Tuesday 6th May, 2014
I love this time of year. Every sunny evening, when the sun is sinking and the glen is already in the shadow of Skyhill, the gorse on far side of the glen below the mountain road lights up like a golden rim on a bowl.
I am taking advantage of our enforced holiday from hiking to get down to a few projects in the garden. The first was to lower the height of the hedge down by the road. It is a mixed hedge, mainly beech, holly and forsythia, that we inherited with the property. The original owner of our garden was obsessed with privacy and wasn't satisfied with one hedge. She also planted a row of beeches, interspersed with flowering cherries inside the hedge, plus a second hedge of Leylandii (a fast growing conifer).
Over the years I have gradually tried to reduce the routine work in the garden by cutting the hedges down to more easily manageable heights and removing areas of grass which are a nuisance to mow. The holly hedge on the south-west boundary has been tamed, the Leylandii (which had been allowed to grow into tall trees) have been cut back a couple of times and the hedge is now down to about six feet - but the hedge by the road has been sneakily getting higher recently.
This is a photo from 20th April, when we had cut about a quarter of the hedge . . .
. . . and this is the end of Project number 1 - on 5th May. The side of the hedge still has to be trimmed because the new beech shoots have burst out and you can almost see them growing at this time of year.
You can almost see time passing too. Every week the garden changes. A few days ago we were still enjoying the blossom on the flowering cherries and I photographed the very first flower on the clematis by the front steps. Yesterday the last of the white cherry petal "confetti" was shrivelling on the front lawn but the sweet scent of the clematis is adding yet another dimension to the beauty of our "fifty shades of green" spring.
The apricot coloured azalea mollis outside the living room window is full of flowers too - and it is only two days since I photographed the first flower.
I spend a lot of time weeding - far more than is necessary because I don't like bare earth and I am a bit prejudiced about which weeds should be removed and which I want to keep. I read recently that a study had been conducted which proved that we are all more prejudiced than we like to admit (even those of us who admit that we are prejudiced) - and I can believe it.
Anyway, to get back to the garden, I have an intense and unreasonable dislike of a fairly inoffensive little weed - hairy bittercress (cardamine hirsuta). I think the reason is threefold. First hairy bittercress is very fast growing and it spreads seed from "exploding" pods. It is claimed that a large plant can produce up to 50,000 seeds. Also it is sneaky. Even if I weed out all the bigger plants at the beginning of the growing season, it produces another generation of tiny plants not more than an inch or so high - capable of hiding behind other plants but able to produce enough seed to ensure survival of the species. Every year I try to weed it out and every year it beats me.
Finally another black mark against its name. It is considered a delicacy by the invading pheasants. Unfortunately they don't eat the whole plant but just peck off the tops - effectively pruning them and making them grow even better.
Hairy bittercress.
Another related plant, the cuckoo flower (aka lady's smock or cardamine pretensis ) starts as a little rosette of leaves - almost identical to the hairy bittercress - but has a dual purpose and is encouraged to grow in the garden. It has pretty pink flowers and is one of the main larval food sources of the orange tip butterfly.
Talking of butterflies. There have been a few in the garden already. I saw some while Jenny was with us and about a week later a couple more small white ones arrived. The first one disappeared down the throat of a male pheasant but I got close enough to identify the other. It was a green-veined white. Then yesterday, while I was taking photos up by the wild flower bank, I got my first butterfly photo of the year - another green-veined white.
I nearly forgot to mention some "you won't believe this" news. While I was cutting the hedge an electrician, who was working on a house across the road, came over and told me that he had a shock when he drove past our gate the previous day. A wallaby hopped out of our drive right in front of his van! Both wallaby and van escaped unscathed. He said that he had heard that there were wallabies up in Skyhill plantation. I knew about the red necked wallabies that escaped from the Wildlife Park over fifty years ago and have been breeding in the Curraghs but I had never heard that they had spread all the way to Glen Auldyn. I decided that it might be a good idea to keep our gate shut in future. We have been leaving it open most of the time now that we don't need to keep dogs from escaping.
Yesterday I went up through the top gate into the plantation and saw an animal ahead of me on the path outside our fence. My first thought was "that is a fat dog" . . . and then I realised that it was hopping. It was a male wallaby. I wonder how high they can jump. Our fence was high enough to keep Schipperkes in but I don't know whether it will keep wallabies out.
Later in the afternoon, I heard some hysterical barking in the plantation. It sounded like Penny, the Jack Russell from the riding school. I wonder whether she had met the wallaby.
When I went out to photograph the hedge yesterday, I noticed that the wild garlic is flowering at the side of the road.
We have a few more "sort of wild" flowers opening in the garden. There are an assortment of columbines or "granny's bonnets" (aquilegia vulgaris) which have been coming up from seed since I bought a packet of aquilegia seed about twenty years ago. They are completely different from the large-flowered parents and must have reverted to something like the original wild varieties. All the flowers are small and the colours vary from dark purple/maroon through various shades to pink. Some are double with a white centre.
The first one is closest to the original wild form.
Another plant which may or may not be wild is the bugle which is an old resident in the garden - possible planted by an earlier owner. We probably have too much but it is a good ground cover and the bees love it.
The crabapple is flowering too.
This is one of those perfect spring mornings - sparkling sunshine after overnight rain. I am going to mow the grass after posting this on the blog. It is too good a day to spend indoors.
After mowing I will think about starting the next garden project. Project number 2 on the list is removing the old dog path. We laid pavers across the back lawn in an attempt to keep mud out of the kitchen. The Schipperkes used to bolt out through the dog flap in the kitchen door whenever there were rumours of riding school dogs up in the plantation. They would tear up across the back lawn, though the daffodil bed under the hawthorns and up the bank above the stream.
Then they would spend hours under this old holly, barking and waiting for the other dogs to return so that they could run up and down inside the fence screaming abuse at their mortal enemies.
Eventually, they would return to the house along the same route. They wore a path through the grass and came in with muddy paws. The rough pavers cut down on the mud and had the added benefit of wearing down the dogs' claws so that I didn't need to clip them - except for Alexander who either had harder nails or was lazier than his brothers and didn't run up and down the path so often.
Now the path is no longer used. I want to lift the pavers to use in another part of the garden and dig out squares of unwanted lawn to replace the grass.
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