BOGGED DOWN

Grey days and damp skies, sodden grass and tangled weeds, it seems a very long and slow progress from Autumn into winter. Elections and impeachment so drag on and a friend keeps sending me photos of sunny South Africa. 
 

We have six wild pheasants wandering the garden, three of each sex, the hens twitchier than the strutting males. It is time to move manure and compost but I look out of the window and then put on the kettle.
Another spring has appeared in the top of the wood right in the middle of a patch of lawned grass. Soon there will be so many drains and ditches and streams and boggy areas there will be no room for anything else.
Enough grass is cut so that it can be left till the spring but no reply from the potential gardener, will have to try and contact him again. Perhaps he is in South Africa or somewhere sunnier than here (and warmer).
 

  There, that feels better, had a good moan and I haven't mentioned elections, impeachments, Brexit, my knee replacement, being cold . . .
R has bought me a gilet to stop me complaining that the heating is off - nice and warm (except for the feet)
  Hoy! I hear, I thought this was a gardening blog - well it is but I am not doing a lot of gardening at the moment.
Wait, the rain has ceased, I will . . .
Wait! It is raining again . . .

 


When it rains there is always the sanctuary of the shed if I can get into it with all the junk. I had a look at the apples stored for the winter and most were alright but - not all!

  I wonder what it tastes like? 
Think I will miss out on that one.

It is still November, just, and in the garden time has gone wonky - the leaf litter is pierced by daffodils and outside the kitchen snowdrops are showing their stems. 



Time for an Eco poem?

PROMISES

For a full month now I have watched the rain - 

it moves in grey waves across the drenched fields, 

water-logs the turf and coalesces 

into rivulets which feed the old beck 

back of a dry-stone wall dressed in wet moss.

The gloom of a cloud ridden sky fills me

with despair, for this is man made sorrow

fuelled by greed, without consideration

for the new generations yet to come, 

for the innocent animals and plants

with which we share this world that we have ruined.

And if the sun comes through, fills the garden

with misplaced hope, I turn my face up and wait

for the warmth, for its invigoration.

If I were to stand there for long enough

I could watch the sunflowers turn their heads,

follow the sun, cold adders would emerge 

on the grassy bank and bask, gaining heat,

small birds dip their beaks in cool pond water.

When we are gone will they be gone as well? 

And will there still be sparrows in the dust,

blackbirds, wings spread, on the shed’s shingle roof?

I walk up into our small ash spinney,

wrapped in my kagoul, hear the branches talk -

for trees are memory, rings of lost years.

I will be gone long before the end comes

and will those organisms that survive us

outlast our dereliction of duty,

sigh with relief? I hear fine talk, promises

of action but see little being done.

We have pillaged this Eden, this small world

which circles a small peripheral star 

in one galaxy out of millions.

Too late?

THE BONFIRE OF THE DILEMMAS

The more I clear away the dead and dying garden detritus, putting the woody stuff on the bonfire heap, the more I think of hedgehogs and blackbirds.
When do I light it?
Now I risk cooking a hedgehog or in the spring incinerating a young blackbird nest?
Perhaps come spring I will need to disentangle the existing heap and rebuild.

The last leaves are on the cherries and off most of the other trees - except the liquidambar, most its leaves are still green, not turned the deep red they should have by now.

It is Monday, 6 pm and I go out to disconnect the car from the charger. The sky is clear and the air crisp with a coming frost. The sky is full of daisies, a world within a flowering Crambe. 
And quiet.
Almost.
The faint drone of the main road a mile away and below provides a base note. 
But no birds sing.
I have left the teasels and the tall grasses, the brittle poppies and hydrangea heads for the frost to coat and sculpt. When the dawn sun rises, before the thaw the garden will be a place of magic.
A solitary tawny owl calls but gets no reply.
Time to go in.

By dawn we have had a hard frost. So many drab leaves are small pockets of wonder.

There is frost on the grass and ice on the pond - no sign of our moorhen nor mallard.

 The small birds are hungry and need food to keep them warm so the feeders are topped up every day.

R has got me the telephone number of a good gardener - he will have to be tolerant of my foibles, the mess in parts of the garden and being unable to get into my cluttered shed.

The list is growing - mowers to be serviced, manure to be moved and spread, raspberries to be dug up and consigned to the bonfire - and there are suspicious signs where I have planted tulips. I think the squirrels are hungry and digging.

A message has been left with the potential gardener - so I have been tidying the shed, cleaning and oiling tools - I mean I need to meet his approval.

So now the days pass with the clearing of the old year. Beetles chew in the leaf litter, fungi break down old wood. I make this tree 36 years at felling but then get 35 the next count, any better calculations welcome.

A STRANGE AUTUMN

One day I am waiting for the autumn colours and then we went up to the lake at Coniston to see the birches in their splendour and it was all over. The damp plus the wind and an early frost might be to blame I suppose. The last pear is off the tree (and consumed by the rabbits though I have seen a robin pecking away at it.) The rain is lashing on my study window and it is cold (especially as we froze in bed last night only to find we still has the 1 tog duvet on! No wonder. That is now remedied. Time for bedsocks and a hot water bottle.)

Here and there are some fruit still lingering - sweet chestnut (though this is a cheat as it belongs to Prince Charles and the Duchy of Cornwall and is in Aconbury Wood in Herefordshire).

The flocks of fieldfares and redwings keep coming, most of the berries will be gone soon at this rate.

And there are flowers in the garden (if not the gardener) - rose, masterwort, potentilla, sedum and Kaffir lilies.

The beech hedge is turning and the last of the cherry leaves are fluttering down. I tried to blow them away from the grass and path but immediately a gust of wind undid all the good work. I will wait for calmer times. I should really be bagging up the leaves to make leaf mould. Fill a black bin liner or sack and seal the top. It will slowly rot down and give a rick humus, not a lot of food value but good for the condition of the soil.

I have put this photo of the view across Morecambe Bay from the new window in the extension elsewhere on the internet, the distant hills are the Forest of Bowland, twenty plus miles away.

I had thought the number of feeding birds had fallen but recently they are back (or have just arrived from Europe.) Mainly tits, sparrows and finches with the odd pheasant thrown in.

The rabbits are still munching on the last of the windfall apples.

The sun is out. the shower has stopped, out into the jungle again.

WINDING UP AND WINDING DOWN

As I get more mobile the garden beckons, clearing out dying plants - well this year's debris, blowing leaves into heaps, trimming, cutting back, aching etc.
This grey cold morning I am nursing my cup of tea as my mother used to do, hands wrapped around the mug, (she had cold hands and used to creep up behind me and stick them down the back of my collar), when a small bird flies into the window with a thud. What had disturbed it? I stand and look out to find three hen pheasants below me looking up. They are this year's brood and skittish, hurry off  into the undergrowth. The small bird that hit the window is unhurt and long gone.

I have been in the garden cutting back the asparagus stems, tidying away the dying peony fronds, Michaelmas daisies and other vegetation. Most off the trees are leafless and the cherries and cercidiphyllums are now turning. A tall teasel shoves its way up through the cherry.

Other trees are casting off this years photosynthetic factories and the grass and paths are carpets of brittle colour. Even the leaves of the strawberries are turning.

Down by the pond the holly is loaded with berries so it is clear that this is a female tree. The winter birds will be glad of the supply.
Other trees and shrubs hold on to their green leaves - the magnolia stellata, deutzia and lilac, the buddleias  and winter honeysuckle. The beech hedge though is finally giving in to winter.
All this seems much later than I remember as a boy as the seasons change.

We have Brussels sprouts but the squash and courgette plants have been consigned to the compost heap.

Elsewhere there are lingering flowers - roses still scented,

Self sown sunflowers from the bird feeders,

a few persistent Japanese anemones

and the final lavender heads.

The lavender is now trimmed - not cutting back into the old wood as that would result in die back or even death of the plant.

The last pear is on the tree and out of reach. It will fall and feed the rabbits.

When I look on facebook or the like and see old friends and cousins in New Zealand welcoming Spring, and then look out at the approaching darkness (it is only 3 pm!), put on another fleece and argue with R about having the heating on, I watch a large flock of fieldfares, winter visitors, fly over and dream of spring and its promise. Meanwhile we just have to get on with elections and Christmas and New Year and so on and so on. 

SEARCHING FOR COLOUR

At this time of year colour is at a premium and often more subtle that in the heyday of summer. The garden subsides into evergreen shades of grey and green with occasional bursts from a late dahlia or fruit.

Hydrangeas, those that have not gone brown yet, carry on but will need the heads removed soon, then be cut back to a good bud later. 

The pond is almost devoid of plant life with animal life buried in the mud for much of the winter waiting for warmer times. I really should wade in a hack back the big water lily - but the water is now a touch chilly.

The banking in front of the house exhibits the multiple green/grey tones well, lifted by a late flowering potentilla.

 And I mentioned fruit - any the the blackbirds, thrushes, redwing and fieldfares have not eaten - still are adding high points.

The trees in the garden are now giving colour, hanky tree below  and azalea to the right. Below the first cherry colour is coming and standing out when (occasionally) there is a blue sky.
In the case of the cherry it is only the branch at the top of the tree so far - I do not know why this should be.
Soon it will be time to get out the blower and clear the paths and grass.

And in the far garden the trunks of the white birches are looking good though I think one has had a squirrel or deer chewing at its bark.

Now, I mentioned that we had been to Scotland. So here is a little Threave Gardens autumn colour.

So, as the Halloween industry counts its profits and prepares for Christmas we move on into November and the year begins to wind down.