Wet leaf season. Monday 20th October, 2014 This isn't the best time of the year to write a hiking/gardening diary/blog. After taking a couple of cloud photos ten days ago, I didn't pick up my camera again for over a week. White clouds to the north east at about 9-30 a.m.
Gaudy clouds to the south east a few days earlier at about 7-30 a.m. Sunrises will be an hour earlier soon when the clocks are adjusted for winter. Unless I have got in a muddle and they are an hour later. It doesn't matter. Sunrises will be at the normal time . . . just a little later every day until the shortest day . . . it's just the clocks that change!
I think eight days without a single photo may be a record for me this year . . . but I am not going to waste time checking. The weather hasn't been great for photography. It has been proper autumn weather, wet and windy. Very nearly five inches of rain fell during the last twelve days and the wind got up to gale force more often than not. Tonight the wind is expected to change up a gear - to severe gale force as the tail end of hurricane Gonzalo passes over the island. I thought I would try to get back to the habit of compiling a new post every weekend but I am a confirmed procrastinator and it is Monday already and I doubt whether this will be finished until tomorrow. The weekend is the logical time to sort out photos and write some waffle because there is even less of interest on the TV than there is during the week. I think we are all supposed to be out raving at clubs or drinking ourselves stupid in pubs at the weekend. Or maybe they just think that everyone enjoys endless tacky talent (?) shows, celebrity dancing competitions, and various other "reality" TV stuff. I have been working in the garden during the intervals between showers, scooping wet leaves out of the ditch where our little stream is flowing quite vigorously, or pruning a few more collapsed hydrangeas and cutting back sodden oregano and knapweed. Last week I picked up four 3 gallon builders buckets of beech pods and leaves off the front lawn so that I could mow the grass on Friday . I think at least another four buckets full have fallen since I mowed. Back to square one but at least the grass is shorter. In desperation I decided to take a few indoor photos of the miniature roses that I bought when we had visitors this year. I don't normally buy indoor plants because I always neglect them and then feel guilty. But I like to have flowers in the spare bedroom when we have house guests and prefer living plants to cut flowers. When my sister visited us in May, I bought a little pot of miniature yellow roses. I planned to plant them in a large pot as soon as they had finished flowering and leave them outside until autumn and then move them into the conservatory. It is hard to believe but the last bud hasn't opened yet and the little pot of straggly roses is still sitting on the dining room window sill - waiting to finish flowering. The light wasn't really suitable for this photo and the background was more interesting than the rosebud - so it is hardly more than a silhouette.
These red roses are mere babies in comparison. They date back to August when our daughter and granddaughters visited. They are on the living room window sill and have one bud as well as the three floppy open flowers.
I tried to find some interesting autumn colour but the leaves are being ripped off the trees by the high winds. The beech down by the road (on the right of the photo) that usually puts on a good display has lost most of its leaves. It is always the first to react to autumn. The beech on its immediate left is still green. This happens every year. I wonder whether they are slightly different genetically or whether the tree on the left is just more sheltered from the prevailing wind which blows down the glen from the south west.
The azalea mollis has lost most of its leaves too, but some of the remaining few are quite an interesting colour.
The most memorable incident since the last post was a "visit" from a tiny goldcrest that tried to fly through our living room window. Luckily Tim heard it crashing into the glass and called me. He thought it was likely to be dead but we looked out of the window and could see that it was still breathing. So I dashed out into the rain and picked it up. I am never sure how much to intervene when birds get into difficulty but I always pick up small birds that fly into the windows and stun themselves. I used to do it in case the dogs found them on the ground. Now there are no more dogs but there are neighbouring cats prowling around. But in this case I was more worried about the heavy rain. The goldcrest needed to be kept warm and dry until it had time to recover. I moved it from my right hand into the left so that I could take some "selfies" of my hand and the bird. It looked very miserable at first.
After a while it opened its eyes and then it started wriggling. I took it to the back door and opened my hand. It sat up but made no attempt to fly away. I was worried about its left foot. It seemed unable to move its toes.
Then I took it back to the living room thinking that it might prefer to leave from that window. The rain had almost stopped. It was looking better and its foot looked all right - but it was still reluctant to leave.
After taking that photo I took the bird outside near the bird feeder. The rain had stopped but it was too wet to use the camera because there were still drips falling from the trees. It just sat on my hand until I gave it a little push and then it flew off strongly until it reached the white buddleia half way up the garden where it stopped for a rest. Goldcrests, and the similar but rarer firecrests, are the smallest of the British birds. They weigh only about 5 to 7 grams. I have never seen a firecrest but we do get goldcrests occasionally in the garden. They search for insects in the shrubs and trees but never visit the bird feeder. PS I saw a goldcrest again on Monday morning, bouncing around happily in the cotoneaster near the rose bed. I wonder whether it was "my" goldcrest.
No longer "All quiet on the weather front"! Wednesday 8th October, 2014. My little rain gauge has been working overtime so far this month. After recording only 13 mm of rain for the whole of September, it was threatening to overflow after the first five days of October. It was reading 118 mm (not far off 5 inches) when I emptied it on Monday morning. And there is more to come. This is the forecast for today: Wednesday, 8 October 2014 Weather: Showers soon becoming isolated during morning, then a band of frequent/ heavy showers moving through later in afternoon. Mostly dry at first this evening, then frequent/ heavy showers later in evening and overnight. Wind: South or SE 15-20, locally 20-25, then decreasing Variable 10-15 later in night. Visibility: Good, possibly moderate in showers. Temperature: Min. Air 9°C and Max. Air 14°C Rainfall (mm): 8-15, risk 15-30 Comments: Heavy rain, with risk localised flooding. Spring tides, some harbour/ quayside flooding & coastal over-topping likely, especially tonight (high tide 00:17 am). Thunder/ lightning possible in showers. Strong winds. There isn't much to write about this week apart from the weather. Work in the garden and walks have been neglected since Thursday because of a phone call from the hospital late on Thursday to let us know that Tim could have his hernia procedure on Monday instead of waiting until November. There had been a last minute cancellation.
After spending most of Thursday clearing leaves out of the ditches and gutters in preparation for expected heavy rain, we had to drive into Douglas on Friday for Tim's pre-operative assessment and again on Monday. We were lucky with the weather on both days. We got back to the glen before the heavy rain and gales arrived on Friday afternoon. On Sunday night another band of severe weather passed over the Island. Trees were down all over the place. Four were partially blocking the roads we normally take to the hospital, and the main road through Ballaugh was closed because a tree brought down the power lines. When it got light I noticed an unfamiliar "plant" in the snowdrop bed near the little apple tree.
It turned out to be the honeysuckle-covered top of a dead holly which had been growing out of the bank above the ditch. We had decided that it would be too difficult to cut down when we were removing dead holly branches last winter and that we would just have to let it come down in its own time. Luckily it fell in the best possible place . . . missing both the apple tree and the hawthorns. It isn't even blocking the ditch and the trunk can stay in place until we feel like dealing with it. I will just cut off the end which is covering the snowdrops.
We had to be at the hospital on the outskirts of Douglas by twelve o'clock and allowed an extra half hour for the journey. It wasn't necessary. The emergency services on the Island really are amazing. I had my camera handy to take photos of the post-storm devastation - but there was no evidence of the stormy night apart from a few small branches at the side of the road near Bishopscourt. The road through Ballaugh had been reopened and all the major debris removed from the roads. I drove Tim home in the late afternoon in brilliant sunshine and it was hard to believe that the day had started out so badly. This week I have been obsessed with beech nuts, or more accurately - beech pods. I am even learning some new vocabulary and can report that this year has been "a mast year" - a year when the beech trees and oaks produce a bumper crop of nuts and acorns. The beech pods from the trees down by the road are not a problem but the big tree near the house drops its pods on the lawn and the lawnmower doesn't like them. They annoy me too because they are quite hard and take ages to decay. If they are not removed before mowing the mower chops them into smaller bits and they are even harder to remove from the grass.
Tim swept up a lot of pods over the weekend but the gales have brought down even more. I am waiting for better weather and then I will try to remove them from the lawn just before mowing. Usually the seeds which our beech trees produce are just skinny shells with no nuts inside - but this year we have also had some fatter seeds with proper nuts inside. They are very small but they are edible. Someone on TV said they are poisonous but a lot of people wrote in and said that they had been eating them for years with no ill effects. I tried one but it didn't seem to have much flavour.
The crabapple tree is loaded with fruit. It was labelled as a John Downie when I bought it but obviously isn't. It looks more like the illustration of the Yellow Hornet crabapple. The blackbirds eat some of the fruit - but not until it appears to be overripe. And I did see a pheasant up in the tree last last year enjoying the fruit.
While I was looking for a good twig to photograph, I noticed this unusual caterpillar. I believe that it is the caterpillar of the pale tussock moth.
This is an unfortunate victim of the first October rain and gales. This old hydrangea gets too much shade and the new growth is always too soft to support the weight of the flower heads especially when they are wet. The whole plant flopped after the rain - and the wind didn't help either. I had to do a fairly radical pruning job - but the same thing will probably happen next year.
The next few days are likely to be uneventful and not very photogenic. Tim will be convalescing and I will continue tidying up in the garden if we get some good weather in between the gales and floods!
Venturing further afield Wednesday 1st October, 2014 I sometimes think the internet is rather like an immense game of Chinese whispers - full of endlessly repeated distortions and misquotations, as well as common or garden ignorance and lies. Take this Conrad Lorenz quote as a minor example. According to an apparently reputable site he once wrote "Every man gets a narrower and narrower field of knowledge in which he must be an expert in order to compete with other people. The specialist knows more and more about less and less and finally knows everything about nothing." Some unknown person embroidered the quote and came up with "Philosophers are people who know less and less about more and more, until they know nothing about everything. Scientists are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing." Fair enough, but what does annoy me is that the modified quote is now widely attributed to Lorenz. I would like to embroider further and add a third category - "bloggers and commenters on the net" (and I include myself in this category). They know nothing about anything but have an opinion on everything! The reason for that grumble was some incorrect advice that I found on the net. After I replaced the drive belt on my Flymo lawnmower, not the simplest operation because it involves the removal and replacement of eleven screws, the stupid thing made a brief loud squawk every time I started it. I thought it might be something to do with the belt tension and Google found a forum where someone who had the same problem had asked for advice. A "helpful" person written in and stated very confidently that the belt should be loosened because it could only make that noise if it was too tight. Well, he was wrong. After loosening the belt on my mower it was no better. I found another site which advised tightening the belt and tried that. I don't think I managed to get it quite tight enough. It has stopped squawking but occasionally when I start it after scraping off the wet grass it still makes a polite little chirp. Better find those screwdrivers again. Hope it is a case of fourth time lucky. Just when I thought we had come to the end of the "new" flowers, I found a few early winter flowering plants that I had overlooked. One or two flowers are opening on the winter jasmine. I brought a few cuttings from the garden of the house that we rented when we first moved to the Island and planted them up by the summerhouse where they resolutely refused to flower. After being moved down near the house they have been growing much better and even produced the first blossom a few years ago.
Just behind the trellis supporting the winter jasmine is a mahonia. It is probably a mahonia japonica but I am not sure because it came up from seed - probably a unintentional gift from our next door neighbour via an obliging bird.
The Nerine bowdenii were an intentional gift from the same neighbour. He lived on the south side of our garden when we first moved into the glen. He was a very knowledgeable plant collector and tended to give me South African plants like the nerine and veltheimia. Perhaps he thought I was homesick. I wasn't. But his plants wouldn't have helped anyway because I think they are indigenous to the Western Cape and we lived in Natal. I had never seen them before.
As well as the autumn and early winter flowers, there are a second flush of late blooms on some of the summer flowering plants. This rose "Rushing Stream" is flowering better than it did in June.
It is not surprising that the flowering season has been so long this year. September was unusually mild. I haven't seen the final statistics for the Isle of Man but in the UK it has been the driest September since countrywide records began in 1910 - and the fourth warmest. The Met Office reported "Using figures from 1-28 September, the UK as a whole has received 19.4 mm of rain, which is just 20 % of the normal amount of rainfall we'd expect for the month. Prior to this, the driest September on record was 1959 with 23.8 mm." My little rain gauge reports just 13mm for the whole of September in the glen! There was a pretty start to the last morning in September. But all is set to change in October with near gale force winds predicted for Friday - combined with a risk of flooding.
The big autumn clear-up is not going as fast as I hoped. My (almost recovered) sore toe didn't help but the main problem is that I get bored and look for other more interesting things to do. About half of the daffodil beds have been cleared and about two thirds of the wild flower bank in front of the summerhouse. That is a slow job because I try to cut back the meadowsweet and the other taller plants without damaging the primroses - and I leave the oregano and knapweed till last because there are still a few insects visiting the late flowers. By the way, I think the purple toadflax (in the bottom left corner of the photo) is one of the most valuable "weeds" in the garden as far as the bees are concerned. It has been flowering for four months, since the end of May, and bees are still visiting the flowers.
We have been walking most days since my last post - mainly in our local plantations in search of colourful autumn leaves and interesting fungi. They are few and far between. The conditions needed for spectacular autumn colours are a big drop in temperature and not too much wind - so that rules out the Island. The leaves are starting to fall but we haven't had any frost yet. There is an occasional pretty leaf.
On Thursday we walked through Brookdale. We had planned to go for a longer walk up the Narradale road but strong winds and hill fog were forecast so we chose a more sheltered walk. They were right about the hill fog.
During the walk we found some of the elusive red toadstools. We missed them on the way up but saw them at the bottom of a bank near the track on the way down. I don't know why we always went to such lengths to plan circular walks. When we return along the same route, we enjoy the views from a totally different direction and often spot things that we missed the first time we passed them.
After being delayed by weather, mowing, and golf on the TV, we finally set off for the Narradale walk on Monday. It was the first time that we had attempted a longer walk since the beginning of March. It is only about five miles but the climb up the Narradale road is both long and steep. It is broken only by a short dip down to a little glen where the trees were just beginning to look autumnal.
About half way up the road, we were greeted by a very friendly sheep dog at Narradale Farm. Its tail never stopped wagging.
Across the road is a modern home which is rumoured to have a nuclear bomb proof bunker in the basement!
The path connecting the top of the Narradale Road to the farm track down to Ohio was puddle and mud free for the first time in years. The farm track was dry too but the ruts had been patched with stone. I am not sure whether it was an improvement - maybe for vehicles, probably not for hikers. We thought the track might be puddle free as well . . . until we reached this detour along the top of an old sod "hedge".
There were some dark clouds looming but fortunately only a few sparse drops of rain fell before we reached the plantation.
I had decided not to bother with fungi on this walk but I couldn't resist this group of toadstool on the bank above the track. I haven't seen so many old toadstools being attacked by mildew in previous autumns. I wonder whether the mildew is attacked by an even smaller type of fungus. It reminded me of the old infinity verse "Bigger fleas have little fleas on their backs to bite 'em, Little fleas have smaller fleas and so ad infinitum!"
We passed a sad sight near the bottom of the plantation . . . the body of a young hare, not long dead and with no visible injuries. It is probably a brown hare. The mountain hares also have black tips to their ears but they are a more greyish colour before they turn white in winter.
We both enjoyed the longer walk and suffered no after-effects, so we are planning to venture even further afield and to be more enterprising hikers in future - weather permitting, of course.
