park 2011

Today we took the train (early, 07:45!) to see Bloom in the Phoenix Park. Bloom's an annual festival/event organised by Bord Bia, to showcase (from what I saw today) the best of Irish food, drink, plants, wildlife and garden design. As well as the usual retail sales areas that you find at (and that probably pay for) these events everywhere, there's a garden show area with about 8-10 gardens competing for prizes; an Irish food area; an Irish micro/independent brewer/distillers area (yum); information on wildlife organisations and activities for kids - a well-rounded family day out I suppose, even if there's only yourself and herself.... :P

There was lots of relaxing things to do....



I took a few photos, needless to say. I should preface them by saying that either I was confused or the camera was, as many of these pics weren't exposed great....so what you see is a result of a harsher than usual cull.



My personal favourite was a garden on the theme of "Alice in Wonderland," which was built/formed/made from synthetic grass and some plants. Lovely and bright and colourful, perhaps I should have taken more photos here!



My next favourite was the Chinese Garden, which had dancing and music. We arrived just after the dancing though, and didn't hang around till the next one. Mostly because it didn't occur to us to.





And another very enjoyable area....



The Bloom Inn was great - half-pint glasses at €2.50 being very reasonable, and excellent beers from craft breweries around the country. I particularly enjoyed my first taste of Galway Hooker and also of Trouble Brewing's Ór (up Kildare!), both very very tasty beverages indeed. I must also beseech the guys in Dungarvan to brew more of their coffee and oatmeal stout for bottling! My first taste too of Metalman's beer (I had the Windjammer), White Gypsy's and of 8 Degrees, all very enjoyable.

May they all bottle and distribute widely. Or to Kildare at any rate.

There is of course plenty of food to peruse and purchase for soakage. Sorry, I mean, of course, enjoyment. Lots of nice meat providers (can think of 2 sausage stands, and one beef stand in particular), bakeries, jams, preserves, you name it, and many providing a sample or 2 to tempt you!



Not to mention you never know who you'll bump into (or see other people bumping into)



If you go, I hope you enjoy it and that the weather suits you. If you don't have time and remain curious, get thee to pix.ie and have a look at either my few pics, or the pictures of other photographers that have submitted their work!

Boro Valley Strawberry farm photowalk, Wexford.

Yesterday, I attended my first photowalk! It's an organised photographic expedition, or something like that. This event was held at the Boro Valley Strawberry farm near Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford. Murt welcomed us with open arms, and a cup of coffee, and a hope that they might get to use some of the images from the day on their new website.



Murt brought us up to the glasshouses - these are where the "Elsanta" berries grow, on suspended shelves at about waist height.



The temperature and humidity in the greenhouse are computer controlled, and it opens vents and water pipes as required. Pollination, though is a little more old-school. A hive is placed at about 5 or 6 locations throughout the greenhouse, and each hive's bees has it's own patch of about 10 000 plants to look after - this was something I hadn't thought about!



The berries are all picked and packaged by hand - in any event it's hard to imagine any machine being gentle enough to pick the fruit without damaging the beautiful skin and texture of the berries. These were some of the sweetest and most succulent strawberries I've ever had.



Just look at the colour!





After visiting another polytunnel with another variety of strawberries that were a couple of weeks from harvest (though some were ready to eat and were almost (almost, mind) nicer than the Elsanta), we took a couple of shots of the farmgate stand. Here, as well as punnets of strawberries, the Murphys sell a selection of potatoes, tomatoes and juices direct to the lucky punter that stops (and it'd be well worth it!)  by on the Enniscorthy-New Ross road.



The other walkers will have better photos than I of this next portion of the morning, I am inexperienced (and ill-equipped!) at the use of flash but I was reasonably happy with the pics I got. The Murphys spent the morning baking and preparing some amazing gateaux and cakes with their strawberries - recipes will be on their website I'm assured! Others had brought lamps and a white background helped to isolate the samples.







After photographing them, it was a shame to have to destroy these beautiful cakes by eating. (er no, not really!)

So thanks to all at Boro Valley for having us down there, and I wish them all the best with their new website and hope it helps to bring business. The product is certainly right!



And thanks to the photowalk.ie gang, this was my first and hopefully not my last. It's great to have an impetus as well as an unusual subject or location.



More pics, as ever, at http://pix.ie/brianp/album/411480

Thanks for reading!