Garden and Ramsey

A warm, dry week with a bit of fog.

Saturday 11th April, 2015.

Last Saturday, the first thing that I did after publishing the last post was to release a small tortoiseshell butterfly which had hibernated in the passage between the garage and the laundry.  The garage door is kept closed most of the time and it was trapped inside.  I thought it might be the right time to take it outside because the first peacock butterfly had just emerged from hibernation.   It sat on the warm step for a few minutes while I took its photo and then spread its wings, flew away and hasn’t been seen since.

I have never been comfortable with the idea that Sunday is the first day of the week.  It always seems to me that it is the last day of the weekend.  But it is usually the first day of my blogging week and on this first morning I saw a very unusual sight . . .  every day of the five day weather forecast shows zero rainfall.  It will be interesting to see whether this prediction comes true.

On the subject of weather, I took one photo of this rather different “cloud”, when the sun was rising, but didn’t understand its significance for a few hours.  The morning started with bright sunshine and blue skies but they didn’t last.  Soon the Island was blanketed by a combination of sea mist and hill fog . . . Manannan’s cloak . . . and I realised that early “cloud” was a bank of sea mist approaching the north of the Island.

The first outing was our usual trip to feed the swans.  There were only two swans in the harbour and they took their time crossing the river to join us.  I amused myself photographing the reflections on the water.  The swing bridge . . .

. . . and the approaching swans swimming through the reflections of ships moored by the far bank.

The first birds to reach us were a group of about half a dozen mallard ducks which were eventually joined by the rather tardy swans.  For once, the herring gulls did not get the lion’s share of the crusts. The reason for this appeared to be that the gulls were frightened of the ducks!  They looked very demure but the gulls treated them with great respect and kept at a safe distance until this “thuggish gang” departed.

Tim was pleased that the swans finally got their fair share.  

We walked back through one of the quaint old lanes that run from the quay to Parliament Street.  The Old Post Office Lane is further east and this one is called Collins Lane.  

I wondered who it had been named for and tried Google.  The only possible clue that I found was a reference in Brown’s Directory of 1881 to an Edward Collins, a boat builder.  He was the only Collins living in Ramsey at the time.  His address was given as Ivy Lane.   (In an earlier publication his occupation is given as “marine store dealer” of King Street.)

There were a couple of other references to Ivy Lane in early publications but nothing since.   As far as I know there is no Ivy Lane in Ramsey today.  It may have been lost when a large area of central Ramsey was demolished due to the South Ramsey Redevelopment Scheme in the 1960’s but perhaps the name changed and the old Ivy Lane is now Collins Lane.

On the way home we stopped so that I could photograph a misty Skyhill.

And record another sign of spring - the first catkins opening on a willow by the river.

Monday couldn’t decided whether to be misty again.  There was a light mist in the glen when we woke but it got much thicker during the morning.  We could hardly see the houses across the road and the other side of the glen was completely hidden.

There was a good side effect though.  The very soft light filtering through the mist was ideal for photographing pale flowers like this patch of wood sorrel under the hawthorns.

The marsh marigolds are covered with buds and the first flower is almost fully open.

Later the mist retreated from the glen.  When we walked in Brookdale after lunch we saw that it hadn’t gone far.  The edge of the dense bank of sea mist was just north of the Sulby River.  

While we were walking down the Fern Glen road we saw two male pheasants fighting.  A pheasant fight seems to involve mainly crouching down and glaring at each other, then posturing with tails in the air, plus the occasional jump in the air.  I tried to take photos but couldn’t focus on the birds because of vegetation in the foreground.

Tuesday morning was devoted to changing library books, banking, paying accounts and shopping in Ramsey.  Not my favourite occupation.  The weather was good though.  It is warming up at last and the garden is bursting into life - but the downside is that the grass and weeds are growing faster. I thought of mowing in the afternoon but couldn’t summon up enough enthusiasm so I decided to do some weeding instead.  I settled down in the sun to dig out grass that was trying to spread from the lawn into the wildflower bank.

I miss the company of the dogs in the garden but I did have some friends to keep me company.  First, I was joined by a pair of mallard ducks who came waddling up to see what I was doing.  I chased them out of the garden because ducks tend to become persistent.  If you give them an inch they take the proverbial mile.  Then Saturday’s peacock butterfly joined me and sunbathed on the warm steps.  And then I spotted a ladybird . . . a seven-spotted ladybird.  It was sitting on a sprig of stitchwort minding its own business until I fetched my camera and irritated it by trying to bend the stitchwort into a better position for a close-focus photo.  Later I saw a second ladybird so I annoyed that one too.  They didn’t seem to mind much - just moved around slowly.

I am gradually educating myself about the inhabitants of our garden, thanks mainly to my camera and Google.  When I saw the ladybirds I assumed that they had six spots - three on each wing case - but after reading about ladybirds I realised that the larger black mark just behind the head is also counted as a spot.

Wednesday was a busy day.  We saw a thrush hopping around in the early morning dew on the back lawn searching for food.  It had a beak full of small bugs so it must be feeding babies already.  

Then we took a load of garden refuse and old newspapers out to the tip for recycling. The view from the tip.  In the foreground is Grest Farm on the northern plain.  On the right, the wooded slopes of Skyhill with Snaefell behind.  To the left of is Clagh Ouyr and then the North Barrule ridge.  

Another male pheasant had been lurking in the garden since Tuesday evening.  We didn’t manage to trap it before we left for the tip because I was busy writing about Monday’s pheasant fight in Fern Glen and wasn’t watching the trap for approaching pheasants.  Tim saw it and called me but we had missed our chance because it had already eaten all the bait.  I prepared some more bait but shut the door of the trap to stop the greedy bird from stealing another meal while we were out.

We intended to walk when we got home so that I could mow the grass in the afternoon but there wasn’t enough time for a walk before lunch so I did some weeding instead and the walk was put off until Thursday.  While I was in the garden I heard a loud pheasant squawk.  The pheasant was back and was apparently complaining because the trap was shut and it couldn’t reach the food!  We caught it after I finished mowing.

Thursday was another lovely warm day.  We walked up to the Brookdale top gate in the morning and then had another short walk down to the postbox on Lezayre Road in the afternoon.  Between walks I kept a watch out of the back window for butterflies.  There were at least two peacock butterflies in the back garden but I had glimpsed something different and more orange.  It kept appearing briefly and then disappearing but finally settled on a stone and I managed to get a photo - not of the colourful upper side of the wings but of the under side with the strange mark that gives the comma butterfly its name.

Friday was yet another warm day until the wind came up suddenly in the afternoon.  I started clearing the last really overgrown part of the garden which is up in the top south west corner above the steep bank behind the ditch.  There has never been a proper boundary fence there.  Just a combination of chicken wire and the sides of an old compost bin that I wired together to stop the dogs escaping - and a thicket of brambles.  There was one memorable escape when little Alice got through a gap in the brambles.  Leo, the largest of her boys, tried to follow her and got stuck with a strand of bramble wrapped around his tummy.  Luckily he plugged the gap very effectively and his two brothers were unable to escape and I retrieved Alice, shut Danny and Alex in the house and then rescued Leo without too much difficulty.

A little robin kept me company while I was working.  He kept inspecting my efforts hoping for worms.  He must have been disappointed that I was just cutting back Ivy and brambles.  After a while he perched on a bramble and sang to me.  I imagine the message was that I should please get out of his territory but it sounded like a sweet friendly little song.

This is the time of year when so much is happening in the garden that I end up with too many photos for the blog instead of too few.  But I couldn’t resist the first snakeshead fritillary which opened in the morning.

PS  The forecasters were right about the dry spell.  There was no rain until Friday night.   And more rain is expected on Sunday morning so our mini-drought is over.

PPS Another male pheasant was transported to the Sulby River on Friday.  Only two this week.  The invasion seems to be slowing down (fingers crossed)!