OLD NEWS AND NEWT NEWS

The plastic heron has faded so much we have a Great White Egret by the pond.

The sun is shining, I am in my study writing this and R is upstairs on Zoom doing Yoga!

Yesterday R noticed we have life in the pond, apart from pond skaters, tadpoles, water beetles and whirligigs - we have newts, I think they are Palmate newts.

Every day I walk down the garden - is that a first potato sprout, a bean shoot, have the carrots, cauliflowers, broccoli, spinach germinated? It is too early for the slow parsnips - reluctant vegetables.
We are full of asparagus, it is growing faster than we can eat it - well almost. The taste of freshly cut asparagus leaves the supermarket stuff in its wake - glorious - one of the better things I put in the garden.
The ammi in the shed have outstripped the cosmos and are 18" tall, will need putting out soon despite it only being April. We have courgette seedlings there too.
I am hoeing away to keep weeds down - one weed that has become particularly annoying is ivy - up trees, along the ground, everywhere. At least its is not thorny like the brambles.

One plant that is suffering with the drought, despite watering, is the rhubarb. It may be time to pull it all, feed and water it, and let it regrow.

Rain is forecast for the week - will believe it when it happens. 
R got up this morning (Saturday) at some unearthly hour and went up the garden and recorded the dawn chorus. I slept through it.

Sunday and overcast and cooler. We have ducklings, ten small mallards on the pond this morning.
A load of logs for the wood burner being delivered - They will have to be stacked in the new log shed. 😒 Then we had a few, and I mean a few drops of rain and we covered the heap and retired quickly for a cup of tea.

We also have a new Grandson born in Oxford on Friday, no name yet. 

Cannot stay out of the garden with the camera so here are a few flowers -

 Kingcup

Orange Welsh Poppy

 Euphorbia

Tulip

Camellia

Tree peony 

Yellow tree peony

Poppy 

 Quince

Azalea

Rhododendron

Osteospermum

And one of R's favourites - 

Back to shifting logs.

Finally done Monday morning, Grey wagtail on the roof, wood pigeons everywhere - where is the Peregrine falcon when you want it?

The bluebells are in full flow - about ten days early I think.

Every day we walk, enjoy the view 20 miles over Morecambe Bay and then we find a tragedy - a juvenile song thrush, I think, perhaps hit by a rare car. I lift it from the road and place it on the verge.

So,  out cutting off suckers from the damsons - all over the place - and unwanted sycamore and ash plantlets.

By Thursday we have had rain and it is raining. The gatepost has rotted and I have had to cobble it shut until it can be repaired. 

I now have video of our ducklings - 

Tomorrow, May 1st is May Gosling (look it up on t'internet) and We wish Lauren a happy birthday. 😀

SEVERAL POINTS OF VIEW (AND ASPARAGUS)

It is Monday morning and the sun is beating down from a blue sky, a strong wind is rushing away to the west dragging ragged rooks over the trees.
We are sitting in a breezeless corner at the front of the house, there are no contrails in the sky, cannot hear the few vehicles on the main road. 
I am wearing my moth-eaten straw hat to protect my bald patch and the tops of my ears.
We can see to Heysham twenty miles away and beyond down the Lancashire coast. The light is dancing in the bay.
We have walked the garden - a new horse chestnut in the wood, the pink tree peony is out as is the yellow one - grown from a cutting of my mother's plant, a woodpecker jackhammers a tree.
  The greengage and plum blossom are all but over.
  Sycamore seedlings are taking over the wood, vying with wild garlic.
  Yesterday our son R turned up to sit outside the extension, safe distancing, to chat and bemoan the fact that he was in his new house alone surrounded by building work.
  The garden is wrapped in birdsong, not the chatter of martins and swallows, yet, but we have seen three not far away.
With wrens, robins, both thrushes and blackbirds the garden is not a quiet place, especially if the ducks quack and the pheasants squawk.
 
   The ash trees are in flower and there is much young leaf colour - the sycamore, so drab in the autumn, so bright now.
 

 
But the blast of white honesty on the way down to the pond is wonderful.

With the virus the veg beds have had a lot of attention and look better than they have for years.

Sometimes I go to the far end of the garden by a dry stone wall covered in moss and sit on a box looking back up the garden. 

There are three places to sit by the house - depending on where the sun is and from where the wind is coming. All photos taken in the early morning so as the sun goes around so do we.

There are other such places apart from by the house such as an old beam in the top wood. This is a place to escape.

In there early days of the garden we had to have a tree cut down because of honey fungus. The trunk was made into a seat but it is now so rotten that is not practical - anyway the last time I sat on it I found that red ants had made it their home.

Down by the pond is a small area of decking and, yes, another seat with a view up the garden.

We have harvested our first asparagus, streamed and eaten with melted butter!

VIRAL GARDENING

We are so lucky to have a large garden inn this time of isolation.

We may be in a drought situation soon but the good weather does make self isolation easier. We do our daily walk, chivvied out by the task mistress, and today we stood and watched a sparrow hawk watching us from ten feet away sitting on a wall.

Talking birds a blue tit landed on the top vane of our windmill, it was motionless, but the impetus of its almost weightless body started it rotating and suddenly the tit found itself heading for the ground. It flew up to the peanut feeder obviously startled.
I have decided to have a go at some of the brambles up near the wood but it will mean digging them out. A job for gloves I think.

No sign of ducklings yet. She is still sitting. 
Here are the mallard on the pond at night, the drake attending to duck who has nest full of eggs up the banking at the back. She comes down in the dark to feed and preen

and here she is heading back to the nest.

Tuesday, at least I think it is Tuesday, I get up and look out of the window. There is a rabbit on the banking, a cock pheasant calls with a voice like a football rattle and a jay flies past in a muscular, crow sort of way.
There must be a pheasant nest somewhere but very well hidden.

The asparagus bed is weeded, my back aches and knees are creaking but that does not stop the 2 mile walk before coffee.

The damsons are in full blossom but there was a frost last night so we pray it has not damaged the crop. We had enough with the pocket plum last year.

Up near the wood there is a rhododendron we bought at a garden near Matlock some years ago and it is gloriously scented - sort of gingery - cannot remember the name, cannot remember when we went to Matlock, cannot remember at which garden we were when we bought it, just that the owner had flown in Vulcan bombers with my brother-in-law.

The small bed by the back door (the one at the side) is looking good with self sown pink and white honesty,  tulips and the Magnolia stellata in full flower. The round mound is a sarcococcus placed by the door we use for its winter scent.

Looking up past the pruned Magnolia grandiflora to the pieris (that R does not like) is the small slate house was made for us by my late brother-in-law Roy and now is is nor concealed. Self sown forget-me-nots and primroses grow by the path (which reminds me R has asked me to water the primroses further on by the wood so they thrive and can be divided and spread everywhere.


Time for a break, a cup of tea and some Roy Orbison.

Wednesday and first swallow seen, orange tip butterflies in the garden (the garlic mustard (Jack-by-the-hedge)) in flower, their host plant, and in the field at the back a male jackdaw finding titbits and giving them to his partner.

The quag gets worse and I wonder if a tree root has got into the septic tank soak-away pipe so it is leaking - not smelly though.

The sun still shines relentlessly and a light frost again last night. Weeding to do etc etc. The herbs in the back bed coming on nicely - sweet cicely to the left (good with fish), apple mint centre and lovage, another lemony fish herb far right.

The plum, right,  and greengage, left, are flowering well - however the greengage is at the northern limit of its range? So far we have only had the odd fruit - keep hoping.

And forget-me-nots are self sown all over the place -

Started digging ditch to drain new spring and borrowed waders from G. to get into (and probably fall over in) pond (unless I can get Sam the gardener to do it)(not fall over).