Garden and Brookdale

Beloved Green Place

Monday 26th January, 2015.

I started reading Craig Robertson’s book Snapshot last week and was impressed by the opening paragraph in which he describes Glasgow as “a dear green place” - a description which would be very appropriate for Glen Auldyn or even for the whole of the Isle of Man.  I knew from my very limited Manx vocabulary that glas means green in Manx and guessed that it could have the same meaning in Scots Gaelic.  After a bit of research, I found that I was partly right and partly wrong.  The first syllable of Glasgow does mean green but according to the Glasgow Caledonian University “It is generally accepted the name is not from Gaelic, as at the time of its formation this area was a Welsh settlement. It is probably from the Welsh 'Glas', and 'cu' or 'gu'; translates as 'Beloved Green Place' . . . . . ”

Our back garden is my favourite part of our dear green place - a patch of green grass and then trees as far as the eye can see.

It wasn’t a very photogenic week, at least not as far as North Barrule is concerned.  I took my camera with me when we went to Ramsey on Tuesday - hoping for a good shot of the snow on North Barrule.  We can only glimpse the very top of the hill from our house and it looked fairly white.  The view from Ramsey was disappointing.  Not as much snow as I hoped and the top, which would have been the best bit, was obscured by fog or low cloud.  

I took a photo through the upstairs window of the library which shows the dismal scene - Parliament Square in the foreground, with the wooded slope of Lhergy Frissell and the distant slope of North Barrule behind.  The Manx flag, flying from the facade of the city hall, shows the strength of the cold wind and was looking rather tattered and torn after the gales last week.

Recently we have had longer shopping walks than usual because work started after the holidays on the southern section of Bowring Road.  At least I think it is Bowring Road.  Google maps has it marked as Parliament Square but I think they are wrong.  Ramsey streets do have a confusing habit of changing their names at various junctions for no obvious reason.   Anyway, until the road works are completed it is not possible to cross at the Lezayre Road traffic lights and walk directly to Shoprite.  We have to walk up the east side of the road until we reach the first traffic circle, near Ramsey Bakery, and cross the road there.  There are barriers everywhere and the lower section of the road resembles an archaeological dig at present.

I did a little tidying up in the garden on Wednesday - mainly picking up dead twigs and small branches that had blown off the beeches at the bottom of the garden.

We were back in Ramsey on Thursday because the weather forecast for Friday - my usual shopping day - wasn’t very promising.  I took my camera again, hoping for more snow on the mountain.  There was slightly more snow but the east wind had blown some hazy pollution across from the mainland and there was no point in taking a murky photo.  In desperation for a subject, I photographed this group of sycamores opposite the entrance to the Shoprite car park.  Sycamores are not the most beautiful of our trees but the mature sycamores come into their own in winter when the smooth curve outlining their bare branches creates an artistic silhouette against the bright sky.

When we drive anywhere in winter I like to see whether I can identify trees by their silhouettes.  I am not very good at this game because one really needs to see the bark of the trees and the leaf buds to make an educated guess.

After a wet Friday, I went out on Saturday morning to take photos in the garden.  I wasn’t expecting to find the first buds on the crocuses so early in the year.  

Later, I lifted my hedge trimming ladder over the fence and leant it against the hawthorn so that I could reach the bits of holly behind the tree.  It was the final bit of holly cutting for a few months, thank goodness.  Then I had a long session of picking up bits of holly.

After lunch we set out for a walk in Brookdale Plantation.  I wanted to take a photograph of our house from the far side of the glen and we went to a great deal of trouble with very limited success.  First we tried an overgrown path along the lower edge of the plantation.  When it became too difficult to go any further, we thought it might be better to climb up a bank and find our way along the slope under the trees.  Then we reached another impasse - gorse - and had to admit defeat.  It doesn’t often pay to go off piste in the plantations.  We decided to take the shortest possible obstacle course through brambles and over felled larches in order to reach our usual path where I took this photo of the delicate tracery of birch branches against the sky.

Further on I tried one more detour down through the conifers in search of our house but the view was disappointing.  I could see the house but it was partly obscured by branches, also I wanted to get more of the wooded hillside behind our garden into the frame.  I shall have to try again.

We walked on up the hill until the view opened up and we caught a glimpse of Shellag Point and the sea.  The colours were muted because of the bank of cloud overhead.

When we got home I took a photo of a patch of snowdrops near the drive.

I am still trying to take a perfect sunrise.  I have been checking the times to see whether it is better to be a little early, a little late or exactly on time.  I took this photo on Sunday at 08-28, ten minutes after official sunrise.

This morning, I was more ambitious and took a sequence of photos. 

1. 08-09  Seven minutes before sunrise.

2. 08.16  Official sunrise time.  Nothing special so I lost interest.

3. 08.29  Went outside to photograph beech branches against the sky and noticed that some low pink clouds were drifting over the glen with streaky white clouds above.

4. 08.31   Two minutes later, all over apart from a glow on the horizon.  

The big beech tree near the house against the morning sky at 08.28 this morning. The two black spots (top left) are not dirt on the lens - they are a couple of high flying birds, probably rooks.

A cold garden

The hottest year and then the coldest night

Monday 19th January 2015

It hasn’t been a very newsworthy week.  We went for one short walk . . . my only gardening activity involved short spells of cutting back the holly hedge . . . and I wasted a lot of time messing around on the computer, trying to get attachments with various file extensions to open . . . and then decided to experiment with composing the blog on Google Docs instead of WordPad or Outlook.com.  But we have had a lot of weather - more than enough!

We have had buckets of rain, days of gales which caused ferry cancellations, a sprinkling of snow on the hills and last night was the coldest night of the year - which isn’t saying much because the year is only a few day old.  There was visible evidence of the low temperature.  When I went out to put a packet of rubbish in the bin down by the gate, I noticed that a couple of buckets which had filled with rainwater were covered with ice.  I took a photo and then prodded the ice expecting it to be a thin film floating on the top.  It was rock hard and must be quite a thick layer.  By the way, the piece of stone in the bottom of the black bucket was put there to stop it blowing away in the gales.  

There was frost on the grass this morning but there hadn’t been enough dew for a really white frost - it was more a paler shade of green.   The words “a greener shade of pale” keep coming into my mind.  I vaguely recall a Noel Coward quote about the potency of music.  Thanks to Google, I have found the quote “Strange how potent cheap music is.”  Not entirely apt perhaps - at least not in a financial terms.  I expect Procol Harum made a lot of money out of A whiter shade of pale.  By the way I am not showing off my knowledge of 1960's British rock music - Google helped with that info as well.  

I was curious about the origin of the name of the band and looked it up.  Like most things on the internet this may or may not be true - but I liked it so I will choose to believe the story.  Apparently the band were looking for a name and their manager suggested Procol Harum which he had been told was the pedigree name of a friend's cat.  The band members liked the sound of the words and said "Oh, great" or words to that effect.  But the manager had misheard the name during a phone call.  The cat was actually called Procul Harun which means "beyond these things" in Latin - and this explains the discrepancy between the band's name and the translation.

I have been looking at clouds again.  I have never learned the names of various types of clouds.  There doesn’t seem to be much point unless one wants to work in the met office.  Anyway I think that words sometimes just get in the way of our enjoyment of visual beauty.  To quote another popular song “It’s clouds’ illusions I recall . . . I really don’t know clouds at all.”  

Most of my cloud watching is done around sunrise which was 08-26 today.  Here is a collage of some recent clouds and a condensation trail on the 11th which looked almost like pink lightning.

Our only walk was on Friday.  We trudged up the muddy path through Skyhill plantation to look at the snow on the hills.  It wasn’t as spectacular as we expected after hearing that the mountain road had been closed after a heavy snowfall.

Progress on the holly hedge has been slow.  Some days have been too windy to venture up the ladder but I have finally reached my goal - the hawthorn tree.  I wanted to get this part of the hedge finished early so that I wouldn’t disturb the great tits if they decide to use the nest box this year.

The hedge - 17/12/2014

The hedge - a month later.

The other half of the hedge, between the hawthorn and the top of the garden, can wait until summer.  There are a lot of daffodils in the bed next to the hedge and I don’t want to crush the leaves.  It will be best to wait until they have died back.

I have a talent for finding excuses to procrastinate.  I am ashamed to admit that I put off loading the supper dishes in the dishwasher until the next morning because I claim that I sleep better if I am not too active in the evening.  In winter this tactic has the added benefit of working in the kitchen when it is getting light - so that I can enjoy watching the birds visiting the feeder.

The long tailed tits have been visiting more than once a day.  I miss seeing them in the summer months so their winter visits are even more of a treat.  They are very agile and often feed upside down.  

I forgot to mention last week that 2014 has been confirmed as the warmest year on record in the British Isles.  “Provisional figures for the whole year reveal that it was the hottest for the UK in records dating back to 1910.

Last year was also the warmest in the Central England Temperature series, the longest running temperature record in the world which stretches back to 1659, recording temperatures in an area of central England.

The average temperature for the year was 9.9C, some 1.1C above the long term average, and making it warmer than the previous record year of 2006.

It was also the fourth wettest year in records dating back to 1910, the Met Office said.

The figures for 2014 mean that eight of the UK’s top 10 warmest years have occurred since 2002, the weather and climate experts said.”

None of this is good news when you take into account an article in the Independent on January 11 which explains the danger of rising temperatures to our trees which are being attacked by more and more pests and diseases.  An interesting fact in the article is that “More than 360 species, an "unprecedented" number, from daisies and dandelions to geraniums and cyclamen, are in flower. It is the latest evidence of the UK's changing climate, they say.

However, the numbers of plants do not simply indicate an early spring, according to experts, as only 5 per cent of the species recorded are spring-flowering native specialists.

Ecologist Dr Tim Rich, of the British and Irish Botanical Society said: "It's a good indication the climate is warming. Twenty years ago, you'd have been lucky to get 20 species in flower in mid-winter. To have 368 is phenomenal."

I imagine that the number of flowering plants is higher in the south of the UK than it is on the Island but I had a prowl around the garden and found an odd tatty flower - primroses, violets, feverfew, Welsh poppies, even an oxeye daisy and a campanula.  These were the best of the primroses but they look as though they regret exposing themselves to the recent sleet.

Some of the other flowers don’t mind the cold and are faring better.  This little garden relative of the primroses has sent up an early flower spike in the rose bed.

Then I found a lovely “greener shade of pale” hellebore below the retaining wall at the bottom of the garden.

The hellebore flowers have an interesting marking - only visible from near ground level.

In the bed above the wall some heather was flowering.

And all over the garden there are patches of snowdrops.  These are in the front garden near the old stump, which has been left as a memorial to our lovely birch that blew down many moons ago.  The little clumps bright green leaves are early bluebell shoots - probably Spanish bluebells which were planted in the garden before we moved here although some have hybridised with the native English bluebells.

But my favourite patch of snowdrops are these which I can enjoy from the kitchen window although the daffodils in front are shooting up so fast that they will soon obscure the snowdrops.  This morning they are enjoying a brief patch of sunlight.

Garden and glen

Clouds, cheese and a derelict nest.

Friday 9th January, 2015.

I have been stalking clouds again this week.   The official sunrise time on Sunday was 08-37 (sunset 16-10) although we don't see the sun until around 11-00 when it finally emerges above the North Barrule ridge.  When I first looked out of the windows the clouds were too low to catch any colour.  I lost interest and only remembered to look again when it was too late.  

The only semi-distant view that we have from the house is to the north north east where we can see the sky almost down to the horizon.
  
Early view of the sunrise looking north north east.

The view in all other directions is blocked by the hills and we can only see the sky more or less directly overhead.  This enables clouds to creep up on us unnoticed and once or twice some drops of rain have blown over Skyhill before the clouds were visible from our garden.

The clouds above North Barrule reflect almost all the bright colour of our sunrises and the angle between the rising sun and the clouds appears to be the vital factor - apart from the basic requirement of the right amount of broken cloud.  The higher clouds light up first - starting as candyfloss pink and then changing to an orangey pink and finally gold.  

Another recent topic of interest has been the customers at the saucer of bird cheese.  The robins are still fighting over the treat and I tried to get photograph but without success.  The light isn't good enough to take action shots.  The robins pay such fleeting visits to the plate of cheese that it is hard to time the photograph.  Sometimes they seem to take off before they have even landed.

Soon after taking that photo, a less welcome guest arrived to have a snack.  I feel sorry for the long-tails because they have such a bad reputation.  They may steal "our" food and spread diseases - but not to the same extent that other humans do - and I think they are over-demonised.   

But out of consideration for the birds, and our more sensible and less long-tail tolerant neighbours, we have stopped leaving the cheese at ground level.  The cheese is now put up in the mesh bowl at the top of the feeder, better for the birds but not so good for photographs.

I have tied back one of the small branches on the Kowhai tree which shelters the  bird feeder from passing sparrowhawks - so that I get a better view of the little birds through the kitchen window.  It has been too windy to get a good photo this week.

While I was taking that photo of the feeders I saw a wren in the flower bed below.  It disappeared before I was able to detach the camera from the tripod but I noticed someone throwing leaves in the air.  It was a song thrush indulging in some typically blackbird-like behaviour.  

Great tits have been spotted going into nest box every few days -  They are not thinking about nest building yet and just seem to be checking the box for possible defects.  

It may be my imagination but I think there is more twittering going on in the garden.  Excitement seems to be building up in the feathered community.   Perhaps there are rumours of spring.  I wonder whether they are already aware of the slightly longer daylight hours at this time of year or whether they notice the changing height of the sun above the horizon.  Temperature can't be a factor because the great tits were looking at the box on Sunday morning when there was frost on the ground.

We have been out for two short walks.  On Saturday we just walked up the glen.  It was about two o'clock and the road which follows the river was already in deep shade but occasionally the sun came out and lit up the side of the glen above us.

At the end of the tarred road we found a patch of winter heliotrope flowering under the hedge . . . the first wild flowers of the year.

On Tuesday morning we walked up through Skyhill plantation.  I hoped to get a photo of Ramsey, sparkling in the winter sunshine but the sunlight was filtered through light clouds.

I climbed into the top paddock to take a photo of the horses and the view framed by an old stone wall and the silhouette of hawthorn twigs.

Then I zoomed in on the centre of the town behind the golf course.  The tide must have been high because there was a ship approaching the entrance to the harbour.

We continued our walk to the view site at the top of the hill and this time I got lucky.  A patch of sunlight briefly lit up the ruined buildings on the old upland farm, the Neary.

On Tuesday afternoon I was working on the hedge again.  I wanted to cut enough holly to take another full load out to recycling facility and I exposed a derelict nest in the hedge about six feet from the ground.  I checked photos on the internet but I am still not certain whether it is a blackbird or song thrush nest.  They are very similar. Blackbird nests are slightly larger (our nest has an internal diameter of about 4 inches/10cms at the rim and is about 4 inches deep).  

Our nest is in a state of decomposition - what an estate agent would describe as "in need of renovation".  Now that my hedge cutting had exposed it to the elements, there was no chance of it being renovated, so I brought it inside to show Tim before it was blown away in the severe gales forecast for the next day.  

One of the joys of researching on the internet is coming across unexpected gems in various blogs and websites. There is an interesting illustrated comparison of song thrush and blackbird nests in the post published on 9 July 2014 on a blog called "The Thrifty Magpie's Nest".   And I was particularly impressed by the bird photography on Charlie Fleming's site "Wildlife in a Suburban Garden".  This video  http://www.arkive.org/song-thrush/turdus-philomelos/video-09a.html  shows a song thrush building her nest.  I was interested to see how she pressed her body into the nest, turning to mould the regular the cup shape.

A New Year

Three Cheers!

Thursday 1st January, 2015

Three cheers!  We have survived another Christmas and New Year/ Yuletide/ Winterval/ Happy Holidays/ Greedfest.   It is all over for another year . . . or maybe just another eight months because Christmas merchandise seems to appear in the shops earlier every year.  I know that traditionally " 'tis the season to be jolly" but how about sparing a thought for the more introverted people?  There must be other people apart from me who are not bubbly, all singing and dancing, jolly, merry, life and soul of the party types.  Couldn't we have a season to be quietly content and happy?  And, by the way, was I the only little girl who couldn't understand why grown-ups said "Three chairs!" when they were happy?

Now it is over I will be able to escape from the kitchen and return to the garden as soon as the weather permits.  The forecast for the first day of the year doesn't look too promising . . . Overcast today with spells of rain or drizzle, occasionally heavy. It will be very windy too, the strong to gale force south or south-westerly winds possibly reaching severe gale at times in exposed locations with gusts to 60 mph; highest temperature a mild 13 Celsius but tempered by the wind and rain.

I don't mind having an indoor day to sort out my thoughts and contemplate resolutions about eating less and exercising more - but I had hoped for a spectacular sunrise to illustrate the New Year dawning.  No such luck, there wasn't a pink cloud in sight . . . just a grey, rainy morning.  It was too wet to take the camera outside so I opened the living room window and took a quick snap from inside.  The camera did its best to brighten the scene but it lied.  The sky was even more gloomy than this photo suggests.

I have been taking a few sky photos recently because the garden isn't very photogenic in December.  This was yesterday's sunrise - not the first of the New Year but at least the last of the Old Year.

And the sun was so low in the sky that this cloud on Christmas Eve really did have a silver lining.

December wasn't exactly dry - but it was far less wet than October and November.  We had 78mm of rain compared with close to 300mm in each of the two preceding months.

We have been on one walk recently - a trip out to the Ayres on Tuesday.  It was a lovely sunny day and unusually calm for the Point of Ayre which is a notoriously windy place and popular for kite flying.  We only saw one family with a kite and they were having difficulty keeping their kite aloft in the gentle breeze.

I took the obligatory photo of the lighthouse . . . 

. . . and then we walked along the shore towards the nature reserve, hoping for birds.  We were surprised to see the shingle littered with what looked at first glance like tumbleweed.

I had a closer look and saw that the dead plants had been growing in the shingle and were still anchored by their roots.

It is hard to identify a plant in this condition but if I had to guess I would place a small bet on the "tumbleweed" being biennial sea radish which died after flowering last summer.  I haven't noticed much growing on this stretch of shingle before but I photographed the pods on some sea radish at the Cronk at the end of July and I have read that "The seeds are dispersed by sea-water, in which they can float for 7 - 10 days without loss of viability."  So it is quite possible for them to colonise a new area.   But the only way to be sure would be to return next summer to see whether any more seeds have germinated.

A little further on we came across a pair of choughs foraging at the edge of the shingle.  When we got too close they flew off towards the lighthouse "choughing" quietly as they flew past us.  

We saw very few other birds at the Point of Ayre, just a couple of gulls, a hooded crow, a cormorant flying low over the sea and a little brown bird that disappeared so quickly that there was no time to identify it.  But there has been bird activity in the garden.  We had the first real frost of the winter on Monday and there have been even more customers at the bird feeder than usual.

There was added excitement under the bird feeder because I bought a big piece of mild cheddar - a Christmas present for our resident robin.  Tim cut some into small pieces and put the saucer of cheese on top of the pheasant trap.  I opened the dining room window to photograph the robin enjoying his treat and waited, and waited and waited.  Getting colder and colder.  No robin in sight.  A couple of coal tits fluttered down to get a closer view of the cheese before deciding that it was dangerous and beating a hasty retreat.  There is a limit to how much I am prepared to suffer to get a "perfect" picture.  So I closed the window and retreated to the warm kitchen to take photos through the glass of the firmly closed kitchen window.  Eventually a brave coal tit sampled the cheese and then the word spread.  The coal tits were very fast and I kept pressing the shutter just too late.  I ended up with numerous blurred birds or just a plate of cheese and no bird in the frame.  Eventually one coal tit waited long enough for me to get a photo.

The birds knocked the plate off the trap before I got a good robin picture but Tim put out another saucer of cheese at ground level and the robin returned.

There was some drama when a second robin arrived and I nearly managed to get a photo of a robin fight!  The camera couldn't cope with fast movement in the dull light and I ended up with this blurred image of an enraged robin defending its Christmas present!

While I was busy photographing blurred birds and plates of cheese, I nearly missed seeing the return of the long tailed tits up on the peanut feeders in the tree.  It wasn't easy to get a good photo because they were partly obscured by the lower branches.  I thought of cutting back the offending twigs but decided against it because I think the branches help protect the little birds from the sparrowhawks who like a clear path to swoop along when they are hunting.   This was the best picture but sadly they all had their backs towards the camera.

Today we saw the long tailed tits on two occasions.  The first time I wasn't happy with the photos because the feeders were swaying so fast in the wind that it was impossible to focus.  But the little party of tits came back later and I got one reasonable shot.

It may be the bleak midwinter but life is stirring in the garden.  During a brief break in the rain, I went out to get a photo of our first snowdrop buds.  They were almost as active as the coal tits - dancing in the gusts of wind.