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.
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