I haven’t written a blog for a while. I keep saying that to myself and then not getting to it, not because I don’t want to write but because I’ve just been really busy. Lots of new projects underway, new collaborations with various partners, I’ve been out and about giving presentations and talking to school kids (more about all these activities soon). So that’s by way of beginning- which busy thing shall I start wth?

Today, perhaps, start with today: had a great outing with local graphic designer @Aggie’s Graphic Design and Photography. We’re working together on the little postcard sized booklet that I’m producing from the “Blue Dot to the Sea” project (Phase 1, Catchment support Fund 2024, looking forward to phase 2 …..)

Remember this postcard? Well, the postcard booklet is using this format. It’s the first in a mini series, and this one is about the Carrowniskey River, back west of Louisburgh; the Bunowen River, which runs through Louisburgh, will be the star of another booklet.

At the Clapper Bridge today, that’s the Bunleemshough River, which feeds into Roonagh Lagoon, we found quite a few Pearl Mussel shells- they were cut adrift from their beds, but quite complete shells, all except one was empty- the un-empty one was quite damaged and I think probably dead but we left that in the water just in case, I brought a few empty ones home to make sure we’d identified them correctly. what else could they be, but you know, when you’re going into print, you want to be sure. Really sure.

Here are the ones we found in the shallow calm little river today. I took a snap of them on the walkway of the small iconic bridge. They might have come adrift in the storm a couple of weeks back and found their way down stream. The rivers around here were flowing very fast for a few days. https://www.pearlmusselproject.ie/freshwater-pearl-mussel.htmlThese Fresh Water Pearl Mussels are special things. They only grow, and slowly, in ecologically more pristine fresh water and once mature they can remain in their river bed home for up to 120 years.

This evening, my eyes are tired from screen work the last few days and because I changed my glasses. I’ve got a very powerful prescription and I’m lucky I can see to type, using the modern technology of vari-focals, but they really stretch your eyes when you change, not even the prescription but the shape of glasses in this case. I’ve reverted to an earlier frame which saves a bit and is also a little act of recycling. part of a trend I heard on the radio yesterday, amidst excitement about the US elections in an advert from the Irish Government https://www.gov.ie/en/campaigns/fa6f9-reverse-the-trend/. Who knew!

Anyway, after a few days away from the desk over mid-term, there was a whole pile of stuff to do, including, working towards the next phase of our work on the river catchment, looking towards conducting a hyrdomorphological study (more on that another time); writing a final report for this (first) phase of the Catchment Support Fund, checking to see if there was any news from Community Fund Ireland about a couple of funding bids i put in recently (more on them in another post, especially if we’re successful)…. hence the screen tired new eyes…. oh, final checks on a presentation I’m giving at the “Caring for Water Conference” on 9th November -i’ll do a post about that soon…. they needed the slides by yesterday which thwarted my usual habit of twiddling with them up until the event. Possibly a good thing.

That’s it for now. for some reason the blog text won’t interleave with the pictures this evening but d’you know what? I’m going to leave it as it is and hit “publish”. Back soon