COUNTING BUTTERFLIES

You come home from holiday and the grass has grown - where it has not succumbed to the drought. A little rain has helped. The weeds are rampant and I have been mowing and mowing.

The courgettes in ten days have exploded into marrows.

The rhubarb has also recovered and the hacking back has done wonders - pulling crisp young stems again and topping up the freezer.

My mate the cock pheasant is mooching about under the feeders and looks not too bad despite some moulting. When I refilled the feeders there was no action for about two hours then they were swamped by goldfinches and sparrows with the chaffinches underneath waiting for dropped delicacies.

The scruffy bit of old rose bed into which I threw an assortment of annual seed is looking colourful and not too awful. Some cosmos has taken but is not yet flowering.

In the garden the butterflies have appeared with the flowering of the buddleias. The gatekeepers seem to  like the marjoram particularly. It does well in the garden.

So I have done my first 15 minutes of the big butterfly count - 
https://www.bigbutterflycount.org 

and saw large and small whites, gatekeeper, peacocks, red admirals and a painted lady - but where are the small tortoiseshells?
On the left a peacock with wings folded - difficult to see - on the right a painted lady.

Just finished filling there log shed with the wood for the winter and phew! I need a muscly man to do this sort of work, but then, I had just mowed the steep banking and cleared around the pond earlier in the day in 26C so . . .

The red rose up the holly tree is in full flower - we call this Pam's rose as she gave it to us. There are a lot of things in the garden given to us by friends, some of them special where a friend has since left us like Sue's reedmace and the maple. We also have one or two things that she passed onto us with the statement that she didn't know what it was but bung it in and see.

The magnolia grandiflora has been reluctant to flower this year until R warned it that, no flowers and it was being cut down. At least this was the gist of what she said. This seems to have done the trick (for now). I wish that method would work with everything especially seeds - if you do not germinate I'll - but what?

A couple of superb reds are the zinnia to the left and the alstroemerias to the right. We really want white alstroemerias but the only ones that seem to thrive are the deep red ones.

It is high summer and hot. We are off to see Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale al fresco - and the forecast is for the first real rain for ages - typical British weather. 😕

1. It did not rain till we got home.

2. We did not see the blood moon.

3. It is Sunday and raining now.

4. Outside my window 19 goldfinches and chaffinches are feeding. (plus odd blue tit, great tit, woodpecker and pigeon).

5. When I opened the back door this morning there were 10 house martins wheeling around my head.

Last night I gave the Brushes Ap another go à la Hockney - somewhere back of Coniston Water from memory.

MOTHER NATURE

Has a DRY sense of humour?

Yet the garden, though parched still has colour -

Some more subtle than others. This is the dastardly thorny rose Grouse.

and plenty of white -

including this - one of the banes of my life - bindweed.

Up in the wood -

are white bedstraw and the thuggish hogweed - beware the sap, it blisters.

There are plenty of marsh thistle and milium effusum looking lovely backlit.










The sycamores are covered in thrips - millions of them that settle on your head when you walk underneath.

This is the canopy lifted rhododendron and the new view underneath back to the house

Not far away is the greengage given to us by I and A, a few fruit but suffering with the drought.
Underneath the seat where the ants nest was when I sat down - you can see the red ants here after I disturbed them.
I have not mowed for three weeks. admittedly some places are a bit shaggy but others have no grass growth at all.

And I found out what had been destroying the beetroot seed bed by digging the soil etc - not a rabbit, it was a cock pheasant throwing soil over itself and the surroundings - perhaps an anti parasite behaviour - or possible a nesting instinct?

So it is time to bend the back and stretch the legs, get the place back into some sort of shape. Out with the mower and hoe, out with the scythe, in with the ibuprofen.

And the Rambling Rector needs pruning - anyone got a suit of armour?

BLOGGY BITS AND A BIRD WITH A WRY EYE

I love sitting outside our kitchen and watching the birds at this time of year, the Robin or chaffinch on the round three feet from my chair, bluetit fledglings by the handful above my head, the sudden flash of red as the bullfinch zooms in and feeds, keeping a wry eye on me only a few feet away.

The garden is so dry despite watering that I despair going away and leaving it to fend for itself. We are in the grip of a major drought now. The various pots need regular water - cannot see such as these lilies suffer, anyway I want the bulbs to build up for next year not wither away. I have done a little scything on the upper banking but it is hard work in this heat.

We have turned the Aga range off and will rely on a old electric kettle and the microwave. The kitchen was getting just too warm.

Of course it is cooler up in the wood where our nature ash trees have so far not shown any sign of dieback. In front of the old ash in the photo is the white lilac which, unfortunately, now had brown dead flowers instead of the glorious white. The magnolia grandifolia has had a few flowers but only after R threatened it with assassination if it did not - seemed to work.

Down to the shed and the Albertine rose is almost done and no longer pumping out scent. Around the corner by the decking the pink clematis is doing well.

That area of the garden seems to be inundated by white honesty plants now full of their characteristic seedlings.

I have moved the three butternut squash plants to another bed as the courgettes have grown so big they were swamping them.

We are likely to have no raspberries this year despite watering. The drought has resulted in small fruit and the blackbirds are picking off anything half ripe - we really must get a fruit cage this winter.

R found these two snails firmly stuck together on the path. I suspect they have been found by a thrush and placed there before being bashed on the stone so the bird can get to the inside. Sadly I had to tell her they weren't mating.

One of the things I love in the wood is the millet, millium effusum, with its small flowers that shimmer when backlit by the sun. R does not like it, in fact is not a fan of grass in the garden, unless mown.

Next door has just told me she noticed a squirrel with a bundle of moss and then found it was thinking of building a drey in the holly right next to her door - dilemma - chase it off or don't use that door for a while. (Chase it off - we have enough squirrels around.)

The water lily in the pond is taking over the world, too big and thuggish. I am putting off wading in there (probably falling in) and hacking it to bits. Perhaps it would be better in the winter (but it its so cold then).

The book beside me is Wilding by Isabella Tree and I am looking forward to an interesting read.

And finally three veggie shots to show some things are still alive and growing in the garden - 

Asparagus fern

Carrots

And courgettes.

FRAZZLED

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Now, I have not mentioned football (or tennis) for a long time - so now I have said all I wish to say.

More, Monty Don's Gardeners' World is being moved for Don Trump's visit - heresy!

Thought for the day - (for Scottie) - would Ral Donner have been more successful if he had not sounded like an Elvis impersonator?

The heat goes on and on.

Mallard duck brought her brood to see the pond, then left them for a long time. They were gone again next morning so we expect they are OK and she came back.

Sometimes writing this blog, hidden away on a hillside above Morecambe Bay, I think of our scattered family, of aspirations for children when they are born and feel surprised that they are their own person and what they do is nothing like I expected. Mind you, whatever it is it does not stop one loving them, you cannot help that but there is always a bit of sadness that they and their children are not next door.

That is one thing the garden lacks - the sound of children laughing and playing.

Enough navel gazing -

With the Pennine moor fire, which we could see from here (47 miles) across the bay and, I think, occasionally smell (Always remember the peat fire smell in Donegal (Doonan)(that for Gillie)). It also turns the moon ruddy like this. The bird is one of the many currant eating blackbirds we have.

Watering garden ++ - borehole ok for now.

I found a hole in the floor of the mower shed and several holes in the sunflower seed sack! In the end, reluctantly resorted to old fashioned mouse traps and immediately caught two.

The rattrap is useless as the great tits wander in and pilfer the bait.

The lawns hardly need mowing as the grass is not growing much.

Two yellow flowering plants - the brachyglottis - grey leaves shrub used to be called senecio,

and good old creeping Jenny, well not always so good - like to spread everywhere but can be ripped up.

Just got the Bushnell video camera from by the lawn and got this -

 As we are by the pond here are a few plants from there - the white water lily on the left - a self sown plant off the main one which is really far too big now.

On the right is then flowering rush.

The trollius chinensis Golden Queen is startling though strange for a globe flower - no globe.
There is a lot of Stachys palustris now, marsh woundwort, on the lower side of the pond and that may need radical culling later in the year.

 Then to this - I am using the i newspaper as lavatory paper for the house martins. Unfortunately they are not very good shots and often miss.
In the end it will go on the compost heap and be recycled.

It is still HOT and no rain forecast for two or more weeks. As we have the borehole I shall put up a sign at the gate - Showers £5, Baths £20 (free if you empty the contents on the garden with a bucket.)

Rambling Rector climbing rose just goes on and on.