YELLOW DAYS

 

So an update on Valerie the celery. She has a root to the bottom of the vase but it will be some time before we are crunching her stems. Perhaps a salad mix with apple?

Cold and wet and rainy but so what is new? I suspect when the swallows come they will head back south.

One day sun and springlike the next wet cold and windy.

The pink camellia by the shed has a white sport - one branch only. 

You cannot see it on this pic as I have cut them off and put them in a vase.

And everything is coming up blossom, especially the cherries - the Shirotae first then in a week or so the Great White.

And yellow everywhere - the cytisus, daffs and primroses.

To the story of the chippings - I got two more big sacks delivered and the gardener has put these on paths but still not enough! Time to give it a rest - anyway I told R that they had delivered green slate not blue and was somewhat berated until she saw them and said she preferred the green.

Moving one barrow load of manure at a time - enough for my back/hip whatever. 

Then raked out more weed from the pond - no spawn this year yet. I blame that heron - he/she has eaten the lot I think.

The fatsia seems to have flowered all winter and is still at it.

And I shall finish with a modest little plant - the golden saxifrage which flourishes by the stream.

JUST A LITTLE LOVAGE

Changes things . .  (Decca F.12553)

So R decided the lovage comes out and I plant a Hydrangea Annabelle in its place - one I have grown from a cutting. 

The lovage was a thug, roots the thickness of small branches and I had to divide it into six with a spade before any luck. It filled a wheelbarrow and that was after cutting it back.

Once out not much soil remaining so I will have to address that before planting.

I have taken two pieces and dug them into rough grass up from the pond. The rest has been dumped in a corner and will survive, or not.

Replanted the nearby crambe and added some wallflowers.

We went to the Lowick Show, The Li''le Royal, back after Covid and one tent I love is the one with the veg and children's concoctions -

beetroot

Mmm, not sure what this animal is.

Then J and D had given us one of their courgettes but we are not sure what sort of duck it is.

We have had a dismal crop of Bramleys, perhaps the frost got the blossom in the spring but we do have some damsons that need picking.

We are still harvesting sweet peas though the stem length is getting less as we move into autumn. Of course they have not been grown a la TV with tendril removal etc - just shoved at the bottom of some sticks and fed and watered. They are not the ones I grew from the autumn just bought in a shop - much easier.

Must mow the lawn - it is pouring - ah! well.

Autumn is decay? Here the cut trunk is already being consumed by fungi - 38 rings I think.

It is the time of the Japanese Anemones, they do tend to spread so I bunged these where that does not matter.

When we think of corvids there are crows and rooks and ravens and even a though but here are two thieves eating our fallen plums - jay and magpie.

We have tawny owls next door and barn owls at the farm -

WAILING IN THE NIGHT

Had I not been awake I would have missed it.

Outside the window a baby was keening.

I was in bed, under the blankets reading by a flickering torch.

And it was after midnight.        

     

    But there it was again.

I crept to my window, gently parted the curtains.

A waning moon lit the roof of the porch.

Three feet away, open mouthed and wailing

sat the baby, 

    but not a baby. 

A barn owl swivelled its head,

    stared at me,

 

blinkless, 

ignored me, 

keened again.

Had I not been awake I would have missed it.

OH DEER! (OH DEAR!)

 

So the house martins have abandoned us - wait, what is that at the gable top - 

We were sitting out, R my sister and her hubby when suddenly we saw a bird fly up to the gable above us.

No swallows but we have house martins - about time.

And a roe stag has taken up residence in the wood reclining on the top path. Probably glad I mowed it!

2022 is a goosegrass year - everywhere cleavers, sticky stems, in my pockets, in my pockets, in my . . 

Anyway, to the garden. Most of the soft fruit already eaten by the blackbirds and thrushes, managed to salvage a few blackcurrants and goosegogs. There are a few plums and damsons and the greengage has fruit.

What is that I was asked. That is Clematis New Love, I think, bought many years ago from Muncaster Castle when they has a garden centre.

Elsewhere the anthemis is doing well, I have put in the erigeron P gave us, the rue is eight feet tall, the lilium regale are out and, of course there are roses.

I do go on about white in the garden but it sets off so much else like this white lavender and a campanula creeping in at the top right. We have other whites like the roses and off-whites like the astrantias and veronica.

Sometimes there are surprising successes - the Geranium Ann Folkard has gone rampant.

And all is not just colour but form and shape - alliums in flower and seedbeds like the purple sensation and the camassias.

Now the buddleias are all out but there arena flying flowers on them - where are the butterflies? We just have a few whites, the odd brown and speckled wood so far, fingers crossed.

Today is Thursday and not very hot here but they predict a heatwave - we wait.

THE BEST TIME OF THE YEAR

 So, there I was going to the new veg beds, newly surrounded by chicken wire fencing and about to sow some Sweet Williams and wallflowers for next year when there was a disturbance and a large rabbit jumped the fence and scurried away. Where I had planted some broccoli there was a big hole and no plants!

That is all I need - leaping rabbits. I mean sheep and deer are bad enough but - 

I love this time of year, May and June, the birds still singing, everything growing, light and shade though this photo is a bit of a cheek as it is of the Green Lane at Orcop Hill in Herefordshire!

It is Sunday and I look up the garden from an upstairs window. There are four rabbits on the lawn! Two adult, two smaller and they are eating the grass. Later I walk down to the compost heaps to empty the kitchen waste bin and then search for a rabbit hole. Nothing! As R says they are coming in from all sides to dine on our luxurious plants.

So to flowers, flowers and a few favourites -

This is one called The Poet's Wife and given to us by our children.

Of course, having a wild garden (jungle) we have wild flowers too - The simple meadow buttercup, foxglove and green alakanet.

Do not talk about veg beds - no germination of carrots or parsnips, some signs of beans, chomping slugs despite nematodes though first signs of potatoes albeit put in late. We have let the asparagus go, there are signs that french beans are appearing and fruit is on some of the fruit trees. The currants look good but they will also look good to the blackbirds.

Sometimes it is not colour and contrast that catches the eye, shape and design can too like the Allium Christophii.

At the moment I am reading Time Song by Julia Blackburn about the lost world of Doggerland in the North Sea. It makes one realise that everything in the garden is so transient as is life in general. It has been suggested that we are heading for a new Extinction like with the dinosaurs (though they fly around the trees today - birds) but this one is caused by a plague called humanity. Actually a dinosaur is still pecking on our glass doors.

Cheer up lad, the Rambling Rector rose is flowering in the old ash tree and has survived the winter storms.

So I leave you with rabbits, again - a small one having breakfast by the pond.

It is only when the wind gets up that you realise what you have forgotten to stake so job to do.

WILDLIFE AND BLOSSOM

Newts in the pond, peacock and Brimstone butterflies, the pheasant still pecking the window though he has also taken to nipping off the flower heads on the Madame Lefebre tulips so I have put them up on a table.

Very dry, today Friday 20.5C and watering the pots.

Monday and 12C, rain.

Thursday and some light snow flurries. Ah! British weather.

Today is Friday again and I am sitting by the garden doors when a stoat with a baby rabbit in its mouth strolls past and up into the wood. Probably storing it. Then it wanders back ignoring me - probably bit big for prey - probably back to the rabbit hole for more.

C and G came to see the garden and C saw our tree creeper which pleased R. Heron on the pond this morning and the fox has been back.

But we are now into blossom weather, the Prunus Shirotae is splendid.

Elsewhere we have camellias out, white honesty on the way down to the pond, the damsons are almost flowering as is the greengage and the Victoria plum is loaded with flowers.

There are swathes of primroses at the wood margin and fritillaries on the banking.

S the gardener has been and the surrounds for the veg beds are completed. I have started to dig and top dress the soil. He has cleared the last of fallen tree stuff from the woodland path but we now have yet another bonfire to try and light.

Having spouted about wildlife earlier the only thing I managed to photo was the cock blackbird enjoying the sun.

I keep feeding the birds and seem to go through a lot of seed - we must have very fat birds here - it is a wonder they can fly.

So let me finish with a few flower pictures -

This is Tom Jackson's flowering currant at the back of the house - we bought the place from him sixteen years ago!

And so to a repeated view from the house up the garden, no straight lines here if I can help it.

All right, not quite done - here is our moorhen on the pond.