Sparrows

Over time I’d considered house sparrows as unremarkable small brown birds which shrieked rather than sang. They would congregate and breed under the eaves at the house front, chattering noisily during summer months. Early morning sleep disturbers which flittered about unnoticed.

Over the years they have declined 60% between 1994 and 2004 according to the RSPB . Come to think of it they have become more noticeable by the relative absence over the past 20 years. Last year a sparrow house was built and erected near where they had been starting to nest again. Create a sparrow street the RSPB site sang. It seems they prefer to live in colonies with their mates to chatter to and fight with all day. At the same time and unrelated to this an old wooden bread bin which enjoyed harbouring festering crumbs was converted into a bat box and hung up on the end of the garage roof. They have colonised that too.

The bird feeders have become the water cooler chat areas for the sparrows and I have noticed the mealworms put out for the robins have been snapped up by them. It seems they enjoy those as a snack too, a suggested cause for their decline being a famine of grubs to forage.

They enjoy launching off two bushes onto the feeders, their favourite being an aromatic bay tree. I like bay leaves added to dishes too.

Wildlife in the Jungle

I’ve come to the conclusion that a tidy winter garden is not a great refuge for creatures great and small during the winter months. Scour and scrape away at dying undergrowth and watch the woodlice, worms and beetles scurry away as their winter home is recklessly removed. In the past a large clump of irises had become home to a frog over winter. So those leaves stay.

Clip away at dead Michaelmas daisies and birds could be deprived of winter foods in the seeds.

The result is what would have been classified as an unkempt lazy gardeners garden is now a nature garden and my response to comments. As a pass up our lane there is an idyllic looking cottage with a large expanse of garden extending out form the veranda area down a slope towards the road. A the road edge it is banked up with a conglomerate stone wall which leans from time to time before listing and slumping onto the road, disgorging the soil and organic matter which has crept down under the influence of gravity.

The carer of the garden has no tolerance of extraneous plant material and appears to spend hours on hands and knees cutting and clipping and dragging unwanted vegetation away to the compost bin to be whisked away by the council lest it doubles in bulk and its seeds spread like a virus across the already cleansed garden. Bare soil emerges from it’s Autumnal protective coat, naked to the scouring elements for the winter. Any creature unfortunate enough to have hoped for a winter refuge must scurry away and find another hiding place.

A pretty garden in spring though? Maybe but perhaps we should be realigning our view of what constitutes pretty and see more of the natural environment as holding the beauty of life. I am not alone https://www.wormsdirectuk.co.uk/blog/untidy-gardens-make-best-habitat-wildlife/

It’s been another cold March day today with a cutting northerly wind. I did do some cutting back of very tall bay tree branches on a lofty bay bush. This bush is a refuge for birds all year round, providing a launch pad for sparrows, dunnocks, tits and others to reach the bird feeders. If left to grow with it’s usual vigour it blocks other plants nearby so sometimes a compromise is reached. The leaves make wizard like enhancements of cooking.

It’s close companion a wisteria has infiltrated the bush, winding its tendrils round and through the bay bush to emerge at the top triumphant. I wonder how many blooms will dangle from these new shoots?

Winter Kale does not make good soup!

An acquired soup maker, its liquidising skills being the main priority, does make soup speedily and efficiently. For the most part that is. Cast in chopped vegetables of any kind it seems, some lentils or cooked beans, water, bouillon and herbs and 30 minutes later a ready to sup soup appears. Or so it seemed.

Yesterday’s soup was a memorable experiment. Butterbeans and freshly hewn red winter kale leaves, garlic. This winter’s crop has been unexpectedly prolific. The most tender leaves at the top of the plants are especially crunchy and tasty to eat raw or chopped up in a winter slaw like salad. So why not add to a soup?

30 minutes later I found out why this was a badly judged idea. The soup tasted wincingly bitter and the kale leaves had refused to liquidise, resisting the blades resulting in unappetising fibrous strands. More seasoning and cream was added hastily. No change. Honey then? might that calm down the bitter taste left stubbornly on the tongue? Seemingly not and the soup tasters put down spoons and turned to toast instead.

There’s probably a scientific reason for this abrupt change in taste when souped up. I don’t remember a similar problem adding them to stir fries. More research required. Ah It seems in mashing up the leaves some chemicals were released -myrosinase enzyme and glucosinolates which the plant craftily employs to ward off hungry eaters. The caterpillars last summer didn’t seem to mind though.

Early Spring is Sprung. Get seed sowing.

Meteorological spring is here. Time to start working out what should have been sown already and what needs to go in now.

Onions from seed. They should have gone in last month at the latest. Quick scour through the box of seeds in some alphabetical order and we have… two packets of Ailsa Craig white onions, on out of date by a year one red baron variety and some remaining shallot seeds wildly out of date. Worth a try as an experiment. Experimenting can be fun as long as disappointments are expected.

Sweet peas have also been sown into trays on the windowsill. One pot with a low heat source and the remaining two with cold feet. It’ll be interesting to see how their germination and growth compares.

Also attempting to germinate on low heat are chilli pepper seeds Autumnal leeks – Bulgaarse Reuzen Lincoln and Dill. With a flamboyant leek name like that only a spectacular emergence of growth can be expected.

January 2022

It’s cold outside. Below 6o C today so I expect no growth of plants is taking place outside.

Last year’s successes were

Kale (oak leafed type red) and cavolo nero

broccoli – for some reason (was it the seed?!) it began forming early this year – thick juicy stems. I don’t know why. It is the best that has ever appeared and I wish I knew how that happened! Only two clues. I pressed them into the ground well, mulched and fed them with super well rotted manure and a friend hand picked all the caterpillars off whilst we were away for payment!

Beetroot – grew well enough until the squirrel ate them all 😦

Rainbow Swiss Chard

Climbing french beans

Raspberries

Last Year’s Failures were:

Peas mostly. Transplanted ones from the greenhouse failed – drought perhaps?

any attempts at sowing seeds outside directly into the ground fail – slugs mainly I think. They love lettuce.

Tomatoes grown outside – blighted

Tomatoes grown in the greenhouse survived and produced a steady crop but just not as prolific as I’d hoped

Some gains, Some losses

The good news is that  plants have germinated well in the comfort of the greenhouse and slug damage is minimal.  Not so the cat who jumped onto a table in there and knocked off courgette plants!

The not so good news is that once planted out in the garden, complete with own chicken manure compost and watering, they have had mixed fortunes.  The brassicas (all muddled up now so I can’t tell which is the Cavolo Nero and which is the Autumn calebrese!  Hopefully they will reveal their true identity  once more leaves appear.

 

Some peas (which I have to grow on a table in the greenhouse because of mice)  have struggled to thrive whilst a few have shone through and look healthy.  It may be because of the frosts we had earlier for a couple of nights then the large diurnal change in temperature during the day to blazing sun.  Poor peas didn’t know whether they were coming or going.

 

As usual outside seed germination has been pathetic.  Where am I going wrong?  is it a) lack of water or b) slugs getting there first?  I have got carrots growing well in a trough in the cold frame but just can’t get them to germinate outside.  Beetroot are sparse too.  I’ll have to reseed …

May 1st

Ne’re shed a clout until the May is out so they say.

With previous warm weather and now rain the weeds have rejoiced in their prime growing conditions.  Ground alder looks like I’ve been deliberately farming it on an industrial scale.  It’s no good trying to extract it in dry weather as was the case in April, the roots within the soil hang on to their habitat grimly refusing to let go.

Today was better after rain.  Each year I go through the same ritual.  Kneeling down on hands and knees, forking it all out piece by piece, planting some other plant I do want in the vain hope it will take hold,  the ground alder returning then the plant dying, smothered to death.

I’m working by the front wall so I see everything that goes on in our lane, or isn’t going on as it should be because we are in lockdown right?   Wrong – neighbours just down the hill have a vehicle going up and down their drive every five minutes.  They seem to be clocking up a rate of two parcel deliveries or visitors an hour.  Immediate neighbour over the road should be self isolated  for health reasons .  He gazes at his ridiculously large  vehicle on his drive for his needs….  He can’t bear it any longer….  He climbs in and strokes the dashboard instruments lovingly….  His twitching fingers clutch they keys and before he knows it they are inserted in the ignition, turning the engine. It’s fired up!  He listens to it throbbing on his drive for a while.   I’m choking on the fumes a few meters away trying to extract weeds.  The gates open and he eases it out onto the lane.  Not really.  He revs and fumbles it out onto the lane and drives off.  Two minutes later – back again!  Well that was fun.

I do meet plenty locals out walking though – we’re allowed to do that. This morning I managed to hold a discussion on our village Climate Change initiative.  Nothing’s happening apart from more climate change.  We could be doing loads online…

This year’s victims will be monbretia.  I enjoyed the riotous colours of reds oranges and yellows displayed by this plant as we cycled around the coastline of western Scotland last year.  Old white washed cottages had huge strands of monbretia spilling out onto the verges. I’m wishing mine will do the same and smother that ground alder in the process.

On the veg front the lettuce seedlings donated by a friend can now be eaten as small salad leaves along with radishes.  If we were self sufficient we’d have died of starvation by now!  Broad beans are in flower and the bumble bees are busily pollinating them. the climbing beans are ready to go out but I daren’t let them in case of a freak frost.

Sorry for running off script with the garden routine – it’s these ‘unprecedented times’ you know!

 

Gardening in Lockdown

More time to grow things but in need of rain now.  Are gardeners ever happy?

I’m still trying to keep slugs at bay in the greenhouse.  I’ve been given some lettuce seedlings (compensation for all the tiny seedlings germinated but who have now lost their lives to the relentless munching of slugs).  Knowing that it would be embarrassing ton admit that they’d all disappeared in the night, I set up beer traps using home brew nobody fancied drinking.  These have caught several including one really fat juicy one. The lettuces seemed unscathed. Phew.

It’s not slug clear yet though.  Several were found lurking under old seed trays (fed immediately to eager hungry hens)  and under plant pots.   On the other side of the greenhouse I’d been outwitted.  I realised this as I stared at three leafless stalks of what were three healthy kale plants.

 

It’s a long battle! In fact. ..quarter to eleven..I’m going out now to check.

The hotel has guests who have just moved in!

After reading Dave Goulson’s excellent book The Garden Jungle , and being enthused about solitary bees which are probably roaming our garden looking for homes, a bee hotel was knocked up by drilling holes of varying sizes into a block of old ash tree wood.

within three weeks there is about 33% occupancy!  Here is the new hotel on April 6th…

And here on April 22nd – just 16 days later

Some of the smaller holes as well as the larger ones have been occupied and the ‘cement to block up the holes after the eggs have been laid differs too.  I’m not sure who has moved in yet. We’ll have to wait until the newborns emerge. 🙂

Trying to tame the pond

How long have we been here now?  Ooh over 27 years now.  When we moved in the garden was semi wild but certainly not over manicured. A pond and rockery containing huge rocks of conglomerate had been dug and set in before we arrived and had some plants, such as two highly scented azaleas. The main problem though was an overbearing growth of butter bur and this hasn’t changed since then!  The plants have umberella shaped leaves which successfully smother other plants trying to succeed. Their root systems, pencil thickness successfully boring through the soil pop up effortlessly around the rest of the area and beyond.

I’ve tried systematically working through one by one, pulling put the plant and as much root as I can be determined the get the better of me, the plant gaily carries on regardless.

One weapon I have tried using is to plant something that I do want which can block out the steady progression of the butter bur.  Heather for instance worked quite well in this respect but in time it too spread too extensively and had to be cut back too.

Two years ago I planted some daffodil bulbs around the rockery surrounding the pond which have flowered quite well this year but now the butter bur has fought back with vengeance.     Last summer I sowed a tray of mixed colour and white foxgloves.  I quite like foxgloves, their long funnel shaped flowers which bees crawl down in search of nectar. They also have long fleshy leaves which could theoretically blot out the weeds, ground alder being another problem. I have planted them around the perimeter of the rockery in the hope that they will gracefully hover over the rockery from above, keeping the weeds at bay.  We’ll see!

Within the pond – new liner put in last year, newts jumped straight back in – I collected some flag irises and other marsh loving plants from our land down the road, being persuaded that local natural plants growing in the vicinity would fare better than expensive garden centre plants imported.