Rattling On...

Wildlife...

Bank Holiday Monday was a proper August day weather-wise, warm and sunny. I decided to do a spot of reading in the garden (not bad, as it happens) by the pond. The bees were buzzing around me and it was clam and peaceful. A large yellow frog hopped across the ground in front of me and plopped into the pond.

It was the first frog I've seen this summer, though I hear them in the evenings, unless you count the ones the cat brings up from the cellar. These are tiny and I really don't know how they got in there, they were living in a corner by the water inlet pipe, it's dampish I suppose and there are plenty of woodlice and spiders down there. I did a quick hunt and rescued a further three on top of the three the cat deposited in the kitchen, unharmed.

So, I'm in the garden relaxing, soaking up a few rays and thinking how lovely it all is when there's a tickle on my hand. Without thinking, I slapped at the spot. Which caused the wasp sitting there to promptly sting me and make a lot of annoyed fizzing noises. I've been stung quite a few times in the garden and they don't really hurt any more, it was my own fault, I usually wouldn't flap or swipe at wasps but my lightning reflexes just kicked in there. Hmm.

And then, this morning I was in the kitchen when some movement outside the window caught my eye. Ahh, I thought, a little wren in the climbing hydrangea. Mais non. It was a little mouse doing a bit of rock climbing up onto the outhouse roof. No idea what he'd be doing up there unless it's caterpillars maybe, I imagine he'd know his way down again, it looked like he was an old hand.

In other news: My computer is rebelling at the moment. The internet security (which didn't come cheap) keeps crashing. My re-boot times are astonishing, in a bad way, and the whole thing spends more time hovering in a state of semi-coma than is reasonable. Thus, I'm avoiding it for long periods as I have a long held belief that if you ignore a problem for long enough it will either solve itself or disappear. Failing that, hitting it with a shoe has always proved effective in the past.

Shiny happy flowers...

I could watch the bees all day, they don't mind how close you get to them and aren't in the least aggressive. I love the way this one has wings like leaded windows, and the gorgeous fur coat as well.

I don't think I'd noticed before how it's apparent which parts of the flower the bees have already visited. But it's clear from the photo. That daisy looks juicy even to me!

Daisies are like sunflowers, they're actually lots of tiny flowers, florets, clustered together in the middle which is I suppose why the bees love them so much.

It was lovely and sunny yesterday but there's a definite cooler edge creeping in, when I go walking in the mornings it's almost cold. I've suddenly improved my pace, knocking four (four) minutes off overnight. Not sure what happened there but I positively race round now.

Yesterday a lady was backing out of her drive, saw me speeding up, and very kindly pulled back in so I didn't have to stop. I wouldn't say I enjoy it but I have a competitive streak which is definitely kicking in. I do worry how I'll manage when it's icy, though. Can you power walk in wellies?

Now you see it...

Goodness, we have had a lot of thunder storms in the last few days. In between it's hot and sunny then the wind whips up and you know what's coming!

Yesterday afternoon we got the most beautiful rainbow. Strictly speaking I suppose rainbows are there all the time it's just the rain droplets and the angle of the sun's rays that mean we can see it.

I watched it as it disappeared from view, shrinking away, looking like it was retreating back into the roof of the house. The blue came back in from the right and the clouds began to form up more densely again, taking the rain off somewhere else. Watching them I realised where the term 'gathering storm' comes from. The clouds really did clump up with each other as if they were ganging up.

I was hanging out of the bathroom window to take the pictures, and watching the rain pounding into the pond, which is now full again. After the storm had stopped the fish came up to eat the food I'd thrown in just before the rain started and the frogs were croaking solemnly. They always get out of the pond when there's a storm. Sensible things that they are. I haven't seen much of them this year, but I hear them in the evenings.

The rain has traashed most of the colourful flowers in the garden, the petals are strewn all over the ground, but the green is impressive by itself. It is so very green!

The decorating is almost finished for now, though I have two (possibly three) more projects I'd like to do during the holiday. Curtains to hang today, some that I'd got in the cupboard from a previous house that look just perfect. It's been a low budget kind of job.

Wet, wet, wet...

It was another humid and very warm day. It hasn't really been the weather for decorating, but then given the choice it's not been fit for much in the way of work. I finished the skirting boards after I got back from my morning walk, and before I had a shower. Seemed pointless to do otherwise.

It's started to rain now, with the promise of some torrential downpours. Goodbye to the roses, then. And where do the butterflies go to stay dry? There have been lots of cabbage whites in the garden, sometimes seven or eight dancing around me as I tried to take pictures of them- without disturbing the blackbirds who were taking a bath. I haven't seen any ladybirds at all so far this year, though I have seen their odd little larvae mooching around on the damson tree where they seem to thrive.

My Mother's neighbour informed me today that they'd had bees nesting in their cavity wall, they were entering through an air vent. She then told me they'd blocked the vent to kill the bees as some had come in at the back door. I was steaming and asked her why she hadn't contacted the beekeeper's association about trying to remove them. To the best of my knowledge you shouldn't kill bees unless it's the absolute last resort. I suppose other people have different priorities and wildlife just doesn't figure as anything but a nuisance to them.

I have lots of sparrows nesting in the eaves at the moment, I love the idea of sharing my space with them. So many people try so hard to control everything around them all the time. Sometimes it's easier and for the best just to co-exist. I'm glad we don't have poisonous snakes or scorpions to contend with, though. That I would find a little harder.

Good year for the roses...

It really is a good year for the roses here. Mine have gone bonkers and grown really tall, I've had to stake them all up. The heavy rain recently put paid to some lovely blooms but hopefully they'll keep flowering. The smell is divine, it wafts over as we sit in the garden; the rosa mundi (in the pictures) as always hasn't disappointed.

The blog title comes from this song by Elvis Costello. It remimds me of being in the 6th Form and getting the news that a friend had died after a long fight against cancer. She was eighteen and one of the cleverest girls at school, she'd won a place at Oxford and had worked like a demon to get it. While we'd all been partying and cramming, she'd worked steadily.

I suppose I still favour the party and cram method in life; I like a deadline, it makes me work harder and I'll often leave things 'til the last minute. Like the spare room that's been half painted for two years, abandoned when the person who started the project decided he wouldn't be staying.

Visitors since then have slept on a put-me-up bed in the front room as the spare room was such an eyesore. We are due a visit from my daughter's uni friend next week so I've been at it on the decorating front for three days solid now. It's a makeover rather than a scratch job, but I don't think the room had been done since the year dot. I've done the emulsion and the trims (doors, skirting etc.) and just have the sopt cleaning of the carpet to do. Which I'm not looking forward to. It really needs new flooring but for now the old, joined (??) carpet will have to do- with a strategic rug.

It looks so much better already. And it's one of the summer jobs ticked off the list. Two more rooms are on there as well, not sure I'll manage them as one can experience a certain emulsion overload, we'll see. Maybe I'll even get some photos together. Off now to mow the lawns as rain is forecast for tomorrow, so they won't scorch hopefully. I just won't look at the weeds...

Elder statesman...

It's a weed that just happens to be, in my eyes anyway, very beautiful when it's flowering. Ground elder, which loves the shady bits of the garden where little else will thrive.

I have a go at it each spring but it remains fairly stable despite my efforts, you have to admire that.

I let some nettles grow, and dock leaves and all sorts of other things most people consign to the compost heap on first emergence. The bees love them all, and I like having the bees around. I was in the bathroom the other morning and their collective sound was so loud I could hear it through the closed window.

I don't use weed killer or slug pellets. If something gets eaten I say goodbye and don't plant it again. The snails love the butterburr which is a great tradeoff, I hate the stuff-they eat what I can't dig up due to exhaustion and ennui. I hardly see any slugs, I suspect the birds and the frogs eat them.

Maybe gardening is best when done symbiotically, much less stressful in any case.

Blue blue electric blue...

I woke up at 6.30 yesterday morning and decided it was too nice a day to miss out on. I donned the exercise gear and headed out of the door before the mood wore off! Back home and a cuppa downed I thought I'd tackle the grotty garden furniture before I had a shower.

The table and bench are quite a few years old and were going to ruin from the weather, I'd bought some stain on Saturday and thought a quick wire-brushing followed by slapping on some paint would take an hour or so.

Three hours later, thoroughly bored and I was still at it. But I think it was worth it. The chairs can wait a while as they are virtually new, and I can't face all those slatted bits.

The good weather had brought lots of little visitors, mainly wasps. There are zillions this year and there's a nest in the wall at the end of the garden. So far they've minded their own business as there's plenty of flowers to keep them busy.

A bit of added interest over on the pond was a Large Red Damselfly; who, despite the name, is actually quite tiny. I'm surprised I spotted it with the state of my eyesight at the moment- it's deteriorated a lot recently, and I'm back to wearing glasses much of the time.

The tench like it when it's warm and come to the surface of the pond to bask, usually mostly hidden by the floating duck weed or the water lilies.

What happy chappies they are!

The girls and I walked through the park later to have afternoon tea in our favourite cafe. We'd booked which was a good job as evrywhere was heaving with visitors, lots of pop-up kiddie tents and a few BBQs even in the park.

I think this recent new article may have bought people from further afield as well as the Festival currently on. I went to a Fringe production on Friday night, most odd it was as well. A woman channelling Charlotte Bronte, sort of. the audience was the best bit, including the man who fell asleep and snored, and the woman on the front row who kept turning round and asking "What's going on. Does anybody know?" Got to love alternative entertainment.

Nibbled...

So far I haven't managed to catch sight of whatever is snacking on the honeysuckle. They haven't ruined it and it's only the leaves close to the ground, to maybe two or three feet (the whole thing is maybe ten feet high).

Maybe the dozens of little birds that are usually squabbling in its depths have something to do with that. Snacking on the invaders, karma. I have to say I think it adds an extra dimension to the leaves, they look more jaunty.

It's not raining right now, but the garden looks like a bomb has gone off. The high winds have basically flattened most of it. If you wandered in from outer space you'd think it was autumn.

I am toying at this very moment with going to the Emma Bridgewater factory sale. Many bargains. Is it too early for Christmas shopping?

Granny's bonnets...

It's a bit of a picture heavy post today, but I do love these jolly little flowers. Aquilegias, or granny's bonnets. This year's display is particularly good, with plenty of variety and the bees love them as well.

They're funny plants, they prefer growing in rubbish soil or in the gravel path- I just let them alone to grow where they like it best. Sometimes I collect the seeds but generally I allow the wind to do the job of spreaading them about.

Years ago we bought a house that was virtually derelict and did it all up, including the garden. I had lots of aquilegias then and an old man used to walk past and stare into the garden almost daily. I thought he was crackers, but one day he knocked on the door.

Certain ones of my little bonnets were apparently very rare and he was desperate for some seeds!

Ironically the garden is now back to a ruin as the people who bought the house just let it (and the house) go, never doing anything to it at all. The hedges I tamed and kept so precise and beautiful were like something from Sleeping Beauty until a developer bought the house, gave it a cheapo tarting up and cut the hedges down. Such a shame.

The wind has ravaged the plants again this year, the paeonies have taken a real battering but still look beautiful even when tattered. I'm afraid it's a bit grim up north again so far. Whenever there's a little window of sunshine I try to go out and soak a bit of it in, I feel like one of the cats chasing the warm spots round the house!

Snooping down the allotments...

I love wandering round the allotments. There's been a radical hedge trim this year, so you can see much more than usual. I prefer the ramshackle, slightly delapidated plots to the beautifully groomed ones, they look more real- if that makes sense.

The waiting list is closed on these, has been for a long time, but there's also a warning message on the noticeboard- keep on top of your plot or you'll be evicted. Or something of that nature just a bit more diplomatic.

The railway runs alongside the allotments and it forms a corner plot at the back. This is my favourite, it's always busy...

Half of me would like my own plot here, a space just dedicated to produce, but it's hard enough keeping up with the garden. I've planted more fruit bushes in the borders in the back garden, I quite like mixing practical with pretty.

Plenty of unattended rhubarb was on show, in fact plenty of excellent rhubarb just growing away- why is nobody eating it? And if you ever wondered where all the sparrows are these days, they're living on the allotments. The hedges were alive with them, and they were nesting in the sheds; I spent ages watching them coming and going and listening to their chattering.

If you've been reading this nonsense for a while now you'll remember that we planted loads of hawthorn hedging, maybe four years ago- I can't find the post. There's never been any blossom and I wondered why. On Googling the issue I found a little snippet by Monty Don, and I'm a bit put out that it can take twenty years for hawthorn to blossom. Twenty. Years.

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.

Blue sky = hard work...

The sun is shining this morning, there's a frost on the grass. I suspect we are, as usual, well behind the rest of the country as far a spring goes but things are happening at last.

My annual battle with the two Bs has begun in earnest. Butterburr and buttercups, proof that butter is bad for you. I had another hour in the garden last night digging up the butterburr runners/roots, they are nightmarishly tough and go for miles. I ended up using the tree lopper tool to cut them.

I've almost forgotten what it feels like to have a garden which only requires average weeding and digging. This was such a ruin when we moved in, requiring a lot of hard work, and it's hard to keep on top of it never mind actually move forward. I've given up with the celandine. It appears each year for a couple of weeks then dies off. I can put up with that I've found.

Speaking of butter being (allegedly) bad for you... on Thursday one of the break-time-boys came in for his tea and toast and asked if he could have just jam on the toast. I asked why and he said he was worried about his cholesterol (he's 13). When I told him we used sunflower spread he was mollified a little end thought he'd risk it. Science lessons have a lot to answer for.

We eat butter here, not ridiculous amounts, we prefer the taste on most things though I do bake with sunflower spread most of the time (the cost is a big factor rather than health matters). For now I don't have to worry about my cholesterol levels, they are quite a bit below average according to a recent blood test. I think the doctor was very disappointed he couldn't lay that one on me, they do like preaching. Mine does anyway.

More gardening today while it's nice. I say gardening but it's more weeding really. Despite having done the same patch twice already the buttercups are back, goodness knows where they lurk. I don't, won't, use pesticides or weedkillers of any sort And after seeing what the slugpellets my Mother's neighbour puts down did to the mistle thrush nesting in my Mother's tree did, then I think they should be banned.

Worlds within worlds...

Me

Coco

Blackbird

Mouse

I have been watching the mice pinching the food I put out for the birds, under the laurel trees opposite the back door. They weave in and out of the stones in the little retaining wall and pop out to thieve a bit of seed or grated cheese, before nipping back to the hole I showed you previously. Occasionally they hang around for a brief moment

before streaking away. I tried to get a shot of one of them going into the pile of stones that was meant to be there temporarily while we wondered what to do with them. It has been there two years and the mice love it, so it's become a sort of installation. Anyway, my picture was spoiled by a photo-bomber...

Probably annoyed that someone was eating his grated cheese.

Holey moley...

February, four years blogging and another year on this earth. Both anniversaries now behind me.

Yesterday the sun came out, I won't go so far as to say it was warm (it wasn't ) but it did make me feel like I wanted to tidy the garden. This was partly as I wanted to stay near home to hide. I have had anothe allergic episode and my eyes are like two little slits in a red cushion.

So, I gardened in sunglasses which hid the eyes but not the puffy face. It drew glances from passers by. I say passers by but they are not random, they are invariably people in walking gear on the way to the woods, usually with dogs.

I cleared a lot of clart, filled the green bin in fact. And uncovered several mouse holes in the process- see above. If you find holes think "golf ball, mouse; tennis ball, rat". So golf balls they are, or smaller actually, and incredibly neat and perfect.

Funny how most (all?) animals go for round holes and just we humans have to have angles and lines. Better than crouching I suppose, and arches are a compromise.

I mentioned we have an owl in the back garden, well yesterday there was a female sparrowhawk. She even went into the laurel hedge, and came out with a little bird. I find this a bit sad, but can't complain as it proves the garden is sustaining quite a little system. And birds of prey were my first birdy loves, which along with bats and horses consumed much interest.

The blue tits are checking out the nesting boxes. Bit early, but as I feed the birds every day it may well be that they're starting to build a nest. Crow is also still around every day, though he can fly well now. I wonder if he (she??) will ever leave or just be a permanent resident?

Better weather given for this week, but snow next weekend. Bleurgh.

Whether the weather...

It has snowed all night, it's still pitch black outside so no photos until later. Until after school, because we're open as usual!

There are national exams on which is I suppose why we're fully open but I imagine plenty will vote with their feet, especially those from out of town and those not sitting an exam.

So it's wellies on and walking in for us. The dog will have to cross her legs for the day as I won't be able to make it home at lunch time.

Last night I made a special trip to buy bulk bird food. Feeding my feathered neighbours is one of my daily jobs whatever the weather, but is especially important at this time of the year.

I have a lot of blackbirds at the moment. Seven males were at the pond the other day, drinking and bathing. It'll make for an interesting Spring.