Too many azaleas?
Monday 26th May, 2014
Good news on the lawn mowing front. Google found an internet company called Mower Magic for me. I checked and found that they stocked the lawnmower that I wanted and they delivered to the Island. I ordered the machine on Monday and it arrived - all the way from Lincoln to our front door - by Friday. All I had to do was type in a few things on the computer. I prefer to support local business by shopping locally whenever possible but not everything is available in Ramsey . . . and internet shopping really is rather like magic.
The azaleas and rhododendrons are continuing to come into bloom. There are two old rhododendrons down by the gate that have had difficult lives .
The crimson one was growing in a very dry spot near a large Lawson's cypress up by the house when we moved here. After we got permission to cut down another cypress near the road, we moved the rhododenron to its new home - with great difficulty! It was too heavy to carry but we managed to drag it down on a tarpaulin and drop it in the hole. It is much happier in the damper position but the old leaves are looking a bit anaemic and spotty after the wet winter. Luckily the new leaf shoots look healthy and the flowers are as lovely as ever.
Nearby is another old rhododendron. It was rather straggly and top heavy and blew over during the winter gales - pulling some of its roots out of the wet ground. It also has lovely flowers so we did our best to save it. I sawed off all the heavy branches and just left some lighter growth near the base of the trunks. Then we pushed it back into an upright position, tied it up to a stake and weighed down the roots with some heavy stones. It has survived (so far . . . fingers crossed) and has even flowered.
This little azalea is new. The label just said Azalea japonica pink. We bought it at the end of last summer - to plant on Leo's grave.
The wisteria is looking better every week. My only regret is that it gets rather leafy before the flowers are at their very best. I try to cut back the leaf shoots that really do "shoot" out - but they grow so fast that it is hard to keep up.
I hope we get out on some short walks soon because it is going to become increasingly difficult to find new flowers to photograph in the garden as we move into summer. But there will still be plenty of work to do. The foliage has already died back on the early bulbs like the snowdrops and daffodils - so I need to weed the beds now that I can walk on them without crushing the leaves.
I still haven't finished trimming the hedge down by the road. I have been "pruning" it with secateurs because the road is narrow and the hedge has grown out rather far and needs to be cut back fairly severely. The hedge trimmer is quick but works best when the hedge doesn't need a very close shave.
And, of course, there is the never-ending mowing and edging of the lawns. I was going to try out the new mower this morning but it was raining hard at about six o'clock. Perhaps the grass will dry out enough by this afternoon.
I have seen more signs of activity in the bird box. Yesterday - while the parents were out foraging for caterpillars - I caught a glimpse of a little baby face looking out of the hole and this morning I saw a tail. I am watching carefully - partly because Tim has twice seen one of the neighbours' cats tightrope walking along the top of our wooden fence in the direction of the nestbox. And partly because I would love to see the babies leave the box. In all the years that they have used the box, we have only once seen the great tit babies take their first flight into the unknown.
I love white flowers and always used to marvel at the way a patch of perennial candytuft lit up the front garden on a dull morning. I nearly lost the plant - due to neglect. I didn't clip it back after it flowered for years and finally it got so choked up that it lost the will to live. When I cleared the bed, I found that a few sprigs had survived. I mulched around them with leafmould and now the candytuft is beginning to spread again.
But it is upstaged by the white saxifrage on either side of the steps which is spreading rather aggressively. It looks rather like mossy saxifrage "Saxifrage hypnoides", a wild flower, but is probably a garden hybrid. I dug out a huge patch last year and gave some to friends but it hasn't been deterred.
I waded through some wet plants to take a photo of yet another azalea down on the bottom terrace of the garden (often referred to rather pretentiously as "the shrubbery") . . .
. . . and stopped to take a photo of the rain drops on the new foliage of the lady's mantle "alchemilla mollis" below the retaining wall. The RHS site says that these plants are "Prone to self-seeding" and they are not kidding.
Lady's mantle is a wild flower which has been adopted as a garden plant. The centranthus ruber (commonly known as red valerian even though it is not a valerian) has moved in the other direction from our gardens into the wild. It grows wild in the Mediterranean countries and was brought to Britain as a garden plant but has escaped. It is also prone to self-seeding and can be a nuisance - but the butterlies love the nectar so I keep more than I need. The first flowers are just starting to open. There are three colours . . . pink, white and this one which is almost red.
Two of Tim's favourite plants in the garden are ones which he bought. One is a skimmia japonica "rubella". It has panicles of red buds which open into small starry white flowers in April and attracts a lot of bees. The other was a present for me. It came home from the garden centre in Tynwald Mills in a little pot. We thought it was a shrub but now it is as tall as the double storey house next door! It is a Crinodendron hookerianum - a Chilean lantern tree.
This photo was taken from the patio above the garage . . .
. . . and this is a close-up of the flowers.
While I was up on the patio I noticed yet another azalea in flower at the side of the house. It is deciduous and may be a type of azalea mollis. The bush used to be a combination of two plants - half yellow and half orange but the orange half died.
The oriental poppies have been knocked about by the wind and weighed down by their wet petals - and have turned into the usual mess of poppies.
And finally, proof that procrastination pays off in the end! I wanted to screen the wheelie bins down by the gate but couldn't decide how to do it. The ground is very hard under the trees, full of roots and not ideal for planting a short hedge or digging holes for fence posts. But a few years ago some seedlings came up. They look rather like wild broom but may be seed from a garden variety that has reverted to an earlier form. They are rather straggly and not dense enough to be a really effective screen but I am happy - and they should be happier now that one of the beeches has been cut down and they are getting some morning sun.
Late Spring/Early Summer
Monday 19th May, 2014
No garden projects during the past week - just a lot of medical appointments, a quick trip to the Curraghs and a fair amount of weeding and mowing.
I woke early this morning - well before five and it was already light although there is still another month until the longest day. I got up just before five and took a photo of the morning sky. It was lovely outside. There was just a gentle breeze, the air was scented by the clematis and the wood pigeons were cooing.
I don't know what is going on with the nesting wood pigeons. I didn't see them flying into the conifer for days and thought their babies must have fledged - but recently the adults have been back again. I wonder whether they are thinking about a second brood already. They just seem to be visiting the nest occasionally at present and sometimes one perches on the power line nearby.
It is still all go in the tit box. When I got up this morning the parents were already flying in and out with tiny caterpillars for their brood - and they will keep on working until the light fades this evening.
A week ago I received a message from Dorothy - "Just been to the Curraghs and saw some bogbean". I was excited because I have never been to the Curraghs at the right time to see a bogbean flower.
We couldn't fit in a trip until Friday and it wasn't entirely successful - but I did see a few flowers as well as masses of orange tip butterflies. They seem to be having a good year as I have even seen a couple in the garden. The drive to the Curraghs was rather hair-raising as the only route is along a narrow back road which is actually more pothole than road and, to add to the excitement, there are deep ditches on either side of the road in places.
But back to the bogbeans . . . we parked near the grassy path into the Curraghs but there wasn't a single bogbean flower in sight from the path. So I walked a few yards along the road to the beginning of the boardwalk. It is a lot drier than it was in February and the new fronds on the Royal ferns are already almost shoulder height.
Eventually, I found a bogbean flower which was close enough to the path to photograph without getting my feet wet. It was slightly past its best - the lower blossoms on the flower spike had already shrivelled. I only found two more. Tim was waiting in the car so I didn't want to spend too long searching.
Sadly, the bluebells are nearly over for the year but I took a last set of photos about a week ago. I have trouble getting the right shade of blue as blue flowers often look too close to the green end of the blue spectrum in photographs but these bluebells in the late afternoon sun are just about right.
I wondered whether the same light conditions would work with the intense blue of the tiny germander speedwell flowers (Veronica chamaedrys) - but they still look a bit too anaemic.
Germander speedwell is related to a very pretty pale mauve spiked veronica which was given to me by a friend. It isn't native to Britain. If I have identified it right, it is Veronica gentianoides, a wild flower from the middle east.
The garden flowers seem to be taking over from the wild plants now - but the hawthorns are looking pretty. We have a group of in the back garden. Two are covered with blossom but the other poor tree is almost smothered by a wild rose which should be flowering in a few weeks.
The first bud on the climbing rose by the summerhouse opened last week. I love the perfect little miniature blooms on the Cécile Brunner- partly because they remind me of happy holidays on my aunt's farm. She used to make Victorian posies with the little roses and sweetly scented violets.
Last week's mowing marked the sad demise of my trusty Flymo. It just refused to start again after a brief stop when I was half way through mowing the back lawn. Tim says it is only good for the scrap heap - so I finished the back with my little reserve mower. The little mower cuts well but it is really meant to be used on a smaller lawn so I will have to get a new mower. It isn't easy because I want an electric mower without a grass catcher and a lot of the internet garden equipment suppliers don't deliver to the Island.
At least I don't have to avoid stepping on the occasional "dog mess" when I am mowing the back lawn now - but I still have to concentrate. We have a lot of bumblebees in the garden and they sometimes enjoy a stroll on the grass. They can get quite cross when I rescue them from the mower.
The shrubs are all doing well this year. In fact everything seems to be thriving after the mild winter. Near the drive we have an old lilac - not a lilac lilac but an almost wine red lilac!
And near it is a rather pretty weigela. I don't know its name. I grew it from a cutting from an old plant which was already in the garden.
And almost last but not least (as they say), the apricot azalea mollis glowing in the early morning sun.
But the big news is that it must be almost summer because the first oriental poppy opened three days ago!
The next morning there were five flowers and today I have given up counting.
And there is more pleasure to come. The wisteria flowers are starting to open.
How not to create a perfect garden.
Monday 12th May 2014.
If you have read the previous two posts you will know that this is not a "how to create a perfect garden like mine" blog. I cannot understand people who write self-help books. How can anyone be so arrogant that they think they are qualified to tell everyone else how to live their lives? Maybe I am wrong. Perhaps they not arrogant . . . just greedy and the books are a cynical way of ripping off the gullible.
Anyway, back to my "how not to create a perfect garden" blog. I do have some advice - about what not to do.
1. Don't waste valuable gardening time trying to photograph wood pigeons with a nest in a neighbouring garden.
The parent birds kept landing near the top of the dense conifer in the centre of the photo and disappearing into the heart of the tree - obviously feeding babies.
I kept grabbing my camera but never managed to focus and press the shutter in time. I tried leaning out of the window with the camera, ready focused and pointed at the right spot, until my arms ached but the birds never appeared until I had given up. I haven't seen them for a couple of days now so the babies must have left the nest already.
2. Don't waste even more valuable gardening time searching for wellies that are not lost.
There used to be three pairs of wellies that lived in the conservatory, two pairs of mine and one of Tim's. On Friday there were only two pairs. We assumed (wrongly) that the green pair belonged to Tim and my green ones had been mislaid. I spent hours searching for the missing wellies before the penny dropped and I realised that both pairs were mine. I vaguely remembered Tim complaining last autumn that his wellies leaked. We decided that he must have put them out with the rubbish, intending to buy a new pair, and then forgotten. Of course, the day after we stopped looking for them he found his wellies in the boot of the blue Golf.
3. Don't get side-tracked by clearing a path around a fallen tree in a neighbouring plantation.
A huge dead sycamore, on the boundary between the plantation and our neighbour's garden, fell during the winter gales and blocked our favourite path up to the track to the top of Skyhill. It fell across the bed of a little stream which is dry for most of the year but can come gushing down after a heavy rainfall in winter. Tim likes to keep the stream clear of fallen branches and leaves because it became blocked once in the past and the water was diverted down our bank behind the summerhouse.
In March some men from the forestry department came to work on the tree. They sliced up two of the main trunks and all the smaller branches and most of the ivy but must have decided that it would be impossible to cut up the last trunk without dropping the huge stump into the stream. So our path was still blocked.
We couldn't get under or over the remaining trunk so I spent a whole afternoon moving all the debris which was piled up around the end of the trunk and cleared a path so that we could walk up that way again.
I haven't trimmed the side of the hedge by the road yet, but I did manage to complete my "Project number 2". The dog path is no more.
When I removed the paving slabs, I felt some slightly absurd pangs of guilt about destroying a memory of our dearly departed little Schipperke family but comforted myself by thoughts that the whole garden is full of memories.
For instance, there is the kniphofia (red hot poker) that I bought as a joke Mothers Day present for Alice from her sons. Tim's sister had sent us a beautiful calendar with photos of South African flowers and one month featured a picture of kniphofia with a caption explaining that they were often planted around the traditional homes in Lesotho because the local people thought they would protect their houses from lightning. Alice was terrified of thunderstorms. She tried to dig a hole in the carpet under a chair in our bedroom in a vain attempt to hide whenever there was even the slightest rumble of thunder. Unfortunately her fears didn't diminish after we bought the plant.
So far this year the plant has only managed to produce that one flower. I had a close look because I remembered seeing a second flower shoot. It was lying on the ground - probably chewed off by a slug. There were other stems that looked as though they had suffered the same fate. I don't think our damp, slug-infested garden is suitable for these heat loving African plants.
Maybe I should just grow weeds. I was weeding out most of the Herb-Robert (Geranium robertianum) until I noticed its name on the RHS perfect for pollinators wildflower list. Now it has been given a reprieve. The tiny pink flowers are pretty but the leaves have an unpleasant odour when crushed. In some areas it is called Stinking Bob.
A relative of Herb-Robert is the perennial geranium "Johnson's Blue". I bought a plant a few years ago mainly because it looked rather like a more colourful version of the wild meadow crane's-bill. It flowers in summer but the first bud has just opened.
I also bought a packet of Star-of-Bethlehem bulbs (Ornithogalum umbellatum) ages ago and planted them under the beech tree near the house. Only one survived and I didn't see it last year so I was delighted when I found it yesterday. I was trying to get in a good position to photograph a white bluebell and nearly trod on the little plant.
I have been trying to get a good photo of the pignut flowers (Conopodium majus). They are the daintiest of the white umbellifers and in my opinion the prettiest. This is my best effort so far.
I was reading about the common names of the aquilegea vulgaris while preparing the last post on the blog and found out the significance of the name columbine (columba = dove). The spurs above the drooping petals are said to look rather like five doves sitting around a feeder.
The clematis montana rubens is looking good still - above a bed filled with a froth of London Pride mixed with oriental poppy buds waiting to burst open.
The first bud to show colour.
The earlier azaleas and rhododendrons are providing a lot of colour. I don't know their names. Some were here when we bought the property and this one was an impulse item when we were filling the car with petrol years ago. We just refer to it as the "Laxey Garage rhododendron". The buds are pink but turn cream when the flowers open.
And finally, you can't overlook this little azalea. If there was an award for brightness it would win.
Projects and wallabies.
Tuesday 6th May, 2014
I love this time of year. Every sunny evening, when the sun is sinking and the glen is already in the shadow of Skyhill, the gorse on far side of the glen below the mountain road lights up like a golden rim on a bowl.
I am taking advantage of our enforced holiday from hiking to get down to a few projects in the garden. The first was to lower the height of the hedge down by the road. It is a mixed hedge, mainly beech, holly and forsythia, that we inherited with the property. The original owner of our garden was obsessed with privacy and wasn't satisfied with one hedge. She also planted a row of beeches, interspersed with flowering cherries inside the hedge, plus a second hedge of Leylandii (a fast growing conifer).
Over the years I have gradually tried to reduce the routine work in the garden by cutting the hedges down to more easily manageable heights and removing areas of grass which are a nuisance to mow. The holly hedge on the south-west boundary has been tamed, the Leylandii (which had been allowed to grow into tall trees) have been cut back a couple of times and the hedge is now down to about six feet - but the hedge by the road has been sneakily getting higher recently.
This is a photo from 20th April, when we had cut about a quarter of the hedge . . .
. . . and this is the end of Project number 1 - on 5th May. The side of the hedge still has to be trimmed because the new beech shoots have burst out and you can almost see them growing at this time of year.
You can almost see time passing too. Every week the garden changes. A few days ago we were still enjoying the blossom on the flowering cherries and I photographed the very first flower on the clematis by the front steps. Yesterday the last of the white cherry petal "confetti" was shrivelling on the front lawn but the sweet scent of the clematis is adding yet another dimension to the beauty of our "fifty shades of green" spring.
The apricot coloured azalea mollis outside the living room window is full of flowers too - and it is only two days since I photographed the first flower.
I spend a lot of time weeding - far more than is necessary because I don't like bare earth and I am a bit prejudiced about which weeds should be removed and which I want to keep. I read recently that a study had been conducted which proved that we are all more prejudiced than we like to admit (even those of us who admit that we are prejudiced) - and I can believe it.
Anyway, to get back to the garden, I have an intense and unreasonable dislike of a fairly inoffensive little weed - hairy bittercress (cardamine hirsuta). I think the reason is threefold. First hairy bittercress is very fast growing and it spreads seed from "exploding" pods. It is claimed that a large plant can produce up to 50,000 seeds. Also it is sneaky. Even if I weed out all the bigger plants at the beginning of the growing season, it produces another generation of tiny plants not more than an inch or so high - capable of hiding behind other plants but able to produce enough seed to ensure survival of the species. Every year I try to weed it out and every year it beats me.
Finally another black mark against its name. It is considered a delicacy by the invading pheasants. Unfortunately they don't eat the whole plant but just peck off the tops - effectively pruning them and making them grow even better.
Hairy bittercress.
Another related plant, the cuckoo flower (aka lady's smock or cardamine pretensis ) starts as a little rosette of leaves - almost identical to the hairy bittercress - but has a dual purpose and is encouraged to grow in the garden. It has pretty pink flowers and is one of the main larval food sources of the orange tip butterfly.
Talking of butterflies. There have been a few in the garden already. I saw some while Jenny was with us and about a week later a couple more small white ones arrived. The first one disappeared down the throat of a male pheasant but I got close enough to identify the other. It was a green-veined white. Then yesterday, while I was taking photos up by the wild flower bank, I got my first butterfly photo of the year - another green-veined white.
I nearly forgot to mention some "you won't believe this" news. While I was cutting the hedge an electrician, who was working on a house across the road, came over and told me that he had a shock when he drove past our gate the previous day. A wallaby hopped out of our drive right in front of his van! Both wallaby and van escaped unscathed. He said that he had heard that there were wallabies up in Skyhill plantation. I knew about the red necked wallabies that escaped from the Wildlife Park over fifty years ago and have been breeding in the Curraghs but I had never heard that they had spread all the way to Glen Auldyn. I decided that it might be a good idea to keep our gate shut in future. We have been leaving it open most of the time now that we don't need to keep dogs from escaping.
Yesterday I went up through the top gate into the plantation and saw an animal ahead of me on the path outside our fence. My first thought was "that is a fat dog" . . . and then I realised that it was hopping. It was a male wallaby. I wonder how high they can jump. Our fence was high enough to keep Schipperkes in but I don't know whether it will keep wallabies out.
Later in the afternoon, I heard some hysterical barking in the plantation. It sounded like Penny, the Jack Russell from the riding school. I wonder whether she had met the wallaby.
When I went out to photograph the hedge yesterday, I noticed that the wild garlic is flowering at the side of the road.
We have a few more "sort of wild" flowers opening in the garden. There are an assortment of columbines or "granny's bonnets" (aquilegia vulgaris) which have been coming up from seed since I bought a packet of aquilegia seed about twenty years ago. They are completely different from the large-flowered parents and must have reverted to something like the original wild varieties. All the flowers are small and the colours vary from dark purple/maroon through various shades to pink. Some are double with a white centre.
The first one is closest to the original wild form.
Another plant which may or may not be wild is the bugle which is an old resident in the garden - possible planted by an earlier owner. We probably have too much but it is a good ground cover and the bees love it.
The crabapple is flowering too.
This is one of those perfect spring mornings - sparkling sunshine after overnight rain. I am going to mow the grass after posting this on the blog. It is too good a day to spend indoors.
After mowing I will think about starting the next garden project. Project number 2 on the list is removing the old dog path. We laid pavers across the back lawn in an attempt to keep mud out of the kitchen. The Schipperkes used to bolt out through the dog flap in the kitchen door whenever there were rumours of riding school dogs up in the plantation. They would tear up across the back lawn, though the daffodil bed under the hawthorns and up the bank above the stream.
Then they would spend hours under this old holly, barking and waiting for the other dogs to return so that they could run up and down inside the fence screaming abuse at their mortal enemies.
Eventually, they would return to the house along the same route. They wore a path through the grass and came in with muddy paws. The rough pavers cut down on the mud and had the added benefit of wearing down the dogs' claws so that I didn't need to clip them - except for Alexander who either had harder nails or was lazier than his brothers and didn't run up and down the path so often.
Now the path is no longer used. I want to lift the pavers to use in another part of the garden and dig out squares of unwanted lawn to replace the grass.
