MAY LEAVES IN MARCH

The may has leaves down at sea level, daffodils are flowering and birds are nest building.
We are at a little over 54 degrees north here - the same latitude as Goose bay in Newfoundland, Lake Winnipeg and Edmonton in Canada, The Kamchatka peninsula, Lake Baykal in Siberia and only a little further south than Moscow.
Let me hear three cheers for the Gulf Stream!

R has weeded the cutting bed and tidied up the contents including the alstromerias. They are a wonderful cut flower lasting two to three weeks - worth every penny.

R is not just a great weeder but a good pruner as shown here where she assassinated the buddleia by the kitchen.

The two photos above how one of the stick heaps and my wonderful carrier - very simple, an oblong of canvas with handles at each end. Arrange the sticks in a line across it and when full just pull the handles together carrying the contents to the bonfire.

Yesterday, after gardening, we sat on one of our seats by the house and drank a mug of tea (one each, not the same one) whilst feeling the warmth of the sun on our faces. This is the first decent cuppa in the garden this year. It made us feel much better.             In the garden one of the bird boxes had lost its roof so it was important to repair this so it could be used. Alas I had no wood so it now has an off cut of linoleum nailed in place. Anyway the birds won't notice.

Now to the exciting stuff - here is my barrow full of muck by the heap.

And here is the source of much joy in our garden - I know it looks a bit mucky but you would too if you had been rolling in the muddy grass.

I am now about to go out again and do something (or other) - like sit and watch the frogs, the birds, the squirrel, the world go by.

And I must ring the mower people again as they have not year collected and serviced the machines - the grass is growing (it has been all winter) and regular cutting will start early this year.

And I must ring the boiler man and I must ring the fruit trees with grease bands and I must, and I must, and I must - but not quite yet. D is coming for some Apple (Mac) help and I am probably going to fail to give it to him.

Been to the gym this morning - time for a nap.

Before more gardening?

AND I am definitely not going to mention the Russian chappie - he might cut off our gas supply.

(Actually we, personally, do not use gas so . . . . . . . . . PUTI........!)

NEW LIFE, NEW DEATH

It is officially spring. There is snow on the mountains and a chill in the air. The house stands between its bare trees gazing out over the bay whilst in the garden new life stirs.

Yet, life that is over leaves remains that have to be disposed of - by insects, woodlice and especially fungi.

King Alfred's Cakes emerge from fallen ash branches resembling potatoes forgotten in the Aga range - charred and black. But these globes, though firm, are spongy.
Its latin name is Daldinia concentrica and is also known as cramp balls or coal fungus. It is inedible and definitely does not look appetising. (though, I suppose, it could resemble Bury black pudding.)
I think I will give them a miss.

The old seat made from a fallen trunk of an ash tree is sporting bracket fungi.
They are fascinating whether in large clumps or singly.

Looking at them closely their colours, albeit shades of brown and grey are beautiful. In some ways they remind me of an oyster shell - though no pearl, no lovely oyster inside.

In the second image there are two different kinds together.

These are not the only clumps in the garden - another speaks of new life and is heaped up so much in the pond it is sticking out of the surface.
I mean the frogspawn.
Every time I approach the pond there is a great kerfuffle as the frogs bury themselves in the mud at the bottom or dive under the water cress.
They are fascinating creatures - and so far no heron has arrived.

The pond is fed from both the stream and the ditch below the hedge where the hazel catkins are shedding pollen like dust on the breeze for the small red flowers to catch.

Even in the wood where the ground is carpeted in leaf and twig litter promise is erupting. These small green leaves are the first signs of the wild bluebell and foretell the coming of the carpet of blue later in the year. Every year they spread, and are spread, and the sea of blue grows wider.

I am sitting here bathed in music - John Denver is singing Annie's song and the Carpenters have just finished Solitaire (written by Neil Sedaka.) Whoops! Change of style - Brook Benton and Kiddio now.

This has nothing to do with gardening.
In fact most of today's blog is about observation - just seeing and experiencing the changes that happen with the seasons, the moving on of SAD as the sun comes up and general feeling of well-being with spring.

R and I went out onto a nearby hill called Birkrigg this afternoon and sat in the sunshine looking at the 360 degree view - from the Irish Sea clockwise to the Lake District, the Leven Estuary and distant Howgills, over Morecambe Bay and back to the sun on the ebbing tide. It was beautiful.
Even from the house on the hill we can see many miles to the south. It adds an extra dimension to the garden, enhances it.

I am now listening to the Eriskay Love Lilt. My mother used to sing it. She was an accomplished Mezzo.

Mmmm!

IT IS MARCH - OF BIRDS AND A MOW

Today I mowed some of the lawn for the first time! Yes, I know it is early but it has been the first chance since October because of all the rain. The grass was just dry enough with a couple of rainless days, sun and a drying wind. 

There was a frost this morning and last night the northern sky was bright - could not see the Aurora Borealis because of light cloud but it was there.

I have divided some of the snowdrops already and replanted, still in the green, in multiple small clumps. Moss on the paths has had its first assault.

This is a view from the top banking looking down on the house. My study is the window shown. There is one of the feeders in the middle right and the bulbs on the banking are coming out - daffodils, snowdrops and crocuses so far. This is the back of the house and the door shown comes from the living room out onto the paved area. You can see the chimes we bought last year seemingly suspended in mid air, top right. They are hanging from a branch of a large ash tree.

So, now for some of the snaps taken from my study window starting with goldfinches. These feeders are hanging on the small shed in the top photograph. The seeds used are a mixture of black sunflower and nyger. The birds are so gaudy, far too exotic for England, but then see below, this is not the only stunning plumage. 

To talk about something else for the moment - we are approaching the spring equinox in about three weeks time and the garden is romping ahead of itself. Iberis are flowering as are many other plants and I am worried that all may turn out bad yet.

I am also concerned that the birds are beginning to nest early - however this does give them more time through the summer to have successive broods. So here I am snapping away through my window images which will do for this blog but would never be good enough for magazines etc today - the standard is sickly high and I am too lazy to spend all day at it (photography I mean.) (Actually have just had a payment from Getty Images for a couple of my shots - Wast Water I can understand but a lenticular cloud over Queenstown in new Zealand - ?)

So, here is another stunner - this is a male Greater-spotted woodpecker. When he arrives all the other birds leave the feeders and wait. You can tell it is a male by the red patch on the nape of its neck. Unfortunately they are also partial to a chick or two and will drill into wooden nest boxes to get their lunch. The holes on our boxes are fitted with metal plates around the entrance hole but this does not stop them pecking a way into the side of the box. As for open boxes as for robins - well - lunch on a plate.

So to the delightful dance and twitter of the long-tailed tits. Their bodies are smaller than that of a blue tit and there is actually one outside now. 

Of course there are also non avian intruders - yes, here we go again, Mr (or Mrs) Teeth of steel. Despite the red tail this is a grey squirrel.

And then the ground feeders come in - chaffinches, dunnocks and blackbirds amongst others.

This chappie was chasing, and being chased by, another cock blackbird. They were having a real ding-dong. It is sitting in the fig tree - in a pot outside my window.

C and P arrive tonight for a wedding tomorrow in The Midland Hotel in Morecambe - Art Deco masterpiece that featured in Poirot on the TV.

And I will finish with the classiest of all the strutters - old man pheasant. No wonder his feathers adorned hats.

Time for a Heineken and some garlic sticks. 

Happy birthday Roly.

FEBRUARY'S COMING UP ALL SORTS

So, just to start with something other, here is a photo of my daughter's orchid and cyclamen in Herefordshire. Cyclamen die with me but orchids, once they have found the right place are not all hard.

To here - where R has been pruning back hard the buddleia outside the kitchen window. This leaves the bird table a bit exposed until the new growth gets bigger - fingers crossed. I have done the same for the banking hedge of buddleia and all the prunings have been either placed on the bonfire heap or some have been shoved into the ground by the top fence by R (without telling me) as a fait accompli. I have begun the weeding of the bed by the decking and pond removing carex pendula seedlings and other undesirables. Then I dumped a barrow load of old compost on the top.

After that I bolstered the ponds by blocking one or two leaks and giving the frogs an ideal environment to add to the bucketsful of spawn already produced. We have a few wallflowers out now as above and here is the beginning of pulmonaria flowering perforated by daffs. The garden is exploding with vegetation. 

I also tidied up the dead apple mint stems and the cut-leaved elder from which I took two experimental cuttings and shoved them into the appropriate place.

This is one of our several flowering currants coming into blossom - everything is about two to three weeks early! This is because of the mild weather (and the incessant rain).

This does not seem to deter the birds from guzzling all day though when I fill the feeders there is a skerfuffle of wings as the take to the trees. All that remains as evidence can be one small down feather on the paving. Working in the garden is still something I am not dashing out to do in this damp winter. Last night I dashed out to a poetry group and today I dined out with my friend NC before visiting a secondhand bookshop in Windermere. We arrived after 1pm and were his first customers of the day. He said the winter is killing trade in the Lake District. (Well, if you want green fields and lakes you have to have a little rain now and again - BUT not all the time!) And here are some of the manured beds showing new growth - especially day lilies and white campanula. 

The Winter Olympics are over and Putin's in his nest (but looking out at the nest next door where the birds are squabbling - a bit like our rookery. Apologies to those concerned - I do not intend to trivialise what must be dreadful.

My keyboard is no better and connects up when it feels like it so a new one with a wire sticking out  is on the way. 

I have dug out my Wainwright drawing (Alfred Wainwright - look up Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wainwright) that he gave me years ago. He used cheap paper and it is going brown so I have done a copy and photoshopped it - put the original away in a drawer.)

Which, talking about the Lake District, makes me think the mists of the mountains may be closing in on hidden villages, Herdwick sheep at risk of removal from the fells - resulting in regrowth of scrub and finally trees to change the very man made (well the odd glacier may have been involved) scenery.

And the final cry this February to the British people is, 'Move to the high ground, physical or moral, stop building on the flood plains and to the person who answered the quiz question (thanks Private Eye) that asked in which English county was England's highest mountain? with Norfolk, come up here - we have Scafell Pike and no Broads. (That is an English use of the word, not American.)

STRAWBERRIES AND SCREAM

Saturday -

I have just been out to top up the bird food and the sun is out. (Forecast is for storms and rain again Sunday.) The song thrush is belting out its call for the first time. It repeats a phrase 3 or 4 times, then another phrase and another and so on.

The garden is beginning to bloom - purple crocus, pulmonaria (lungwort for the spotted leaves that look like a nasty disease), tulips and daffodils pushing through everywhere.

Yesterday afternoon a parcel arrived with twenty small strawberry plants, especially ten Cambridge Favourite. These are now in the preprepared bed inside the rabbit proof fence. Eighteen inches apart and in rows three feet apart they will probably not give fruit this year. In fact it may be wise to nip out the flowers to let the plants build up strength. (Might have to make one or two exceptions.) So we will, I hope, have three years of fruit before the virus comes. This reminds me the raspberries need replacing because of a virus infection.

The strawberries will have to be netted and straw placed between the rows to keep the berries off the ground. I will do this in early June after the last chance of frost. Mind you, if I am pulling off the flowers there will be no fruit so may not have to do all that this year. The plants will need regular watering as they do not like to be too dry.

I do a bit of the old photography and have a site on Flickr -http://www.flickr.com/photos/duncandarbishire/

I received a message from the continent from someone wanting to use one of my pics in a catalogue. Being mercenary I kindly asked what they were thinking of paying for it.
Funny, I have not received any further communication from them.

Even the kitchen garden is stirring. The red tops of the rhubarb are showing. Mind you, friends down by the sea, three miles away and a hundred metres lower, have almost reached a height where they can eat it. (I do not mean they have reached a height, the rhubarb has . . .)

Now why, you might say, has he put scream in the title.
The answer is - I have no idea. It just seemed a good title.

Actually there are times when I could scream - being a gardener does have its agonies - and I do not mean backache, thorns in fingers and so on - when the slugs go rampant, the pigeons eat all the newly planted seedlings, the mower gets stuck in a ditch, I realise the banking is a sea of bindweed, hammer my thumb instead of a staple, R asks me to move the stream I have spent two weeks digging etc etc.
And we have still not decided to do with the twenty box plants I bought in the autumn. They sit in their pots by the cold frame looking cast aside.

Sunday - they were right, gales and rain, inside messing on computer, going over seeds - when to sow what and so on.

Wild day. This is how it looks from the house on a good day!!

The big buildings are Heysham Power Stations - bit of the old nuclear you know - help light up my life!

GOLDEN RAIN, SISKINS AND DITCHES

A Golden Rain was a firework popular when I was young - no bangs and shooting things, just a powerful shower of yellow sparks.

Now that spring is underway the hedgerows are full of hazel catkins - another golden rain.

And the feeders are full of goldfinches and yellow siskins, the latter a more delicate bird than the chinky greenfinch, more a chaffinch size. 

We have had a flurry of birds - greater spotted woodpeckers, both sexes, long tailed tits, goldfinches and the siskins - apart from the usual tits, sparrows and other finches, robins, dunnocks, wrens, blackbirds and thrushes. Not long ago, when the squirrels had demolished one of the peanut feeders, I bought a squirrel-proof one. This has delighted the blue tits and they hide inside at the back pecking away, safe from the sparrow hawk. In fact R did see the sparrow hawk catch a blue tit. She looked out of the kitchen window to see the hawk on the ground staring up at her with a small yellow and blue bundle in its talons.

As we have been away for a week I had no excuse and work in the garden beckoned. The dead teasels and grasses were cut down and added to the compost heap. The roses were lightly pruned - they are almost all shrub roses - and the twigs put on the bonfire heap. 

I have been wanting to tidy the lawn grass up but it is all too wet and anyway the time for the annual mower service is here so I will be mowerless for a few days.

It is also becoming evident that I will have to decide about moles. Do I call in the mole man and have them caught or do I just let the garden become a collection of small soil mountains.

Then I went down the garden to the ditch and dug it out, removed the watercress (still thriving) from the top pond making the reed mace as a small island and dragged up some of the deep sediment from the bottom. All the stuff I took out has been left beside the water do small creatures can return to it.

The bottom pond has one or two leaks in it and these were plugged temporarily to enable the randy frogs to continue their mating swim and preserve the spawn.

Now, we have no snow to mention but whilst we were on top of Orcop Hill last week we had a brief covering one morning so I nipped out and did an Andy Goldsworthy with my Wellies. This is not a self portrait - ears a bit on the sticky out size. However, as I look at it there does seem to be a vague resemblance to Prince Charles?

BIRDSONG and FROGCROAK = SPRINGSPRUNG

I thought this was an original title until I looked back a year - FROG BLOG, SPRING SPRUNG - so not so clever.

First daffodils out by the shed under a shower of robin song. These miniature daffs came here in a pot from our previous house and were popped into the only place available as the rest was wasteland, ravaged by the builders of our new house.
Every year I say to myself that I must move them but do not. They seem happy and if there is one golden rule I stick to, then, if the plant is thriving and happy leave it where it is if possible.
This, of course does not apply to weeds - I must go down to the pond again and the bed beside the shed, and dig up the pendulous sedge that has seeded everywhere. (The Yeats influence petered out fairly quickly.) My father used to stay at Inisfree for his summer holidays between the wars. It was only some years later I found it was a summer rented house in Bowness-on-Windermere in the English lake District!

Snowdrops everywhere. These by the big sycamore are dug up whilst in the green every year and planted elsewhere in the garden. Obviously we do not get them all.

I love the spring when the garden fills with birds singing their soprano arias. The bass line is not so beautiful and is generated by frogs. The pond is a maelstrom of sexual energy at the moment. It has so much frogspawn in it that it is becoming congested.
The amphibians swim into hiding when I approach but, with patience and waiting, they gradually emerge to climb over one another in a mass of writhing bodies.
I have not seen evidence of toads nor newts yet though I know both are there.

The evergreen euphorbia R is encouraging to spread beside the path to the pond has begun to sprout and its coloured nodding shoots are on every stem.

We have been away in Herefordshire and Oxford. (Went to the Pitt-Rivers Museum and came away with backache from stooping to examine the exhibits.

What an astonishing place.)
Now back and with gales having struck there are yet more fallen twigs on the banking - which I had just cleared.

The Witch Hazel, Hamamelis × intermedia 'Jelena', is showing its rich orange scented flowers. It lost a branch last year in a storm but is recovering well.

It is good to visit the grandchildren - I helped plant 13 fruit trees on Orcop Hill whilst there - but we both wish they were nearer. (The children not the trees.)

Sometimes I wonder for whom I am gardening. Yes, myself for exercise and for R to enjoy. But I wonder if the effort is worth it. Would I be happy living in a house surrounded by chaos? The wildlife would be perfectly contented with untended lawns and beds.
Perhaps this year I will cut the grass further away from the house longer. But then I say this every year and the control freak within me cannot let that happen.

Come on trees and shrubs, grow bigger and fill the empty spaces.

FROSTY, CHIVEY, DOGGY, STICKY, FLOODY

We have had a sharp frost. The roof outside the bedroom window was covered in ice.
But it soon burned off in the sun and we were left with a mild, sunny day, warmth in the sun and a real feeling of spring - in early February.

Nothing seems to be harmed much and there are even, albeit sickly, nasturtiums in the green.

Preparing the garden has to move on apace - I noticed that the sides of the steam where it passes through the lawns really need digging out.

We are being entertained by our grandchildren - which remind me - congratulations to G and R and family and their imminent grandparenting - well in August.
Grandparenting is an event which comes as a surprise - yes, we'll look after him/her/them for a few days whilst you have a break then they return to find the grandparented couple sitting on a sofa staring into space wondering what hit them.

These are chives pushing up through the winter litter. Each year I have divided the bulbs and tried to make an edging to the blackcurrant bed - but I forgot this year. Nevertheless they are thriving and, like much, ahead of time.
Very tasty in salads and as a fine chopped topping to fish and stuff.

Our long suffering dog - he stands outside all year round (except when he is blown over by a gale) is going rusty. I think I will have to treat him with a rub down of oil. No matter what I say he either stares blankly or nods.

Note the winter pansies flowering behind him. The pot also has tulips now just shoving there plumules above the soil. (Nice word plumule?)

By afternoon and sunshine Doc is basking (if fading a bit) and the chimes are still.

Crocuses have opened and the wood is full of birdsong, thought mainly sparrows, tits and finches so twittering and chirping rather than singing. Then the robin begins to belt it out and all is well with the world.

Actually, as I was waking this morning I heard the laughter of a green woodpecker - but still have not seen him (or her).

One of the main clearing jobs is collecting fallen sticks - bits blown off the ash trees and some are now heaped as a small bonfire at the far end of the garden. However there are many subsidiary heaps that need to be gathered and moved. Anyway we will probably have a gale and then I will have to start all over again.

In the garden I can almost hear the plants muttering - shall I, shall I not? Is it time to grow? Is it too early?
I do have a sense of foreboding that we could undergo a cold spell (probably will - here we call it summer).

Really we have been so lucky up t' north when I hear of the floods in t' south. So what can be done? More flood defences, dredge rivers, plant lots of trees in the hills and inland to soak up the water, stop building on the flood plain, make tarring over gardens illegal, shift houses to higher ground?
They said on the television that some parts of the east coast are eroding away at two metres a year - so - in 25,000 years the tide will have reached the foot of the Pennine Hills - mm? - don't think I will worry about that one.

The settlements up here formed after the last ice age were up on the hills. No one much lived down in the boggy valleys where the wolves and wild boar roamed. Even in the fens one lived on highish ground if possible.

So, transfer everyone within 15 metres of sea level (or below) to high ground and grow rice on the food plain in paddy fields. Use the low land for crops.

It is easy to be smug sitting here 100 metres above the sea and three miles inland but it is terrible for all those affected. I hope it all dries up soon and the Gov. and Dept. of t' Enviroment gets its act together. Perhaps the centre of London needs to be flooded, the Houses of Parliament to be inundated and then something might get done.

ps. G and L - I hope your flash flood ruined caravan situation in Le Lavandou is resolved soon.

FROGSPAWN IS IT AND THE HOKEY COKEY AGAIN

And so early!

Here are there of the first clumps in amongst the water cress.
So, off I went down the garden carrying a rake and a plastic sack. I filled the sack with loose stones and buried into the hole in the pond wall. When the stream flow falls the pond will empty and leave the spawn high and dry. Then I raked mud from the bottom of the pond over the sack in an attempt to keep the water level high. I had meant to properly line the pond before spawning but have been to tardy.

Now it is too late.

The pond is on the bottom east corner of the garden in front of the Wendy House (R's writing shed) in the boggy area. The stream runs into one end and out true other. Unfortunately this means that silt and muck are washed down and fill it up.

I am glad to report that, despite slipping in the boggy bank I failed to fall in and lighten your day.

So, what does the next picture show?

It shows manure, good ripe horse manure lavished on the flowerbeds. I have been ranting on about this for a long time so thought I would let you see what it all about. The green shoots in the foreground are day lilies, a camellia to the right and roses straight ahead. The green bush on the left is a genista.

Not all parts of the garden are actively cultivated. The old log pile by the path down to the pond, well rotted and now gathering moss, is left well alone. This is a haven for invertebrates, small mammals and toads. It is infested with fungi and full of interesting nooks and crannies.

Now I know these are not our native wild primrose - still in leaf only - but a bought primula - I think given to us in a basket full of plants. It was plonked by the Wendy House and every year it starts to flower in January - a little ray of sun in a dark corner.

And so to the Winter Olympics - how contrived can events become - sliding on ice on tin trays, dancing on ice - is dancing a sport? Then there are Moguls - bumpy skiing - and suicidal jumping on a a skateboard without wheels.

I am surprised they do not have timed ice lollipop eating, whippy ice cream serving, standing on one leg on ice after dark whilst eating dry crackers competitions, curling hair and so on. Anyway it would be no good holding them here this year - speed skating would be breast stroke and crawl, backstroke and butterfly.

Perhaps they might have a special Putin gold award for the best prat fall on ice - did you see that only four of the five olympic rings opened - I wonder which one was the flop (I know it was the right hand one)(actually that fits - with Russia's political leaning being to the left)(Then again somehow the regime in Russia reminds me much more of a right-wing dictatorship).

Just a minute, someone is knocking on the door.

"Ah! Hello Vlad. Have you come for me? Mr P. objected to my linking him to the Hokey Cokey, did he."
"Oh! No, he wants to learn how to do it. He thinks it would look good on Mayday if the Red Army all did the Hokey Cokey in Red Square as they go past."

The mind boggles!!