Wet garden

Not the best of weeks . . .

Saturday 9th May, 2015

Not the best of weeks for sunlovers, or for out of date old left wing sympathisers like me. It rained most of the week and the wrong side won the UK elections.

It started raining while I was finishing last Saturday’s post and continued for twenty-four hours.  We had nearly two inches of rain.  47mm to be more exact, which was slightly more than we had in the whole of April.  So the garden had a really good watering and I  had an excellent excuse to be lazy.

The skies didn’t clear until after lunch on Sunday so we cancelled our visit to the swans and spent most of the weekend  indoors - trying to keep warm.  These cold snaps after the central heating has been turned off are a nuisance.  It seems too wimpish to turn it on again.  So we freeze for a while before deciding that we might as well be  wimps.

I took a few photos through the kitchen window on Sunday morning - of soggy birds on the feeder.  This little female siskin spent ages pecking away a the peanuts because her preferred food, the sunflower seeds, hadn’t been replenished yet.

After the rain stopped, Tim filled the sunflower seed feeders and the goldfinches arrived.  They are our fussiest customers.  The other finches and the tits will make do with peanuts after the sunflower seeds are finished but the goldfinches show no interest in peanuts. I read that they are particularly fond of niger seed but they seem happy enough with the sunflower seeds.

Bank holiday Monday brought sunshine but there was still a cool breeze.  We took the blue Golf out for a drive.  It spends most of its life sitting in the garage because we use the old car for short trips to the supermarket and the tip.  The north of the Island was looking very pretty . . . green fields and bright gold gorse hedges.  There were also a number of fields of rape in full flower - carpeted with brilliant yellow.

We stopped briefly at the Point of Ayre and I took a quick photo through the car window of the silhouette of the mountains.

The cherry trees down by the road were looking good when we returned home.  I think they have benefitted from the work done on the beeches about eighteen months ago.  We got some young men in to cut down one large beech by the gate and to prune the lower branches on the others.  Now the cherries get more light.

After lunch we walked up through Skyhill plantation - our first walk for a week.

Butterflies are still in short supply.  Only two sightings of unidentified whites so far this week, one in the back garden and one in the broadleaf section of the plantation.

The dry weather was short lived.  By Tuesday morning it was raining again. 

(PS Ditto Wednesday morning. I checked the rain gauge on Tuesday afternoon.   Another 24mm of rain had fallen.  If you add in Wednesday’s 5mm, it adds up to 3 inches so far this month and the first week isn’t over yet. 

PPS Total for this month up to 4 inches on Saturday morning).

I saw a male blackbird collecting food for babies on front lawn in the rain.  I am not sure whether his nest is in the holly hedge or the conifers in the next door garden.

After writing about niger seed on Monday I was tempted to buy some from the pet shop when we went in to stock up on bird food.  It is hard to resist impulse items.  I put half a cup in the empty mesh basket on feeder where Tim usually puts sunflower seed.  We hoped for some signs of enthusiasm about this new addition to the menu but apparently our birds thought it was dangerous - or didn’t recognise it as food.  They refused to even look at the seed until I put some sunflower seeds in the basket too.  Eventually the siskins started eating the niger seed and on Wednesday morning the chaffinches had joined in.  No sign of interest from the goldfinches yet.

We are not sure about the state of play in the bird box.  The great tits are still visiting the box, especially in the early morning . . .  possibly sitting on eggs.  Tim even saw one taking in a bit more nesting material this week. They are not feeding babies yet.   Last year the babies left the box on May 26.  If they are on a similar timetable this year they should be due to start feeding soon because the babies are fed for about three weeks before they leave the nest..

On Tuesday I photographed the buds on the pink clematis.  I love the creepers on the railings in front of the house but the long shoots are a nuisance.  They need to be cut back almost weekly because they seem to grow a couple of inches every day and - if they are allowed to - they try to block our access up the steps to the front door.  

The next morning  I saw that the first flowers were opening . . .  ten days later than last year.

I also saw that the first flowers on the white clematis had opened.  This was a gift from a friend last spring and I have been debating the best place to plant it for a whole year.  I moved it into a large pot and just waited for inspiration to strike.  Now I think I know the perfect place but it will have to wait in its pot until the oriental poppies have finished flowering and die back because I will have to stand on them to dig a hole.  I want to plant it on the south side of the wisteria.  I think it will look good if it climbs up the trellis on the wall and hides the bare lower branches of the wisteria.  Unlike the pink one, it isn’t a rampant variety of clematis so it should be easy to keep under control.

There are a lot of buds on the wisteria but it we will have to wait a bit longer for the flowers.

Thursday promised to be one of those perfect spring days but didn’t quite live up to its promise.  There was a fair amount of cloud lurking around and a coolish breeze.  Although there were plenty of sunny spells it didn’t warm up as much as we hoped.  But it did warm up enough for another butterfly sighting.  This one was a male orange tip.  It posed very nicely for photographs in the sunshine but I was hoping for a cloud to come over because I knew the bright sun would bleach the deep colour of the orange tips to his wings in a photo.  

When a cloud eventually did oblige, the butterfly promptly folded up his wings and didn’t spread them again until the sun reappeared.   You can see the true colour of the upper wing in the narrow strip visible above the wing nearest the camera in the next photo.

It was very frustrating but I did get the best orange tip photos that I have taken so far even if his wing tips look more gold than orange.

While I was chasing the butterfly I saw one of my favourite bumblebees on the bugle - a common carder.

After lunch we walked in Skyhill plantation again.  I stopped at the top to photograph the new cones on the larch . .

. . . and the Scots pine.

The seasons are changing. The sheep have been moved from the high pasture where they have been grazing all winter and replaced with cattle for the summer.

We were all busy early on Friday.  I was loading the dishwasher and looking out of the window, Tim was catching up on the news on TV in the aftermath of the UK elections (which I have been trying to ignore as far as possible because it is too depressing), and a blackbird and thrush were collecting food for their children on the back lawn.  I saw the blackbird first.  He was obviously a successful hunter gatherer.

Then the thrush arrived with one small bug in its beak.  I watched its hunting tactics.  It hopped around for a while and then stopped in a sunny spot and stood there patiently, listened, looked around and finally pounced.

After dithering for an hour or two, I decided to mow the grass before our shopping trip.  

And finally my blogging week ended the same way that it started.  Wet. It started to rain as soon as we got home from the shops and I watched the rain falling on the new mown grass with a smug satisfaction that only another gardener will understand.