Author: Richard

3-bin Garden Compost

3-bin compost making

We’re trimming hedges and taking up the broad beans this morning, so our new compost bins are proving useful. To create more room for the glut of material at this time of year, I’ve been moving the progressively more broken down compost from one bin to another. Bin 3 is almost ready to use. Some of it was wet and claggy but forking it across from bin 2 gave me the chance to break up the clumps and let the air get to it.

In case of downpours, I’ve covered bins 2 and 3 with opened-out compost bags, held down with a few bricks. There’s still plenty of opportunity for the air to get to the compost because there are one-inch gaps between the slats.

I was pleased to see one or two small red earthworms as I lifted the plastic sheets. Often referred to as brandling worms, they’re part of the recycling system in compost-making.

Rambling with the Nats, 1873

naturalists
Artists impression of Victorian naturalists, drawn on Clip Studio Paint (I’m trying out the Lasso filled-shape tool). It would be wonderful if a photograph of the Nats on a ramble in Victorian times ever turned up.

Wakefield Express- 31 May 1873

WAKEFIELD NATURALISTS’ SOCIETY

On Saturday last the members of this Society had a field-day at Nostell, Ryhill, and Wintersett. It was a beautiful day, and nature decked in her spring garb of ever-varying green, displayed that wonderful freshness with which no other part of the year can vie. After several hours’ enjoyment in the woods and lanes, the party met at the Angler’s Arms, Wintersett, where, after tea, the president (Mr Alderman Wainwright, F.L.S.) took the chair and subsequently named the plants about fifty species which had been collected during the afternoon. – Mr Taylor named the conchological specimens, of which fourteen species were exhibited, and Mr Sims named the geological specimens and made some interesting remarks on the geological formations of the neighbourhood. – Messrs. Parkin and Lumb, whose attention had been chiefly directed during the day’s excursion to the observation of the spring migrants, reported they had seen fifteen species of them, and that they had also noticed a Heron and a pair of Common Gull besporting themselves upon the reservoir. Messrs. Fogg and Heald exhibited the larvae of several species of geometae. Returning by way of Hawe Park, the party arrived back at Wakefield as the evening closed in, after spending a most enjoyable and delightful day.

My thanks to Lesley Taylor for spotting this.

Southern Hawker

Southern hawker dragonfly

This southern hawker dragonfly, Aeshna cyanea, was hawking around by a sheltered path through the woodland at RHS Harlow Carr Gardens but obligingly perched on a rhododendron leaf, allowing us to photograph it. This is a male, distinguished by the three blue-spotted segments at the tip of its abdomen.

Woodland at Harlow Carr

A nuthatch calls insistently as we take the path behind the Doric Temple.

Rhododendron

These twisted trunks remind me of old olive trees, but I think that they’re Rhododendrons.

Sequoia bark

Giant Sequoia bark has a spongy texture, which acts as insulation in forest fires. Much as I like sequoias, I’m sorry to hear that large plantations of them are being planted on some Welsh hillsides: this might be an efficient way of taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere but it won’t do a lot for another key environmental problem, the loss of biodiversity.

Lakeside Haiku

haiky
Drake mallard dabbles
and preens on the willow bough
A soft feather drifts

This morning at the lakeside at Newmillerdam I’m trying a haiku.

notebook

I made three pages of notes, then went for the main observations that appealed to me, fitting them into the three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables.

Published
Categorized as Drawing

Trail Cam Fox

Testing my new Browning Strike Force Pro XD trail cam yesterday in the back garden: at night in infrared mode on red fox and in daylight on grey squirrel, juvenile blackbird and dunnocks.

We think there may be two foxes; the first, with a bushy tail appears at 10.13 p.m., then ten minutes later there’s a similar-looking fox crossing the screen and finally, at 10.26, a fox with an apparently thinner tail with a lighter tip to it appears to notice the infrared light and it heads off.

The following night we recorded no fox activity, so I hope that we haven’t put them off with the infrared.

Parasol

mushroom
mushroom

These parasol mushrooms were growing in a small troop in a corner of our friends, Matthew and Tonia’s, back garden in Ossett, who’ve recently cut back shrubs to rejuvenate a shady bed by an old stone wall.

I remember that back, in the 1980s, Matthew attempted to remove the large stump of what I think had been a diseased elm from this corner, but in the end he had to bury it and leave it where it was, so these could be fungi associated with rotting wood.

To me it looks like one of the agarics, some of which are good to eat, others deadly poisonous. I should have taken a closer look at the gills.

2021: A Space Oddity

space comic strip

I’ve gone Cinerama format for my latest birthday card which continues the Lost in Space theme of the previous card.

space cartoons

How would you serve afternoon tea in zero G?

happy birthday banner

Wood Pigeon Selfies

trail cam photo

Time to test my new trail cam by positioning it below the bird feeders and sprinkling a few crumbs and mealworms on the lawn.

wood pigeon photos
dunnock

The wood pigeon took 36 selfies and even photobombed the dunnock’s brief appearance.

Also captured on camera, a blackbird, house sparrow and what we think was a song thrush.

Next test is on the video setting through the night . . .

blackbird

Horbury High Street

High Street

Much as we like our homemade bread it doesn’t keep long at this time of year so while the wood pigeon tucked into that (see the greatest hits from of the 103 selfies it took of itself on my new trail cam in my next post), we enjoyed the roast Mediterranean veg sandwich at the Cafe Capri.

The storks in their natural habitat

While we’re in Horbury, we check out my Addingford display in the Redbox Gallery in the old telephone box on Queen Street. I’m pleased that the foamboard artwork isn’t buckling too much under the summer sun and that I can see the Addingford Steps artwork and map so well on the back wall, then I realise that the reason that I can see them is because the two stork cut-outs, suspended on fishing line, have fallen down behind Joby’s riverbank.

I’ll reinstate them, but I’ll draw the birds again at half the size, so they don’t blot out the display at they did previously.

A Corner of the Meadow

sketchbook page

3.50 p.m., 91℉, 34℃ in direct sun, which is filtered through a veil of cloud with lower cumulus coming in from the south-east: A small hoverfly is fascinated by the lime green top of my pen and explores it as I draw.

blackbird

A blackbird is softly scolding and a female sparrow eyes me warily from the hedge.

my little meadow area
My small meadow area, next to the revamped compost bins, has been rather neglected this summer but it’s getting nearer to what I want. On this small scale I’m now aiming to put in plenty of plants for pollinators and manage those as the seasons go by, rather than attempt to create a traditional hay meadow.

Most unusual sighting is two Typhoons flying over, turning about on manoeuvre.