A MENAGERIE?

Late June is pressing down on us.
The trees are one green and the garden is becoming quieter. This morning a lone song thrush calls, a young sparrow chirps. The only other sound is the raucous call of the magpies and the chunner of a pheasant outside the kitchen door.
Down the long path, where I covered the seed bed with netting and sowed carrots and parsnips, there are two fat rabbits sitting on the top of the netting. One reaches up and eats a leaf off a senecio that is in a pot (now called a Brachyglottis)(the plant not the pot). I did not know that rabbits ate those shrubs but suspect they eat just about anything. I shall go out soon and try to put better protection over the seedlings.
It is warmer and more humid. We are waiting for rain. My computer has been attacked by a virus that wiped out all my bookmarks from Safari - very strange.

It has not rained. There are goldfinches on the feeders and today (Wednesday) a greenfinch. I have not seen one of those for many months.

Wildlife is everywhere and the untamed grass is taller than I can remember - if my shoulder was not so sore I would be out scything (just an excuse).

The peonies are an explosion of pink and the small deutzia is ten feet tall - where did that come from? Each morning when I go out the philadelphus assails me with scent. The mass of vegetation is a blanket on the garden, almost smothering us. I do wish someone would smother the blackbirds though. They chatter at me in annoyance as I try to salvage redcurrants.

In the rose bed I have found an abandoned pheasant nest with twelve cold eggs. It is but a scrape in the soil and two feet from the long path - what a stupid place to build it.

No doubt the magpies and the rat will dine well so I move them to a far part of the garden in case they begin to smell.

I am sitting on the sofa in the kitchen when there is a loud thump - a young chaffinch has flown in the door and tried to escape through the window. It is on the floor, stunned. I pick it up, weighs nothing, and carefully take it outside to recover. It sits under the feeders, wobbly and shaken but finally flies away.

We have a second brood of house martins in the new nest above the kitchen door - the nest is so close I can reach up and touch it.

Thursday and I walk into the new part of the living room after breakfast. Sitting on the mat outside is a young rabbit. We stare at one another, two feet apart. It cannot smell or hear me through the double glazing. Perhaps it needs glasses?

When I open the door it ambles off - presumably to eat more of the garden. J's sunflowers are but short green stumps and netting is everywhere. It is a good job some of the veg beds are surrounded by a chicken wire fence. I do not know what else we can do other than buy a gun but that is not on my agenda. Pain in the proverbial as the bunnies may be there must be something a little Buddhist in my make up, mind you I did get in the mole catcher so . . ?

The lady's mantle, alchemilla mollis, has finally got going - late but luscious. And, yes, the foxgloves do self seed. If they were not a wild flower we would all be singing their praise as a garden plant.


And the eggs - after an exploration by sparrows and a blackbird the magpies arrived en masse, then, when most of them had gone the rat came.

LOOKING GOOD

Saturday and we have had our first lunch out on the new whatever - hate the word patio but then what - terrace?

There garden is looking good - as long as you do not look too hard.

 

The grass is dry, the grass is wet, the mower's clogged, I need to scythe etc etc. But though it is June it is still cold. 
On Friday, the longest day, and it was 12C at 9 am but by the next day the temperatures were 18.5C.

The lawns are finally mown and things are looking a bit tidier. 

Some plants are thriving like the redcurrants - unfortunately this means the blackbirds are too. I have managed to salvage 2 pounds of fruit so far - need 4 for jelly.

5 goldfinches on the feeders, they have fledged as have the magpies next door - 7 of them - 'for a story that's never been told'.
And squirrels come and go, and rabbits come - have netted some of the veg beds to keep them, and the pigeons, off. 
The young rabbits are too tame for their own good. When confronted they just sit and look at you with a puzzled air - what is this creature?


The heads on the peonies are so big they need staking or they end up on the ground. Paeony Shirley Temple, amazing and faintly scented.

Last night as I sat at my window the Phebe rose (Rosa rubifolia from Wormleighton Manor where she lived) slowly fell over. It is now staked and manured. We hope it will survive.

 Elsewhere there is colour in the oriental poppies, the alstroemerias and the so useful geraniums - because the slugs and snails leave them alone. I have ordered 3 deep maroon geraniums for R - she saw them at Swarthmoor Hall when we visited the gardens.

And roses, ramblers and climbers - the Albertine has decided to go fifteen feet up an ash tree - and roses in the rose beds. 

The pots by the back door are settled in and the white rosebay is rampant on the upper banking - which is alright - I knew it would do that so had to put it somewhere safe. The Philadelphus Belle Etoile in is flower as is the white deutzia. I do not from where the red poppy  in the midst of the rosebay came from, perhaps self seeded but unlikely as I dead head assiduously.

Trees - the mighty ash above the house is full of bird (and squirrel) life, the eucalyptus continues to grow and grow and the lower hedge is clearly in need of being laid again. 

At one of the ways down from the middle garden the the lower lawns I planted two thornless crataegus, onion either side. That on the left is thriving and three times the size of that on the right. The soil is the same, they were the same size when bought - a mystery.

I have been weeding, trimming the willow around the compost heaps, R has cleared the old heads from the aquilegias, but the one thing that I think of when I look at the garden is - where has all this come from? In winter there is bare soil, now a jungle.

Still some of it is looking really good.

We sat down by the pond last night, in the evening sun, in our little paradise, and thought how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful place.

HIGHLIGHTS AND LOWLIFE

There are places in the garden that cry out for a focal point or for light in a dark corner. This does not have to be an expensive piece of sculpture - a plants will do.
The one that stands out in our garden is, perhaps surprisingly, a variegated horseradish. Of course this will not do much in the winter when the foliage dies down - but for the rest of the year - it is wonderful.

There are others - the glory of a crambe, here not yet in full flow next to an enormous cardoon. The crambe can be left as it has such an interesting seed head, the cardoon will need staking because the flowerhead become so heavy the stems fall over.

At the end of the long path is a scruffy fence behind which is hidden a cold frame and plastic storage box. This fence is now festooned with yellow roses and in from there is a golden choisya, Mexican orange, which compliments the rose.

Other plants that are stunners are the red alstromeria, here in a vase, and oriental poppies, especially the bright red ones.

We have also used the white birches to catch the eye and I intend to underplant them with ox-eye daisies for a summer show.

R made me get a daisy bush which is now in flower and she says they smell of honey.

So, what have we been up to in the garden - I have trimmed the beech hedge. The copper leaves are special when back-lit. We also have a copper beech behind the white birches to make them stand out even more.

The two Rambling Rector climbing roses are really getting going - one twenty-five feet up the old ash which is just as well because J and D, two Church of England ministers, are coming for lunch next week. 
R has been clearing out old aquilegias but leaving those of which she likes the colour most to set seed. 
I have cut down the Rhus typhina and now have the job of dealing with its many and far flung suckers. It just fell out of favour.
I went down to the shed by the pond and staked H's dark rose which had flopped over the bench, turned round and the wild duck was watching me from a few feet away, apparently unconcerned by my presence.

We have been given some sunflowers, thanks J, and I have put them in by the back wall.
















To lowlife - and we are besieged by grey squirrels, taking apart the squirrel proof feeders and being brazen just outside the kitchen door. Here is one sitting in the entrance to the trap eating peanuts. I went out and to escape it bolted into the trap which snapped shut - big mistake!

There is a constant visitor on the peanuts - a female greater spotted woodpecker.

She or her other half more likely has been busy on the
old ash tree. It has several dead branches and a bit fell off one - peppered with woodpecker holes.

And a glory in the garden - the first Rose Emma Hamilton, blowsy and heavily scented. I just wish the flowers would open more. If they get wet they are too heavy and can get sodden and rot.

And it rains.


And we still have flowering camellias.

Apart from that it is all go - first opium poppy 😇, here with the Stachys (lamb's lugs).

The white campanulas - that spread themselves, are coming out as are the herder and the various geraniums - always good value.

Finally the petunias we bought at Melkinthorpe and were put in the pots by the door are doing well.

Finally, finally, this is the dining area under the feeders - wood pigeon, collared dove, grey squirrel and a small (?) brown rat.

FIRST ROSES

We have roses, summer is a coming in even if it is not very warm. - but we have had rain and the garden is bursting with growth. R's favourite rose is the Albertine - wonderful scent but just one flush of flowers. The other roses are a bit hidden in the new rose bed by all sorts of other stuff - aquilegias, hesperis, foxgloves etc etc.

We still have the odd camellia flower too - yes, odd.

Down at the pond I think the ducks may have consumed all the tadpoles but plant-wise the water crowfoot is doing well - a white aquatic buttercup - and we have our usual damselflies and chasers, whirligigs and water boatmen.

The golden sedge lights up a dark corner.

We went out to Langholme Mill at Lowick, a garden in a small valley around a stream - an interesting microclimate where the azaleas and rhododendrons thrive.

It was the garden of Dr Walter Gill who succeeded my father a GP in Penny Bridge in, I think, about 1950.

We have tree bumblebees nesting in the roof of the borehole shed. They are not inside the shed and not a problem. They first arrived in the UK in 2001 in Wiltshire and have rapidly spread north. We have several species of bumblebee in the garden which is good for pollination. Unfortunately we are plagued again by grey squirrels who are demolishing the squirrel proof bird feeders. One has even learned how to lift the lid and get at the seed.

In the house the canna lily is flowering again - dramatic.

Back to the garden - I have reduced the fence at the end of the long path by a third (wide) and dug up the three gooseberry bushes and dumped them on the bonfire heap. They are heavy with mildew again and also have sawfly. I give up - anyway we do not eat large quantities.

The rest of the fence has been left as it supports a wonderful yellow rose.

Three white lavender and two osteospermums have been put in, what I call, the builders rubble bed. I have dug in two trailer loads of horse manure but it still looks impoverished.

The ex gooseberry bed has been dug over lightly and sown with carrots and parsnips (the third attempt at germination this year) and dill.

In the veg beds I have put three butternut squash and a marrow. The asparagus bed has been weeded and R is busy deadheading and pulling up forgetmenots that are over. The chard is trying to flower. We can still eat the leaves and are using chopped stems in stir fries.

That leaves trouble at t' blog - Blogger changing font sizes and it takes two tries to see a preview. Took their online advice and lost the whole of this blog which I have had to rewrite.