PONDY STUFF

This is then path down to the pond lined on either side by self sown wild garlic or ramsons. I am now glad we have a hand rail!

In the pond the water crowfoot, a white buttercup that has to be

 

carefully hoicked out before it takes over, and bogbean are flowering.

Now for a little story - last year my good and generous friend P game me a chunk of gunnera and it produced leaves. However this year so far there was no sign of it - until today - and you can see the first leaf by the meadowsweet and golden saxifrage alongside the ditch stream.

Down by this hedge where the pond stuff grows R planted a small stunted eucalyptus fifteen years ago - and it has grown!

Not far away is an amelanchier also known as serviceberry, sarviceberry, sarvis, Juneberry, saskatoon, sugarplum and shadbush just for a few.

 

Anyway back to the pond which attracts many visitors from a plastic egret to a pair of wandering pheasants.

In the pond itself the usual plants are emerging - flowering rush, water lilies, bog bean, irises and so on and though we had a lot of frogspawn I am still to see some tadpoles but they may be hidden under the pondweed. I have seen large water beetles, newts and water boatmen and whirligigs on the surface. 

We seem to have lost our moorhens and the mallard have also forsaken us this year. A heron has arrived for breakfast but whether I can blame him for the shortage of taddies who knows? The kingcups or marsh marigold light up the darkness between the pond and the stream (ditch).

So drought over, May gosling to you all and it is raining, at last. I got the mower stuck again - it slid off the path and into a bush, had to get the big son to help me lift it out before he goes to Grand Canaria, (and sun).

The Muncaster bluebells will have to be missed this year but Carstramon Wood here we come.

Muncaster is well worth a visit and details are on their website - https://www.muncaster.co.uk/castle-gardens/gardens/bluebellheaven.

And there is a cafe and rhododendrons and birds and heron feeding etc.

On the banking above the pond the shrubs are flowering - Viburnum plaicatum Mariesii, lilac and the yellow tree peony. The latter is a cutting from my late mother's tree and many of the family have it now.

Now I have to go out and, after mending the wheelbarrow, remove the clematis armandii that has decided to grow along the washing line.

MORE NEWS FROM A SMALL GARDEN

The sun is out and thought cold, a present from the Arctic, the garden bursting with growth.

Then, Tuesday, it is hailing, no snowing, no the sun is out again! It is nearly May!
The asparagus is through but not yet ready to be eaten.

Squirrel trap worked last night and caught a Wood pigeon. It had gone in for the peanuts. I put up another picture of the cock bullfinch as he is such a colourful bird.

R and I went to Muncaster Castle as I mentioned in the last blog. Not only were the bluebells splendid but 

rhododendrons too.

In amongst the bluebells were broom shrubs laden with golden flowers - not quite as buttery scented as the gorse but, at least, not spiny.

Back home I have finished tidying the cutting bed and the first gladioli are through.

In the strawberry bed, as well as many places elsewhere in the garden damson suckers are proving to be a nuisance. Like its relation, the blackthorn, it does this readily.

I weed on amongst the colours of mid spring.

Though we do have a broom in the garden it is not yet in flower unlike the Genista or Lydian Broom or Dyer's Greenweed. It has got too bug and will need pruning after flowering - but gently as too hard pruning of brooms can kill them off.

 This is the gingery scented rhododendron we bought near Matlock some years ago. Not large but special. The tree to the left is a greengage.

The blossom on the left is Conference Pear. It still looks a bit tired but I keep feeding it and hoping. So far so good.

With the cold over the last two days I look nervously at the plum and damsons. The former seems to have set fruit, not sure about the other.

Big water beetles in the pond - the trouble is the larvae eat the tadpoles.
Looks like I may be making another pond at the far end of the top garden - dig out the soil and leave a hole - which has filled up with water.

Never thought I would not mind a bit of rain - but there you are - getting bit too dry.

OF BIRDS AND PREDATORS

Usual - that is what R's grandmother wrote almost every day in her diary! Mowing, weeding, dead heading etc.

I have been up by the wall at the far end of the garden digging out the soil under the trees where they hang over from next door, The soil/leaf mould mixture is over a foot deep and will be a great asset to the garden.

Meanwhile back at the bird feeders - it is no wonder I catch squirrels only infrequently as I have just watched great tits entering the trap and leaving with whole peanuts! To other birds -

Robin

Greater spotted woodpecker

Goldfinches

and best of all? Cock bullfinch. On my way out this morning came across the cock pheasant, well a cock pheasant, hopping along on one leg, the other injured - cat? They are definitely the main predator on the garden and at some time or another all of these birds have been victims. One problem is that the cats have no natural predator controlling their numbers. (Sorry Scottie.)

Of course grey squirrels and stoats take eggs and chicks as will other birds - woodpeckers, sparrow hawk etc. 

There has been a minor flap over sickly osprey chicks that the naturalists left to their fate - big outcry - poor little chicks - need to be rescued. But that is the whole point - the natural order of things, predators at the top of the food chain, seeds and insects at the bottom. 

Unfortunately we have got rid of wolves and lynxes and bears and instead of replacing them as natural predators we have distorted the ecosystem - too many people - perhaps a good cull of mankind might be the answer - whoops - dangerous territory.

To move on - (and about time too) - R showed me tadpoles in the pond - they must have been hiding in the weed - I have hoicked a load of crowfoot out to give some clear water, leaving at the side sonny creepies can slither back into the water.

Walking the garden with friends today we put a a small jack snipe - have seen the odd one before in the stream bottom - still a nice surprise.
At the rhubarb patch I was suddenly assailed by a strong sweet gingery scent and realised it was coming from the rhododendron on the banking thirty yards away.


R and I went to Abi and Tom's nursery at Halecat, Witherslack and they have done an amazing job. The trouble is one never leaves without spending something - bought a blue geranium and this unusual white primula.

This morning I have read that there may be a water shortage in the UK after a dry winter - where? Lawn still boggy in places etc etc though the stream has partly dried up. Anyway we have borehole of our own. 

Got up this morning and looked out of the bedroom window up the garden and a swallow zoomed down in front of me from the nest at the top of the gable. I know one swallow doesn't make a summer - but a spring?

The sun on the front of the house this morning was a treat but we have been warned winter is coming back in the next few days - blossom beware.

Watching M. Don on Gardeners' World there was a bit on Charles Dowding and his Natural No-dig way he uses in his market garden. He wrote a very interesting book - Organic Gardening which my son C gave me in 2007 - ISBN 978 1 903998 91 5. (If you have a garden or are into that sort of thing (or have a bad back)).

Went to Muncaster Castle today to see the bluebells - 2 weeks early and stunning.

More Muncaster pics in next blog.

MUNCASTER, HOLKER HALL AND SPELT BREAD RECIPE

Three pics of Muncaster Castle gardens - two of the bluebells and one of the view over the shrubs to Scafell.

Back to earth after such heavenly gardening delights - The Conference pear and to some extent the Bramley apple have, I think, canker, Nectria galligena and dead twigs coated in lichen.

Enough - I am scratched to bits by brambles - still clearing the jungle in the far corner. Just as I was about to start the wheelbarrow had a puncture so had to wrestle with a new inner tube and all that.

I could start a forest with the tree seedlings in the garden - mainly ash and the dreaded sycamore.

Whilst we were at Harlow Carrr, the RHS gardens, the other day we bought 2 good sized earthenware pots (2 for the price of one so R could not resist the offer)(but they were good value) so I have crocked the bottoms and filled them with compost. Now we just need something to go in them. (Saw same offer at Beetham, same price, yesterday).

R decided she would read a Harlan Coben paperback I had just finished but gave up when a woman was shot in the knees - not for R - Miss Read come back, all is forgiven. (Actually my knees are pretty shot at.)

Garden getting dry, the big yellow scabious collapsed and had to be watered. All the pots need regular attention but the weather girl on the BBC says it will piddle down on Tuesday and Wednesday - so what's new?

We have been to Holker Hall gardens - we can get in free as we are both members of the RHS.
The bedding in the central beds was a delight - 
forgetmenots, pink and white tulips. And the wild ramsons (garlic), despite the pong, was in wonderful carpets by the ha-ha and the great lime trees.







We do not have tree sparrows in the house martin nest this year - we have house sparrows. I can see them flying up to it past our  bedroom window as I sup my morning cuppa.

Last autumn my daughter gave me a paper bag full of calendula seeds and I have been travelling the garden looking for bare patches sowing them - we will see. I have also found a jam jar full of poppy seed I collected for cooking but have spread some of that about as well.

The aquilegias that self sow (Granny's Bonnets) are out as are the yellow azaleas, first oriental poppies and wall flowers.
The abutilon has survived the winter and a plague of whitefly and is now out on the table on the paving, fed and tidied.

Come Wednesday morning, it has rained last night, not a lot but I liked it.

As the house martins are trying to build outside the kitchen window and we remember a grey squirrel robbing a previous nest the squirrel trap has been out again - one caught, more to go.

The garden from the west.

Gardening, in fact anything to get away from this stupid referendum - only a distraction from the real politics going on (perhaps that is politics?) - both sides unable to admit the other has anything worth saying - I hope when all is over we can get on with being part of Europe again and business can move ahead knowing where it stands.

Off to the kitchen where I have just baked a loaf of spelt bread - half wholemeal, half white, very easy -

250g white spelt flour
250g wholemeal spelt flour
1/2 teaspoon dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
300ml warm water

Mix it all together and then knead for a good 5 minutes, slap in a well oiled tin and leave to rise somewhere warm - about 60-90 minutes.
Bake at 200C - 25-30 minutes in our Aga.
Eat with melted butter (or marmalade)(or marmite)(or syrup).

LINNETS AND THE PLAGUE IS BACK

Sunday and I see the first swallow - at  a farm nearby. Then I look out of my window and there are a pair of linnets on the paving - pretty little brown birds with a hint of pink. Tree sparrows are in the house martin nest again.

Rabbits - I came home to find a dead young kitten (name for a baby rabbit)(so not a cat) by my car and on the way to church on Saturday to fill the place with daffodils and flowering currant we came across a rabbit with myxomatosis.

It was introduced to Australia in about 1950, I think, as a way of controlling the rabbit population. The disease is nasty and they usually die within a couple of weeks. 

It seems to go in cycles - population boom (like now), outbreak of disease, recovery and so on.

 R and I went to Sizergh Castle to look at the gardens and the berberis darwinii was spectacular - right. The fritillary meadow was good too though can hardly compete with Magdalen Meadows in Oxford.

R has just deadheaded the daffs whilst I messed about in threshed sowing sweet peas, courgettes, ammi and some beetroot. I use beetroot boltardy - the name suggests it is resistant to bolting so . . 

The pond is consistently cloudy from the ducks feeding and I think we are getting a build up of algae again. For the moment there is no sign of the liner on the surface and the water lily-pads are beginning to show.

And so to tulips - here are some flowering at the moment. Most are not new plantings (well from the autumn) but plants that are left in the ground and come up year on year. I particularly like the red ones, R loves orange. Pink is not my favourite colour and we still have a few almost black ones - Queen of the Night - given to me by Puck.

 The wallflowers in the old ceramic sink are flowering and pushing out their scent and, by the pot of lilies the small horse chestnut seedling I dug up last year is alive and sprouting.

And then their are the cherries - Shirotae and Tai-haku - covered in blossom - always spectacular at this time of year. This is the prunus Shirotae.

I have taken out the willows stuck in the far part of the garden. Many are fifteen feet high now but thin enough to cut with a pair of loppers.

Tuesday and when I got up (late) I could see the blue carpet up in the trees that are wild bluebells. These are at Muncaster Castle which we will visit in the next ten days. The show there is fantastic.