Tuesday 22 May 2012

FLOWERS AND BLACKBIRDS

We have our first rose and first oriental poppy.
Sudden rise in temperature means all is go at last
- for the weeds too.

Spent two days weeding, ripping up the clawed roots of creeping buttercup, pulling out the thousands of broad-leaved willowherbs and cursing at the newest pest - we have vetch!

Common vetch has started to appear in dense clumps of campanula and saxifrage and it is a terror - compatible with horsetails and bindweed. I cannot be bothered to dig the whole bed up so pull and pester the pest and hope it will give up.

Our back windows are netted and criss-crossed with trellis and this seems to have stopped the mad blackbird that was attacking its reflection. Now it sings gloriously from the ash tree above the shed. One blackbird has built a nest in the bonfire! So we have abandoned that one and started anew.

Then R was debrambling by the wood and uncovered another nest. We can only hope that the bird will go back to sitting on the eggs but . .

Many flowers self seed in the garden.
Some I am happy to let do their own thing such as Aquilegias - nothing fancy, just good old Granny's Bonnets, pinks and blues mainly. R likes the blues best though I think they are almost violet.

The asparagus is just starting to recover from the cold and I have had to net the turnip seedlings to keep off the pigeons. Goosegogs are doing fine and we have blossom and leaves on the Bramley - I had given up hope.
Sadly the swallows have not returned to nest on the house but we are being investigated by House Martins as last year - fingers crossed.

Have just Skyped family in Herefordshire - now exhausted so need a cuppa or a pinta (not milk).

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