Ramsey and Langness

The last post - possibly.

Thursday 11th June, 2015.

I am in “Stop the world, I want to get off” mode.  Life has been rather too busy and stressful recently.  There is too much to do in the house and garden and the last straw was when some bees decided to set up home in our chimney.  So I have decided that this will be the last post on this blog - perhaps for a few months, perhaps forever.   The blog has passed its use by date anyway.  It started life as a record of our weekly hikes on the Island, before deteriorating into a garden blog with a just few short walks included.  Now I have recorded a whole year in the garden and the photos are becoming more or less a repeat of those that I posted last year, so it seems like a good time to stop.  But I may be tempted to start again - hence the possibly in the title.

PS I changed my mind and started a new garden blog before the end of June. It is called Reflections and can be found at http://caillagh.blogspot.com/

This week started with Mad Sunday.  It was only half as mad as usual.  The roads were closed in the afternoon because it was too windy to race on Saturday and the first races of 2015 were postponed.  

We drove into Ramsey before the madness started to buy the newspapers.  There was a crowd of visitors on the river - Canada geese.  We have never seen so many before.  I thought at first that they might have stopped for a rest during a migration.  

But when we got home I read in a bird book that Canada geese are flightless during their moult after the breeding season and usually seek out the safety of sheltered water.  I had noticed that a lot of the birds were preening so that is the most likely reason for the gathering of geese.

There were a few fans circulating around the course by the time we drove home.

The bee problem may have been solved but I am not counting chickens yet.  According to an expert on the internet there is a short window of opportunity, about five days, when you can persuade a swarm to move on from a chimney by lighting a smoky fire and keeping it burning for some time.  After that they are almost impossible to shift and it becomes dangerous to light a fire because there is the risk of the wax melting and catching alight.  We tried the smoky fire trick on Monday and hoped for the best.  I think they have gone but there were still a couple of bees near the chimney the next morning.

TT race week is always frustrating because we never know when the races will be delayed and the road closure schedule changed.  Most delays are caused by adverse weather but this year there was an added complication - an accident on the course just before the roads closed on Monday.  This meant that one of Monday’s races and some of the practice sessions had to be held on Tuesday.  Tuesday was the day that our son was flying back to London so I had to leave home before I got trapped inside the course and couldn’t return until the roads reopened.  

The Ramsey Sprints were taking place as well as the race.  Finding parking was quite a problem.  There were a few spaces in the car parks but they were all in two hour disk zones but we eventually found a space in a side road near the Queen’s Pier and then walked back down Waterloo Road.  I wanted to take a photo of the crowds in Parliament Square from the library window.  The scene wasn’t as busy as usual during TT week because the road was closed and all the bikes had been banished from the small parking area in front of the town hall.

Then our son suggested watching from Coronation Park so we crossed the footbridge and found a place in the shade to wait for the race to start. 

There were fans from all over the world including these members of the King’s Brigade Swaziland.

Eventually the first bikes arrived in Ramsey and I got a few photos of them nearly taking off as they accelerated up the road towards the footbridge - after slowing down for the the sharp turn from Lezayre Road into Parliament Square.

This biker was turning up the fast corner at May Hill.

After the race was over, we met back at the car and headed south - driving down the coast road through Laxey and Douglas.  It was too early to check in at the airport so we continued to Derbyhaven to see whether there were any interesting wading birds in the little shallow bay.

The only birds were a long way away but I was able to pick out a heron and zoomed in on it.

It was only when I got home and saw the photo on the computer that I noticed that the large white bird behind the heron looked like a goose - probably a domestic goose but according to this conversation on the Manx Birdlife Facebook page - possibly a snow goose.

Saturday, 9th May we had a report of a "white goose with black wing tips" (possibly a snow goose) in Langness Golf Course. If anyone have seen such bird could you please let us know. Thanks!

• 12 May at 21:08
• Liz Charter There's often a domestic goose on the breakwater!
• Manx BirdLife The observer seem to know his birds..

We drove on to St Michael’s Isle at the northern end of the Langness peninsula.  There was a smallish black bird and I took a number of photos of it before I realised that it wasn’t an unusual bird -  just a starling.  Unusual for me though - because we don’t get starlings in our garden.

Then we wandered around in the warm sunshine - chasing butterflies.  I only saw three varieties.  There were plenty of small heaths . . . .

. . . as well as three green veined whites which were apparently fighting or having an orgy.  It was hard to tell.  They were flapping around so frantically that my photos are just a blur.  And there was one small copper which settled on some thrift but flew away before I managed to get a photo.

We watched meadow pipits doing their skylark impression overhead, pied wagtails strutting along, and even saw a couple of oystercatchers sunbathing on the rocks.  

I would like to go back with binoculars because we couldn’t get close enough to identify all the birds.  There were some ducks and one had babies.  We assumed they were all mallard but couldn’t be absolutely sure.

Parts of the little island are like a natural rock garden, with patches of pink thrift, white sea campion, yellow bird’s foot trefoil and blue spring squill.  

It was a completely different world to the excitement of the TT experience.  A case of  “Far from the madding crowd”?  No, it would be unfair to compare the heroism of the TT riders to “ignoble strife”.

Brookdale and garden

The bikers are back - and so is the wild weather.

Saturday 6th June, 2015

Last Saturday

The week started with a morning walk in Brookdale plantation.  We haven’t walked a lot recently so we just went up as far as the view site, an area where the trees were felled about twenty years ago and we can see across the glen to Skyhill.  I don’t think any trees have been replanted here but there are a lot of young conifers which must have come up from seed.  I am not confident about identifying conifers but I read that the original plantings in Brookdale were mainly Sitka spruce and Japanese larch.  Some of the young trees are obviously pines and I would guess that they are lodgepole pines which were planted in many of the Island’s plantations.

Young Sitka spruce on the left and centre (foreground) and lodgepole pine on the right?

A closer view of the new shoots and cones on the pine.

The brambles and bluebells have both benefitted from getting extra light due to the recent larch felling.  There should be a good crop of blackberries in the autumn and there were pretty patches of bluebells near the path.  I tried to resist the temptation to take more bluebell photographs because I took too many last week but I weakened on the way down.  

The first practice session for the TT was held in the evening but wasn’t completed because of rain.  The forecast doesn’t look good for Monday evening’s practice either, and Tuesday could be showery, but there are rumours of better weather by Wednesday.

Sunday.

It is hard to believe that summer is due to start tomorrow.  It is still colder than usual for the end of May - barely 12 degrees C and it feels even colder in the strong north-westerly wind.  But the summer flowers are beginning to open - tentatively.  The first foxglove buds are on the verge of bursting . . .

. . . and a couple of oxeye daisies in the back garden have already taken the plunge.

I sent an oxeye photo to a friend in Johannesburg and she commented that it looked exactly like a shasta daisy.  I wondered whether they were related and checked on the internet.  Sure enough the oxeye was one of the original parents of the shasta,  which is a hybrid produced in 1890 by the American horticulturist Luther Burbank.  I was totally bemused by the botanical name of the shasta - Leucanthemum × superbum  - until I realised that I was mentally mispronouncing it.  The second part of the name isn’t a reference to some dubious celeb who has been voted “Rear of the Year” but is simply superb with -um tacked on the end.  I don’t expect Luther Burbank was familiar with British slang or he might have had second thoughts about that name.

I did a bit of weeding so that I wouldn’t feel too guilty about the garden which is going to be neglected for a week after our son arrives on Wednesday and started making lists of things to be done before the road closures disrupt our normal routine after the racing starts on Saturday.

An almost full moon rose over North Barrule in the late afternoon. The shadows of the craters don’t show up so well on the full moon as they did on the half moon photos that I have taken in the past - must be due to the angle of the sunlight.

Monday morning

The day dawned bright and sunny with bright blue skies and just a light breeze but the afternoon’s forecast didn’t look promising!  “Comments: Heavy rain. Standing water on roads, risk of localised flooding. Unusually windy for early June, with gales/ severe gales for a time, causing some disruption and damage. Some coastal overtopping in places at high tide tonight.”

The big question - should I try to mow before the rain starts or should I leave it for tomorrow?  I was saved by the weather.  The wind strengthened and the clouds arrived earlier than expected so I decided to put off the mowing and to have a pleasant ramble around the garden taking photos before the wild weather arrived and damaged the flowers.

The first flowers have opened on my favourite rhododendron.

And there are also a few flowers on this yellow one.

I like the colour of this weigela and the bumblebee seems to like the pollen.

I nearly overlooked a lovely delicate little veronica.

Tuesday morning,

Another bright, sunny, breezy morning.  The calm after the storm but plenty of evidence lying around of yesterday afternoon’s wind and rain which more than lived up to expectations.  The trees had been thrashing around in the gale force wind and there was minor debris everywhere.  I picked up two builders buckets of twiggy bits from the front lawn.  But the garden survived more or less unscathed.  The only damage was to one lower branch on the white buddleia which had twisted and split.

Further good news is that it is too wet to mow so that task has been put off until tomorrow.   We had nearly one and three quarter inches of rain - and more showers were forecast for this morning although there isn’t much evidence of them so far.

But others weren’t as lucky as we were.  Record winds for June, with gusts of 63 mph, were recorded.  The story about the weather on the Manx Radio website had the headline “Carnage at campsites across Island” and reports that “Chairman of Colby Football Club Dickie Gale says their campsite completely blew away, one tent making it's way into the next field with four mattresses inside.”  It was the worst possible time to break wind speed records because this is TT fortnight and a lot of the fans are staying at  the campsites.

Wednesday morning.

The drive down to the airport wasn’t as nerveracking as it might have been.  Our son was arriving on an early flight from London City and most of the bikers were not out and about when we left.  It takes just under an hour to drive from our home to the airport in the south of the Island.  Ronaldsway airport looks very much like any other small regional airport . . .

. . . but the iconic sculpture of the Three legs of Mann outside the terminal is unique.  It was  created by Manx artist and sculptor, Bryan Kneale, and is said to resemble aircraft parts.

Thursday

I took a few more garden photos.  Here are the goldfinches using my modified niger feeder.  I tied the perforated plastic lid of an old margarine container under the feeder to catch the seed which falls out of the holes while they are eating.  Some of the birds prefer to sit on the lid instead of using the perches.

Then I found a group of self-seeded aquilegia in the front garden - all different colours due to the bees' experiments with cross pollination.  Every year there seem to be even more variations.  It is the first time I have seen the pale pink ones in our garden.

This collage shows the same purple and white aquilegia from two different angles.

And here is another rhododendron, not quite my favourite but it runs the crimson one a very close second.

Now it is Saturday again. The week started with wild weather and the end promises to be almost as bad.  The poppies by the front steps have taken a bit of a beating but they are putting up a good fight considering the conditions.

The main race scheduled for today has been postponed until tomorrow afternoon because we are expecting gales again - ”Windy this morning, with the southwesterlies increasing to becoming strong to gale force, giving gusts of 40-50 mph on low ground and 50-60 mph over the hills. Unpleasant conditions are likely again for campers, . . . “  It is just gales this time - no rain. At least the campers can be grateful for small mercies.

Skyhill bluebells

Laissez-faire Gardening?

Saturday 30th May 2015

I have been trying to think of a way to describe my style of gardening.  The most accurate description would probably just be “messy gardening” but that isn’t completely accurate because I do try to keep the grass mowed and to prevent it from spreading into the areas reserved for other plants.   Calling those areas flower beds might be an offence under the trades description act (whatever that is) because they just contain a jumble of plants . . . conventional garden flowers mixed with pretty weeds and anything else interesting that just happens to come up spontaneously.  It is a case of survival of the fittest - so I think I will call it laissez-faire gardening.  This is the “area reserved for plants other than grass” under the big beech tree.

Saturday

There has been curiouser and curiouser behaviour around the bird box.  Activity had all but ceased, yet last week a great tit was seen taking a beakful of moss into the box.  Then all activity ceased again for a few days.  This morning some prospective tenants, a pair of blue tits, were examining the box.  Almost immediately a great tit arrived and chased them away.  The great tit had something white in his beak but he didn’t take it into the box and he left the area as soon as he had dispatched the intruders.

We went for a short walk up the glen to the end of the tarred road.  We wanted to have a look at some building work that appeared to be going on up there.  We had seen equipment and materials being transported past our house and guessed that work had started on a decrepit old barn/garage which used to be on part of Far End’s garden.  When we moved to the glen, the barn was still in use as a garage although  the roof timbers were already sagging.  A few years ago the property changed hands and was subdivided.  The old house was completely altered and modernised and is now for sale but the barn was left to deteriorate.  

On the way up the road we passed two beehives in a field.  This explains why there have been so many more  honey bees on the flowers in our garden recently.  I felt like muttering about immigrant bees moving in and stealing all our bumblebees pollen - but it seemed a bit xenophobic.

It turned out that we were right.   Work has commenced on the barn.  The roof has been taken down and the walls have almost disappeared behind scaffolding and blue plastic mesh.

This is what it looked like in January.

Sunday

After shopping and feeding the herring gulls, I spent some time weeding the gravel on the turning circle.  I am taking out the pesky annual grass, which is almost impossible to eradicate, and the taller “weeds” (apart from a few Welsh poppies by the wall which I must remember to dead head so that they don’t spread seed everywhere).   But I am leaving the violets and some patches of Soleirolia soleirolii also known as baby's tears, angel's tears, mind-your-own-business, peace-in-the-home, pollyanna vine, polly prim, mother of thousands, and the Corsican curse!   A lot of names for a very small plant.

Monday

A milestone was passed.  Phase one of the path project (removing the strips of grass and stacking them at the top of the garden) was completed - at last..  It took me three months from the time I started but work stopped for weeks after I got a twingy pain in my back while I was cleaning leaves out of the ditch.  The next step is to go up to the top of the garden with the crowbar and retrieve some paving slabs which were laid outside the top gate during the Schipperke era.  Our dogs used to race up and down inside the fence shouting abuse at the riding school dogs which came down to bark at them when they were walking in the plantation.  During wet weather all the thundering dog paws churned up the mud and Tim laid some paving slabs in the muddiest places so that we could walk up to the forestry tracks without getting stuck in the mud. Now the days of stampeding packs of dogs are over and the paving slabs can be recycled for my new path.

The niger seed was going down so fast that I had to refill the feeder.    Then I looked out of the window and saw three siskins on the feeder so I went to fetch my camera.  When I returned there were four - a full house - one on each of the perches.

Tuesday

The  morning was devoted to home maintenance - buying spares and then fixing a broken toilet handle and replacing the starter for the strip light in the kitchen.  Then I mowed in the afternoon.  The grass wasn’t very long but rain was forecast for Wednesday afternoon, we have to drive to Douglas on Thursday for a medical appointment, and showers are predicted for Friday.  

Wednesday

In the morning I did a second session of beech hedge trimming down by the road before the wind strengthened and the rain started.  It is very slow because I prune the hedge instead of clipping it.

The first flowers are just starting to open on the wisteria.  They are about two weeks later than last year which isn’t surprising because it has been a cool spring.

Thursday

A cool, sunny morning for our drive to Douglas.  It is always a pleasure to drive around the Island in spring when there are new leaves on the trees and everything looks fresh and bright.  But we don’t have to leave home to enjoy the spring foliage because we are surrounded by trees in the glen and have a good view of the broadleaf trees which were planted below the conifers in Brookdale plantation on the far side of the glen.

Friday

It was very damp  outside in the early morning.  The sun was hiding behind the hill fog, which had settled on North Barrule after overnight showers, and there was no wind.  I took a couple of photos from the patio.  The wet front garden . . .

. . . and the flowers on our lilac.  

I sent a friend a photo of the proper lilac-coloured lilac in our neighbours’ garden and she wrote back asking about the scent.  I had always been disappointed in the scent of our lilac so I stole a sprig off our neighbours’ plant to check whether it was different.  It was far stronger.  Now I know why people rave about the scent of lilac. This is the sprig of "real" lilac.

After morning tea we walked up through the plantation behind the house.  I picked up my camera before we left and then wondered why I was bothering to take it.  We have done this walk hundreds of times before and I have photographed it from every angle.  But it pays to have a camera handy - just in case..  The path was wet but the birds were singing and there were bluebells under the deciduous trees near the streams . . .

.  . . but they paled into insignificance compared with the view from the top.  A wonderful combination of bluebells, golden gorse and bright green grass.  The wind had strengthened, the clouds were racing across the sky, and the light was changing every few minutes. I couldn't choose my favourite - so here is a selection . . .