Thursday Doors – Freedom

At last we are now permitted to travel outside our own counties, which explains this week’s Thursday Doors title – Freedom. So we took to the road and drove through the counties of Monaghan and Louth to visit some of my family. Along the way I managed to capture some nice buildings as we drove by. Here’s a close up shot of that lovely old house on the hill. It’s a three-bay two-storey house, built c.1850,

In the next photograph you’ll see a Masonic Lodge built in the late nineteenth or early twentieth-century. From the angle of the shot it looks like only the facade is standing but the complete building is there but not in use today.

Not far from the Masonic Lodge there is another interesting building. A Protestant recreational hall, detached single-storey over basement, built in 1926.

Of course, there’s always a red door or two waiting to be spotted. Like these two peeking over the stone wall.

I came across some interesting street art on the journey and took quite a few drive by shots but the next photo is the only one that wasn’t blurred.

The reason my daughter and sister supplied me with photographs for my recent posts wasn’t just because of travel restrictions. I was busy building walls in our garden from the hand made bricks that came from the interior walls when we were renovating our cottage. As these were part of the fabric of the house and may be around two hundred years old, I wanted to make a feature of them and some raised beds seemed like the perfect way to recycle them.

I really enjoy building dry walls of stone or old brick but I’m glad I didn’t have to do it for a living. It’s backbreaking work and takes forever to find the right shape and colour of brick. I had to dismantle a bed I built last summer and when I did so an unusual ‘doorway’ revealed itself. It seemed to lead to a labyrinth inhabited by all sorts of interesting creatures, especially spiders. There were quite a few centipedes, which is a good thing for the garden.

Close to this cavernous opening lay a handful of empty snail shells, not a good thing for the garden. Although I was happy to see them empty, I wondered what could have eaten them and sent a photo to the grandchildren asking them to guess. One of them joked that maybe it was their granddad, lol.

When I removed a few more bricks I found the answer. A frog was clinging to a snail, probably convinced I was after his lunch.

Mr. R. caught him and placed him underneath a fennel plant while I quickly rebuilt his home, making sure it wasn’t going to collapse on top of him.

Thanks for stopping by this week. Dan has lots more doors to view over on his blog. I’ll be taking advantage of our freedom to search out more Thursday Doors for next week, until then have a lovely weekend.