FURTHER RAMBLINGS OF A GARDENOPHILE

At this time of year the light in the afternoon in the wood is just magical. Walking up there bathed in birdsong on a warm day is such a pleasure.

This is a brachyglottis (why did they have to 
change the name from a senecio?). The one at the top is too big. We had two on the bank below the kitchen so we experimented and assassinated one to see if it would regrow, and it is so doing. When the yellow flowers are done the big one will get a violent trim too, well, perhaps not quite so vicious.

So there I was, just up out of bed, put on my glasses and walked to the bedroom window looking across the garden - and there, on the other side of the glass, 16 feet up a sheer wall, was a small squirrel with its back to me. It was after the house martin eggs above its head. I yelled at it and banged the window and it haired off down the wall and away!

Two weeks ago R was saying poor little squirrel as one in a cage in our car whined and, as she put it, cried while being relocated. 
The thought of losing our house martins has changed all that. Now it is shoot the little bu****s. Actually this morning one caught in trap, one on ground below and another around by the kitchen sitting on top of the feeder pole!

So I have taken down the big peanut feeders until September and just left the so-called squirrel-proof one in place.

Still a sucker for an oriental poppy - so blowsy and colourful.

Whilst reorganising my room I found and old box of seeds. I do not know if they will germinate but have sown them here and there in bald patches - quaking grass, Ammi major, calendulas, nasturtiums and chervil. There were also some wallflowers so they have gone in the cutting bed for flowering next year.

So with nothing else to do I took off the old dead flowers from the rhododendron - the spicy scented one. Doing this, feasible on a small bush, will encourage a better blooming next year redirecting the energy of the plant into new growth rather than fruiting bodies.

My iTunes lists Artists by the first letter of their name so it goes Neil Sedaka, Neil Young, Nina Simone and then Otis Redding with me sitting on the chair of my desk. Why not by surname?

Back to gardening - down the pond the plants we put in last year are starting to come up - this is water crowfoot. We are now waiting for the waterlilies, bogbean and flowering rush to bloom.
Taking of bloom - algal bloom still in fine fettle with the recent warm weather. Will try some more straw.

Not all things in the garden have to be flowers or fruit. These Hosta leaves are so sculptural - and not yet slug chewed like the ones under the magnolia.
Other similar leafy plants (with dramatic leaves) are the cartoon and kale.

I have tried planting unusual things in the grass under some of the trees - here alliums at the foot of the great white cherry. I did try some ornamental grasses but they succumbed to the winter.


One of the necessary jobs without a short cut is the hand weeding of the asparagus bed. The shoots are not easy to see as I have just cropped them for a lunch.

Weeding, weeding, weeding, trying to keep on top of things - puling out the goosegrass by the handful (or is it handfuls?)

Weeds and now gooseberries have their annual attack of sawfly larvae and mildew - both at once - sigh!

Come Wednesday come rain come surprises - just had 29 visits from Portugal! These are the first from there for a while. I wonder what I wrote that caused this - did I mention being near Porches in March?
Yes, I did on 17th March - Blogged off to Portugal - cannot even remember my own blogs now!

Finally I must mention compost - for L and G - the old heap had had a nettle invasion but this can be remedied with a little forking and removal (when I get around to it)(when).

JUNE IS BURSTING OUT

Today is Wednesday 12th and for the first time the temperature reachees 70F. The garden is full of birdsong and you can almost hear the plants growing. Sun hat on and old shoes not rubber boots.

I am watering - the veg, the rhubarb, etc. Why do hose pipes always get knotted up and kink?
Mowed the woodland paths.

House Martins nest building under the west gable end, chaffinches nesting in the beech hedge.

So much purple it must be the in colour. It does contest well with other colours as long as it is intense - not so in favour of wishy-washy purples.

R is still up in the wood (ready to cut down my last few willows). The hawthorn up there is coated in may blossom - well it is June.
I have taken the supermarket basil and put it in a bed within the rabbit proof area. It may grow - probably not.

Email from Go Wild about their free seeds I sowed above the pond - nothing showing yet. (The pigeons have eaten them all?)

Bats flying outside at dusk for the first time - well, the first time we have seen them.

"Oh! The cuckoo is a pretty bird," so goes the song but not as far as other birds are concerned - today saw a cuckoo being chased all over the place by small birds. It makes one wonder how they know that the cuckoo is bad news.
First willow warbler heard in the garden with its characteristic descending song.

Just been finishing off the removal of stones from the new drainage areas and reseeding with grass. Watered it and then it almost rained - few drops then nothing.
It is strange but watering the garden often causes it to rain!
I also dug a new drain by the pond to try and dry out a boggy area and raked mud out of the small pond. A lot gets washed down every time it rains heavily.

And we thought that the ducks and herons and such had eaten everything in the pond but we have seen tadpoles. And a dytiscus water beetle larva - predator supreme, also known as the water tiger.
Purple in the pond also with the water lily leaves. Note the spirogyra alga - probably due to rich inflow water (soakaway from the septic tank). I spend time removing it with a rake and dumping it at the edge so creepy crawlies can return to the water.

Found a dead young pheasant by the pond - its head missing so probably a fox. The parents frequent the feeders (underneath) and had another young with them so not all lost.

The geraniums are coming into their own - in fact this one had self sown itself.

Sometimes it is the hidden corners that delight - the poppies self sown by the shed, 

 The shrubs on the banking by the path to the lawns,

Or even a small collection of items on the paving.

Thursday - it is grim up north so the reaper has been out.
Now, some of you will have laughed when I bought an Austrian scythe and went to Sprint Mill for lessons with Steve Tomlin - but - I have been cutting the long grass that the mower cannot get at by the stream this afternoon after mowing the lawns.

Also noticed we have a dead hawthorn in the wood and another looking on its last legs. I was removing any new shoots on the trees below head height. 
I checked the ties on the new white birches to see that they are not too tight and then pruned off any lower branches, again to shoulder height. Now all the growth energy will be concentrated in the top of the trees and without lower foliage I can see through the trunks to a young copper beech. The area under the birches has been left and is a sea of buttercups.

End of week - still eating asparagus as sprouting well and have had first strawberry. Much promise to come with red and black currants, 

 

gooseberries,

we have Victoria plums coming, damsons, Bramley apples and greengages on the tree I and A gave us - the first time we have had fruit, something not always guaranteed this far north.

The plums

and Conference pears.

So much going on and I am trying to restrict myself to one blog a week (but failing).

Friday and suddenly the temperature is 24C and humid - I have put on my cheap shorts from ASDA in Hereford to get my legs brown before the summer holiday. However rain is forecast for tomorrow. That should signal time to write a blog - another one!

ALL ROOK AND ROLL

(This blog carries a warning of insensitive material later on)

In the beginning there was a heart sinking feeling as we strolled past the pond and noticed that, since the drain had been put in under the liner properly the liner was rising again!
Methinks a call to Gary may be needed. 
Very depressing.
To move on -

When the light shines through young beech leaves it is a delight.

Have just hoed around. We had stormy weather and the garden is wet so big mower will have to wait.
Where one of the drains was put in the mole has dug a new run off to the side and all the water is going that way! Not down the pipe.

R is having three downstairs room floored in oak which has floored me. One is my little private haven stuffed with . . . stuff! My stuff! And it will all have to come out.
3 days later and I am stuffed - floors done and chaos resolved, bank empty, brain dead! But the lady loves it so . . .
And have managed to mow without getting bogged down.

Still cropping asparagus, just, and earthing up the spuds.

We have had a a swarm of honey bees into the dormer roof space outside our bathroom - windows shut for the moment.

R has been up the garden digging up recurring brambles and pulling out goosegrass and tiny tree seedlings. There are millions (well hundreds) of sycamore and ash infants.

The campion is in full blossom now.

Let me chuck you a few garden shots - first looking west from the kitchen patio - what a yucky word - there must be a better.

Then to the shed from there and down to the pond. Note the candelabra primulas in full glory.

Finally a view up the garden to the west along the curved path. I prefer curvy things - like paths - except in the veg garden.

Two plants doing well at the moment are these saxifrages.

Din outside my window and I have a squirrel in the trap, no I do not, yes I do, no it is not it is a jay and it is making a terrible fuss. 
Its plumage is beautiful for a crow so out I go and release it.

The metal trap is encased in a plastic sack tied on with string and weighted down with a stone (To stop it blowing away).

The sack is needed because as peanuts are the bait they fall through the metal mesh - and if the trapped prey is in there all night a little shelter would not go amiss.

The forecast ahead is good but we have had some special rain pouring over the gutters.

However it does not last forever and the sun comes out with a little magic light.
This was a complete rainbow but I could not get it all in one image. 
When all is said light is the main essential in any garden, creating contrasts.
There is something special about the varied shadow and light in the wood, particularly when there is a gentle breeze and the leaves cast shapes on the woodland floor.

(R does not have my appreciation of the finer things in life - I am currently listening to Bubbles in the Tar by The Piltdown Men on my iTunes player.)

This year's weed be mainly goosegrass (cleavers) and covers me with sticky burrs. Where did that come from - pulling it out by the handful.

A couple of years ago I put in 5 purple alliums at the end of the rose bed and have allowed them to seed with dramatic effect.

R wants me to chuck seed into the area of yellow/green euphorbia by the path down to the Wendy House when it is ripe - should make a contrasting statement.

My taste has improved (a little) now playing Early Morning Rain by Peter Paul and Mary - showing my age (and Mary is gone as are so many).

Now, I know New Zealand is a long way away and adjustments have to be made for climate, having an upside down year and so on but there is good advice at http://www.sustainablegardener.org/latest-post/. This post on broad beans.

Sometimes this blog can get a bit too nice? Can be too sweety?
So - New Writing Cumbria's online mag The Carrot has taken a poem of mine for the second edition - the theme was 'Killing"!
Also Manchester Camerata has requested photos of Ulverston so all going on. (No pay tho').
The verse is about how all things come around and nothing is wasted in nature.

Any way here is the charming poem - 

FUTURE

Rings set by summer sun running in elm-sap,

trap, in their stain, seasons of snuffed years.

Rain and sorrows run from the furrowed bole

where, beneath the waxen bark, beetles burrow.

Dutch mandibles bring lethal hyphae,

leave bleached skeletons of silent wood

spread against the sky, rattling in the wind.

Within the darkness of an autumn hanger,

from the brown of beechwood litter

and black-edged mould, a parasol emerges,

a Destroying Angel dressed in innocence,

pure and virgin-white against the soil:

and when the ignorant have eaten well

bells ring for worms and new mycelia.

At the north gate of the cattle paddock

past hangs in the dull eyes of a dead rook

hooked by its black neck to barbed wire.

Future crawls in its corrupt corpse, a white choir 

of gorging maggots warming the tangle of its rotten guts,
moulding old flesh to new flesh and paper wings.

Such a gentle little ditty - chicken for supper!!?? Or as was eaten in the last war - rook pie.

THE TOP GARDEN AND WILDLIFE

The garden is beginning to get going - I wonder where all the growth comes from when all there is in the winter are a few shrubs and a coating of manure. White hesperis on the right and purple alliums. I keep hearing that hesperis is a biennial but it thrives as a perennial here. Above the blue forget-me-nots the roses are yet to bloom though in bud and already feeding the blue tits with greenfly.    

Everything is growing - when I put a hazel marker stick in to show where I had planted a small rhododendron little did I think that it would root and sprout! But it has so I have a new tree! A hazel. Nuts!

Today I began the tedious task of lightly forking over the areas of bare earth where the drains were put in, then raking out the stones and finally sowing a rough grass seed.
This is rather boring so I got out the little mower for a change and mowed a way down to the point from the path in front of the house and the lawns to the west - the more formal grass.
It poured all night, even hailed, but this saves me watering the new seed.

A short path has been made from Wendy House to the mown grass at the back of the pond. I put the heron up as I went down the garden.
The path is a base of pebbles overlaid with porous matting and a covering of slate chippings.

This is the way to the wood though the steps need redoing owing to excessive mole activity.
The dominant flower there at this time of the year is red campion, Silene dioica, which seeds itself freely.
At the top of the wood the view is back to the house through the trees, note the bird box on the right and the small figure by the path.

If one turns ninety degrees right then paths diverge - one back down and the other to the far garden.

The far garden is lawn(ish) with a big overhanging horse chestnut tree and borders the field at the back. 
From there one can look down on the new white birches grouped in the southwestern corner.

To wildlife - here is a poor image of the bullfinches on one of the feeders. He really is a handsome bird even if he does like to eat the fruit buds off the trees.

Though the tree sparrows have not nested in the old martin nests, as they were removed last year when the house woodwork was painted, they have done so somewhere. Here an adult is feeding a fledgling peanuts, the young bird littering its wings to get the nosh.


However, sparrows are only one of many things eating peanuts. (We had some very nice almonds with rosemary and peanuts with black pepper and herbs the other day.)


(Everyone else had them with wine but I did not as I was stuffing myself with Metronidazole - an antibiotic related to Antabuse which is a treatment for alcoholism - makes you sick if you drink.)

So, - greater spotted woodpecker and squirrels (of course.)

Yes, this is a pic of a peacock's tail feathers. They are as gaudy as any garden flower but not for us. The squawk of this bird would drive us crazy!

I really cannot believe it is June already, cold and wet and windy like March. I can't believe in lots of things - that Mr Blatter tried to stay on, that one day I will like the soggy sponge at the bottom of a trifle, that the English motorway traffic chaos will improve, that I do not want a cup of tea right now - so to the kitchen and an end to this week's blog.

And a ginger biscuit.