HOPING FOR A LITTLE HELP FROM HELEN YEMM

Heron back, frogs in hiding, transplanting cosmos seedlings, cock greenfinches fighting outside my window, blackbird attacking the window again, difference of opinion in house.
R has decided after all she is not a wild garden enthusiast, wants garden rooms a la Hidcote, big yew hedges etc. I mentioned that I am getting more decrepit and cannot wait for yew to grow, cannot afford a ready grown hedge.
IMPASSE! (Except I will give way somewhat as I love her.)

The garden is a bit here, a bit there, I suppose, a bit short of good planning. I take a corner and think - got some old blackcurrant cuttings - shove them in there, big empty patch of lawn needs six white birch. R thinks veg and fruit beds in wrong place - spent hours double digging and preparing them - cannot face starting that again.
Alas, alack, what shall I do.
Then an invite came - I could try and get some help - Helen Yemm it!
I cannot see the trees for the brambles, the garden needs a fresh pair of eyes, without floaters and soily glasses.
So I have sent off my blurb and a few photos, not to mention the address of this blog. (If that doesn't put her off nothing will.)
The first image is the view from the Wendy House (where R writes) up the garden over the boardwalk (rotting a bit) over the ponds (silting up). The thug plants in the foreground are pendulous sedge.

Molehills are all over the place but I have not the heart to borrow Barry's trap, end it all, make a waistcoat.
I take the soil and put it onto flowerbeds where there is a deficiency of depth. No doubt, one day, the big mower will disappear into a chasm.

The weather has turned much colder again today and I am glad I resisted the spring urge to put out tender plants too early. We are already three weeks late.


Talking of flowering currant bushes, big, pink and smelling a bit like cat wee, I just leave them. They were something left by the previous owner of the plot, Tom. Unfortunately the pink of their flowers does clash with the gaudy yellow of the daffs. The biggest clump hides an old well, an ugly black box covered in bitumen, and now wire netting to keep investigative grandchildren out.

There is also a Rambling Rector rose entangled in it.

It is Rs turn to do the flowers on Sunday at church so a big pick of the daffs is coming on - we have plenty - and they do not need fancy arranging - a big vase stuffed with daffs is splendid enough as it is.

The photo is of wild daffs - these are on the banking at the fringe of the wood - where the wood anemones, golden saxifrage and bluebells grow.

I dug out part of the small stream where it crosses the septic tank soak away - and into which the stream has been disappearing - lined it with pond liner and replaced the turf at the side and stones in the bottom.

It worked! The stream flows on, well twenty feet to the bend where it crosses the soak away again - there it disappears as before. 

More digging needed.

In fact R wants the stream to run in a completely different place - sigh!

Actually, with all the dry weather we have had recently it is hardly running anyway. The ponds and Duck cafe (pair of mallard) are kept going by the overflow from the septic tank and thus the house.

All I have to do to top it up is flush the loo or have a bath.

The taddies do not seem to mind.

After all that let me finish on a high note. Since we came I have been spreading and sowing candelabra primulas below the pond, as at Harlow Carr (but a bit more modest), and this year we are going to have a fantastic show which gives more seed etc etc.

Something for nowt! And I was born in Lancashire not the other place over the Pennines.

HEY-LA-DAY-LA THE BLACKBIRD'S BACK

Moles - the hair's not working, the rabbits munching and hey-la-day-la the blackbird's back, hacking at himself in the windows at the back of the house, making a terrible mess as he has accidents in his excitement. I shall have to get some new expandable trellis and fit it into the window space on the outside - worked last time, took it down, thought he had gone away.


Oh! Yes, and the pheasants are mating right outside my study window, she reluctant(ish), he hop on, wham bam done and off. He follows her everywhere like a guard and yesterday was attacking wood pigeons under the feeder - I mean, it is not as if they would give her a second look, is it. However, if you look closely, her brown plumage is magnificent, not so gaudy as the boss, but fabulous.
He, obviously, is totally at the mercy of his hormones and his jealous mind. She is his Coo Ca Choo.

I have mown the lawn again using both mowers, big one for mass grass removal, small one for the boggy bits, difficult of access bits and awkward corners.

We survived the gale last week with only a few twigs off the ash trees and my Dwarf on his side, now put up again.

First beetroot and carrots sown as are first broad beans. I have covered the beetroot with alkathene hoops and netting to try and keep off the piddocks,  (pigeons). A new sage plant has been put in and paths have been weeded. Ah! Yes, weeding - it's only just begun.
Out from behind the shed have come my carefully saved bean sticks (bean sticks are a bit like pea sticks but larger) and these have been shoved in to support the broad beans when and if they come up.

Yesterday was a glorious day - how spring should be - but this morning is cooler and darker. I can smell the rain in the air. I am not sure my wife believes me when I say things like, 'It is going to snow, I can smell it.' But I can (or I am fantasising). It is surprising sometimes what can get up one's nose.

I you look at the image of the willow tunnel taken just over a week ago and then at the view from the house you can see how the garden has greened in such a short time with the warmth and rain.

The willow image also shows one of the new plantings we did of daffodils in the autumn. They are not doing quite as well as I had hoped but there happens to be a line of mole hills down each side. The mind of Mowdywarp mystifies me - why just in the line of the trees? Such a strange solitary creature living in its dark world. What fantastic hands though (R says - not hands - paws or something but not hands) for digging. With mitts like that who needs a spade.
Actually, if you look at paws, whatever, especially rodent 'paws', they are just like little hands - Oh! Hands, that is what they are.

Bama lama bama loo, that blackbird's at it again. Its latin name is Turdus merula. I am not sure about the merula bit but the other part is all over the window, the wall and the ground.
Must go, bucket in hand.
Anyone know an avian psychiatrist?

PETER HAS EATEN MY FRITTERS

We had a gale last night - twigs down, bench on its back, pots all over the place but the rain has now gone and things have calmed down. The daffs are fantastic - I just by a cheap sack every autumn and shove them in. Next year the plan is to fill the field hedge at the garden bottom.

Having planted one of my favourite flowers out in the autumn, snakes-head fritillaries, I went out today to admire them only to find that some devilish individual had snipped off all the buds.
So, a little research on the web was needed to reveal that fritillaries are a favourite food of RABBITS!
So, I have no chance - they live here, visit here, sunbathe here and dine here.
I could cover the flowers with netting but that defeats the aim of enjoying their bells blowing in the breeze.
In fact it seems to be fauna week!
Just seen first House Martin - they have beaten the swallows this near.

Mr and Mrs Pheas. trundle around under the bird feeders. She is eating for several - eggs on the way. He just struts about in front of our single gnome (though it is a dwarf - Doc) given to me on my retirement.The mad blackbird has returned to attack its reflection in the windows at the rear of the house.
We have wood mice and voles, shrews and moles.
Frogs croak, taddies swim, caddis fly larvae crawl around in their little houses.
Pigeons get fatter and fatter, they nest in the conifers by the shed.
The collared doves have abandoned the beam outside the kitchen and gone nesting elsewhere.

And on and on - first grey squirrel seen so trap out - after last year when one climbed the house wall to empty a house martin nest.
Then, to cap it all, R returning from a trip to the theatre spotted, in her headlights, a rat crossing her path. I suppose, with horses and stables next door, they are inevitable neighbours.
I wonder if Megatron, the local black cat, might actually meet with my approval if he presented us with a dead rat?

R is off to a school reunion this weekend so I will be on my own. The weather is set fair so in goes all sorts - jut bought a new sage for the herb bed and some shallot sets. Sweet pea seedings thrive but the cosmos have a touch of the damping off.

The grass is greening, the weeds are growing, I get I'll just mow the lawn - what do I care? I've got my Aga to keep me warm. (And R)(Though I tend to keep her feet warm rather than the other way around.)

. . . WOULD A WOOING GO . . .

Hey-ho said A. Riley.

A-croaking and mating and all that stuff, taddies and spawn and you will notice that these two froggies are different colours.
So which is which we thought and watched. The paler brown frog came out on top so we assume that this is the male, or a male or a matriarch.
The grid you can see is my anti heron device - a bit of old concrete reinforcement mesh chucked over the pond corner where all the activity goes on.
They don't half croak, sounds more like they have a frog in the throat (except it is all bulgy cheek action.)

The Grandchildren have been here (4 and 7) which has been fantastic but we are a little phew! now.

With their mother's help, 2 more pieces of mesh, willow wands from the top garden and an old rhododendron bush we made a den. The photo shows the entrance between the stems of the bush.
Next plan is a swing on a branch nearby. You can see we even had a doorstep.

Yesterday it rained - Hooray! I never thought I would ever say that again by the end of last year but that and the rise in temperature has transformed the garden - tulips are budding (two out), anemones, wood and otherwise, pulmonary, first forgetmenots - everything is bursting out all over (and it is only April (not June)).

Soon the soil will be warm enough to put in plants, sow seed outdoors and such. The sweet peas and cosmos have germinated in the utility room - warmth, no greenhouse - fingers crossed.

We sat in the sun down by the Wendy House and listened to the dulcet tones of Froggy and Co. Winter is finally over!!

The last image is a long lens portrait of out garden mower, not the mechanical one but the one that has the name, Oryctolagus cuniculus, or Peter, sitting under the Davidia scratching itself in the sun. It sat there for over an hour before lolloping off in a blasé manner towards the veg beds. Now you know why we have fencing around our precious produce.

And look how fat it is. This makes me wonder if it is a female with  a litter of mini buns in the oven? Nightmares are made of this.

So, poor old Monty Don has been blamed for the weather being cold and, sensibly, saying not to sow seed and shove bedding plants into such chilly soil.

You tell 'em Monty - at least someone is thinking, 'Common Sense" "Nous" (pronounced to rhyme with mouse) spring to mind. 

Anyway you can buy your veg at Lock's Garage. It is a four hour journey for me to get there.

LUVVY AND DUVVY, AND A BAD BACK

The daffs are on their way. It was a bit warmer yesterday, at last, and they have responded - probably just got fed up waiting.

The collared doves have been billing and cooing just outside the kitchen door. He flies down and back with a stick, blade of dried grass or something similar.

He presents it to her and she tries to arrange it after a cuddle. He flies off again in search of more nest material. As soon as he is gone she considers his last offering and discards it onto the floor beneath.
This goes on for two whole days before they decide this is not the right place. They do not seem to be bothered by humans peering at them from six feet away, albeit on the other side of the glass door.
The covered paved area beneath the chosen beam is now littered with debris.
At least they might have tidied up behind them.
They have been a fixture near the house for several years. Often, when in the kitchen, you can hear them coo-cooing - the sound coming down the chimney - they are perched on the pot.

And plants keep arriving - did I order those? Really! The cold frames are getting full, waiting for rain and warmth before planting.

And this is a potty time - potting on I mean, plants moving up the pot scale so they can grow - black nails from the compost, frozen fingers from the weather. Potting up is not something I can do with gloves on.

Yesterday was Grand National day and as usual I picked the fifth, Rare Bob, because my nephew's name . . .  a friend said Teaforthree so my sister and wife backed that - and it came third!! Still, we maintained the once a year family tradition of the race, nibbles and champagne (well, cheap pink Australian fizz.)

Every time I go up the garden the trees have shed again. The stick pile grows and grows.
Some are saved as kindling but the rest just go on the heap.
The stream has all but dried up now the last of the snow behind the walls up on the hill has melted. All is getting very dusty. I am watering pots and special plants.
The two dead amelanchiers have been cut right back - one is definitely moribund but the other shows faint signs of hope. I will keep and eye on it with everything crossed (fingers and things.)

The grass is still brown - I do not have super lawns - more mown field full of moss and creeping buttercup and so on. I do try to eradicate the marsh thistles for the grandchildren's sake - nasty with bare feet.

Poles and peasticks are ready. Soon there will be much work to do but I strained my back the other day.
Own up.
Okay.
I went to have a golf lesson and a practice and was crippled the next day. R had to put my socks and shoes on. I can shift barrows of manure but . . .
The moral of the story -
I will just have to not practice anymore!
Not that it makes any difference to my game.

So here I am waiting for spring proper, waiting for rain, for the plants to grow - and weeds - I had forgotten about them. Though, if I cannot stoop because of my back someone else will have to do the weeding.
Perhaps I will just nip off and swing a few clubs, a little practice?
R .......... can you help me?

ALL MUCK IS DUST

and, I suppose all flesh is grass - cows eat grass, we eat cows, or if one does not eat meat drink milk, eat butter or if a vegan - er? - eat grass?
Anyway so it is true in a way that all flesh is grass.
Having said that we are near drought in the garden and it is so dry the soil is becoming dusty despite the oodles of muck I dumped on it. Blackbirds throw the stuff around searching for food and make a mess. It is no good sweeping it up, the wind just blows it back.
Yesterday I had a stick collecting session and then contemplated having a bonfire but all is tinder dry and we might have had to have a fire engine as well - so no fire.

THE MOWER HAS BEEN OUT! - first cut, just a top trim and what a difference it makes. We have a garden again.
Last year, in March, I blogged about the bluebells being out early! Now the daffodils are struggling to flower in April. I hope there is someone in North Africa warning the swallows to put on their wooly comb's.

R has been dividing and transplanting the snowdrops. 'I will leave it to you to decide where would be best,' I said, and so she put them in at the bottom of the top banking, just where I mow. Keep thy mouth shut, lad, I said to missel', now you will have to put off mowing that bit till July so the bulbs can fatten up.

There are some primroses out but only a few.

Black stuff is laid on the veg beds to warm them up, exclude light, alkathene hoops adorn the rows, plants in pots fill the cold frame waiting for warmer soil.


I am having some difficulties with the septic tank soak away - I know septic tanks are not the most appealing of subjects but . . .


Where the soak away lies under the stream, the water has decided that the slotted pipe underneath would be a better route than down the stream bed. So the bottom half of the stream is dry and water emerges in the ditch by the lower hedge.
I will need to sort out the bed and line it with pond liner or some such I think. I could just let the water go into the pipe and fill in the dry part of the stream but if it rains a lot there would be an overflow and trouble on t' lawn.




The drain away is thirty yards below the tree with the nest box in the photograph. That is a reconditioned box as the top came off. A bit of sawn off fencing plank end was just the job. Notice the metal plate around the entrance to keep the woodpeckers at bay.

The hills in the distance are the Forest of Bowland across Morecambe Bay. I am rambling, (big surprise! What a change!)


Last year was real struggle with the sweet peas and someone suggested plugs - but they are expensive so, maybe.
I will finish with a withering comment about brown fingers - probably just bad gardening and laziness - but a friend has a big veg plot in a field (you know who you are D J) and he said, 'Slugs, what slugs?'
WHAT SLUGS!! I can probably lend you some, buckets full, unless this cold snap has set them back. (Image of gardener on his knees in the veg plot praying.)

CAUGHT RED-HANDED

Forgot to get R a plain chocolate egg for Easter. So, I hard-boiled three eggs, one with pansies, one with onion skins and one with cochineal - and now I am red handed. A little deftness with  a marker pen embellished them (One with a sad face as the shell had cracked.)
Also made Easter biscuits as per the Marry Berry show on tv - they are v nice, a bit like brittle Welsh cakes.

I have been fencing - not with epees, foils and rapiers but planks, hammers and nails. The idea is to hide the veg beds etc from the house.

I have ordered a climbing rose - chose Golden Showers - and have stuck a sheep skull on top of the right hand post. This fence will become adorned as time goes on.
The blue alkathene piping you can just see through the fence is the framework for some improvised protection for the beds. Fleece early on then netting later.
This year I am determined to try and keep pests out.

Then I show you a picture of our rhubarb forcing pot with some stunted stems and leaves in the foreground. The plants inside the pot are not much bigger.

I wish to update you on the efficacy of human hair in getting rid of Moles. Gilly, it works, BUT having left its hairy run it has set up twenty feet away with a new one, more bigger mounds, more soil and so on. So more hair and hope.

Yesterday we went to the outstanding Garden Nursery run by Abi and Tom Attwood at Halecat, Witherslack - http://www.halecatplants.co.uk. We bought some plants for the new cutting bed - prices very reasonable, place spotless, a pleasure to walk around.

Back to the garden - I raked out part of the banking by the wood yesterday to clear dead grass and stuff. This revealed all the primrose plants we had divided and replanted last year.

Soon they will be out and glorious.

The third photo is of tiny taddies in the lower pond. The frogspawn is becoming a seething black mass. On the left you can see a water snail trail shaped like a hook.

Mr Pheas. in all his splendour is rooting about under the shrubs at the top of the garden. They nest there every year so he is casing the joint.

The big mower is still not out - the grass is hardly growing - but it cannot be much longer, can it?
Everything is waiting - seeds, plants, cuttings - the soil is too cold, the gardener is too cold!

April 1st tomorrow, ten weeks to the longest day and we still freeze in a Siberian wind. I wonder of Putin knows something I don't. Is this a ploy to up sales of natural gas?
Well, let me tell you Vlad. it won't work with us.
(We don't have gas.)

EARTH IS HARD AS IRON

And water like a stone.
And air like a vacuum cleaner sucking warmth from me.
Yesterday I potted up 32 Senecio (Brachyglottis greyii) and by the end my hands were like ice. You cannot do this properly in gloves. R like the shrubs and we have a patch of doing nothing so there some will go, others to Christmas Fairs, coffee mornings and so on.

R clips them early every autumn so that they are comfortably round. You can see one in right foreground  in the photograph, the writing shed, for R not me, above it and the stables over the hedge beyond that - source of the wonderful manure.

R like to clip things, not my ear 'ole, well, not often, so more and more plants are becoming shaped. Is this a topiary fetish, I wonder?

I have completed the manuring, mulching, top dressing at last having repaired the barrow wheel.
So now I have to think of new projects - a fence between the garden and the veg and fruit is on the agenda, perhaps.

So to the current topic of SNOW!
Cumbria is inundated, cut off, submerged we hear - well, not all of it. Here around Morecambe Bay it came and went quickly - there is still a bit behind the hedgerows and the occasional flurry in the air but that is all. The rabbits are out in the garden trimming the grass and birdlife everywhere. There has just been an almighty row outside my windows - fighting wood pigeons - MEN! (It could be WOMEN! but I do not think so.)

Plants are emerging despite the prolonged winter - chives by the path in the kitchen garden, day lilies in big clumps, some things? - I am not sure what they are - bulbs of some sort, I think - oriental poppy leaves and so on.

Yesterday I also wandered across the lawns and through the woodland picking up sticks - the ash trees shed all the time - and snapped them into 9" lengths for kindling for the wood burner.

The garden is like unexploded dynamite waiting for the plunger to be rammed home. We will get milder weather one day, warmth and soft rain (like you get in Ireland) - then the ground will erupt with growth.
Trouble is I am getting fed up waiting.

The pots that have had yellow pansies flowering all winter now have tulips pushing through. I think they are red - I think. I know - label things, label things, label things. But there is something special and delightful about wondering what things are and then getting a nice surprise (or not).

It is almost time to divide and plant the snowdrops - a ritual every year - divide and multiply. Half of each small clump gets moved and the snowdrop carpet spreads.

Off to town to peruse the market stalls to look for bargains for the garden. Will I buy seed potatoes - probably not - I like to grow things that are difficult to get - or expensive - if the weather will let me.
Surely it cannot be as wet this summer as last - can it?
Probably can!

sNOw GARDENING TODAY

White flakes are driving across the garden from the east, pausing and scattering in disorganised fashion, then resuming the urge to go west. Tree trunks are white on the eastern side impaled by the soft snow.
Spring is here - well, came yesterday with the equinox.

The heron has been back and now the mallard are mopping up for breakfast. They know, obviously, that I am not a very early riser. The frogs have survived under the mesh protection I put across one corner of the pond and under that are large clumps of spawn.

Now the wind is whipping the flakes up into a maelstrom, swirling, driving, eddying all at once. (Read Robert Frost's poem). The gnome has an extra hat, shawl and is slowly disappearing from the feet up. In the wood the statue of the small boy looks cold and lonely.

I have been bereft this week - how one depends on a wheelbarrow - because of a puncture. So I did the logical thing - bought a new inner tube over the internet and then mended the old one with a bicycle repair kit. Having done that I am back to more barrowing of manure. The cutting bed is now completed and ready. (Cutting for cut flowers not cuttings though you never know, I might use it for both).
I am a very much lesser form of Gorbachev having impaled my forehead on a branch of the pear tree - just a scabby patch, not a birthmark.

Still only the odd daff.

I notice in the Gazette that this weekend Dora's Fields at Rydal (William Wordsworth stuff, daffs in hosts) are open. People will enjoy all the leaves I am sure.

The walkway through the boggy area is repaired but only for this year. I am cogitating, (NO, cogitating), about getting in a lad with a digger and excavating the garden bottom, putting in  a proper liner and having a gurt pond rather than a li''le un. (Pardon lapse into local dialect).
But then I would have to get into waders rather than Wellies (capital letter for the Duke) - concrete? That is not very Eco is it? So not concrete, then bog? And let it go?
You may have noticed that my hold on English grammar has departed (not that it ever arrived). Watching the snow go around and around, (old men of Aran and such? (prize for the source of that bit of lateralness)), has confuddled me.


Pots means plants.
Hence plastic tubs waiting for carrots, upturned bottomless flowerpots with copper tape around the middle protecting the broccoli and my rhubarb forcing pot (£1 at a house sale many years ago) in the rhubarb bed.

So I have lit the wood burner, have a coffee, feet up and a bit of thrillery words - no, Paul Temple, Lee Child, Reg Hill, Ian Rankin . . . I think I will return to the ultimate fireside read with John Macnab by Buchan - and as I am on a diet - again! - a sweetener and a banana.

Bananas are 0 points! Mmm!

WHERE HAVE ALL THE DAFFODILS GONE?

Long time passing -

indeed, Mother's Day is done and only the tete-a-tetes are out. Winter draws on and all that stuff.
One day there is hope and warmth in the sun, then up I get and lazily glance out of the bedroom window and - snow!
Off I go to try and spread a little (no, not goodwill) manure but the heap is frozen solid, a rock cliff.
Phew! One job I can get out of - but not for long.
It was so cold I had a great idea - all that dead grass on the lower banking could be burned off. (For new readers I have a strimmer phobia).
So, out with the matches, I will just light this small tuft - and whoosh!
The old man is running around like a squirrel in a cage (I know what that looks like) with an upturned lawn rake batting away at the grass desperately trying to save shrubs. (Which is more than can be said for the hair on the front of his head.) (Smell of singeing locks - equivalent to a Number 0. For (most) ladies there is a haircutting device which shaves at various lengths according the the attachment on the end - Number 1 is very short, 2 a bit longer etc.)

Mind you, it worked and half the banking had its old grass removed in a few minutes. I think the other half can just stay long for now. Anyway it is finally warmer - and raining.

The last few days the pond has been frozen over so we hope the frogs are ok - they must be, anything that can spend the winter buried in the mud at the bottom must have amazing powers of survival - I know, they are frogs but could we do it?
Having said that, there are times when hibernation under a blanket of duvet is appealing - in the dark dismal days.

The first surprises have started to appear. Cyclamen by the cherry - should they be, were they not, out in the autumn?

Buds are getting impatient, breaking, then stopping for the cold, then opening a little more with some sun and so on.

White butterbur is ignoring the weather and, as usual, getting on with flowering so that its big bristly stems and leaves can do some heavy photosynthesising as soon as possible.

And the garden is so full of birds, everywhere. The policy of habitat maintenance and feeding, come rain come rain, whatever, is working. There are so many birds I wonder how they can all find nesting space.

There is one very good piece of news - the blackbird that drove us mad last year attacking its reflection in our windows has moved. Last night a neighbour informed us that they were being pestered by it!

So, in all, I have a new saying for the English language - replace waiting for the paint to dry by waiting for the hair to grow! (Not a quote from Burns.) (Hair today, gone . . . enough.)

SUPERGLUE THE CURE

One of the side effects of gardening without gloves is kins - splits in the ends of the fingers which is why I am typing, as usual with two fingers, but with the ring finger of the left hand as the thumb and first two fingers are split.
They, of course, will take time to heal but plasters come off, get wet and are pretty useless.
So - use superglue. put a little into the kin and wait for it to dry. A good skin is formed under which the finger can heal. You might need to repeat the application from time to time but it certainly takes the soreness away.
Currently there are other parts of the body aching too as I have been ramming stakes into the ground with my marl - a big metal mallet. When I ordered it I had a choice of weights for the end and picked one that was too heavy - about 14 pounds - 6.35 Kg. (The metric weight is for those of us who have managed to move on to that system.) Hence I ache!
Then our order of 2 cubic metres (!) of logs arrived and needed barrowing to the shed. I was going to do it myself but R came out and moved the lot whilst I stacked them. What a wife! We would have used our willow crop but they need another 10 years and I did not want to chop down one of our own trees.

I have put in a new length of fencing to visually separate the flower beds from the rest of the garden - it does nothing other than act as a demarkation but creates a sense of a room space by the house. There are just uprights and two horizontals.

At this juncture I was going to show you a picture of our surviving frogs - I counted over twenty in the bottom pond this morning from our bedroom window but if I get anywhere near they do a disappearing act. They are so aware - I was walking along the path by the house, 30 yards (about 27.5 metres) above the pond when they must have seen me and submerged.
I contemplated getting out the camera and tripod and remote
control but was distracted by breakfast.

The veg bed picture shows the near half with a heavy mulch of well rotted horse manure. In the far half where the sticks are, a further mulch of extremely well rotted horse manure has been added. This latter application is about 8 years old, beautiful stuff - if muck can be beautiful.
Under the wigwam of sticks a trench was dug and this was also filled with discarded horse stuff. Beans, for instance, are very hungry plants.

I am also in the process of creating a cutting bed for a  mixture of annuals, biennials and perennials - there is something wonderful in a house wrapped in scent, filled with flowers. It only needs a further topdressing of the horsey product and a path made in the middle so the flowers can be harvested without treading on the beds.
We have a vase of flowering currant in the kitchen and vases of snowdrops, primroses and small daffodils - lovely.
The garden continues to be full of surprises - the wonder of spring.

The far dry-stone wall is redolent with moss forming intricate shapes and patterns. This is also an indication of the purity of the air here. After a few days without rain, if I look out over Morecambe Bay towards Lancaster, I can see a blanket of dirty air below me. It seems to reach up about 250 - 300 feet (75-90 metres) from the sands at sea level. We are at 360 feet. (No, work it out yourself.)
Then along comes some rain and washes all this gunge away. This is one reason, I think, I love the northwest coast of Scotland and Ireland - the air is so special.
Yes, use rainwater on the garden - but it might be full of dissolved smog. Also, you might think water filtered through the earth and rock, emerging from springs might be better, perhaps it is, but it has got minerals in it. We have some arsenic in our water supply. (Just a very little.) (Might explain a few things though?)
Soft water, hard water, did not matter last year - just too much water.
It is raining today - soft rain gently soaking the world - none of the downpours we experienced last year.

Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit - sometimes I do go on! (And off).

Time for some more superglue. (No, not the lips.)

HERE WE GO AND SO DO THE FROGS

Frog alert at The Nook - the heron is back and having lunch!
I covered one corner of the pond with a piece of metal grid (reinforcing grid used in concrete). I hope that will put it off - but is that truly "eco"? Should I be letting things get on with life and not interfering?
If one thinks not then no environment is not manipulated, especially a garden.
The pic was taken a year or two ago - the daffs are not yet out. (Except the tete-a-tete).

With the lack of rain the manure mulch is very dry and scattered everywhere - blackbirds and thrushes are the worst but dunnocks are at it too. 

The milder weather - well, it is still cold but warms up nicely during the day (hence the frogs) (they are amphibian and need a bit of warmth to get them active) has brought out the bunnies - we feed all here, no one turned away - rabbits, herons, blackbirds, slugs ....

I have had the MOWER out - the little one. The lower garden is still boggy but needed a skim badly. It looks so much better now. One has to make a few concessions to order, even in an eco garden.

I am still digging and manuring veg beds, have set out the bottomless plastic pots for carrots, pruned the oldest wood out of the blackcurrants, R has finished cutting back the buddleias, I have snipped the top off the beech hedge at the maximum height I wish it to achieve, edged the goosegog bed with salvaged stone, checked the grease bands on the fruit trees, cleared around the lower stream and ponds and even had time to stop and smell the flowers on the winter-flowering honeysuckle.

The snowdrops are flourishing even though the snow has gone (and will not come back, I hope).

I have given some thought to how diverse are the habitats we have in the garden. We have the lawns, veg and fruit garden and flower beds, of course, but also the wood with mature trees, bramble patch, shrubbery, stream, bog, pond, field hedge and bank, a big decaying log pile, manure heap, bird boxes, feeders, dry stone walls, rough grassland, wild flower area - and so on.

Maintaining all this takes some time - well, not the wild bits - generally they are left to their own devices yet prevented from taking over the rest of the garden. The sycamore and ash seeds would soon have the whole garden a potential woodland if nothing was done.

Every winter one forgets just how much work is involved in the garden and as I gradually fall to bits (it is called ageing) I wonder each year how long I can go on doing it. I suppose, if I stop, the whole lot will become an "eco" garden.

Yet it is variety and contrast that make the whole thing a joy, the surprises - yes, even coming face to face with the evil eye (I mean the heron).

Just glad I am not a frog.

WHITE SMOKE UP HERE

Now, do not get alarmed, I am not heading off to Rome to elect (or become) a new Pope. I am going to pontificate about bonfires.
Bonfires are strange animals - you carefully judge the direction of the breeze - it is always good to have a bit of a blow to get the bonfire roaring - light the heap (often with difficulty) and then the wind direction veers and suffocates your neighbours, makes their washing smell and covers it in smuts.

Well, I lit our two heaps at the far end of the garden - before the blackbirds built in them (One flew out as I approached) and after disturbing the structure and checking for hedgehogs - and away they crackled. Around came the wind and sent the smoke next door.

The principal picture is of the far top part of the garden in the wooded area and shows one of our streamlets (open drains) running down to the main stream.

I am still barrowing muck - nuff said.

The garden is getting tidier and the stream has almost dried up through LACK OF RAIN!!! The mower is nudging the shed doors and trying to escape - and it is only March.

Went out for lunch to a place down by the estuary and they are eating their rhubarb! Our plants are struggling to get out of the ground, even under the forcing pot. Of course there is still plenty of rhubarb here in the house (on this page) etc.

Ewedini, the farmers great climbing sheep has been in the garden again. It comes over the wall in the far corner (knocking half of it down) and then wanders around with a face which seems to say, 'What are you doing in my garden?' Cheek!
Barbed wire is now coiled across the corner, wall rebuilt - we will see how it goes. It will soon be time for the lamb gang to escape into the track up to the house. I tried to fix the gap under the fence by repositioning a post and marling it in more firmly - nearly drove the thing through out underground electricity cable! The black line was only three inches below the surface! Shocking work.

And of flowers - snowdrops, small daffs, crocus, odd daisies and celandines, promise of much more to come. At this time of year with low sun much is backlit like the Acer sango-kaku and the witch hazel. There are still some teasels left on the lower banking and they catch the light beautifully.

I stepped out this morning - a beautiful, calm, sunny, warm day - and a skein of geese went over heading for the Duddon - magical. The garden is full of birdsong. The pond is full of frogcroak. How an earth do we survive the dark days of winter?

It all makes me feel good to be alive and part of this amazing world.

A LITTLE HEAVEN

It has not rained for a week and looks set fair!
Here I am talking about lack of rain - for once.
Having said that, the lawn in the lower garden is still sodden and a no go area.
R and I out pruning some of the buddleias yesterday - yes, I know it may be a mite early but the sun was out and so were we.

We have our first wild primroses and the stinking hellebore (Helleborus foetidus) has been in flower for a week or more.
The Witch Hazel is in full flower (and scent), roses are beginning growth and the aquilegias are uncurling their leaves from the compost and manure.

The buddleias are all over the garden - outside the kitchen window where they give cover to the birds at the feeders, around the septic tank and as a hedge on the banking. On the banking they are pruned very short at the banking top and then longer as one descends the slope, so that the top is level. For several months the birds do lose their queuing bush by the kitchen and the septic tank becomes rather visible.

There are snowdrops everywhere and the first crocus, planted on the top banking, are appearing. Locally there is an area known as the purple pasture for its carpet of spring crocus. I know I might need thousands of crocus or a hundred years to emulate that - and I am a bit fogeyed - but one has to start somewhere.

Last autumn the grass on some of the banks was too wet to strim and had to be left.
So now I have decided to burn some of it off and this proved successful but a bit scary when a breeze blew up - had to dash around with a shovel bashing out the burn to protect shrubs about which I had forgotten.

I have repaired the steps up into the wood - nothing sophisticated, just some pressure treated planks sawn up and held in place with two or three stakes.

The manure man keeps traipsing, keeps mulching. I have transplanted errant white campanulas that seem to have spread over a large area of one of the flower beds. There was so much that, in the end, I dumped some of it by the far wall - where it will survive (or not).

Ah! Goldfinches outside my window - a little heaven, as is the garden when it is still, breathless and basking in early spring (late winter) sun. I can almost hear the grass growing, the buds unfurling in joy after the long wet, cold, dark months.

The winter is coming to an end, though we did have snow flurries yesterday, and I am waiting for the final sign that winter is over - only about six weeks to go - then the chatter will begin again and the sky will fill with swallows.

As I said, a little heaven.

FROG BLOG, SPRING SPRUNG

Spawn to Pond 2 en passant!

We have our first frogspawn. R was in her shed (The Wendy House) and heard strange noises coming from the pond. It was all of a commotion. She crept nearer and the frogs disappeared into the mud - but - left behind our first spawn. No doubt the mallard and herons will be here soon - for a snack.

And now I realise I have put off the refurbishment of the ponds too long. I will have to isolate the area with the spawn before draining the rest or move the spawn from one pond to the other.

Last night the song thrush was trebling from the big sycamore - it has returned again from its winter holiday abroad.
And this morning, early, a blackbird was fluting from the old ash.
This warm snap has brought everything on.

Before that there was snow and dark evenings.
The snowdrops seem to have loved the weather last year. We did divide and replant in the green and they have thrived.
The pulmonaria is out as is the mahonia. We have a small scraggy plant at the woodland edge but have been given a beautiful specimen by our son-in-law's parents. The spot is picked but I will delay planting it until the ground is softer - hard frost last night.
Panic - birds scattering, one into the study window - sparrowhawk on a hedge-skimming attack but all have escaped.

The mist has risen and gardening deferred - too nice not to walk - perhaps to town and back separated by a coffee.

We have been given some purple tulips by I and A - to pot or not to pot? I will have to think about what to plant with them and what colour.

I have decided to convert one of the veg beds to a cut flower one - this will mean lots of preparation - shifting more manure. Mind you, those who have read my previous blogs will realise I can shift plenty, even if only in writing.

The manure heap from which I barrow is enormous - see image.

Now, I mentioned how some plants have done well from the weird weather last year - well, moles! They are everywhere casting up their mounds of soil. I do not think I have seen such a proliferation.

Perhaps I could borrow my friend's dog to have a go at them, but not yet, it is only a puppy - a cockerpoo!

Ah! Yes - another way of getting rid of moles has come my way - sticking a stem of rhubarb down the holes in the hills. That would be fine but the rhubarb is only three inches tall even in the big forcing pot.

Another friend just said to get some traps.
Perhaps he needs a new waistcoat?

TALES OF LAWNS, PONDS AND A HOT CROSS BUN

So, there we were, staring out of the bathroom window at the banking under the flowering currant (still dormant) and gazing at an earthwork, an adit to somewhere newly dug.

We had wondered where the rabbits had got to - even in winter, if the weather is mild, they come out to feed. Now we know.

So up in the bushes and block up the nascent warren. It was not nearly deep enough for there to be anyone down there. The bunny will try again, and again and get hot and cross hence the title.

The snowdrops are in full flower now and replanting them in the green last year to extend the spread has worked.

R is looking at catalogues, I am looking at the old bank balance - no seriously a packet of seed is so much better value than a few seedlings.

We have been invaded by the twitterers agin - long-tailed tits - clustered on the feeders.

I am still barrowing manure up from the horses - if the amount of this I have put on the garden is anything to go by we should buried in vegetation come July.

At the end of the big shed I have fixed a large square of concrete reinforcing mesh as trellis, dug over the soil - and manured it - and planted a Clematis armandii  with a red honeysuckle on each side.

This we can see from the kitchen.

I wish to mention our forlorn lawns. The appalling weather this year has resulted in the death of grass. There are bare patches, areas of moss and creeping buttercup. Reeds are growing in the lower garden where it is still wet. The extent of the damage is beyond me spiking and topdressing such a large area. In the end there may have to be some scarifying and reseeding - and some praying for dryer weather. Mowing will have to start with the light machine to avoid too much damage.

The photo shows the stream and ponds 7 years ago before we had created the garden, house just built. Now they are overgrown. The ponds need restructuring or even turning into a stream! With so much water coming down the stream from the back field silt has made the water too shallow. The water lily is sitting on a muddy bank.
Now, I could dig them out, reline them and wait for them to fill up with silt again but is that the best solution? It is so much simpler with a pond not on a source of running water.
Mmm! I seem to have water on the brain!

HAIR TODAY AND GONE TOMORROW

And I am going cu-cu?
Can't shift manure at the moment - just tweaked my back pushing human hair down mole holes. (Trying to turn the compost did not help much either.)

Why the title - don't know really - time for a pome reflecting on the glorious summer of 2012 :-

WHAT SUMMER?

Summer is a-going out,

loud sang no cuckoo,

strewn - no seed, no sweet

mead brewed, leaves fall,

water springs anew

through our sodden wood.

It rains, it rains 

again, rindle drips collide,

pipes gather shadows,

throw down torrents,

besprent the yard. 

The garden weeps for the sun.

Three amelanchiers are dead

drenched by the flooding rill,

mildew’s white hyphae 

blight the meadowsweet.

We dream of drought

now summer is a-going out.

This has so much internal rhyme it would make the compost heap turn itself.

Actually line two is a lie - I did hear a cuckoo here once last spring.

The garden does have colour in early February - apart from snowdrops and so on - is white a colour?

Most of it is in leaves but the hamamelis (we have an orange one) is flowering and spreading scent, shoots are appearing everywhere and the grass is greening.

At this rate, ground permitting, I will be mowing by March and the beds will not all be manured (because of my back).

I am now finding out where I planted daffodils in the autumn for, as usual, I have neither kept a record nor labelled them.

There are lots coming up by the far dry-stone wall and along the willow tunnel - shown above.

Unfortunately the sides of the tunnel have also sprouted a plethora of mole mountains - hair to the rescue.

The ranunculus in the old earthenware sink is sprouting and tulips are pushing up through the yellow pansies in the pots.

I do not think I have seen so many tiny figs on the bush as this spring - we need a good summer up here though to stand any change of figs stuffed with cream cheese and cooked - Yum!

Until today I had not seen Mr Phez (cock pheasant) around but he is back - the ladies must be looking attractive again. He is prowling by the rough shrubbery at the top of the garden where they nest every year.

So, I will have to keep a watch on the moles and hope that 'hair today, gone tomorrow' actually happens.

Hot bath or watch the Rugby.

Could I record the Rugby and have an early bath?

Why not!