Friday 14th March, 2014.
The weather has been absolutely perfect for walking all week - no rain and almost no wind. But unfortunately a niggly pain in Tim's back, which has been worrying him most of the winter, got worse. So he is having an enforced rest to see whether that helps.
The plan is that we will go on shorter walks for a few weeks until Tim is ready to join Trevor and Dorothy on the weekly hikes again.
So far we have only managed a few very short strolls up the glen to the top of the tarred road and I have taken advantage of the good weather to do some work in the garden. The most urgent jobs were giving the lawns their first cut of the season. The grass wasn't very long but it looked rather shaggy. The other urgent job was to deal with an old dead holly which blew over during the last gale. I was sad to lose the dead holly because it provided support for a delicate pink clematis (a self-seeded throwback from the Clematis montana rubens by the front steps) and a wild honeysuckle. I took this photo of the casualty after I had cut one "muck bucket" of the creepers off of the tree. I filled another six buckets before it had all been chopped up.
After I had manoeuvred the holly trunk off the wall and over the ditch, I trimmed the ivy on the wall and tied up the surviving stems of the creeper. It looks neater now but rather boring. I hope the clematis and honeysuckle will spread and sprawl over the wall in a year or two.
On Sunday Tim called from the kitchen and told me to look outside the window. There was a female mallard duck in the pheasant trap! The flap was open so she wasn't trapped inside. She was eating bits of fat ball that I had left there to tempt a female pheasant that has been coming into the garden rather too frequently. Her male friend was watching fondly. Tim took her some more crumbled fat ball and she gobbled most of it down with the male just standing by guarding her. He appeared to be a perfect gentleman! Then she waddled off to our little stream for a drink and they settled down on the grass to preen themselves and have a nap!
Our ducks!
The male is rather handsome.
We think the ducks just wandered in from the road because we haven't been keeping the gates shut all the time. There have been a lot of mallards down by the river in recent years. I was told that they were released by the pheasant shooting syndicate. I rather like them but worry that they will become as destructive as the pheasants if we encourage them to spend time in the garden.
I went out to take some photos and shoo them out of the garden before shutting the gate but they took off and flew strongly over the roof in the direction of the river.
They didn't return on Monday and I thought the visit might not be repeated. But at teatime on Tuesday the female returned on her own, and yesterday afternoon there were three ducks waiting outside the kitchen demanding to be fed. One was nervous and flew off when Tim took some food out for them. The other two repeated the behaviour that we observed during the first visit. The female ate while the male kept guard.
It would be wiser to stop feeding them - but they are very persuasive. I just hope they don't start coming in the numbers that we saw on the river last autumn!
This morning was foggy, unlike the beginning of the week when we had warm sunshine. But it felt quite warm because there was hardly a breath of wind. There were perfect reflections of the trees in the big puddle in the "donkey field". The donkeys left years ago and were replaced for a year or two by a few sheep but the field is uninhabited now.
Further along the road there was a froth of white blossom on the thicket of blackthorn across the river.
There is very little traffic on the road now the pheasant shooting season is over but we were passed by a solitary rider.
I stopped to take a photo of these daffodils in a garden. They look exactly like the true wild daffodils - less sturdy than the garden daffs, with pale outer petals and yellow trumpets. They are obviously planted but I am sure they were obtained from a supplier of native bulbs.
We have a variety of daffs in our garden. Apart from a few miniatures that I bought, they are all ones which were already in the garden when we moved here. It appears that a previous owner bought a bag of assorted daffodil bulbs - probably a supermarket special offer selection - and planted a few in the front garden and the rest in the back lawn. After trying to mow around them for a few years, Tim dug them all out and planted them in three beds - under the hawthorns, behind the kitchen, under the rowan, and in front of the fence on the south side of the garden. The most common are the bright yellow flowers - similar to those which have been planted on many road verges around the Island.
We turned back when we reached the entrance to the pheasant shooting estate. There is a public right of way from this point up to the pool at the old quarry but we will wait until Tim's back has improved a bit more before trying a longer walk.
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