Garden +

Three days of waffle

Thursday 24th July

After a disturbed night due to computer trauma, I finally managed to publish another post on the blog.  Then we went for a hot walk in Brookdale plantation to check up on the slaughter of the larches.   It is quite a mess in places.  Just before we reached the forestry tracks the path was blocked by felled trees and we had to climb over some logs but the main tracks were clear.  There was no evidence of recent activity.  They must have stopped work a while back.  This photo shows the scene just above the slope where broadleaf trees were planted about twenty-five years ago.

When we got up to the old clearing, about half way to the top gate, we found that a lovely view to the north  had opened up. 

There were bees on the Rosebay willowherb and a few butterflies flying around.  Nothing unusual, just the usual suspects . . . speckled woods in the shady areas, meadow browns in the sunny clearings, and some unidentified whites.  It is amazing to think that the speckled woods have colonised the whole island in such a short time.  They were first noticed on the Isle of Man in 2005 when 2 were spotted.  Then in 2007 the first breeding colony was discovered in Port Soderick.  I have just read that captive bred butterflies, including speckled woods and commas, were released on the Island in the late 1980's and early 1990's.  It isn't known whether these were the ancestors of the current generations or whether they died out and a later group migrated under their own steam from the mainland.  I haven't seen a comma so far this year.

On the way home I stopped to admire this unusually bright pink bramble flower . . . 

. . .  and this sprig of fuchsia gleaming in the hot midday sunshine.

Friday morning

I was watching the peacock butterflies on the white buddleia and spotted a large dragonfly flying across the back garden.  It would be marvellous if I could attract dragonflies and damselflies to the garden.   If I manage to get the autumn clear up done in good time, I am determined to widen the ditch behind below our little "waterfall" to create a small pond.  It might even encourage frogs to take up residence.  We see them occasionally but not very often.  I think they used to breed in a pond in the next door garden but that is choked up with vegetation now.

In the afternoon Dorothy emailed some enchanting photos of herons and choughs that she took during a recent walk at Langness.  All I had to send to her in return was this photo of a little dunnock . . .  enjoying the sun in our garden.  It sat on the grass for ages with its feathers fluffed out, just doing an occasional bit of preening.

Saturday

Yesterday Tim noticed some unusual blackbird activity at the top of the wooden fence in front of the holly hedge and this morning he saw one of the birds hop into the hedge with a worm in its beak.  They must be feeding a second brood of babies.  I thought this might be the case when I put out some scraps of cheese last night.  A female blackbird picked up as many bits as she could fit in her beak and flew off with them.   Later I saw a young fledgling sitting on the low wall under the wineberry.  A parent bird brought it some food.  It must have just left the nest.

The whole garden is alive with blackbirds - a mixed blessing.  They suddenly decided that our gooseberries were ready for picking and stripped the bushes.   There is a very short window of opportunity for enjoying ripe gooseberries.  They stay hard and sour for ages and then, about a day after they reach perfection, the blackbirds descend.  I prefer eating berries straight off the bush but next year I must remember to harvest a bowl of gooseberries so that the blackbirds don't get the whole crop.

In the afternoon we walked climbed up to the top of the plantation and followed the informal mountain bike path along to the top of the Ballagarrow paddocks.  I hoped to get a photo of Fern Glen and Brookdale from this side of the glen but, even though we had a good view of the new service reservoir and the Albert Tower,  the view to the south east was blocked by  conifers.

 I have been thinking about trying to climb up to the fields on the north side of Fern Glen so that I can take a photo from the same position as the photographer who took that old photo that I included in the last post.  One difficulty will be that the trees have grown up so much in the last century.  We can even see big changes during the past twenty years.   After looking at this photo which I took in January, I think it will be best to wait until the autumn leaves have fallen.  The field below the rainbow (where the old  photographer may have set up his tripod) used to be easily visible from our front windows . . . now we can only see it through the bare branches of the sycamore in our neighbours' garden.

There was an unusual tall shrub in the garden when we arrived.  I always thought that it was a Holodiscus discolor because the flowers appear to be almost identical to a photo in my RHS Gardeners' Encyclopaedia.  But I checked on the internet and discovered that the leaves are different.  The leaves should be oak-shaped but our plant has compound leaves.  Now I don't know whether it is another type of Holodiscus or something entirely different!

It may be a good thing if it has a different name because my memory for names sometimes works like predictive texting.  I get the first letters right and the rest gets filled in by random guesswork, sometimes with absurd results.  I tend to confuse Holodiscus with Holomisa - which is the tribal name of a Xhosa politician who featured frequently in the South African newspapers in the late 1980's.

I have been watching the young robins to see when their autumn moult starts and their red breast feathers emerge.  It is a tough time for them because robins are fiercely territorial and are solitary birds for most of the year. Apart from the brief breeding season, they apply a sort of "reverse racism".  They tolerate all the other little birds but discriminate against anyone with a red breast.  The young ones are all right while they have their speckled baby feathers but are driven away ferociously as soon as their bright adult feathers appear. 

I noticed some tail feathers on the back lawn when I was mowing last week.  They may have come from this unusually short-tailed robin.  I wonder whether he had a narrow escape from a cat . . . or whether he had been defending his territory from another adult robin.  They do have very fierce fights.  I once saw a pair rolling around on the ground going at it hammer and tongs (or should that be beak and claws?).

I wanted to put the two robin photos side by side on the blog and Googled to find out how to do it.  It looked far too complicated for me as it involved writing code on the blog editor - but a helpful soul mentioned that they got the same effect by posting a simple collage.  I got a bit carried away and used two simple side by side collages and then decided to make another with four photos - featuring various stages in the short life of one little unidentified toadstool up in the plantation - first photo was taken on the 14th July and the last twelve days later.

Then I thought of making a butterfly collage but decided that three collages are more than enough and anyway these butterflies, feeding on the oregano by the summerhouse, are so beautiful that they deserve individual photos.

Peacock

Small Tortoiseshell

Garden 12

A heatwave?

Tuesday 22nd July, 2014

The needle on the little thermometer attached to the outside of the dining room window was hovering just under 25C (about 76F) at five this afternoon.  I don't know how accurate it is - but it does feel hot and it is due to get even hotter tomorrow and the next day.  Not a very impressive heatwave I admit - but an unusually hot spell for the Island.

Although the garden is going through its usual midsummer doldrums there have been some new flowers to photograph during the past two and a half weeks.  There was very little to report on during the first week following the last post but a lot has happened during the past ten days.  I will try to keep more or less to chronological order.

As soon as I had posted the last blog I went out into the garden and planted my new perennials.  I put the bee balm in a sunny place behind the kitchen so that I could enjoy watching the bees visiting the flower.  The stupid things gave it a wide berth for at least twenty-four hours.  They didn't appreciate that I had bought it as a special treat for them.  But after the first intrepid bee approached it the rest decided that the strange foreign intruder wasn't dangerous after all.  Now there are frequent visitors to the bright flowers.

I am not the only one that wilts in hot weather.  It is tiring being a fledgling chaffinch and having to find your own food.  This one was taking a nap in the shade - perched on the frame  at the end of the raspberry bed.

One evening I thought I saw some yarrow flowers outside the laundry but when I went out with my camera I found that they were just feverfew.  They looked completely different from yarrow when viewed from above but did quite a good impression of the brilliant white flat-topped clusters of yarrow when viewed side on through the basement window.  I couldn't find any yarrow in the back garden and started wondering where I could get some seed, but later I found a couple of patches of the ferny foliage growing in places which were too shady to encourage flowers. 

In the middle of the week, I saw the first small tortoiseshell butterfly of the season. 

  

Patches of the back lawn were looking dry, shaven and shorn so I raised the blades on the mower one notch.  I think it helped - but some rain helped even more.  The hypericum shrub has been flowering well this year.  The hot weather suits it.  We also have at least three forms of wild hypericum in the garden.   The most impressive and easiest to identify is Tutsan - described as "a medium/tall, half-evergreen undershrub".

The smaller hypericums are harder to tell apart.  I need to go out into the garden with a notebook, camera and magnifying glass to do some research!  This flower (magnified) is one of about half a dozen St John's worts.  It is delicate and rather pretty.

On Friday we were visited by a thrush and a female blackcap.  The blackcaps visit every year at this time to share the raspberry crop.  They are small migratory warblers, generally summer visitors which have bred in Scandinavia and Germany, but many are now over-wintering in Britain.  I have only ever seen them in July when the raspberries are ripe.  Their name only makes sense for the male because the female has a brown cap.

I haven't seen a song thrush in the garden since spring when one was hopping around the lawn frantically searching for worms to feed hungry babies.  This one looks quite relaxed.  It had just swallowed a whole raspberry.

So not a great week for the blog.   The sum total of five photos - three birds and two weeds! But things were starting to happen in the flower garden by the weekend.  The crocosmia was putting on a good display . . . 

. . . and the flowers were starting to open on the only "thistles" allowed in the garden - the blue echinops (E. bannaticus), a member of the Asteraceae family, native to southeastern Europe.  I love the way the flowers start opening with a tuft on top and eventually form a perfect blue sphere.  The insects love them too.

My resolution at the end of June about walking to the top of Skyhill plantation every day didn't last long because the path from our top gate was so jungly.  I haven't had time to strim it  and don't like to walk through tall vegetation because there are ticks in the grass at this time of year - but on Monday last week Tim and I walked up the road to the official gate into the plantation and followed the track to the top of the hill.  We have been doing that walk regularly since then.  

On one of the outings we were bemused to see two horses in the paddock above Ballagarrow wearing coats.  Surely they couldn't be cold?  The horses came across to have a closer look at us and we realised that they were wearing horsefly protection.  One horse only had a body blanket but this one had the full outfit!  The label on the blanket reads "Sweet Itch Buster"!   He didn't seem to be embarrassed by his appearance.  Maybe this is what all the fashionable horses are wearing in Glen Auldyn this year.  Anyway he didn't look any more absurd than I do - gardening in a long-sleeved, polo neck shirt while wearing a big black angler's hat with a midge-proof veil!

Setting out on the walks gave me plenty of opportunities to observe the solitary small tortoiseshell  which seemed to be frequenting the centranthus and buddliea down by the road.

Up in the plantation was speckled wood territory.  This tattered old one lived near the path above  the broadleafed section of the plantation by the road.

Near the top we saw a few speckled woods every day.  But one afternoon there must have been an orgy taking place in a small sunny glade.  There were more than a dozen butterflies spiralling around ecstatically in twos and threes at the edge of the trees.  They were moving too fast to photograph but this one was resting nearby on some bracken.

The late summer flowers have suddenly burst into life.  The most spectacular are the hydrangeas.  I have two varieties.  The lacecaps are all the result of cuttings that I took from an enormous bush in the garden of the house that we rented in Ramsey in 1990/91.  The mopheads were living here before we moved in and looked pretty ancient already in 1991.  There were three bushes.  Two had to be moved when we built on the new garage and had to change the turning circle.  Only one survived along with a bush under the flowering cherry next to the stream.  I also have five plants which are descendents of the original mopheads because I tend to stick pieces in the ground when they break off in the gales and they root and keep accumulating although I have given some away.

The colours interest me.  I knew that the acidity/alkalinity of the soil affected the colour of the flowers but I don't understand why there is a variation of colours on one plant.  The plant in the centre of this photo started as bright pink due to alkali leaching out of the concrete ramp up to the garage.  It is a bit more mauvy this year but there is quite a variation.  The lacecaps on the left don't seem to be so sensitive to soil alkalinity and in the background on the right you can see the blue parent plant.

A rose that doesn't know it is supposed to flower in June is The Fairy.  I love miniature roses.

The first flowers are opening on the Japanese Anemones.  I have a selection but this is my favourite.  It is more vigorous than the others and is a lovely colour.

I also have some evergreen agapanthus which we liberated from the tip years ago when someone dumped some huge clumps.  Unfortunately it doesn't like our garden, seldom flowers, and suffers badly during severe winters.  I have tried it in different areas but I think the only place it would be happy would be next to the outside wall of a house where it would be sheltered and could benefit from escaping heat from the house.  Our house isn't suitable because we have concrete paths along the sides and back of the house and the front is elevated.  But near the anemones is a clump of hardy deciduous agapanthus which flowers every summer.

On Friday, I got a very welcome phone call.  Months ago, before TT, there was an exhibition of old photos in the foyer of the town hall.  The photos were selected from a collection taken by a studio in Ramsey which closed down in 1948.  I was fascinated by a photo of Glen Auldyn which showed our part of the glen before most of the houses were built.  I made enquiries about getting a copy of the photo but wasn't very hopeful.  So you can imagine my delight when the very nice man from the Heritage Centre phoned to let me know that he had two photos for me!

The photographs were not dated but were all taken between 1880 and 1948.  This is the earliest of the two Glen Auldyn photos.  Our house and garden are in the middle field of the three to the left of the house (Sunnyside) which is closest to the right hand edge of the photo.  The old bridge and part of the road by the river were washed away during a devastating flood in September 1930 and a new bridge was built opposite the chapel and a new section of road was put in behind the group of houses across the river (in the centre right of the photo).

Yesterday evening I went out to photograph some flowers and the whole bed of wild oregano under the white flowering cherry was absolutely buzzing. 

There were bees of every shape and size - bumblebees, ordinary looking bees and hover-flies.  The bees think the flowers are absolutely wonderful.  I think the flowers are quite pretty but not very spectacular.  I like the plants  because they are tough and grow anywhere.   I am not sure who this is . . .  possibly a type of hover-fly.

The butterfly season is getting into full swing.  There were two peacocks feeding on the white buddleia the other side of the garden wall this morning . . . and so many small tortoiseshells that I couldn't count them.

And the last bit of bird excitement was seeing a small warbler fossicking in our white buddleia.  I haven't seen one for years.  It was checking out the flowers, probably searching for bugs.  I didn't have the camera handy and it was moving constantly and was too far away for a good photo anyway.  We think it was probably a willow warbler, but possibly a chiffchaff.  They are very similar.

Garden 11

Time for a break?

Saturday 5th July 2014

There will be a gap of a few weeks until the next post on the blog.  The inevitable has happened.  I am running out of subjects for garden photos.  

The spring and early summer flowers are long gone - or just looking tired - and it will be a while before the later summer blooms are trying to cheer up the garden.

Very few butterflies have visited us yet.  I noticed the first flowers opening on the white buddleia this morning.  It is often called the butterfly bush, but the butterflies don't usually appear in any numbers until the end of the month - almost too late to take advantage of the buddleia nectar.

And the "generation 2014" birds are growing up - so no more cute baby bird photos until next spring.  

I am still watching the bird antics in the back garden whenever I am doing the washing up.  This morning there was a serious squabble on the ground under the bird feeder.  Too many chaffinches were competing for the sunflower seeds falling from the hanging feeder.  Bird feeding is a serious hobby here.  The days when one put out a few crumbs and bits of bacon rind for the birds in winter are long gone.  It is a multi-million pound industry now.  We used to just put out peanuts for the tits which live up in the plantation but last year we extended the menu and added shelled sunflower seeds.  Word soon got out and now we have daily visits from the siskins and goldfinches as well.  I have heard that niger seed is even more popular with finches but ours seem to be happy with their sunflower seeds.  Incidentally, I was amused to read that the "word police" are trying to change the spelling from niger to nyger - in case someone accidentally mispronounces it.

I did some internet research the other day to try to find out whether it is possible to distinguish between male and female goldfinches.  The most common advice was that the red patch on the head extends behind the eye on the male but not on the female.  In that case this could be a male . . . but nothing is ever simple and a breeder of gold finches said that it isn't a fool-proof method.

A contrast to the goldfinch, the most colourful of our visitors, is this humble brown and grey dunnock.  They usually scurry about on the ground under the feeder although at least one is brave enough to fly up to the mesh bowl for the occasional sunflower seed.  They used to be called hedge sparrows but the aforementioned word police no longer approve of that name because they are not a type of sparrow. 

Ages ago, Tim read a novel set in the past in rural England and was interested in a comment about the dunnocks and ruddocks that ate the grain spilt by the roadsides after harvest.  I looked up ruddock and found that it was an early name for the robin . . .  and also discovered that the name Dunnock comes from the Ancient British dunnakos, meaning little brown one.  Very appropriate. 

The chaffinches weren't the only quarrelsome birds this morning.  I saw the male blackbird defending his favourite spot up near the wild flower bank from a brown one - perhaps a female but more likely a juvenile.  It has crossed my mind that ardent feminists might be irritated by the naming of the blackbird.  Only the adult male is black.  Someone else writing on the internet was interested in a different aspect of the name and wondered why this particular bird has the common name of blackbird when there are much more impressive black birds like ravens, rooks, crows and jackdaws.  Apparently the answer is that in the distant past, when birds acquired their common names, only small birds were called birds.  Large birds were called fowl - hence "Behold the fowl of the air . . .".

Back in the garden, I did finally relent and used the sprinkler on the back lawn at the beginning of the week after mowing. But it was a case of too little too late and now the grass is a patchwork of mottled green and beige.  It isn't really a lawn.  I don't think it was ever planted with proper lawn grass.  It is really just the remnant of an old sloping field which has been mowed for years . . . a mixture of grasses, some of which survive the hot weather better than others.   The lawn in front of the house is not a problem.  It was obviously levelled when the house was built sometime around 1970 but the back hasn't been changed much structurally since the days when it was a field belonging to Sunnyside Cottage.  The narrow terrace running across the top of the property (where the summerhouse was erected) used to be a farm track from the cottage to a water tank in the larger field on the south side of our garden.

We did get some good rain yesterday (10mm) but the week started hot and dry.  Even this young great tit was examining the thermometer and wondering when it would cool down!

On Tuesday Tim went with me to the Garden Centre in Waterloo Road (or perhaps that should be Albert Road . . . Ramsey roads have a habit of changing their names as they go along).  A kind friend gave me two vouchers in spring and I spent the first in April and bought a lovely white clematis and a white rose.  The clematis looked like this when we brought it home.

The rose has just flowered.  The first blossoms are slightly damaged at the edges of the petals - probably due to some froghoppers which had spread their froth over the buds.  I removed the offending bugs before they damaged the next lot of buds.

I got a new weeder on Tuesday and we chose three perennial plants.  Only one has a flower - a monarda didyma which I have been wanting for ages.  You will understand why if you know the common name . . . bee balm.  It is also supposed to be popular with butterflies.  I am going to plant it in the garden today.  I have been waiting for the rain to give the garden a good watering first.  I took this photo yesterday in the conservatory - it was too wet outside.

The other two plants which we chose are a white perennial geranium (Kashmir white) which will look good next to my deep violet blue geraniums and a rose coloured Hellebore.

There were a few new flowers to photograph this week.  First a shrub, a pink spiraea - probably S. billardii "Triumphans" - growing up by the summerhouse with the meadowsweet on the bank in the background.

Then these bright cousins of the common Montbretia - Crocosmia Lucifer.

I am not sure whether to classify this Feverfew Tanacetum parthenium as a wild flower or a herb.  It is rather invasive so I suppose it could even be called a weed - but there is no denying that it is pretty.

This little plant is definitely a wild flower although most gardeners would call it an invasive a weed.  It spreads so fast that I have to weed out vast quantities even though it is dearly loved by the bees.  It is Lotus corniculatus or bird's foot trefoil aka crow's toes or bacon and eggs or Lady's shoes and stockings or God Almighty's thumb and finger or hen and chickens or Granny's toenails!

And finally . . . some mystery bugs!  My planned daily "exercise walks" up Skyhill fizzled out very quickly because I decided that I needed to clear the jungly path from the top of our garden up to the forestry track before continuing to use it.  When I was walking back to the house after a brief path-clearing stint, I noticed that something had been eating the leaves on our small birch tree.  Then I noticed the culprits.  I quickly removed them from the tree before they could do any more damage and then regretted that I hadn't taken a photo.  So I retrieved a leaf and took this snap and then headed for the computer to identify them.

Well, they are birch sawfly larvae!  Tim wondered why the birds hadn't eaten them and the reason is that they have a strange defence behaviour of arching their tails when anything casts a shadow on them which probably scared our little birds.  During my research I found a photo in the Telegraph with a description that called them "dancing caterpillars".  The person who sent in the photo was delighted because he had very few butterflies in his garden.  Unfortunately they are not caterpillars and I think he must have been very disappointed when they ended up turning into flies.