The Ewe Sculpture Garden & Gallery

The latest of many groups from near and far to visit was also the first ever from Japan.

There may have been a language barrier, for how do you translate sculpture titles like: "Growing Panes" for glass set in flower pots, or "Because I'm Worth It" for a pig in a bath, or "Whirled Wild Web" for a giant spider web.

The same problem applies to our many German and French visitor. For that reason we are now having the garden guide translated into German and French. As far as we have heard, the translators are knotted into verbal contortions to try and came up with original titles, since good translations are not actually about translating ad verbatim. It is all about getting the intented message across.

Our Japanese visitors certainly enjoyed the interactive sculpture called "Public Toilet", showing a man with his trousers down. They didn't get it though, until we opened the door and showed them....the toilet.

This is the 18th year of The Ewe Sculpture Garden in West Cork and the project has now come of age.

The first ten years the location was the Mizen peninsula before we relocated to beautiful Glengarriff, an hours drive up the coast from Mizen.

And what a journey it has been. Every year a new development, extension and improvement, which thousands of visitors have been witnessing.

"I feel like Alice in Wonderland in this garden!" a visitor exclaimed yesterday. No, she wasn't eight years old, more like 68...

We have lots more plans, the only problem is our chiropractor telling us to stop any heavy work.

CHARITY TEA PARTY SUCCESS

Our annual charity tea party was a great success. We raised €700 for the Alzheimer Society of Ireland, catering for dementia.

Many thanks to everyone who baked cakes and made donations on the day

Our annual charity day will this year be on Saturday May 28th from 12 to 5 PM. We have chosen the Alzheimer Society of Ireland, Southern region, as the beneficiary.

They work very hard to alleviate the suffering of dementia not just for the almost 44.000 people affected in Ireland but also 50.000 carers and hundreds of thousands of family members.

So come along and support our charity tea party. The entrance fee and all Sheena's home baked cakes and drinks will go to a good cause.

See more on www.alzheimer.ie

For our latest sculpture Sheena was inspired by a Charnia, the oldest known fossil with such a complex structure. The fossil was discovered by an English schoolboy in 1957 and stunned the science world. The frond like fossil has the most effective body structure, which was used through evolution from then on in all life forms, including (rather a lot later) in the human skeleton.

The Charnia sculpture now stands in our "Evolution Walk" as part of Valley of Eden, the very top garden here at The Ewe Sculpture Garden. It stands 20 feet tall and in strong wind sounds like a wind turbine - in fact from a distance it looks a bit like a prototype, revolutionary turbine. We are hoping it will help keep the deer away, since they are eating all our plants, including a delicate Magnolia tree. Fortunately so far they have kept away from our precious Australian Wollemi pine. Parts of the top forests are like deer highways, with droppings and nesting places revealing their habits.