Rattling On...

Garden roundup...

In the last week or, more precisely, in the recent sunny weather the garden has come back to life. I've already seen these different butterflies. The bees are about and the pond skaters are surfing the pond.

Every year I find it amazing that the dreadful cold hasn't done for everything. You can see in the last picture the frost certainly did see off quite a lot of the lovely old reclaimed bricks that I put in as a border, they just crumble when you touch them. But the butter burr is right in there. The picture was pre-apocalypse-weeding spree, but I'm sure it won't be the last I see of it.

You will also note the lady's mantle and the Other Weed I don't know the name of, looks a bit like strawberry plants but that's just a heinous disguise to try to fool you. My garden is a positive Eden Project of the pestilential kind. Should Kew Gardens ever lose any of their extensive plant DNA collection in a freak bioaccident then they know where to come for a one-stop weed roundup.

Or, fingers crossed, fancy London restaurants will start demanding buttercups to fulfill new demand after this year's Masterchef winner uses them in an amazing must-imitate recipe. Obviously I have pre-empted this and am growing an extensive crop this year. In fact it's the best yield the lawn has ever produced. You can imagine how chuffed I am.

The other good news...

After extensive hanging out of the bathroom window when the sun was shining directly onto the pond, I managed to catch sight of both fishy friends at the same time. Thus proving they both are still going. One is much bigger than the other but this is irrelevent for fish spotting unless they are together (which made me think of this sketch).

The frogs aren't so evident this year, though I hear them at night and have seen the odd one. And one was a very odd one, it was standing on tiptoe on the bottom of the pond, reaching up with both hands. Very spooky.

Here endeth the garden roundup.

Oliver Cromwell had a point...

I went to the theatre last Friday with some tickets a friend couldn't use as he was otherwise engaged. I took My mate K with me, she runs a creative writing class and is a teacher of English, so she likes a good play.

So do I, this wasn't one of them. I'm not saying it didn't have good bits, but by (what I desperately hoped was) the last act I was literally squirming in my seat as I couldn't wait for it to be over. I don't think this has happened to me ever before, and I've sat through some crap in my time. Unless of course you count the Elton John concert some years ago, in his addled phase, when I was so unimpressed that I left at half time. I had a cold, which didn't help.

Anyway, back to the play; the social conscience/political ranting turned me off big time, and this from someone who studied politics and likes a good debate on any subject you care to toss in the ring. For me the characters lacked chemistry and the set was boring as it never changed except for some flowers appearing at one point.

Obviously my advancing years are leaving me unable to appreciate anything with a subtext or requiring deep thought. Maybe I should stick to operetta and farce from now on. Start wading through Mills and Boon. Listen to Ken Bruce without irony. Or just learn to walk out of things when I've had a bellyfull.

K agreed with me on almost all the points, I may add. She also found the storyline confusing and lacking direction. But then she's a few years older than me so one can forgive her a little befuddlement.

We did, though, enjoy the people watching opportunities presented by the audience. K being fascinated by the dynamics of the group-of-three sitting directly in front of us. One hesitates to use the word 'threesome' but if the cap fits and all that. Funnily enough I'd had my eye on a similar group just further along our row. Which strikes me now as being unusual, even for round here. Maybe we stumbled into a Speciality night out without realising it? You know, a bit like singalong-a-Sound of Music. But more of a Friday Night is Threesomes how d'you do. Maybe the play was just a front??

She'll be comin' round the mountains...

Right at this moment there's a little bit of sunshine and the birds are singing. It's snowing as well, but we'll ignore that bit.

The weather wasn't enough to put off visitors to the park at the weekend, or to keep the little train in his hut any longer. It is incredibly cold here still; bitterly, stinglingly cold. The ground is frozen solid and nothing at all is flowering except the poor snowdrops that are the only respite from what still looks like winter.

The blackbirds have been gathering bits and bobs for their nests but, surely, they won't be considering it just yet? I have nothing but admiration for the wildlife which just accepts the weather and gets on with business as usual. I went to top up food supplies the other day and the woman on the counter remarked that we must have the best-fed birds in Britain as they've sold so much seed.

Frank the cat was ill all over the bank holiday weekend, when the vet is closed. Much yakking up and retching, a bit of scary blood. He was a lot improved yesterday, by which I mean the piles of puke had stopped appearing, and this morning ate his breakfast as usual. I suspect hairballs. Or something caught at the vet's surgery last week...

The funny thing is that when Frank wasn't eating, Harry stopped as well in some sort of sympathetic solidarity. I took the opportunity this morning of readjusting the amount of breakfast I put out for them, bearing in mind the vet's comments on weight. I've done similar for the dog, who can't understand it but hasn't got a choice, being too small to even steal much effectively.

Off out now to feed the birds and get really cold in the process...

Up, up and away...

More snow here, and someone had fed the pigeons in the car park behind the main shopping bit of town. Their lovely straight line caught my eye and I thought what a good blog banner they'd make. See above! Then, suddenly, something disturbed them...

This little lot are here pretty much all the time (I've shown you them before) and aren't really a nuisance and don't seem to increase in number particularly. So they are tolerated.

Peepo!

Don't worry, I'm not going to say anything like it feels like Spring is just around the corner. It most certainly doesn't.

However, once the snow had gone a few little heartening signs had appeared, in the form of snowdrops. Looking around at the bigger picture, so to speak...

...the pesky squirrels have been digging away, uprooting lots of bulbs and probably scoffing a fair few. It's a shame they don't eat celandine corms as the front garden is positively infested with them.

The garden looked a bit iffy before it snowed, but now that effect has been amplified to beyond dodgy. Mushy, flattened, brown and shrivelled. It all spells hard graft.

Snow on snow...

If you've been reading this blog for a while (you mad thing) then you may think I'm recycling my pictures. Not so, but this is very like one from a couple of years ago.

I shall be using this post box as my snow-ometer. If anything I think we have slightly more snow this time and it's not stopped yet. This picture was taken yesterday morning on my way to work and it snowed all day.

The roads haven't been ploughed or gritted, the bins aren't being collected and no post has been delivered. It's a positive winter wonderland here, you'd think snow was a surprise and it didn't do just this each and every year.

School was closed to students except those sitting external exams and rehearsing the school musical. Only local staff were in and most of them left early.

As I walked to work a woman was pushing a car along the road. Periodically she got in, span the wheels a bit, got back out and pushed. As she passed me she gave me the sort of look that requested sisterly solidarity. No way, baby. Mine's on the drive, why shuld I shove yours? It's definitely four wheel drive weather. Or two-by-two as my Mother calls them.

It's all very gorgeous to look at, though. If you ignore the grey skies. A nice bit of blue and some wintry sun would set it all off to perfection.

As I was doing the ironing after work, I was idly watching the blackbirds and sparrows having a bath in the little open bit of the pond (are they mad??) when a flash of pink caught my eye. A bullfinch in the garden. I adore bullfinches to the point of distraction and almost wept. I know... a very irrational reaction, but they're so seldom seen here. I ran to get the camera instead of just watching him as I should have. Because of course he'd gone by the time I made it back to the window.

But the good thing about gardens, and birds, is that there's always a compensation.

                                                           

In which I worry, unnecessarily as it turns out.

Rather selfishly I searched on-line for details of the current ash tree disease, chalara, thinking of the mountain ash in my garden. The one where the blackbird sits in the Spring and serenades me. The one that holds all the bird feeders, that has honeysuckle climbing up it. The one I got worried about.

Turns out that the mountain ash, the rowan tree, isn't actually an ash. Or at least not the kind that are in danger. So mine is okay. I said I was selfish.

I remember when Dutch elm disease struck years ago, there are plenty of people who will never have seen an elm tree (and there are still outbreaks which threaten the few that remain) and I wonder now whether the ash will go the same way.

The disease hasn't really reached here, or the west of the UK in general. We are only just below the tree line in any case. But do have a look at the video on how to spot the signs and where to report cases. It would be a shame to lose yet another native species.

Blue skies and butterflies...

What a beautiful weekend we had. Misty mornings and sunny days, perfect. Just a shame we had to wait 'til summer has almost finished to get the best of it. I think was the longest stretch without significant rainfall that we've had in I don't know how long. It's raining this morning, of course.

All my linen clothes were back out, though I have to admit I've been looking longingly at scarves and woolly tights and knee length boots. I like my layers. I also like the evenings when you close the curtains, light the fire and knit away while a good drama is on the telly. It's funny how the schedules still have new dramas on in autumn, even with all the many ways there are to record things these days. Some traditions outlast the technology. Downton Abbey on Sunday, and I'll be watching despite the hype and tweeness of it all. Nice costumes again. Always gets me.

I wouldn't say I was a summer person, much more autumn and winter. But this year I've enjoyed summer a lot, even taking into account the weather. I don't really know why this should be so but it's a bonus to enjoy the whole year round!

Birthday cake at school today for a boy whose Dad forgot his birthday last week. I made chocolate as, even though he's 16, you can't go wrong with chocolate and boys. Cakes and meetings, meetings and cakes. We're back into the swing of school life all too quickly. It's an eight week half term, they promised there wouldn't be any more of them...

Waterworld...

I am thinking of opening the garden as a nature reserve... this pair are today's new attraction.

I looked out of the kitchen window to see them making themselves at home. No doubt feasting on the frogspawn as well... not much you can do about that kind of thing really. Nature and all.

I went out to photograph them and was followed all the while by the female blackbird nagging for food. I then had to go and get the tub of mealworms and put them in the feeding spot in the front garden. She was there before me.

Back to say... hold the front page. I've been out with the garden rake to scare them off. Why? Because I was just wondering what the female had in her mouth after surfacing from her dabble when I realised it was onre of my frogs. Well, the effrontery. My frogs are my frogs.

The flew off quacking and not very happy to be evicted. I think I now know how the pond pump has been dislodged in the past...

Corvids...

It is still bitterly cold here, the snow has not gone and more is forecast. But it is getting lighter in the evenings, meaning the dog walks are more interesting as we can actually see the goings-on around us.

In the fields at the edge of the woods I often stand and watch as the rooks swoop in to roost for the night. They are noisy and there are a lot of them. I love the way they are so communal and so vocal.

It's incredible to think they survive this freezing weather, up there in the tree tops, open to all the biting winds. That's why I don't begrudge them feeding in the garden (though I don't like their baser behaviour of eating baby birds in Spring...).

I think you have to embrace all Nature, not just the cute stuff, especially such hardy birds as these. And they look so good silhouetted against the evening skies...

Hanging around in the garden...

It's amazing what a good set of toenails and a head for heights can achieve. This one is a regular garden visitor, he eats everything. Especially the mealworms in the special holder in the front garden. He has expensive tastes and it's showing on his waistline. Corpulent is the word for him this year, though after last winter it must be good for all the garden creatures to have an easier time of it.

It's a very wet winter so far. We had almost ten inches of rain in December, and still it comes down. At least the days are getting a little longer if not brighter, there were 17.75 sun hours last month, which is about half an hour each day. Except quite a lot of days there wasn't any.

There's a weather page for the town which is well used by people living here as well as visitors who are coming to go walking and such. Last year's stats make very grim reading, but that's Nature for you. 

Only tomorrow left before work kicks in again. I honestly don't feel there's been a moment to sit still and can't decide whether that's a good or bad thing.