THE YEAR OF THE RAT

Sunday - there is a new feeling in the air - the birds are beginning to sing - Robin, blackbird and our first song thrush of the year. Oh, and the collared doves drone and on and on ....

It is the year of the rat, (Donald Rat, Vladimir Rat, Li Rat, Boris Rat), coronavirus is about to wipe us all out and the little ones will take over.

Here is our  resident ratty by the pond just hanging around, waiting.

It is also the time of the Great British Birdwatch, done, small birds winning until a load of rooks arrived.

When it is not foggy or wet and raining it is (a bit) sunny in the garden. There are snowdrops everywhere and the pink viburnum and the winter flowering honeysuckle are pouring out scent.

The veg beds are almost done - I know the raspberries in the foreground are a bit feeble but I have given them one more year.

Monday and out again putting extra composting manure on the roses. They need a bit of help after being moved before the new extension was built.
The grass is sodden, really sodden and turns to liquid mud if walked upon - so better stay off it. And to help that I need to redo many of the chipping paths - again!

All in all the weather is mild but we have had the odd frost.

I thought we might have lost our crambe but on closer inspection it is still there next to the cardoon.

So it is Friday 31st January 2020, the end of dry January, veganuary, the sky is weeping (it is raining ++), my back hurts, I have had two Weetabix for breakfast, my gardener is not coming after all and, incidentally, the UK is carefully shooting itself in the foot.

We will be out of the EU tonight, but not out of the EU rules for at least the rest of the year. 

The world shambles that is politics goes on, the lawns are waterlogged and the long grass still needs strimming. 

I will have a nice cup of tea, coffee with friends this morning and publish this blog.

R has still not decided on whether to get an Irish passport.

Dark days yet to come - South towards us from Gummers How on a dismal morning. Cheer up lad, it could be worse, couldn't it? 😕

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?

LOOKING CLOSER

I begin this blog on February 16th - we have been in our house for 12 years. Crocuses are out, bumblebees in the garden and this after noon a Peregrine falcon flew over heading east.

It is mild today - 11C.

We have chard for supper with some rather strange veggie sausages. I hope they taste better than the Quorn mince we tried in a Shepherd's Pie (?Greengrocer's Pie)(suggestions on a postcard please.)

When you think there is nothing in the garden a good look is worth it.

Frond by the pond -

- bark on the poplar.

catkins on hazel, moss on the ground.

The big sycamore's reflection in the pond - no frogspawn yet but having had the video camera in the very bottom corner where the stream leaves the garden we have found the bathing site for many birds - tits, finches, sparrows, blackbirds, and even rabbits. 




This place is a highway for pheasants and moorhen. (or is it moorhens?) In fact the pheasants seem to go in for communal bathing!

R did much of the hard work cutting back the buddleia along the banking and carting it away to the ever growing non flammable bonfire. It looks a bit stumpy now but later in the year it will be covered in brightly coloured butterflies. 

I am enjoying the continuing mild weather despite Brexit but feel that there is something nasty, if not in the woodshed, then at least in the near future. 
It is interesting if tedious to watch our political parties with the knives out - reminds me of when I played Julius Caesar at school - Et Tu Boris?

Broccoli for supper and freezer after 1 minute blanching in boiling water.

And in some forgotten corner of some  garden flower bed lurks Doc - behind the thyme (as usual) - with snowdrops in the background.

Having said that the snowdrops are just beginning to go over after four weeks of glory.

But there is hope - the first leaves are coming on the elder by the path to the pond and a euphorbia in flower higher up.

It is Saturday, temperature reached 15.5C yesterday and is warm today. There are two pairs of mallard on the pond and, looking out of the bathroom window at the back banking, I watched a rabbit collecting dry grass for bedding and taking it down a new burrow. The world is on the move.

WINTER WHIMPERS ON

The weather does not let up - I am glad I am not one of our builders. From the kitchen door, one minute it is snowing and the next we are buried in fog.

All I can do is chop back a bit here, prune a bit there and wait. The plastic heron keeps a lonely vigil by the frozen pond and moorhens swim when they can if the surface is free of ice - and the sarcococcus by the back door continues to pour out its scent.

Some plants take on a new lease of life with the snow. This particularly applies to those with variegated foliage.

And when there is not much to look at then it pays to look closely -

Dead wood mined by many mandibles,

Dead grass not yet cut back,

The red stems of the maple against a dark hedge or even a single leaf, a camellia I think, shed onto the path below the house. When all one has  are promises - daffodils stopped by the cold, flowering currant buds unopened, and there comes a time when there are just too many photographs of snowdrops it is tough to blog.

So one has to resort to pictures of septic tank tops - of course to show where the buddleia was pruned and the new mixed bed, and another view illustrating the chaos of building on.

Then I can show you a big clump of buddleia not yet cut back and the bonfire upon which it will be thrown.

None of this is exciting but anything is better that the total catastrophe of Brexit - Oh! I told myself I wouldn't mention it. 
So as the country of Empire retreats into the past of oblivion, away from the modern world and we retreat up our own small niche, I think of more important things like what should I use all the mowdywarp soil for. I wonder if it is full of weed seeds and should I not, therefore, shove it on the veg beds?

The weather has finally warmed a few degrees - so it is raining. And there is no way I am going to mention cricket in the West Indies. (Could mention the Rugby in Eire though.)

And it is a sad time for my friend N as his friend Brother Columba has passed on.

Let is dream of the spring - 

SUSPENDED ANIMATION

Well, not really but with the festive 😟 season ahead gardening takes second place.
The garden is not completely asleep, there are some flowers -

We live up a field, up a track and someone left a non biodegradable black plastic bag of dog poo beside the track - in a field full of sheep droppings next to a paddock full of horse manure. So why wrap it, get a stick and flick it if you must or take it home and put it in the bin. 🤔🙄
Actually it was only thirty yards from our heap of garden manure! Mind boggles.

Back to the garden - I know it is only December but some daffodils think otherwise - 

The raft is still a raft as we wait for steel beams and the timber frame.

The leaf is submerged in the water providing us with a reflection in an infinity pool two inches deep (5cm for the rest of the EU) (Yes we are still members, for now. The whole thing is a farce brought about by a small number of Conservatives putting pressure on David Cameron before an election.)

Anyway. one thing we do have at this time of year are spectacular skies over the bay.

Down in the veg beds the ghost of fleece has still stopped the imminent death of sweet peas but the other beds are well composted in preparation for next year. I will give them another dose in the spring.

It is Friday and the timber frame has begun to go up - now I can picture our downstairs room. 
Went to a specialist in Preston - "Don't do any heavy lifting" - like manure, paving stones or the sit on mower when I get it stuck in the stream? The old body is a bit moth-eaten.

Very cold today (for us) - not above 2C and ice not gone on pond, frost in the shade. Forecast snow tomorrow morning then warmer with gales and MORE rain.

But no snow just RAIN.


To finish this week a load of pigeons and their hunter in the night -